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!)

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... 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!

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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...

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Fire mixed with blood... Gives one pause.

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Chromosomes
Sand Mountain, Wythe County, Virginia
Circa 1976

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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

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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!

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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?

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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".

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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."

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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... 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.

Now the last thing I wanted at this moment was to appear calmly rational and thus be accused of being uncaring and indifferent to the catastrophe du jour. For reasons I don't understand, reason and parental protective impulses are seen through some eyes as being two problem-solving philosophies that are diametrically opposed. (The 'Mars and Venus' thing really stands out prominently at times like this.) I tried to find the right words to say to her to make her understand that if I didn't know where to start looking, my chances of finding him were gonna be pretty slim. He'd come home, and then I'd be lost. That somehow didn't seem like much of a solution to our problem.

He had not seen any road signs other than little county roads. I told him to drive until he saw a hiway sign with a number he could tell me, and I could find it on the map. This would at least give us a reference point. We waited an eternity for him to call. "I'm on hiway 17". North or south, he hadn't a clue. Either way, he would come to an intersection eventually and then we'd have something. We waited forever for him to call back.

"I'm at the intersection of 17 and 10 and a sign says "Shelby 5 miles". We waited another eternity for the next call. He called from Shelby from a diner. He had clear directions, plenty of gas, was charged now with adrenalin like we were, and would be home in 45 minutes. This brief period of parental terror was going to have a happy ending after all.

The story ended but it has never been forgotten. Like many family stories, it is ripe with allegory and symbolism. When Ann calls and asks me how my day has been, all I have to say is "I think I'm somewhere near Shelby". She knows what I mean. And I say it a lot these days.

Posted by fred1st at 6:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

You do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself about. I, on the other hand, do not. I'm sorry but I began my non-conformity the first time I was asked to shake it all about in a Sunday School class as a child. I had the nerve to ask the teacher what was the point of this silliness. My rebellion apparently created quite a little temptest at the Methodist Church and gained me a reputation as a resister. I confess that I have been a non-joiner ever since... unless I know who and what and why I am joining.

This little Sunday School episode left indelible marks on my tiny psyche, and ever since, when rebelling particularly against some element of church polity, liturgy or silly tradition that makes me feel like a mindless sheep, I have grumbled to myself as I tied my tie and put on my stiff big person's clothes of acceptable status that "its time to go do the Holy Hokey Pokey again". Apparently, I was more on target with this phrase then I had realized.

Found. Re the silly sheep dance called the Hokey Pokey. Source reliability uknown: The origins of this song date back into history. It was used as a skit on the Roman Catholic "Holy Communion" from whence came the title "HOKEY COKEY". How "Cokey" turned into "Pokey" I don’t know.

That said, you understand why it was important for me to know what it is I have become since starting back to school (sort of) at Virginia Tech. Some of you will know that they are known as the HOKIES. Hokey smoke, Batman, I'm a HOKIE. What the heck is that! And does my belonging to this group confer any requirements to do the POKEY before entering class? I had to know while there was still time to pull my right foot out.

It apparently had been rumoured that a HOKIE is a castrated turkey (the team's mascot is a gobbler ... go figure). I am comforted to find that this is not the case. I am appalled on the other hand to learn that the name HOKIE is derived from the now immortal winning cheer of a 1896 cheerleader's fight song competition:

Good Grief! I haven't read the fine print in the student handbook yet. I'm still a little nervous that at some point in the semester we will all be asked to stand up at our desks and perform the Hokie Ritual Dance. My only comfort is that, now fifty years after my first defiance in the threat of this silliness, I'm sure that I can get an excuse from my doctor. Shaking things all about at my age is liable to break something. On the other hand, it is comforting to finally know at this late point in my life, that THISis what it's all about.

Posted by fred1st at 6:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

First, let me take this opportunity to thank my caretakers who this week have found me wondering out along the road, or over in the pasture and have kindly brought me back home where it is warm and I have my nice chair and slippers, and the dog what's-his-name.

Well, not exactly that kind of help, but similar. I lost my way on more than one occasion, or couldn't figure out exactly where it was I wanted to go or how to get there if I had known. And my blogger buddies were quick to lend a hand. Thanks to Christine of miriabilis.ca, Michelle of Mandarin Designs, and Feste of Foolsblog who each one this week kept me from wandering too far in wrong directions and making too big a mess of Fragments. I truly appreciate your kind offers of help (or at least not refusing when I begged pitifully).

Now. On to the next project: figure out how to put up thumbnails to all the images I have in storage on the server that are just taking up space there like 35mm slides stuck in a drawer someplace.

Easy, I thot. I know of at least one freeware program that should make short order of it. Not. So I faked it and just made a crude page that will be something to work from. Of course, I am always open to suggestions for improvements. Anyone? Anyone?Meanwhile, here is a very crude beginning at a thumbnail gallery. That's all for tonight. My eyes are crossing, time for bed, y'all.

Posted by fred1st at 8:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

Somehow the usual feedback of early-morning contact with keyboard, coffee cup and computer just is not bringing forth the usual stream of mental images and random paragraphs I expect to meet here. Maybe it is the parka and toboggan I'm wearing this morning. Takes so little to smother the tiny little muse with a pillow these days.

Its the heavy coat I wear as I sit here today, but the tactile dysesthesia of cold numb fingers plays no small part in shorting the circuit of thought to words, and I sit here lumpish on the coldest morning of the year. Five degrees above outside. Warmer than that in here by fifty degrees, and still it seems cold to a confessing homeotherm like me. It's times like this that I come to understand the ultimate end of food, clothing and shelter: maintaining body heat. Don't leave home without it.

Cold was a new experience for us when we moved to Virginia (the first time) from sultry Alabama twenty five years ago. Our first rambling 100 year old house in Virginia was heated, using the term loosely, by an ancient oil furnace. At 17 cents a gallon, our first bill was over $300 and we were decidedly NOT warm. We ate our breakfast with our butts parked on the largest cast iron radiator in the house, watching the vapors of our breath as if we were outdoors, glad the folks back home weren't here to say 'I told you so'. At nights when nature called, we had fears of becoming stuck to the toilet seat, like the proverbial tongue on the pump handle. Here we quickly learned about wood heat, and that is another story.

In our second Virginia house out in the country, there was half the space to heat and after replacing all the rattling single-paned windows, it was a pretty snug little bungalow. Except on nights like last night. The kid's rooms where on the north side of the house, and the prevailing winds that swept unimpeded down the Great Valley of Virginia found their way inside. On winter mornings, little florets of ice crystals on the dark paneling of the inside walls marked places I would need to caulk in the spring. I would often get up in the middle of the night and add more wood to the Fisher stove. These days, I just think about it and wear my toboggan and jacket in the mornings when I get up. At least you can't see your breath in here.

Here on Goose Creek, we are living in the oldest old house we have ever owned, and I think it is now the snuggest, despite being 130 years old. The hippies who used to live here qualified for federal energy subsidies and our tax dollars paid for insulation to be blown into the attic and walls, thank you very much. When we moved in, we replaced every window with thermal glass and had the floors insulated. Even so, I expected we would need more than the single woodstove in the front room here, and we added a second smaller one for the great room. We seldom use it. But when temps are down, and stay for several days below freezing and especially with winds that find their way into the valley, I confess: this heavy coat is making my first morning cup of coffee easier to enjoy. But it sure plays havoc with typing.

