Fragments From Floyd

... please turn out the lights.

T'was a historical day for Fragments yesterday. Not one comment, not one email pertaining to a weblog entry. Nada. Zip. First time ever.

Yes, I think I have finally run off everybody but the one poor schuck who came here this morning Google-searching for "collard greens chicken manure". First, during the past week, it was the endless sequence about wood and stoves and creosote and blah blah blah. Of course that topic was germane to oh, one out of 200 Fragments readers who come from places like Los Angeles, Tallahasee, and Kuala Lampur. Then today the death-blow... with a couple of entries in praise of Pond Scum. I think I just heard the door slam behind the last Fragments visitor. Oh well. It's been real.

Then, as I teeter on the brink of despondent melancholy, a glimmer of encouragement. Out of the ashes... The last Carnival of the Vanities entry brought in the same number of visitors as I got comments yesterday. None. And then I go and read that Chaz Hill's entry had 150 readers!. So vegetables aren't a hot current topic in these days of pre-bellicosity. Then today I hear from Bill Peschel. Bill has undertaken to create on Planet Peschel the "Best Internet Essays of 2003". And, the Vegetable Shop of Horrors piece about Aparagus is included as the chosen essay for January 30! Other essays for the month are in the drop-down at the top of the main page. Bookmark this "best" list and come back regularly.

Meanwhile, your momma's shoes have aiglets, and all her children were born nekkid! (I have decided to be more inflammatory, confrontational and in-your-face as a way to win back lost readers. You don't like it, send me an email or comment. Grrrrr!)

Posted by fred1st at 2:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (0)

... and Other Spectacular Specks!

We are talking briefly about finding DJ something to look at with his new microscope. If you're not interested in this morning's topic, just clean your nails, maybe doodle us something on a napkin, we'll be done in a minute. This is just Weird Uncle Fred blathering about biology again, with a short treatise on pond scum (and you thought surely I couldn't do any worse than the soliloquy on compost, back in the summer!) You may begin humming now... DJ, come with me.

Now it's been a long time since I did what you're wanting to do, so I'll have to dig back into my memory to decide what to tell you. First of all, realize that you have the kind of microscope (I think, haven't had confirmation on this) that will let you see details of small things that are thin enough to let light pass thru. Something thick...like that dead fly my parents wanted me to look at... will just be a big black blob. One of his wings, on the other hand, will be a bit more interesting. Even a blade of grass will be too thick, so, think thin!

And the next thing you need to know is that your 'scope has a very small 'depth of field', meaning that what you see will be in focus only if it is flattened. Looking down into a standing drop of water on a slide would be like flying over a mountain of jello and looking for a cherry somewhere inside the center of it. Squash that mountain so it all lays in one plane, taking the mountain off the top of the cherry. Toward this end, you'll need some cover slips. If you don't have any, get plenty of them. If you have them, they have to be CLEAN! Another neat thing to have would be one or two 'depression slides'. More about that another time. Another good thing to have around would be some methyl cellulose, a thick clear goo that slows down the fast moving critters so you can study them, otherwise they zoom past your lens like Tom Petty in his race car... or is that Richard? Doesn't matter. They'll be zoooming by so fast, you won't be able to tell the difference.

The most exciting thing in early microscope exploration is to see tiny living things do living things... eating, moving around in all sorts of odd ways, reacting to light, digesting their food... stuff they do all day, every day, all around you...even under your feet... and you weren't even aware that world existed, until you got your microscope! So, find a still puddle in a grassy place, or better yet, a pond. (You'll do way better with looking around STILL water than moving water).

Yes, I know ponds are all frozen where you live, so this is a bit of a problem. If you can find some vegetation near an edge, a clump of grass with wet roots, get that; and some of the muddy stuff on the surface of the bottom is good too. Put that in glass bowl (clear is best) along with some of the pond water or rain water (don't use tap water), set it in the sunlight in a warm (but not hot) place and 'incubate' your sample for a few days. Then you're ready to explore!

Don't get discouraged if your first winter pond sample isn't great. Lots of things go dormant in this kind of weather (including microscopists!) Some things you are likely to see after a few weeks of pond sampling:

Protozoans of all kinds. The kind covered with beating hairs (cilia or flagella) are amazing in their variety.

Small crustaceans called ostracods. These are like little shrimp inside two shells. Don't put a coverslip on this guy or you'll squash him!

Single celled algae, including diatoms, and filamentous algae, long stringy stuff often called 'pond scum'. These will all be green. And they may MOVE... even the filamentous ones. If you thought plants JUST SAT THERE, think again. Some little plant creatures move around like animals!

Flatworms. You can collect some with a bit of meat. This will tell you how.

Tardigrades. Water Bears. Neatest critters on earth. Find them in clumps of moss.

ASSIGNMENT:
__________________________

Learn how a microscope works.

Become familiar with the creatures you are seeing and be able to identify them with the group they belong to.

Study these images (especially Ciliates, Pond Water, and Whirling Animals) so you'll begin to understand where these creatures live, and where to look for them.

Go hunting for "Bears in your Backyard".

Happy Hunting, DJ. Let me us know what you're finding!

Posted by fred1st at 6:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

One night this week at a meeting, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that the woman sitting next to me was staring intently at my lap. Hmmmm. Then I realized that on my lap was a scrap of paper upon which someone had doodled a rough drawing. It appeared to be a Parmecium, a microscopic animal.

Oops. Guess I must not've been paying attention. While my brain was wandering all around the words of the speaker, managing to totally evade almost every one of them, my hand had been mindlessly drawing a microscopic creature that was apparently swimming around in the pond scum of what passes these days for my conscious brain. Where the heck did that particular doodle come from, though, I wondered?

I'm still not certain. But it occurred to me, as I continued to feign interest in the voice behind the podium, that this might have something to do with Michele Catalano's son, DJ's, birthday. No, I'm not making this up. Here's the deal...