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Summer is soft, yielding, supple. Winter is hard, unyielding and brittle. You can feel winter through your feet and hear it in your steps. Cold dry air has its own smell, and it almost seems that there is a sound that belongs to the cold of winter. The sound of winter is the sound of breathing, ears muffled keeping the beat of your own heart trapped in wool, like an echo in an empty shell.

No birds call, insects sleep frozen solid under bark and sod. Winter smells of wool and wrapped human grit underneath. From beyond the thick encumbering shroud of winter clothes there is only the near-fragrance of frost. No motes of aroma escape on warm currents from spicebush, sassafras, white pine, from dank soft creek mud or pasture clover. There should be a olfactory adjective, like 'monochrome', to describe the stark lunar aromasphere of winter.

Posted by fred1st at 7:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Thanks, Cody, for the pointer to the 'next coffee'... Yerba Mate. I'm sure our local healthfood store has it. Cody says get it from your local Argentina import store, but unfortunately those have all gone out of business in the Floyd area. Harumph. Apparently it is an acquired taste. Anybody have experiences with becoming a yerba drinker? How 'bout Moxie, a soft drink/pop/soda that I learned of from Fragments reader DCE of N'Hampsha'. My horizons are broadening by the minute. But what will I drink now? Any other beverages I should try while I'm taking a walk on the wet side?

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A group of administration staff from the community hospital where I used to work took a weekend trip from our small town in North Carolina to New York City. Only one of them had ever been before, so the show was Country Come to Town. Gawwwleee, look at all those lights!

On their first night in town, they were having dinner at an upscale restaurant near the heart of town. Gloria, the very countryfied personnel lady, was overwhelmed by it all; she was having just a bit of discomfort with finding the right fork and trying hard not to rubberneck too conspicuously around the interior of the opulent eaterie while they waited to be served. Soon, a stiff young waiter introduced himself and asked if they were ready to order drinks before their first course.

Gloria ordered her usual: iced tea. She was careful to conceal her southern roots (as if this were possible) and did not ask the young man for "sweet tea" as she would have back home. It wasn't long before the chap arrived with a their drinks. At Gloria's place with great fanfare he deposited a large silver basin filled with ice, in the center was a large bottle of dark wine.

"I didn't order this" she offered quietly.

The waiter checked his orderbook curtly. "Yes mam, that is what I have written down here. Have you changed your mind, then?" he asked impatiently.

"No, young man. I never ordered wine!" Gloria is a strick southern Baptist and is mortified to have this devil's juice sitting in front of her. The very idea that she had asked for it!

As the bottle had been uncorked, the waiter saw a goodly chunck of change coming out of his paycheck if it went back, so he returned to the issue with renewed zeal.

"Madam, I believe that I have brought you the drink that you requested. Very clearly here I have written 'Asti'. The Asti Spumanti chilled in the silver bowl, there in front of God and everybody.

And it was true. In her Nawth 'klina way, she had ordered her usual beverage for dinner.... ohsTee. And that is what she got.

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Some excerpts in italics from Teaching Tolerance Magazine article called "Everyone Has an Accent".

My kids used to razz me when I would be on the phone talking to a neighbor.

"Daddy, I can tell if your talking to the Criggers or somebody from the college, 'cause you talk different".

They were right. I would find my inflection, intonation, vocabulary and sentence structure changing, depending on who I was talking to. I really hadn't realized it, but it was easy to lapse back into the natural southern speech patterns I had grown up with when talking to the neighbor folks in our new home in southwest Virginia. But even here, words were a bit different. They didn't say y'all like I grew up with in Alabama, but y'uns (a conjunction for 'you ones') which I learned later was a vestige of the Elizabethan language of their ancestors who settled this broad valley centuries before.

If, in my work, I came across a 'education professional' that didn't use "broadcast English" in his or her work setting, they lost esteem points quickly. "Educated" people didn't talk like the locals! In language realms, you'd better shift language-gears and rise above your raisin' or else suffer mild derision or outright dismissal as a bumpkin. Passing judgement on dialects starts early. Children were especially hard on the 'new kid' from Jersey whose language set them immediately apart from the 'normal' kids.

Language/dialect discrimination is common. According to author Rosina Lippi-Green, dialect discrimination is "so commonly accepted, so widely perceived as appropriate, that it must be seen as the last back door to discrimination. And the door stands wide open." There is a knee-jerk tendency to believe that, if a dialect or word choice is alien to us, it must be wrong. If people belong to a socially oppressed group, they can count on having their language stigmatized; if they belong to a prestigious group, their language will carry prestige value.

What 'funny words or phrases' would I hear if I heard you speak? What words that you use every day in your home would seem strange to this Alabama boy living in rural Virginia?

If you heard me say "I'm fixin' t' git smore farwood" (which I AM) would you think me a moron? I really would like to hear from you... Joni in California, Cody in Texas, Anne in upstate NY, BeneDiction in Canada, Terry th' PossumMan in my hometown... What are some of your 'localisms' and their roots? What kinds of dialect-discrimination have you inflicted on others or been the victim of?

Not to go to the ridiculous extreme of promoting Ebonics for Appalachia, I do suggest that we need to watch how we judge the book by the words on its cover. Teach your children to be proud of the uniqueness of their diverse speech traditions, even while they are learning "good English" in school. There is a place for both in this rich word-world of ours.

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Have you heard about the newest assault on the character of rural America? And does it surprise you that it is coming from CBS?

The CBS show takes the premise of '60s sitcom "The Beverly Hillbillies" and places a poor Appalachian family in a Beverly Hills mansion.

The Center for Rural Strategies in Whitesburg placed quarter-page ads in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Cincinnati Enquirer.

"The brass at CBS clearly think it's safe to make fun of and commercialize low-income rural folks," center President Dee Davis said. "We intend to lessen their comfort zone and make them rethink this premise."

"The Real Beverly Hillbillies" is to "follow the adventures of a large family when they move out of their rural home and settle into a Beverly Hills mansion (and) live in the lap of luxury," CBS said.

The show, which has not been cast, is planned for either a spring or summer launch, said CBS spokesman Chris Ender.

The ad directs people to offer feedback on the campaign's Web site, at www.ruralstrategies.org. Davis said Rural Strategies, a public advocacy organization, plans to run another set of ads, possibly in newspapers in Los Angeles, Chicago and Nashville, Tenn., during the next week to 10 days.

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I had a comment last week by a fellow (no URL) who was compiling a list of "regional weblogs". Fragments is very place-oriented, and somehow he found me for this reason. Several weeks before, Fragments was visited by Chris Corrigan from Bowen Island Journal. Chris has put Fragments in his "Blogs about Place" category, as he is very much interested in, as he calls it "geoblogging". Do go read what he has to say. Maybe it would be helpful to think of 'place blogs' as webcams that give an ongoing panorama of what it is like each day where you live. Write more about place, folks. Where you live is more a part of your identity than perhaps you realize. Sharing that 'webcam in words' may be more meaningful than the offering of political opinion for us who want to know who you are, what you are about.

Creating a more "Appalachian" centered weblog is one project I am considering for my current college class, so I will read Chris's comments with interest. While visiting the lovely island off of Vancouver's shores, don't miss Robert Brady's wonderful reflection on the wonder of fire excerpted from Pure Land Mountain blog from Japan.

And somehow, in all my ramblings this morning, I ended up on Planet P, where Paul Hughes echos my own disgust with dismal techoevil futures.
Read his optimistic and colorful words on the Rebirth of Psychedelic Futurism.

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Aw heck! Now I wish I'd saved all my old college ID cards. I got yet another one made today, and yep: there he is again laminated in plastic... Fred doing his "Deer in the Headlights" impersonation. If I had all the student ID cards I have ever carried in my wallet, I could collage the wall behind the computer here with them. It would be terrifying.

My college mugshots would have sociological significance. They would represent a study in evolving hair length and facial distribution, going back to the mid-sixties (need I say more?) Moreover, the ID mugshot would provide a study for what decades, gravity and miles of smiles do to a perfectly good human countenance. This grotesque collection would capture every stilted and wooden expression this face is capable of making. Not suitable for viewing by children.

I don't know why it is, but when the lady behind the Polaroid says 'smile on the count of three' my lips sag awkwardly to show just the least enamel underneath while the remainder of my facial features are obviously paralyzed by a South American toad toxin. The entire bearing of my body morphs in the rays that emanate from the camera just before the shutter opens, and I become a gollumish thing, a "type" considered suspicious and dangerous, sure to be picked up by the behavioral profiling folks. They know I have no business back on a college campus. Just look there at my Hokie Passport. Hideous! Turn away! But I digress.

Every time I end a college stint, I think 'well, that's that last time these feet will walk on a college campus in student shoes'. But there I was again today, mingling self-consciously amongst the ridiculously young, realizing that this time around, I'm the chronological equivalent of two post-docs, with pocket change left over. I have underwear older than these kids!

Nevertheless... it's official. As of yesterday I'm a Hokie. (Did I hear someone ask 'what IS a hokie? I'll come back to that sometime). I'll be taking a heavy load: one class, Appalachian Identities: a senior level Humanities class, for personal interest, non-credit. It promises to be more demanding of reading time than I had expected (hence, less blogging? NAH!) and there is a major research project required as well. The prof made my day when she singled out the three 'graduate students' in the class of twenty and told us she expected from us all the requirements in the syllabus she had just gone over, but piled higher and deeper. Get out the hip waders! Honestly, I need something to focus my energies; I have some ideas for a research topic that could be fun. So...

We pulled our desks into a big happy circle and got acquainted. "Find someone you don't know" says the prof (well duh, for me that's all of ya). "Take five minutes, find out all about each other, and we'll regroup and you tell us about your new friend." It's like deja vu all over again.

I told her my tale first. I condensed every major epoch of my life into a single sentence and it still took me seven non-stop minutes. My 'new friend' is twenty two. She was a hall monitor in high school and then she came to college. It must be nice having such a nice, clean resume. I've heard that in some societies, when your resume spills over to a second page, they put you out on the ice for the Polar Bears.

Bring on the bears. When I see'em coming to eat what's left of southwest Virginia's oldest college student....I'll just flash my Hokie Passport photo! Take that, you ol' bears! I'm not ready to go yet.

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The ominous signs of impending war are everywhere. The enemy is showing signs of becoming emboldened by the safe harbor provided by our decision not to strike early and hard. They are joining forces, gaining strength, plotting to overthrow our tranquil domain any day now. Of this I am certain. The most telling sign of impending combat: deer poop.

Our pasture is carpeted in smart pills. You cannot find a square yard that isn't fertilized with mounds of deer pellets. Hunting season ended this past weekend. Now the coast is clear, and the cussed squirrels-on-stilts are down from the ridges en masse. While the hills were alive with the sound of deer artillery, our 80 acres was a relative safe haven for the cloven hooved invaders. We allowed one friend to hunt here, and he never even got off a shot. Now, there are signs of both increasing numbers and escalating vigor amongst the enemy force.

I ran across the darndest buck rub I have ever seen while out rambling the valley this week. Along the edge of the pasture growing out of an old rock wall, spicebush and alders and other small trees grow thickly. What must have been an enormous and powerful rambo-buck had actually broken a two-inch, tough Witch Hazel trunk with his powerful antlers. The studly buck (I am wondering if chemical enhancement was involved) that broke down this small tree with his rack shouldn't have trouble finding an admiring doe or three. But if his progeny inherit pappa's propensity for shrubbery mutilation, well, there goes the neighborhood.

Deer are becoming both a nuisance and a menace in Floyd County in general, and here in particular. Some for-instances from the last couple of weeks:

Of course I blame the nearsighted hunter and not the hapless deer for this, but it was nonetheless a deer-centric pain in the pattootie. In anticipation of party guests who we thought may want to take a quick walk around before the Christmas party, my son and I toured the path one last time to pick up tree limbs out of the way, that sort of thing. While crossing our crudely hewn pine tree footbridge across the rain-swollen creek near the house we saw it. There in the center of the creek, almost completely submerged in the rushing water, was the carcass of a gut-shot and bloated deer. Well, that's a nice party favor! With much ado, I finally managed to slip a rope noose around the disgusting stiff neck and pull the thing with the truck across the pasture. We only had time to bury it crudely in the frozen ground. We covered it with rocks and limbs as best we could, and hoped the dog wouldn't discover it before it decomposed and disappeared. Not exactly how I had planned to spend my afternoon. Deer: minus 10 points.

Since then, we have discovered that there are now NO leaves remaining on the four Rhododendrons (purchased, not cheaply) that we planted near the house three years ago. They were doing splendidly, and must have been delicious. Last night I noticed that several more sections of garden fence wire are broken by deer that managed to jump over the wire to get inside the fence, but can only escape by breaking through the wire to get out. ERRRRR!

We came home from a meeting one night last week. As we rounded the corner and could see the house, there were three large deer in our headlights, standing where we park the car. As I approached within a hundred yards, they stood there. Within 20 yards, no movement. I finally had to practically nudge them off my parking spot with the front of the car. I'm searching online now for one of those wedge-shaped cow scoopers for the front bumper of my truck like you used to see on the front of the old Western steam locomotives. Deer in the headlights: I'm not even going to slow down.

Deer are such a problem here that our county has the highest auto insurance of any county in the state. We had an unfortunate event that ruined the day of one deer back in September; ruined ours too, to the tune of more than $2000 and a month in the shop for the Suburu. I considered requesting a 'nuisance' license to kill deer out of season. But then, I noticed yesterday that the buzzards have found the crudely buried body of the waterlogged deer we planted on the edge of the pasture a few weeks ago. I can just envision the pasture dotted with mummified deer carcasses, and the bordering trees festooned with a hundred hungry black vultures who have learned to come to our place at the sound of rifle shot in January.

Maybe I will just have to learn to peacefully coexist with the deer. On the other hand, when I think about these all-terraine terrorists eating my Rhodos, I could ramp up the bellicose threats of war even a step beyond Mr. Rumsfeld's and boast that I personally am not above stuffing one of the slain enemy bodies into our freezer.

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It is a sad testimony to our times that the average American adult or child spends way more in front of the STARS on MTV than the under the stars in the night-time sky. This is a great time of the year to spend a few quiet moments in the dark, crystal-clear outdoors between dusk and dawn. You'd be surprised what you can learn listening to the twinkling celebrities that create the 'music of the spheres'.

If you are totally lost, astronomically, and have the attitude of 'seen one star, you've seen'em all', get your bearings here, here and here. Then, turn off the TV, gather up the kiddos, go back outside, and see how much more interesting the silent STARS can be.

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Well let's see here. It's morning again, and I sit down at the computer to reconnect with the larger world. First visit: the NEWS. See if the world still has all its fingers and toes. Are there as many countries out there today as there were last night when I went to sleep? These mornings when I tune in, I realize that the answer could well be NO. Nations might disappear overnight. And not just geopolitical entities. Nations of people. But not really people. Enemies. And that's good. Right?