In a post a couple of weeks back, I encouraged parents to get their kids outdoors under the stars, to learn a few constellations, that kind of thing. Michele commented that DJ had a telescope and really seemed 'into it'. I got up on my tiny little soapbox and pontificated that, in order to know 'both ends' of the world (the very large and far away AND the very near and very small, thus making him a budding Renaissance man, well, boy) DJ should have a microscope. Today was DJ's birthday (TEN big ones!) and he got his microscope! Hot diggety. Oh man, I'm jealous. I'm serious.

I got a microscope (of the drugstore variety) for my birthday when I was about DJ's age. My parents were totally clueless about what I should look at with the thing. "Put some cotton fibers in a drop of water" they said. (Yawn!) "Get some water from the commode. That's gotta be crawling with interesting things". (Blecch!) "How about a dead fly?" Boring. Its a wonder I ended up spending six years of college with the microscope crowd after this totally insipid first encounter with the micrometric world.

Most biology classes don't go much beyond my poor parents' creativity. "Today we're going to look at the preserved, stained cells of an onion skin/ cheek cell/ protozoan. Boring, two-dimensional, motionless, lifeless. Phooey!

But once I learned where to look and I saw the intricacy and beauty of the myriad twirling, pulsing, oozing and gliding jewel-like creatures that live in the surface water in a clump of moss, a drop of pond water, or the gut of a woodroach (YES! TRUE!)... I became a most enthusiastic field microscopist. Some of my most cherished 'discoveries' of the natural world while peering down, down, down through that lens into the microcosmic 'heavens' of the very small.

DJ, I think we can get you off to a better start than I had. First thing tomorrow...

Posted by fred1st at 9:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Fire mixed with blood... Gives one pause.

Posted by fred1st at 7:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Chromosomes
Sand Mountain, Wythe County, Virginia
Circa 1976

Posted by fred1st at 5:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Or, Where There's Smoke

READ: PART ONE PART TWO PART THREE PART FOUR

But while they were figuring on how to make it better, it got worse. One night in December just before Christmas, an extremely low-flying jet zoomed overhead. Oddly, it didn't seem to be moving away, but rather hovering right over the house. Fred put on his jacket and went outside to investigate. Great Gerty, the danged jet was nose-down the house 'cause its jet engine was throwing fire up out of their chimney! What they had there, Vern, was a flue fire. The creosote that escaped as a liguid to adorn our fireplace inside the room remained to dry and deposit thicker and thicker inside the fireplace. Eventually, it dried out enough that, with a hot fire, it ignited, burning at a temperature of over 2000 degrees, creating a most ungodly roaring column of rushing fire shooting out the chimney.

So, if there's fire, you throw water on it. Right? So in the December darkness, our idiot homeowner clambers up a ladder with a bucket of water. Whooosh! Into the blast of the jet engine. WHOOSH! SHUDDER! HISSSS! And over the next hour, it petered out and the house did not burn down. Now since this event, he has learned that pouring cold water into a hot chimney is an excellent way to crack the lining of a fireplace, allowing the fire to leave the chimney and find some nice dry framing to ignite. Flue fires: don't try this at home.

While their flue fire had a miserable but not hurtful ending, this was not the case for their neighbor, Euell. One morning not long after the Esperanza flue fire, the Firsts were awaken by fire engines all around, red lights flashing into the bedroom windows from across the street. Euell had been burning the same half-dry wood collected by the two woodchucks on the weekends. The chimney of his three-story gingerbread farmhouse was a good twenty five feet tall, so the smoke had even more time to cool off and deposit the deadly cresote. It set the framing burning in a closet adjacent to the chimney on the second floor, and a low-temperature smoldering fire spread, creating a thick pall of smoke that poured out of every open window as they stood on the sidewalk that awful morning, watching helplessly.

Everything that the smoke didn't ruin, the volunteer firemen soaked, perhaps unnecessarily, with hundreds of gallons of water. The house basically had to be gutted of all furniture, all the wall paper stripped, all their clothes thrown out. It was a neighborhood disaster that could have ended even more tragically. And but for the fact that God cares for beasts and idiots, it could easily have happened to Euell's hapless neighbor as well.

And this was the end of Fred's blissful ignorance about the dangers of wood heat... a threat that lurked so insidiously behind its warmth and charm. Yet, in spite of the risks, he was unwilling to give up the concept of taking the sun's energy stored in wood and releasing it back to warm their present and future homes. The symmetry of this astonishing and beautiful cycle of photons and chlorphyll, lignin and flame was a true life object lesson he wanted to contemplate as he grew older, to truly understand and appreciate, sitting quietly old cold mornings in the radiant warmth of a flickering wood fire.

It is now more than twenty five years, five homes, four woodstoves and more than forty cords of wood later. We heat with wood. We don't have creosote or flue fires. I sleep soundly at night, not concerned about the safety of our stove. In the final installment (yes, finally!) I will tell you what I've learned about wood and woodstoves. Maybe knowing of our experience will encourage someone among you to enjoy as we have the pleasures of the good work of wood heat in your home.

READ PART SIX

Posted by fred1st at 5:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Dave Barry offers a valuable contribution in his review of LOTR II, wondering

"Why can't they just lose the ring in the sink?"

The PLOT all came together for me when I read his 'simplified screenplay'.

Dave now has his own blog, by the way. I consider Mr. Barry a peer. At least age-wise. He is, as Jane Fitch recently phrased it, of that "Certain Age" that gives him an air of sagacious nobility, don't you think?

Mr. Barry was born in 1947, a very good year for sagacity, which I will also assume, by chronological proximity. Dave's my hero 'cause he's a year older than me. Its getting harder and harder to find someone with those qualifications these days. Not only is he older, but he is in an ever smaller minority worthy of awe... a man older than me who has a new blog. He says he had an old blog that was powered by kerosene. I swear I'm not making this up!

Posted by fred1st at 8:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Just to proove that I can post short entries...

I have a new link in my LINKS toolbar, a most coveted bit of desktop space on the browser. Replacing or at least getting co-billing with OneLink Dictionary is now the HyperDictionary.

It includes a thesaurus, and in both dictionary and thesaurus, each word is a hyperlink to that word's definition. Also you can search on your town's name and bring up it's gazeteer info including zip code. Your mileage may vary.

Any recommendations for other "don't be without" links for our LINKS toolbars?

Posted by fred1st at 7:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Or, Blood from a Stone

READ: PART ONE PART TWO PART THREE

Even so, the small dry wood they acquired through Fred's efforts with his new chainsaw and the little Datsun-turned-woodwagon was soon depleted as the temperatures fell and more and more fuel was needed to keep them warm and the pipes unfrozen through long November nights. Once again neighbor Euell took pity on them, and Fred and Euell would drive the flatbed truck out into the cove and bring back a half cord of wood on a good Saturday.

The first sign of trouble in paradise took the form of a black tarry fluid Fred spotted one morning. It seemed to be oozing from under the sheetmetal fireplace covering, out onto the hearth. He thought at first it was something spilled perhaps, since they occasionally used the stove for slow cooking stews and such. But no, it was definitely coming from inside the fireplace and it smelled strongly like Liquid Smoke. It was not an unpleasant smell exactly, but bitter and burnt, like the inside of a barbeque grill.

Must have rained down the chimney last night, he thought, wondering if they did need a chimney cap of some sort, after all. The locals mostly didn't have them and told him it shouldn't be a problem, rain coming down the chimney. So he cleaned up the small puddle and dismissed the matter, even though the faint odor of smoke remained to remind him of it.

So things got bad, and things got worse. And it wasn't long before that same thickish brown-black goo started showing up in the mortar between fireplace blocks of dark limestone. The smell became more of an issue, and within another week or two, there were small trickles of glistening tarry sludge slowly oozing down the face of the exterior of the massive fireplace. And soon the beautiful old centerpiece of the front room was drizzled with rivulets of syrupy black blood that Fred soon learned was called creosote. Horror of horrors, before long, it was running down in thick clinging stalagtites in a grotesque mockery across the word-in-stone: ESPERANZA. Hope, indeed.

READ PART FIVE

Posted by fred1st at 5:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Did you know that you can see real-time satellite images of your region (even at night!) via Wunderground's zooming satellite infrared images? Here's our area at the highest resolution. Our place (look closely, see me waving up at you) is in the center right in a tight little cluster of mountains around which hooks the South Fork of the Roanoke River, into which Goose Creek flows, ultimately to the Atlantic.

And now that I've got you all giddy with cartographic urges, here is a neat image of the Rivers of Virginia taken from a larger atlas called Nationalatlas.gov. (Don't bother going there, there's nobody home yet.) This gives a good general view of the Virginia Mountains (Allegheny, Ridge and Valley, and Blue Ridge).

How familiar are you (or your kids) with the land forms that create your "home"? Where in the world are you? Can you (or your kids) trace a drop of water from your front yard to the sea? Given recent assessments of our geographic illiteracy, I encourage you to start with your home turf. Put yourself on the map. Find your place in space. Then broaden your world view by viewing the world, in maps. It's a start toward losing our appaling Americentricity.

Posted by fred1st at 6:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Or, Ignorance of the Law(s of Chemistry) is No Excuse

READ PART ONE READ PART TWO

It was late summer when the woodstove was delivered to their house and just the sight of it's massive presence on the hearth gave Ann and Fred a feeling of joy and confidence at the coming of their second winter in the old Virginia homeplace. The sheer simplicity of it... no moving parts other than the hinged door and the threaded draft caps... fit so perfectly with their hopes for finding 'appropriate technology' in their new rural lifestyle. Cutting wood by hand that would otherwise lay in the forest and rot also seemed like good stewardship, in addition to providing an incredible amount of exercise. Body, soul and spirit, in their new incarnation... it was all coming together now, it seemed.

During its first month in the house, the woodstove was home to a cheery house plant that sat on a yard-sale crocheted doily on its top surface. Then, on the first September morning when the house was just the very least bit chilly, the day for the christening had arrived. A handful of kindling and few small dry pieces of oak warm heated the cast iron for the first time, sending off warm rays of heat in a way that arm-loads of fireplace wood never had. Fred breathed a sigh of deep satisfaction and pride. This was the easiest and most impressive yet in his short list of do-it-yourself projects since becoming a quasi-homesteader in their new Virginia lifestyle.

It wasn't long before the Firsts' good neighbor Euell took pity on the well-intentioned but inexperienced couple, struggling with their bow-saw and hauling five hundred pounds of wood in the back of their little Datsun Hatchback. It was laughable to see it trudge along with it's rear down on the frame, laboring along the back roads to home like an old man leaning into his load. Euell, who had grown up 'country' and was wise in the ways of self-reliance and rural ingenuity. He encouraged Fred to buy a chain saw if he was going to be serious about wood gathering, and showed him how to use it safely so as to retain all of the usual appendages.

It wasn't long before they traded in the frail little hatchback for a red Chevy Luv truck that would carry home literally tons of free wood from the forest. Stove lengths of locust and oak, hickory and cherry grew up in glorious ranks and rows of future coziness, just out their back door. The wood burning enterprise and the wonderful ritual of heating with wood was in full swing by the time the colder days of October had arrived. The young couple and their small daughter were happy in their family woodgatherings and quite contented indoors now, basking in the glow of their Mamma Bear and all was well with the world.

Or so it would seem. A clueless newcomer to country living tends to think no more of the chemistry of smoke than of the physics of his digestive processes. It just happens, right? Fire produces heat produces smoke, smoke rises and goes away. End of story. Ignorance it turns out, is not bliss after all when it comes to bringing a fire intentionally inside your home. Ignorance can get you toasted in a house fire, and this final ignominy only after spending months of smelling like a charcoal briquette. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

to be continued PART FOUR

Posted by fred1st at 4:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Oh my. Chaz over at Dustbury triggered a trip in the Wayback Machine with his post about Crayola Crayons. If you grew up any time since 1903, and chances are pretty good that you did, Crayolas were a part of your childhood. The 48 crayon box was a rather new item when I first encoutered Crayolas in the second or third grade. Before one of those early school years, all we were allowed to use were the thick-as-stumps kind of crayon that were flat on one side so they didn't roll away from our clumsy little fingers. (Come to think of it, those pre-crayon things were so stout you had to hold them with your entire fist, not your clumsy little fingers!)