I have a few problems as I try to get my head in the mood for war. First of all, I don't think we are ready to go to war with a nation until we agree on what that nation is called. Regarding the turning of desert into a sea of glass: are we hoping to do that to EYE rak, EEE rak, EYE rok or EEE rok? And not only that, hadn't we better be thinking about what we are going to call those faceless impersonal 'evil ones'? Got to have a collective name for them. Already taken: Gooks, Gerrys, Krauts ... Without a name like this, we might be distracted by thoughts of the human scale of war, when as we all know, it is really just a giant Nintendo Game. Green flashes of light on the distant horizon and some really nice graphic effects in those neat tracer thingies. Great subwoofer thudding sounds, too. I hope this time we can get a window across the bottom of the screen to let all of us keep score at home. It's exciting to know, no matter what the score, we're going to win!

But what's this? There must be some mistake. I don't think this the same Desert Storm Game that we watched on our CNN gameboxes in 1991. Goodness me. That's not at all pleasant.

Well. I am certain that in this next War Game episode, mandatory Parental Protection will be in place once again so the Mortal Combat will be sanitary and we won't have to be exposed to this kind of graphic violence in our homes. Its disturbing and intrusive and Americans should be protected from it. Yeah!

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Talk the Talk ~ Part One

Day One in my first professional career, and already, there was the distinct smell of death. I changed gears abruptly, hoping this elusive move would distract them, make them forget our collective alien encounter that had just happened. Without further wit and humor I jumped straightway into Lecture One, the "chemistry of living things". Forty pair of eyeballs took on a manacing quality; I felt them burning holes into my tie and the collar of my shirt. I had become the prey.

"Life on Earth is carbon based, all living things are made from cells", and so on and so forth. I began my first lecture of my first class in my first career; I wondered if this might be my last. I continue for only a few paragraphs before I realized I was struggling to get my breath -- as if I had been running windsprints up the stadium seats; but I was just standing there, attempting to speak, publicly. My mouth tasted of chalk dust and my voice faltered, faded and failed. The lips were moving but there were no words coming out. "Class dismissed", I whispered pitifully after no more than 20 minutes of class. And thus I learned my first terrible lesson on the importance of breath control for those who want (or have) to be a public speaker. What had just happened to me?

Here's the physiology of speechlessness:

For reasons which I do not fathom, a person standing before others to speak perceives their audience, at the visceral level but not necessarily consciously, as a threat. There is no other way to account for the very marked "fight or flight" stress response that most of us experience when speaking publicly. Hormones like adrenalin, cortisol and others surge to the heart, and the beat rate increases. Vessels to the internal organs constrict (hence, the butterflies in the stomach) while those to muscles open, preparing for a physical encounter.

The speaker's breathing rate goes up and the depth of inspiration increases; and here's the problem. It is impossible to both inhale as your body is telling you to do for the potential emergency, and at the same time, control the exhalation as you must while forcing your breath outward while speaking. And so, we the 'threatened' speaker hears his voice begin to become starved for wind, lose force and become trembling and gaspy. Uh-oh. Wounded animal. And this perception of our own distress further adds to the angst. The lips move, there is no sound, class dismissed.

It was not very long before I learned to handle the first-of-class stress response. The nice thing about the classroom setting was that I could always shuffle papers, pretend to be looking for something in my gradebook, or take a little extra time putting a drawing on the board or somesuch, until I felt I had control of my breath. Then, I would be able to hear myself sounding confident and in control, and off we would go, learning the cranial nerves or the bony landmarks. I got quite cocky as my poise under classroom pressure improved over the first couple of years of teaching. So when a spokesperson was needed to go before the cameras to discuss our small town's "Pairing Project" with a small Russian town (back in the MAD days of the cold war), Fred was the unanimous choice. "No sweat" I thought. "Hey, I'm gonna be a star!"

What I didn't appreciate in my small town megalomania was that television is REAL TIME. Forget stalling, Charlie. There was not going to be a gradebook to thumb through until the adrenalin subsided and I could breathe. No baby, they were in my face with the microphone and the camera, and asked a very open-ended question. "Mr. First, tell us how your tiny town became paired with Krozny Kut in Siberia". Oh for a head-nodable answer! After about three sentences, I knew viewers were wondering if somebody had pulled the plug on wheezing Uncle Fred's ventilator, right there on live TV. Mercifully, it was a short spot on the 6:00 news. One of my daughter's friends told her the next day "We saw your daddy on television and he looked really scared!" Its hard to be a TV anchorperson when you're suckin' wind.

So now I've been away from the classroom for 15 years, although I have 'gone live' quite a few times since in a speaking/lecturing situation, and have done some singing, usually with at least one other person. Singing is another situation where you start and you don't stop making those noises until your finished; so singing is harder than lecturing, as far as breath control goes. Hardest time I had with singing, without a doubt, was singing a duet with my son at my daughter's wedding... before.... immediately before I was to 'give her away'. And it was a tear-jerker song from her lamentable country music period. I never once practiced it without choking up ... how was I going to be able to keep the wind and words flowing this time, but not the tears?

I somehow got in a zone, almost a self-induced trance, and I breathed all the way through it somehow. (And my daughter is still married, four years later!) But I'd have to do that kind of gig a lot to get comfortable with it, even if not losing a daughter at the end of the song.

Well shoot. All this long-winded jaw was to address the question about how the radio spot went on Friday. I promise, a few more breaths and I'll wrap this epistle up and go away.

Saving grace to recorded radio: If you make a mistake, you can just start over again, the sound editor will clip the culls. So this last time, knowing this fact as I sat there with the big headphones in front of a large boom mic, I announced to my studio person before I began: "I'm going to stop after every paragraph until I catch up with my breath". And I did. And it came out well. Thanks for asking.

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I love AHA! experiences. I had one this morning, driving to town, catching glimpses now and then of the forms that ice can take along the creek. In a flash of 'insight' (I love that word) I recollected a black and white picture I took at least 25 years ago, that I called "Old Man Winter".

Ice shapes are much like cloud shapes, in that one can see all manner of creatures in curve and shadow, in opaque and crystal. Take a look at Old Man Winter. I have put him in his proper place, along with the piece I wrote a week or so ago, called Winter Wind.

Can you see the blustery old curmudgeon of January? Or do you see some other form there that I have missed? Please share your cloud-visions.

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The telephone rang, so instant and close, like the ringer was embedded in the temporal lobe of my brain. I reached for it by mere reflex before I even knew what it was that had made me startle. There had been an alarm of some sort; the shock had actually lifted me up off the chair where I had been living in another life in another person's body for the quiet hour since Ann left for work. Somehow at this instant, there was now a phone receiver in my hand.

I don't recollect who it was on the other end; I'm not sure I fully realized who I was talking to or why as I sat there, somehow finding the telephone in the hand that seconds before had been channeling thought and memory into a keyboard. Days had passed in that one focused hour of writing. I do remember what the voice asked me.

"Mr. First, what is your zip code?"

And I could not say. There is no zip code, no street address where I had been living in the instant before the call; there is not even a calendar to know if it were past or future. Now I was pulled back to the moment, back to the world of time, space and the numbers that encode our being in this world, and I could not find them. Zip code. Has to do with what state I am in, that's a start. It didn't help that we had just returned from a short trip during which we passed through two former home towns, and my brief and impersonal brush with these places that had been home but were no longer home had set me into trances spiraling out like the swirl of galaxies; friends, buildings and streets, creeks, trails, tears and triumphs were the stars, and I was moving through them propelled by solar winds.