I still remember being fascinated by the metallic colors of silver and gold. THey seemed magical somehow. Another metallic, Copper, didn't come along until 1958 by which time there were an astounding 64 colors. Lifting the boxy lid off a brand new Christmas carton of 48 or even 64 uniformly pointed rank and file Crayolas was like discovering the Count of Monte Cristo's treasure chest. And can you remember the smell of a new box of crayons?

A little know fact about Crayolas that I discovered during the second grade is that they have a melting temperature that is less than the temperature of the huge steam radiators that heated our school rooms. If you filtch one out of the box (a rarely used color is best) and gradually work your way under some pretense to the back of the room by the coat racks, you can slip down behind the last row of empty seats and press that Carnation Pink crayon into the radiator and it will melt like the Wicked Witch of the West, giving off the distinctive waxy smell of crayon. This was pee-in-your-pants naughty and exciting. At least this is what I was told. Really, mom.

Take a look at how the names changed with the advent of new colors in the psychedelic year of 1972: Some examples.... Atomic Tangerine. Lazer Lemon. Groovy.

And some original color names were changed for the purpose of politcal correctness: FLESH was changed to Peach; INDIAN RED became Chestnut; and PRUSSIAN BLUE became Midnight Blue. Dear Gracie, we wouldn't want to offend those Prussians, would we?

Hey Ron, I bet if you suggested to Julie that she make a candle scent called "CRAYON", she'd make a killin' off Eisenhower era covert crayon-melters like me... er, I mean like that other guy in my second grade class that did this kind of puerile prank.

Posted by fred1st at 2:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Or, Ignorance is Bliss

Read Part One of "Hope Runs Eternal"

Our plucky if vastly ignorant back-to-the-land immigrant had lived the entirety of his young life exclusively in sultry, urban Alabama, and could can say with certainty that he had never even laid eyes ona woodstove before. So altough his neighbor had made the stove himself and it was rather crude, the boxy heat source seemed like a miraculously simple answer to their problem.

Rather than the yawning chasm of a fireplace, a woodstove took its air only through a few easily regulated draft openings into the body of the stove. Rather than sending most of the heat up the chimney to heat the neighborhood, the woodstove that sat out a bit in the room on a metal hearthpad radiated heat into the neighbor's entire downstairs. The thing weighed over 400 pounds and held heat for hours in its mass of iron and fire brick, putting out heat even after the fire inside had gone out. Yes! A woodstove was going to be their ticket to warm winter mornings for years to come.

With a little research they soon decided that a Fisher Stove was a well made unit that they could afford and buy locally. Soon, a Momma Bear Fisher sat on their hearth, in front of the massive stone chimney. Soon it would be radiating the warmth of wood they had cut themselves. Oh the joy of energy independence, knowing that the precious body heat that they largely did without that first winter in the old house would be there for them the second time a Virginia winter rolled around.

It was a thing of beauty, the new two-tiered 'step stove', as it sat regally on the hearthpad before the stately chimney. The chimney had long been the focal point of the room. Constructed in the 1870's from local limestone, it was of a very dark gray color, almost black as the stove, and ten feet wide at the base. The mantle was of the same rough-hewn stone, and in the center over the mantle was a chiseled frame that created a smoother light gray surface on the rock. In the center of the frame was the word "ESPERANZA" etched in the stone in an elaborate script of raised and polished letters. They learned that the original builder of the house had been a merchant sailor, captain of a masted ship called the Esperanza. How wonderful. The Spanish word for HOPE. With the advent of this woodburner, the Firsts' new life in the country was finally coming together. The new stove; free firewood; and a grand old house filled with character and old memories, rich with expectation, and soon to be warm and cheery all winter long!

So, there the stove sat, just exactly where the four beefy delivery men had sat it, no set-up installation included. No problem. How hard could it be to hook it up, thought the independent homeowner, taking matters into his own naive hands? It was a simple matter of guiding the smoke into the fireplace opening; the chimney would do the rest. All that was needed was a 4 x 5 foot panel of sheetmetal with a 6" hole in it, then a piece of stovepipe stuck out the back of the stove and through that hole, and voila! Ready to burn, no fuss, no muss, no bother! This whole enterprise seemed entirely too easy. Foolproof!

Well, not quite. The fool had much to learn, in the very hardest way, about the chemistry of wood, the physics of fire and the engineering requirements of venting hot gases... with especially important lessons about the distilled essence of smoldering wet wood that is called creosote, and that phenomenon of creosote combustion benignly called a 'flue fire'.

Here our happy story of City Mice in the Country takes an unpleasant turn; but lest you worry for our hapless homesteaders, the tale will move ultimately towards a warm and happy ending.

To be continued... READ PART THREE

Posted by fred1st at 5:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

I've ordered my Wristiplinarian from eBay. How 'bout you?

Nine out of ten physical therapists who recommend aversive behavior modification devices for promotion of correct computing posture recommend Wristiplinarian.

Remember:
"If it doesn't hurt, it's not helping".

Posted by fred1st at 9:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Loyal Jones, retired director of the Appalachian Center at Berea College, proposes that there are some core values shared by Appalachian people historically that remain important in their lives today. I suppose I would have to count myself among those he includes here, having lived a lifetime within the bounds of the Appalachian Mountains, from their southernmost tip in Birmingham, to the Smokies of North Carolina, and now in the Blue Ridge of Virginia.

He lists these Appalachian values as...

• Individualism, self-reliance and Pride


• Neighborliness and Hospitality


• Family Solidarity


• Personalism (relating well to other people)


• Religion


• Love of Place


• Sense of Beauty


• Sense of Humour


• Patriotism

Reading this yesterday, I was reminded of Sharon McCrumb's story of rugged individualism and self-reliance among mountain people. Seems especially fittin' here during this southern blizzard.

If you were on the East Coast in 1960, you may remember that it was a terrible winter. In North Carolina in particular, the March weather was fierce. That month it snowed every Monday. That's much more snow than North Carolina usually gets. With this steady fall, the snow did not melt. It just kept piling up and piling up. The North Carolina transportation department did not have the resources to deal with a snowfall of this magnitude. The accumulation was so great that back in the western mountains of the state, the roads, especially unpaved rural back roads, never got cleared and soon became impassible. People who lived in cabins way back in the coves couldn't get out. Because many of them were elderly, the Red Cross was called in to try to get help to these elderly citizens trapped back there, deep in the mountains.

Two Red Cross workers had heard about an old woman--in her eighties-- who lived in a cabin way back in the hills, and they volunteered to take a jeep to bring help to her. The two volunteers drove up the ice-bound road as far as they could, abandoned the jeep when the road became impassable, got out snow shoes, wrestled them on, and helped each other tramp through the waist-deep snow until, finally, they saw the little curl of chimney smoke up on the ridge that told them they'd found her. They managed to hike to the cabin on the top of the hill, stomped up on the porch, and rapped on the door. Finally the old lady opened it.

The rescuers announced proudly."We're from the Red Cross."

"Oh honey," she replied. "It has been such a hard winter, I don't think I can help you this year."

Posted by fred1st at 6:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Or, The Case of the Hot Fudge Fireplace

It's all about maintaining body heat. Food. Clothing. Shelter. In the end, our reason for existence, he thought in his more Spockian moments long ago, is nothing more than getting these three basic needs met, toward the common end of keeping a body warm. Food fuels the internal cellular forges that produce heat as a byproduct of giving our muscles and brains the energy to get up and go to work. We work to buy clothing that cloaks us in a heat-trapping shell to help retain the cell's warm glow. We work with the energy provided by our cells, maintained in our shell of heat-retaining cloth so that we can pay for a house in which we are sheltered from the elements that would take from us this precious internal fire that allows us to work...and so on. The rat race is about body heat, he concluded.

Fred thought these thoughts as he sat eating his Corn Flakes with his hands and face stiff with the cold, his breath coursing out in a blue vapor, a microcosm of the angry blue blizzard just outside the window of their first house in Virginia after leaving the tropics of Alabama. He pondered the importance of warmth as he ate cold cereal while sitting on the radiator that gave up a pathetic and morbid heat like a recently deceased body that is not quite cold yet. This was the warmest place in their new old house, and it became apparent during that very bowl of Corn Flakes that the 'shelter' part of the body heat equation was wanting in the worst way, and he would have to 'do something' to keep his young family warm.

The exact form that that something would take, he did not know. He had never owned a house before. And he had never been this cold inside of a house before, and it seemed obvious two things were needed: 1) get way more heat into the house and 2) take measures to keep heat from leaving the house the instant it was produced. The old house had three fireplaces, so some form of wood heat was a possibility. There was the beginning of a plan.

Within a week, he was testing the heft of a new 48" bow saw and had signed up for a free permit from the National Forest for cutting 'down and dead' wood. A small and ragged pile of punky pine, pithy poplar and porous rotten oak soon appeared in the back yard. They would burn this 'free' wood in the large stone fireplace in the front room, next to the bun-warming radiator. Life indoors would come out of the freezer, and vapour from one's morning breath would soon be no more than an aging mental scar in their shared memory.

But it soon became evident that, while the small fire of wood scraps in the fireplace was great for toasting marshmallows, warming hands and casting cold but friendly flickering shadows around the open spaces of the old house, the maw of the fireplace opening was like a cavernous sucking mouth, exhaling more heat from the house than the pitiful little fire could radiate into it. The fireplace was not going to be the pathway to warm feet that they were looking for, after all.

to be continued... READ PART TWO

Posted by fred1st at 6:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

A wild hair. While recovering from our carpeting experience earlier in the week, I discovered this old image from my short-lived excursion into black & white and messing around in my own back kitchen turned darkroom decades ago.

Here, a favorite, one of the first images I was ever excited about. (I will offer no explanation!) that people always had to ask "What IS IT?"

DUH! It's obviously a picture of a sparrow watching a male elephant make a statement. A Kodak moment.

Posted by fred1st at 4:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Hey, Mr. Mitnick couldn't do this back in 1995.

(Why does this thing make me feel all weird inside?)

Use it to send me a message. Be creative. Keep it clean.

Posted by fred1st at 4:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Did you see this the other day...Kevin Mitnick, after eight years of being prohibited from using the internet, got back online. He last 'surfed' in 1995, when he used an early version of Mosaic, the precursor to Netscape. Can you imagine what that must have been like for him to remember gopherspace being the standard, and find high-speed access to the WWW, javascript, pop-up ads and multimedia.

In 1995, I was working in a community hospital in NC (Industrial Rehab and Pain Center) and was able to convince the admin that the networking potential of something called 'email' and the information gleaning we could do with CompuServe would pay for the small monthly charge in a matter of weeks. (It did!) I managed to find a 'trial month' subscription from one of the two providers in our region (using a blazing-fast new 14.4k modem) to the wimpy wide web, and got our VP down to look at what it would do for us. We were the only department in the hospital to be 'wired' for about two years, and I tried to keep our access (on my computer only) a secret on the one hand, but was wanting to share this amazing access to information with others.

Soon Blacksburg (just north of us here) became one of the first 'wired communities' via BevNet (BBurg Electronic Village). At that point, the light clicked on... what if we could live out in the country back up in Virginia, but have access to the internet? (At that time, it was chiefly the larger cities that offered ISPs; Blacksburg was one of the few rural exceptions). Wouldn't that be cool!