I found the number. But my difficulty doing so quite disturbed me. Was I losing my mind? Was this an early sign that memory was coming apart like a ship slowly breaking in pieces on a rocky reef? The eyes of my mind had been so focused on the places I wanted to go with my words that hour that I was barely able to look back into this material world to retrieve some raw numeric piece of flotsam that was irrelevant to my spacetravel in the cosmos of thought and memory. I attributed my forgetfulness to the detachment one finds when lost to the now, writing from the heart. Still, I admit, not being able to recite this number instantly seemed it could be something to worry about, which is the first conclusion with events like this, when they happen among my agemates.

Or maybe I was just intensely attending to the gorilla. And maybe that's okay. Consider this new look at forgetting that suggests that sins of memory that author Daniel L. Schacter, chairman of Harvard University’s Psychology Department suggests "are surprisingly vital to a keen mind". (Another review here).

[...]Organizing the book by examining each of seven "sins," such as absent-mindedness and suggestibility, Schacter slowly builds his case that these sometimes enraging bugs are actually side effects of system features we wouldn't want to do without. For example, when we focus our attention on one aspect of our surroundings, we inevitably draw attention away from others:

Consider this scenario: if you were watching a circle of people passing a basketball and someone dressed in a gorilla costume walked through the circle, beat his chest, and exited, of course you would notice him immediately--wouldn't you? [Researchers] filmed such a scene and showed it to people who were asked to track the movement of the ball by counting the number of passes made by one of the teams. Approximately half of the participants failed to notice the gorilla.

Thanks to Fragments reader "j" for his link to The Seven Sins of Memory:
How the Mind Forgets and Remembers.

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fragmentsfromfloyd.com fragmentsfromfloyd.com fragmentsfromfloyd.com fragmentsfromfloyd.com fragmentsfromfloyd.com fragmentsfromfloyd.com

Fragments from Floyd Fragments from Floyd Fragments from Floyd Fragments from Floyd Fragments from Floyd Fragments from Floyd Fragments from Floyd

There. That oughta bias the Google crawler away from my old web address that still gets pretty much the first Google page, still, after three weeks.

Sorry to do that to ya, but I'm still missing some readers who were regular visitors to Fragments a month ago and didn't hear me say a dozen times 'change your bookmarks!' I got a visit yesterday after the broadcast of the essay on the radio who found me at MSN only minutes after the piece aired by searching "winter winds essay floyd". The new address was the first listed item. Go figure.

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Last week while driving (probably to the "Green boxes" ... the DIY rural equivalent of the city dump) I heard a piece (on NPR, the only station we can get down in our valley) about memory. Specifically, the topic was a new memory-enhancing drug. What was unique about it was that it was not suggested that it be used therapeutically for Alzheimer's or other forms of dementia. The tone of the piece was that this wonder-drug might be used prophyllactically or as a memory-enhancer for 'anyone who relies on memory in their everyday life or work'. Duh. That leaves out certain government officials, but the rest of us could sure use THIS STUFF! Right?

Sure we could. All of us (at least those of us who qualify for free coffee at Dennys) complain at one time or another about our 'poor memory'. Before I would start taking yet another pill (in addition to one baby aspirin, one multivitamin, and the occasional glucosamine when I can, er, remember to take it), I should use the memory available to me that I neglect to exercise. Like muscles, if you don't use memory effectively, to some degree, you lose it. Even our expectations that we are becoming forgetful can contribute to a measurable loss of memory. So, while I acknowledge that with age comes some degree of neurochemical change that takes the edge off my ability to remember, at the same time, there are countless adjuncts and tricks to better use what memory-potential I still have.

I tend to be a visual rememberer. So seeing something on a page (or computer screen) is helpful to me. I also tend to organize heirarchically, more or less in outline form; and my most important piece of software is Ecco Pro that is built on an outline design. The other tool I sometimes use, especially when laying out a complex plan or idea is a 'memory map'. This is really just an outliner that arranges things visually. You can download a free copy of one such mapping program called Mindmapper and see if it helps you with creativity or memory. But software is not necessary. Even a child can obtain memory improvement in a very short time.

When my daughter was in the 8th grade, she needed a project for a 4-H competition of some sort (I don't recall). At the time, I had just read the Memory Book. Having just started back to school again after 15 years of being on the other side of the podium, I needed help remembering the huge number of facts required to become a physical therapist. This book was helping me considerably. Why not teach my daughter to use these memory tools while she was young? What better foundation could one have than to build memory-muscle!

Within a short few days, Holli was able to stand before a group of parents and judges; ask the crowd for a list of 15 random nouns; look at the list outside the room for five minutes; then come back in, and say the list perfectly, in order, frontwards AND backwards! Amazing! Not really. It's all about attention-awareness and association. We don't remember because we never really attend to the fact (person's name, street directions, lock combination) in the first place! I'll let you discover the tricks in the Memory Book. Or on the net, look here and here for a good start. It is really easier than you think, and you will find that you are using your memory intentionally, like a tool, and see it get stronger in just a day or two.

Update 8:00am This entry was picked up by AllConsuming, found via its link to Amazon.com and the Memory Book reference. I had seen this site before, but this is the first time linked there, I think. Kewl.

Posted by fred1st at 6:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Need a chuckle on a bleak midwinter day? Take a look at Calvin and Hobbes Hall of Snowmen. Gotta love that kid. He's so deliciously twisted. However, I wonder if we did the right thing letting our son have every one of the C & H series when he was small. He's not been 'normal' ever since. But like I always tell him, there's nothing wrong with being eccentric. Who th' heck wants to be centric?

Posted by fred1st at 6:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, this started out to be a brief reply to those who asked how it went yesterday recording the essay for the radio. Ask a simple question, and ya get the following discourse on public speaking. (Short answer: okay, mostly. It will be aired this morning ~ 6:55 and 8:55 EST here.)

I read a survey recently that said that the two most feared things for American adults were 1) snakes; and 2) public speaking.

Well, I want you to know, this makes me feel at least 50% more confident than the average citizen, 'cause I ain't afraid a' no snakes. (For Fred's snake credentials, see these Snake Stories here). I'm not particularly afraid of public speaking, either. Or at least I didn't used to be, after I learned how to breathe and talk at the same time.

When I was 26 years old, I was forced into public speaking. Most of the day. Every day. I walked into the community college classroom and found forty nursing students waiting for me to teach them everything I knew about Human Anatomy and Physiology. Unfortunately, that wasn't a whole huge lot. I was starting to think I had made a bad move when I had bluffed my way into the teaching position, saying yeah, great, sure I'm comfortable with A & P. This with only a single physiology class to my credit. I figured I'd pick it up as I went along.

So, there I stood in fear and trembling, a vastly inexperienced brand-spanking-new teacher with only a passing familiarity with my highly complex topic. Now this ought to be fun. I made some introductory comments about the textbook in a squeaky voice, feeling my pulse throbbing in my ears. But I had come with a plan to give me a chance to calm down my initial angst, and a way to soften up my students, win their confidence, make them laugh... always a good beginning in a relationship that will last for two long quarters in the hardest course in the nursing curriculum.

I use a hand-written transparency. I use the accepted teacherly method of covering all points but the top one, then the second, as I go through ten of Murphy's Laws ... a lighthearted way to say we'll have problems, but it's to be expected and we'll get through it. I looked up from the projector, and lo and behold, forty students are all hunched forward, leaning over their notebooks, writing down every word I said like their lives depended on it. Hold on here, ladies. Chill. You missed my point entirely. Well, that went over like a lead balloon.