And now, eight years later, here I am in Floyd County, about as geographically isolated as one can get in the eastern US, with the virtual world at my fingertips, and folks from Australia, Malaysia, Japan, Europe, Canada come visit me here every day!

What were you doing with your computer in 1995? When did you first go 'online'...using your computer for anything more than a 'dumb terminal'?

While the 'net is not a replacement for face-to-face or libraries that smell of old books, and even though it has more than its share of rotten content, all in all, I'm happy to have come along during its infancy and childhood. Don't you wonder where it's going, and if it will continue to be a tool, or will it someday become a master?

Like any technology, the internet is value-neutral. It's the intentions of minds that will determine how it is used. I'm finding the world of weblogging to be overwhelmingly a good use of minds, words and bandwidth. How about you?

Posted by fred1st at 7:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Little experiment here, of the crude-ish variety. With any luck, you should be able to go from the thumbnail to the page with the full image (1024 x 768) and download it, if you chose, to use as a desktop. Please ask permission for any other use than personal use on your computer. Send large amounts of money to me for no apparent reason if the subliminals embedded in this image make you feel all generous and extravagant. Real estate also acceptable.

Forget the thumbnail. It's a picture of yesterday's snow. That dog didn't hunt. Power went out last night before I could get this idea together. Instead, take a look at the largish image and download it if you'd like, from this link. Let me know it there are any problems with it.

Posted by fred1st at 6:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

We have had another lesson in the four year process of training our Black Lab, Buster to the crate. Years ago, when we decided to get him, we knew we didn't want to tie a dog outside chained to a tree or clothes line. But we also didn't want him to run loose here, tempted to roam off to meet some loose female who would lead down the road to perdition. We explored the option of crate training Buster, which was amazingly easy.

I think the process was made so quick and painfree because of the crate we selected. Buster's crate had a front and a back door, a few throw rugs, two large windows at dogface level, and a steady temperature between 65 and 70 degrees. Per the instructions regarding size of a crate for our new dog, it was more than enough space for him to turn around easily, and even stand up on his back legs. Basically, to cut throw the bovine alimentary effluence, he became an inside dog. With house rules. Don't get up on the furniture. Don't chew things. Don't mark your territory inside. All of things he has learned to do, with very few mistakes. The key: the can.

Somewhere along the way, somebody told us about this little aversive training trick: Put a few largish chunks of gravel in a large soup can. Tape the cut end back onto the can with rocks in it. When puppy seems ready to misbehave, give him a verbal warning, showing him the can. If he goes ahead and jumps on the couch anyway, rattle the can loudly close to his face and scold him.

Buster hates the can. All I have to do now, very rarely when he gets overwrought and headstrong, is say "You want me to get the can!?" and he slinks over to his bed and sits, submissively.

New rule. Buster doesn't come down the steps onto the new carpet. So far, I have not even had to threaten to get the can out of the cabinet. A firm "STAY" seems to have done the trick. I'm glad. I hate that can. But it works so well, I only wish we had known about this little trick when the kids were small. You might want to try it with your kids. Let us know how it comes out.

BTW: After I 'developed' this picture I took yesterday, I noticed the sprig of grass sticking out of Buster's mouth. I could have edited it out, but I kinda think it gives him that authentic casual countryboy look, don't you?

Posted by fred1st at 5:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Late breaking news on the Hokey Pokey.

Thanks to acutely tuned-in missboynton from Down Under for unearthing this historical revelation into this apparently ancient ritual dance whose origins had preplexed me earlier in the week.

Posted by fred1st at 8:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Thank you, Cannucks, for sharing your winter weather with us here in the mambypamby meteorologically moderate mid south. We appreciate the uncommon experience of listening to the house croak and groan on its foundation during the night as it contracts, pulling itself in from the cold. I listened off and on in the wee hours to make sure I could hear the water trickling in the kitchen sink, running just enough to pull some 'warm' well water through the pipes that run through very frozen ground.

So far, so good. We have about 6" of very fine, powdery snow that will begin blowing and drifting later today as the thermometer falls all during the day from our nightime low of 10 above and winds increase to 20-30 mph. This may be a boring normal day for some, but it's emergency conditions for the ill-prepared hiway department, house plumbing and wildlife in these parts.

There is plenty of wood on the porch, although it is covered with snow. The new carpet is keeping toes happy (perhaps a redeeming 'after' picture when we get things put back together as an antidote to the 'living like pigs' before picture I posted the other day... which, by the way, Ann has not seen yet and I will catch the devil if she does!) She's not working today, and I'm gonna play hookie from school (yes, Canadian types, I know I'm a wimp).
The VDOT Winter Travel Road Conditions Maps say 'stay home'.

So there you have the hippy-dippy Wx report, for y'uns who were asking (I know feel free to offer more verbal localisms, having had our little talk about that. And by the way, I now know not to say that I am 'digging' this day snowed in at home. The word apparently has a more conjugal connotations 'down under'. Eh?)

This might be a fittin' day to write about another sinister encounter with the dark side of burning wood for heat. We'll call it the Hot Fudge Fireplace, maybe. You'll see why. Stay tuned. If Ann lets me have a shot at the computer, I'll see if I can post it by this evening. Y'all stay warm now.

Posted by fred1st at 5:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Oops. Almost forgot to remind y'uns that Carnival #18 is posted today over at Meryl Sue's(her new name, since becoming a part of the Axis of Weevil). Seems the least I could do for achieving the Large Gluteal Cleft of Fame as Meryl hosts this weeks "best".

My wife will tell you, I am generally known (around here) as one who does the least he can do as a matter of general principle. I prefer to think of it as shrewd economy of attention and concern.

Posted by fred1st at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

When I think about it... when I see in my mind it's vapid green squishiness lying cold and dead on the plate; when I sense the presence of it deep in my rhinencephalon, the primative brain where memory is mixed with the rancid-buttery burning rubber smell of it ... I feel the old remembered rising wrenching tightness moving up my internal pipes, bringing me to the very edge of emetic crisis, even here today. The sight, smell, the very thought of asparagus used to make my digestive system go into violent reverse peristaltic waves and all was lost.

This asparagus of childhood appeared before me like dead green fingers out of a cold can, some months or years, perhaps decades since having been purportedly being a living creature. I could not be convinced that this vile substance on my plate had ever been anything more than an inorganic evil poison created by children-hating adults on the other side of the Iron Curtain, where at the time, the Evil Ones lived. THEY must be responsible for this. I hated them, and I hated the mind control they exerted over our parents to make them insist that to become or to remain amongst the 'good children' this enemy-emitic must go in, go down and stay down. This of course was not humanly possible, and the enemy thus exerted a hegemonic form of psychic tyranny over adult and child alike. Those were terrible times.

Many years later, having escaped the Gulag of Childhood, I found myself the new owner of twenty acres of sunlight and rich earth. I was enjoying, yes enjoying, cutting our acre of grass for the first time with the push mower in early Spring. There in a flat area that I assumed was a flower bed, a thin pale green and shiny stalk had pushed through the leaf litter, its top faintly adorned with small overlapping artichoke-like leaves toward a frail and tapering tip. It was asparagus. I recognized it from the wanted posters I remembered seeing as a child.

I had learned in my botanizing that this stuff grew wild, and was even stalked by those who also thought many parts of a picnic table were edible. Wild Aspargus was to die for, according to some brainwashed and pitiful souls. Here in my new yard it apparently grew as an act of intention, all the more awful and repugnant, I thought as I mowed up and down, coming closer and closer to the plant with each pass. Alas, I was lured to it like a tongue to a frozen pump handle in winter, and I plucked the awful spear from the ground. It held me in its chlorophyllic trance. I put it in my mouth. What was I doing!?

I came, I saw, I consumed. And it stayed down. Easily. I discovered the difference at that moment between fresh and 'preserved' asparagus. They are two distinctly different creatures, from different planets, I am thinking. Succulent and slightly crunchy, fresh asparagus tasted of summer sun, rich humus and all things green and growing. Such is the way with knowing there is no middle man between your food's life in the soil and your first bite of it fresh from the earth. My children liked fresh green peas early on (another gaggy childhood horror for me) because they browsed the pea-patch, pulling SugarSnaps warm from the trellis and eating them like candy. Had they been forced by ghoulish parents to eat cold dead peas from a metal can, well, I'm starting to get that tightness again, so I guess I'd better say no more about the Vegetables of from the Gulag.

Be sure and see Feste's Ode to a Sprout, (another in the same evil class of vegetable horrors) and thanks to all who weighed in with their veggie tales. Or in one case, a fruit, the "durian" from the other side of the world. It doesn't look like something God wanted us to eat, now does it?

Posted by fred1st at 7:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (1)

I'm feeling all stream-of-semiconsciousey (while the nice men are installing our carpet loudly in the next room) and maybe should follow Anne's lead in pursuing the illusive butterfly of whimsy where ever it takes me. She does it in her posts so well, don't you think? And with a liberal dusting of Latin. Her comments page admonishes Summam Scrutemur. I had to look it up. You, on the other hand, recognised it right off. Right? Well, * Subucula tua apparet.

A view of Tech campus, where I experienced Parking Lot Road Rage this morning. No bodily harm was done, but as Jimmah said, I have sinned in my heart. Shame on me. And shame on Tech for having twice as many parking stickers sold than there are parking places. Grrrrrr!

Dave Trowbridge points us to some clear thinking on the pros and cons of invading Iraq unilaterally. I saw a wonderfully done (if terrible in content) four-hour 'special' on the History Channel on Iraq, Saddam, and the Mid-East. Should be required viewing for those of us who need more support for our views. It left me convinced that Saddam is not good for the world, but also that it would be a grave mistake to do what our president is hamfistedly forcing our country to commit to this very minute. If you are straddling the fence, do your homework, and do it fast.

Look how Feste is displaying photos of new family member Harley. Ain't this slick! And what a cutie. Harley, I mean.

And I think we have found a solution to our new carpet-meets-doghair problem, thanks to Dave Trowbridge via Scott Chaffin of The Fat Guy. And by the way, Scott has a great place on the Beautiful Brazos for the upcoming Blogging Man Experience. Right Scott? Shouldn't be more than, oh, 20-25 thousand of us.

You'd better sit down. Meryl Yourish is now a member in good standing amongst the Deep Fried Axis of Weevil, housed on Possumblog, headquartered in my hometown, Bham, Alabama. Meryl moves south to Richmond and takes one plunge all the way to SOUTHwest Virginia, and she is now a fully enculturated SUTHNAH and Weevil Queen. Now Meryl, I want to know: Can you make latkes with grits?

Southern Appalachians. Remote. Untrammeled. Not. Look at the roads that cross the area. The only conspicuous relatively roadless space is the Smokies in NC-TN. This image is from a nice site, the Southern Appalachian Forest Coalition. Go take a look.

And while we are in a map state of mind, this "image highlights of stream erosion near Renova, Pennsylvania" looks like a photomicrograph of a capillary bed in the spleen, don't you think? And might be suitable for framing.

And finally. How Many Lileks does it take to change a lightbulb? Combustible Boy takes a stab at a Lilekian answer. Hey, this hits a bit close to home since Fragments wanders the same general trail ... the discursive ramble with digressing cul-de-sacs and loopy themes ... but doesn't do it nearly so well. And here on this blog, the topic tends more toward vegetables, insects and dirt.

* translation: your slip is showing

Posted by fred1st at 6:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

As I moved the last of the things from the front room, piling it all on the dining room table and floor, and any place else it could be stashed in preparation for new carpet later today, Ann issued her last commandment in her sternest tone:

"Be sure and make the bed. We don't want the carpetman to think we live like pigs."

I submit Exhibit A.

Need I say more?

Posted by fred1st at 1:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

... sung to the tune of Elton John's Rocketman. Change words as needed.