Let's move on the the ice-breaking first joke of our relationship. I shift into my scholarly voice.

I turned and wrote in large chalk letters on the board... H O R M O N E

Ah, this is a little bit scientific sounding. But of course they will see an A&P joke coming here.

"Does anybody know how to make a hormone" I asked with a slight grin?

Furtive eyes glance at each other or find some point of extreme interest down on the linoleum floor between rows of desks. It's time for the punchline, and the welcome comic relief. I anticipate the warm glow of laughter signifying the beginning of student-teacher bonding... okay, here we go...

"DONT PAY HER!" I said with a big grin.

Bada bing bada bang. Nothing. The most nothing I have ever heard. One person in the back of the room chuckled self-consciously. One out of forty. Dear Minerva, I'm dying here.

To be Continued....

Posted by fred1st at 5:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday was a day of editing hell.

I wrote something I liked and thought it might be appropriate for sharing via the radio. I submitted it in an email, and an hour later had arranged to go read it at the radio studio in Roanoke. Then I came back and sat down with the piece and took a hard look at my conception. I realized that 1) it read too long and needed 30 seconds cut from the reading time; and 2) it had a wimpy beginning and ending.

Oh the misery of paring away the living tissue of your carefully chosen words.

"No! Not that! The alliteration is so perfect and the hard consonants play so nicely against the soft words about texture in that paragraph. And, I WILL NOT sacrifice THAT word, I don't care if only two percent of the listeners have enough botanical background to know it; it fits, and I like it".

The ownership of words is a terrible thing, and stealing them from yourself is a perverse necessity in the realm of self-editing. It may be even more painful, though, when your wife is the thief.

When Ann came home from work, I told her I would be reading an essay on the air. "Oh which one?" she asked, half afraid each time that I am excited about a piece I have written that it will turn out to be about her, she being as I often tell her, such a rich resource of good material.

I sat her down and read to her the piece I had been working on, here and there, for much of the day. It was now in final form, and I was ready to go on to something else after I let her hear it.

Whoa! Stop the presses!

"That's not you", she says. "That's not the way you write. That just doesn't fly. It's weak. Here, let me have it" she says and takes my final copy from my sweaty hands. I can't bear to watch as she scratches through this and adds to that. "Now" she beams after five excruciating minutes, "I fixed it".

To shorten the tale of this agony, suffice it to say that after a half dozen salvos back and forth, my brainchild will suffer no more changes, and it had a peaceful night's rest, unaltered now for several hours. And all is well. Until...

This morning, I get an email from my son, the writer, who has read my original version. He particular likes this, this, this and this.

And it was exactly that, that, that, which following strident negotiation between Editor Ann and Father of the Baby Fred, lies shredded on the floor of the operating room.

I leave to birth this creature into words in two hours. I wonder if there's time to completely rewrite it. Probably. Only maybe I shouldn't discuss this with my editors.

Posted by fred1st at 7:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Old canine here acquiring novel acts of prestidigitation. I see "Trackback" on my MT entries. I have some crude idea of its purpose, but none of its application. So what, sez I, makes no difference to me... until I noticed last week four "recent pings" show up on my MT edit page. Curious. Following them, I find that other bloggers have posted excerpts or comments on certain of my ramblings.

Chances are, without that "trackback" notice, I would have missed the link to Fragments. Had it turned out to be a matter that leads to further discussion wanting involvement of others (rather than a soliquoy on rutabagas, for example, which would be more typical of a Fragments topic) this trackback thing would really come in handy to create a "thread" by engaging the author in the discussion, apart from the often-overlooked "comments" section for the entry or a private email back to the person who linked to my article.

So I sought info from Scott Chaffin, author and custodian of The Fat Guy, who had been one of my trackbackers, and was bold enough to ask "how does this thing work, exactly?" His answer was so well crafted and clear, even this old dog can learn a new trick. Now I'm sure that for most of you seasoned and web-wise folk, this is old hat. But, with the possibility that there may be at least one more sheltered blogger out there that has wanted to know but was afraid to ask, I have taken the liberty to post Scott's excellent reply in full. I'm going to be more aware of the possibilities of TRACKBACK, and promise to use it at least once in the next few days.

Ooooh, I love learning a new trick. Hurts my brain a little. But you know, it hurts good.

Fred, There are two ways to do it: First, when editing a New Entry, there is a space for "URLs to Ping" in the Advanced Editing menu. For me to ping you, I place my cursor over your TrackBack URL, do a right click and Copy Shortcut, then paste that into the window for "URLs to Ping." When I publish the entry, my server will ping your server and tell your server that I have a TrackBack entry. So, that's: - type your entry that references another Movable Type blog - on the other blog, move your pointer to the TrackBack pointer - right-click - Copy Shortcut - go back to your entry edit screen - paste the copied shortcut (link) into the "URLs to Ping" window - Publish the entry - Everything else is automatic The second way is easier, if you have set up the Bookmarklet for one-click posting. When you do the one-click deal, if you are posting from an MT blog, it will automatically find TrackBack links and give you a list to choose from. Then all you do is select the item you want to ping. Everything else is automatic. So, the next question is WHY you should do all this? Well, some say a pingable web is a good web. It's a way for me to tell your readers, "Hey, I had something to say about this post." Ideally, your readers will click the TrackBack link, and they will see a page with a list of links to other posts, and they can go from your blog to my blog easily if they think it's worth reading. It's like an extended comment pointer. If you click on Movable Type Support in your editing menu, it will have an entry for TrackBack that describes how it works and what it does and how to set it up. Since it's in all the default templates, you probably won't have to do anything, except set up the one-click-post Bookmarklet, and that's easy. The instructions are in the same section. Theres also a Blog Config | Preference that will cause an publish command to automatically look for TrackBack-able entries, and that works really good, too -- I did it last night to Oliver Willis. Honestly, it's not used as much as I would like to see it used, because it's very vaguely defined and it's an MT-only standard, and it's not well understood. I mainly do it as a courtesy. And of course, it could conceivably drive traffic to your site, but I'm past the "gotta get more traffic!" stage. If I get it, I get it, and if I don't, well, then, I don't. Sorry for the novella -- but you asked. I hope this helps...and that it's not 100x more info than you needed. Scott

Posted by fred1st at 6:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Cute story here from Tony at Sand in the Gears. He lives a civil urban life, and finds joy in the small things of parenthood. It helps that he writes eloquently as he describes them, and from a very loving point of view.

His narrative about potty training and other toddler issues of the day concludes...

And as a good neighbor should, Caleb often tries to be helpful. The other day he and Eli were in their bedroom with their mother. She and Caleb went into another room for something, leaving Eli to play on the floor with a block in the manner he has, which involves lying on his back and chewing fruitlessly on it, in the hopes that it will transform itself into food. After a moment he realized he was alone, and began to fuss.

"What's wrong with Eli?" Caleb asked.

"Oh, he doesn't know where we are," replied his mother.

Caleb ran back into the bedroom. "We're in Virginia, Eli."

Tony's tale reminded me of our daughter, who was precocious in some things, but potty training was not one of them. She spent countless hours waiting for the Big Event. So much so, that the first word she learned to spell was U N A T T E N D E D.

The label on the arm of the little blue seat warned DO NOT LEAVE CHILD... UNATTENDED.

So, take home lesson, young parents: Think long and hard about what inscription you want your child to see during those long hours of visceral learning. Don't let this, er, go to waste, so to speak.

Posted by fred1st at 11:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

1) Find illustrator for Wilderness Road Odyssey.

The Story: Several months ago, in my quest for information about things Appalachian, I ran across an account of a local fellow who attempted as near as possible to follow the path of the Wilderness Road (of western pioneer migration) for 850 miles on a bicycle, writing about the historical and current conditions for each section. I wrote him asking if he had maps, as I am interested in particular regarding the Wilderness Road as it passed near us here in Floyd County. He emailed back that no maps were yet available.

Earlier this week, he emailed again, asking if I knew of an illustrator who could draw up a more professional version of his seven maps that will be included in the book. Turns out, there is a hermit of a neighbor (to whom I have spoken I think exactly twice, seen thrice) who illustrates for Highlights Children's Magazine and other publications. I will drive down the road to his place, honk the horn from a safe distance away, and see if I can make contact to ask if he might be interested in this little project.

If any of you know of someone who has some drawing/illustrating skills (I don't think the authors expectations are for cartographic quality, and his budget is limited), please do let me know; or there is an email address on Dr. Green's webpage link above.

2) Go buy new pencils, a Mickey and Goofy lunchbox, and a new spiral-bound Brady Bunch notebook.

The Story: I am taking a single class, "Critical Issues in Appalachia Studies", at Virginia Tech, starting next week. My hope is that the contact with the profs and students will trigger an inspiration toward something of some substance, or at least strong personal passion, to research and write about. I need something to sink my teeth into, while I still have them. So, Tuesdays and Thursdays from now 'til May, I'll be going on campus with the kids. If I wear my tweed jacket with the elbow patches, maybe they'll think I'm a professor and not the oldest student on campus. Or, maybe if I grow my hair in a mullet and dye it orange... have something pierced...

3) While on the road with 1), stop by Vitro Yo Yo art glass studio at the end of our road.

The Story: Perched literally over Goose Creek in a very unpretentious converted barn, Tim Burke produces remarkable art in glass. We have only recently met these young new neighbors, and Tim mentioned showing me around some of the neat off-road places to hike. His place down the road is the most picturesque spot in Floyd County, I think, and I'd love just to walk up on the amazing bluff behind his place. If I do, I'll bring back pictures to share.

4) Ann is home today.

The Story: However she writes it, when she wants, how she wants. Sir, yes mam, Sir!

Posted by fred1st at 6:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I just discovered a picture I took in November, then forgot about. I had gone with Ann to town (the metropolis of Floyd, population 400, home to a single traffic light). Her main objective: Schoolhouse Fabrics, a converted school that sits on top of the hill, looking west toward "the Buffalo", to purchase some kind of doodah for making Christmas gifts. For reasons I don't remember, I had grabbed my camera at the last minute before we left for town.

While I waited for her to find her trinkets, I sat in the car listening to the radio. I was not inclined to get out and wander about, as the cold wind was blowing so hard it was rocking the car; I could barely open the door against the wind. Looking around from the parking lot, I noticed this old house that sits across from the town library. I had never seen it from this view, and, against the backdrop of Buffalo Mountain, it presented a scene worthy of a picture. I braced against a huge ash tree, and even so, the wind almost blew me over.

If you have a camera, take it along, even when you have no idea what you have it along for. Something is likely to find the eye that is prepared to see. I could have described this scene in words, but I'm glad I don't have to.

Posted by fred1st at 12:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

January is here again, and I'll admit, I am not happy about it. Even snows that come this month are not likely to be very pretty, flying past on unrelenting wind that blows snow sideways, abrasive and angry. On the brighter side, it is possible we will hear Spring Peepers on a rare warm day later this month, and their hopeful piping always lifts my sagging spirits in the bleakness of mid-winter. But realize that this cheery frog chorus is just a tease, and February turn around and rub it in our faces, February being a month even farther removed from the memory of green things growing, of insect noises, summer lightning and warm breezes.

Winter wind is perhaps the only element of weather I have come to terms with. Cold, you can dress for. But January wind will find a way to poke a stick at you, freeze-dry your eyeballs, and toss your toboggan in the creek. It’s like an annoying little brother waiting for you outside every time you suit up and venture out of doors in January. I ‘d like to have a better attitude about winter wind, to not take personally its bluster and brashness, to accept it without passing judgement. But this is a lesson that will take me a lifetime of winters to learn.

Last night the wind shrieked overhead like a circling bird, back and forth from ridge to ridge, occasionally dipping down to clutch at our porch roof and ruffle the metal, making a strange rumbling studio-thunder sound effect. Then it would lift again and swirl a thousand feet above us, coursing the high places round and round like a great locomotive caught in a switching yard right over Goose Creek.

Now summer winds throw angry tantrums like this only when performing the accompaniment to summer thunder storms. Even then, a million living leaves modulate the pitch and timbre in the wind, so that in the summer gale there is a softness, a lifting and cleansing quality that is altogether missing from wind in winter. Summer wind steps to center stage in the midst of the storm, strutting and fretting about during the height of the drama, then exits stage left and it's pitch falls, doppler like, and only a breeze is left behind. In summer, a rising wind on a sweltering day is welcomed, the Hallelujah Chorus in the key of green. I have no complaints to register against summer winds.

Winter wind comes here mad and there is no cheering it up. Dense and gray, heavier than air, it sinks into our valley like a glacier of broken glass, pushing down against hard and frozen earth, and it will not relent. When the wind howls at midnight, I dream of the hoary Old Man Winter of children's books, cheeks bloated full, lips pursed and brow furrowed, exhaling a malevolent blast below at frail pink children in wet mittens. If you listen, you may think you hear a pitch to the roar of January wind, a discrete note that you could find on a piano keyboard. But this isn’t so. Like all rainbow colors blend to make white light, January wind plays all tones at once together as the Old Man overhead blows through a mouthpiece of ridge and ravine, across reeds of oak and poplar trunks.

Winter wind is the white noise of January that won't go away.

So, when Spring Peepers sing their clear two-note song from a sunny roadside ditch later this month, I will be pleased to listen, even if they are only teasing us that winter is gone, with the wind.

Posted by fred1st at 6:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (1)

Or, "How Fifteen Terribly Wasted Minutes of Your Short Life Can Remove All Hope of Enjoying the Feature Movie You Payed Half a Day's Wages to See"

I am the contented caretaker of my small and quiet world, the custodian of creek and dormant pasture and windy ridges during days on end when no one goes by but the breeze. Months away from routine and work-angst, my body systems and senses have completed the detoxification process and my eyes are adjusted now to the pleasant ambient light of country living. I look my daily world full in the face, without the necessity of filters or protective psychological barriers, without 'looking away' in the manner that exposure to a larger, uglier world inevitably used to make me do reflexively. This loss of protective response is good. And this is bad.

I don't do civilization, as it is called, with much grace or joy anymore. When I leave home infrequently and encounter traffic, tinsel and movie trailers, I feel like a deer in the headlights of a civilization I'd forgotten about, a character transported from Walton's quiet valley to the set of Bladerunner. It is really an odd and unsettling sensation. Like I said, it's as if I have lost old calluses, those psychological filters and numbing buffers that used to protect me from what are, for most people, just the ordinary modern urban stressors and aesthetic assaults on senses. So. Like a turtle who lost his shell, I go to town to see a movie.