Holding out to the end, here. A lone man and his computer in an otherwise empty room. The lonely woodstove throws futile rays of light into the dark corners. The steaming water kettle hisses at the man's back through clenched teeth. No, stop! No time for whimsy this morning. The Carpetman Cometh! More about that later, and mayhaps a before and after picture with further explanation for why we have chosen (well ONE of us has chosen and the other one of us has surrendered to overwhelming force) to sod our floor with recycled pop bottles (or soda or soft-drink, depending on where you're from)... that's basically what olefin is, as I understand it. Better living through chemistry. I guess. Olefin: sounds like a Norwegian boy's name, but I digress.

Meanwhile, class, during this brief lull from the more long-term lull in creativity that typifies Fragments, a writing assignment for you, shamelessly snagged from a professional teacher of English who comes to this weblog, I think, to find examples to show her students: to paraphrase the words of Click and Clack... don't write like my brother. Just kidding, Prof, I visited your writing assignment page and am passing this one along just for fun, under the 'Better to get forgiveness than permission' clause. I never took a writing course, so didn't get to do these fun essay assignments. Here it is, lifted verbatim and also word for word...

Is there a food or dish that you detested as a child that you like as an adult? Can you pinpoint the moment when you gave that food a second chance? How, in general, has your sense of taste changed? Think about the kinds of words that we use to describe taste -- sweet, sour, tangy, spicy.

Your responses from 'comments' you post here will be excerpted in part or whole and read to the class first thing Wednesday morning. And don't bother with excuses for missed or late assignments.

"The dog ate my hard drive" will not even be considered.

Posted by fred1st at 6:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (2)

... you give up something.

My mom tells the story about a young birthday party guest back when I was maybe 3 years old. He was enthralled by all the toys that day... old ones in my room and those that had recently been unwrapped by the birthday boy. Everything he saw, he clutched and carried around with him, dazzled by the wealth of things he felt compelled to possess. Finally, with his arms overloaded he whined in tears to one of the adults "I can't carry all this!" To get one thing, you have to give up something else. It's one of life's little lessons.

And all of this is just a longwinded preamble to my telling that tomorrow these 130 year old pine floors will be covered by carpet. That is what we are getting. The old floor downstairs is too far gone to sand or plane back to good wood, and the tongues are missing off some of the tongue-in-groove boards. The shrinking caused by wood heat further accentuates the gap-toothed appearance, and in very cold weather like what we have had for the past month, you can feel the draft of the woodstove drawing air in from the cellar space through these gaps in the flooring. Add to that the fact that long ago, someone out of their minds painted the floor pink. You can see that something needed to be done. And so we are getting carpet tomorrow. My toes are sure going to be happy. Not going to miss those cold floors one bit.

What I will miss is the luxury of not worrying about dirty boots, black dog hair, or pieces of firewood debris hitting the floor. We are about to become slaves to our posessions. For everything you get, you give up something. I'll let you know in a few weeks how the trade-off is settling out. But now, I need to disassemble Central Command here and move things out of the room with the pink floor. If you don't hear from Fragmented Fred for a few days, well, I guess that blogging will be another thing I'll have given up (hopefully only briefly) in order to get warm winter feet.

Posted by fred1st at 8:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Vanishing Point
Goose Creek Tulip Poplars
Mid-January 2003

The Present is a Point just passed.
~David Russell

Time is a brisk wind, for each hour it brings something new... but who can understand and measure its sharp breath, its mystery and its design? ~Paracelsus

Antisthenes says that in a certain faraway land the cold is so intense that words freeze as soon as they are uttered, and after some time then thaw and become audible, so that words spoken in winter go unheard until the next summer. ~Plutarch, Moralia

Posted by fred1st at 7:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

You are here. The point of the red arrow marking your spot puts your existence into the context of space... in a department store, on an interstate system, amongst the sameness of unfamiliar city streets. If you don't know where you are, it's darned hard to figure out how to get where you're going. Fortunately, most of us, most of the time can say where we are. But exceptions happen. Here's our family example.

Our fledgling teenage son had been granted the keys to the car. How was Nate going to 'grow up' if we didn't let him stretch his wings, we said, as we debated the merits of him taking the longest car trip alone in his short driving career. He assured us that even though he was going to the next town up the interstate fifteen miles east of us, a route he barely knew, he would be following so-and-so who lives over there to the party. Not to worry. He'd be home at 11:00.

By 11:15 Ann was wringing her hands. It was winter late on a Sunday night. It was raining. And now it had become a darker and more foreboding world because our sixteen year old son was fifteen minutes late. He had always been good to call if he would be late. I feigned interest in a magazine. Ann made no pretense of normalcy and was well into the "what if's" that mothers do so well, some better than others. Soon it was almost midnight. No call and the silence was painful. Time rose around our feet, trapping our moments in a viscous swamp of uncertainty and concern.

RING! Instantly Ann had the phone. It was Nathan. I watched her face for signs of relief; her brow stayed furrowed, her voice lifted a bit perhaps, but still tense. The friend that Nate had followed up the interstate was going to stay late, so Nate, wanting to get home as promised, struck out in his car alone, to retrace the way over that he had taken a few hours earlier. Somewhere he must have missed his way to the interstate with all the new construction. And it is this part of the story I'll never forget. Ann wishes that I would.

"Okay Nate. Thanks for calling us. We're glad you're okay. Now, where are you?"

There was a pause at the other end. "Uh, see, that's just it. I don't know. I've been driving and driving, I don't have any idea what direction, and there's like nothing out here anywhere. I just pulled off on the side of road to call you." His cell phone promised to drop our frail connection at any second. "How do I get home from here?" he asked, expecting a nugget of fatherly wisdom as a quick fix.

And here's where maternal impulse rushed warp speed past logic. There is an unwritten policy that during times of great crisis in our family, to just do something, anything, and do it now!

"Go find him!" she wailed. "Fred get dressed right now and go find our boy!" and she began forcing me into a shirt as she pushed me half-dressed toward the door.