There I sit, in a holding pen numbered Screen 43 of the MultiMegaMondoPlex. I slump self-consciously in my seat, there early, along with some plumpish grade school children and their fubsy parents halfway down into their Biggy-Sized Barrel of Buttered Blubber, waiting for the feature film. It will be only my second movie in front of a big screen in several years. I have come 25 miles in a foggy drizzle to sit here for three hours and be 'entertained', and I am full of expectation; well, I am at least sprinkled with it.

After the obligatory homage to the owners of the vast flat of boxes-with-chairs and a salacious invitation for the purchase of another Bonus Barrel of Butter before the show starts, we the captive audience, are force-fed the trailers of upcoming movies to whet our appetites for good, clean and edifying entertainment fun. ALERT! Shields UP! I worked quickly to raise the psychic cloaking device into place to protect me, but, alas, the shield was breached by sheer volume and I was helpless to keep them out entirely. The Terrible Trailers came, the digital worms entered through the eyes and infected my soft pink rural brain, and my vulnerable turtle-self was invaded by aliens:

Warcraft: The Movie, the violent adult version of the violent childrens version. X2: X-men -- the Movie, from Marvel Comics. Comics? Terminator 3: The Rise of the Machines, way nastier than the gentle Arnold in T2; two black/hip drug-anti-drug car crashing, trash talking movies -- A Man Apart, and Bad Boyz 2. And finally, Bruce Almighty wherein a wickedly unholy Ace Ventura Pet Detective Gets Keys to Pearly Gates from whence he makes light work of The Man Himself.

By the time the feature film rolled around after 15 minutes of being trailer-trashed, I felt inclined to ask if there was someplace I could go to be disinfected, have my brain washed out with soap, or talk to a counselor who deals with PTSD. The pudgy children in front of me, on the other hand, seemed to be happily immersed in their medium, if perhaps a bit bored and understimulated by ho-hum carnage, crashes and videocrap. What must their dreams and fantasies be like, these voracious modern adolescent media consumers?

"Garbage in, garbage out" I thought, as they reached the bottom of their first Butter Barrel and headed to the "Refreshment Center" for more.

"The trouble with normal is it always gets worse."
lyrics, Bruce Cockburn

Posted by fred1st at 5:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

Okay. Close but no cigar re the 'new banner' up there. Somehow I have managed to layer or raster or vector or hector an image (I have no idea what I'm doing. No Really!) onto some text against a background. With Mr. Ron Bailey's spelling it out for me in terms an armadillo could understand, I put the html for the banner in the right place.

Now, dear hearts. What nice words do I tell it so it will spread all the way across the top of the page? Since "the page" can be all different sizes depending on screen resolution and window size, is there such a thing as "100%" as a width? If so, how and where to I put it? Give ya a cookie... ?

I'd like to get to where there was a placeholder in the header and I could easily replace the image every few days or at least every week. I'd like to get rid of the calendar and put quotes in that top space. I'd like... well, this will probably do for my wish list for tonight. Tra-la. Tomorrow is anotha day, with new things to whine about. Maybe even a rant. Wait and see.

UPDATE 9 pm: banner all the way across now (800 pixels!) and Rescue Ron shows Fumbling Fred how to remove the stupid calendar. Baby steps! Baby steps!

UPDATE 945 pm: So I acted like I knew what I was doing, and made a two cell table, one for my daily/weekly image! Of course, it looks fine and dandy to me, but I feel sure it looks like the aftermath of a bus wreck in MSIE6. Right? Grudgingly, I ask that you let me know if the banner doesn't work in your browser. Thanks and off to bed!

Posted by fred1st at 7:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Read Part One for the topside of the story...

"Yes, well. When did you build this house?" She shuts off her engine. I ramp the BS detector up a notch.

"Mam, this house has sat on this spot for 130 years. We are re-building it, and it sits squarely on property that we own, for certain". I was starting to get that line down my back that Buster-the-dog wears when he feels threatened or suspicious. If she wanted to arm wrestle, I was ready.

The momentum shifts to our side as she backed off, stammered, and apologized slightly. "I own a piece of property somewhere in here. I have only seen it once. There used to be an old house on it, but I understand it burned down some time ago".

"Yes'm. That'd be the next piece up this way" I said, pointing up the road west of us. And she skulked off with her Jersey tale twixt her legs. We of the construction crew by that time had totally lost our minimal momentum and took a break, during which I was the target of razzing about how they thought for a minute there that I was gonna grab that lady by the collar and pull her through the window of her Explorer.

I would never had done that! Being the country gentleman that I am, I'da opened the door for her first, then pulled her up by her collar. Please, guys!

And that, dear friends, was the end of this bizarre little encounter with our New Jersey neighbor. Until earlier this week.

On Monday, two white utility trucks stop in the road, pulling just barely into our driveway. Three fellas in baseball caps get out and spread a large sheet of paper out on the hood of one of the vehicles. I could see a logo on the door, but couldn't make it out. With the binocs, I read the name of Hillendale Surveyors. Hmmm, sez I. We had better investigate. I don my most authentic Crazed Hermit of the Woods outfit and prepare to do battle.

No adrenalin necessary. The nice chaps tell me that Ms. New Jersey is having her land next door surveyed. One of them lets it slip that she is subdividing her 80 acres, plus or minus, into tracts! This bodes ill for the neighborhood. Needless to say, as soon as Ann had a day off on Wednesday, we marched next door to see in what manner she had marked her territory, so to speak.

Off we set up first one and then the other common boundary, north and south of the road. And I emphasize the word UP. Four knees with a combined life of 220 years ventured places they had no business being, and we wouldn't have gotten far had not the surveyors hacked a line of sight through the dense underbrush. What a spectacular place we live in, I think, between deep lungsful of mountain air with my heart beating audibly in my ears. How magnificent the view from the top and what a royal effort to obtain it.

Yet, there all along the steep pitch of mountainside, someone, many decades ago, had cut American Chestnut from those once majestic trees that grew here or yet persisted dead in place. Felled, sectioned and split on this steep hillside, those chestnut posts spoke of those who had come up this way long before this week's surveyors came to tie bright ribbon around them as they lay half buried in the forest floor.

I have seen aerial photos of these hills, taken back in the mid 30's. This steep land had all been pasture long ago, home to mountain cows who have two long legs on the downhill and two short legs on the uphill side... a marvelous adaptation to grazing on steep inclines. Just kidding. This lady owns more 'mountain land' by far than we do, and way less flat land. There is scant loggable timber, so no worries there. It includes two meager homesites right along the road, and that, as they say, is the rub. Pull a third-hand camping trailer in there and set it up on blocks, add a couple of four-wheelers and a case of beer, and now, that would pretty well spoil the broth, buddies.

Rather than answer all my questions, the three amigos handed me a business card, with the number of the head honcho, back at the main office in Blacksburg. No, there is no indication that the land is to be subdivided. So, if all she is doing is paying these young men to blaze a trail for us to the top of our property, I guess this will be the anticlimax to our little story.

But maybe not. Stay tuned. There may be a couple acres for sale nearby, and if so, I'll give you folks a heads-up. I'd rather have one of you blogging buddies as a neighbor than Scooter and Shirl and the Rattail Twins. I think.

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Seven months ago, my wardrobe changed abruptly from casual business to casual farmer. I left my job as a physical therapist, and perhaps I have left my profession. We'll see.

On this side of the divide, the cerebral chemistry of stress and competition have given way to a sedate satisfaction with being in the present, cloistered in a rural safe haven with myself. It is a different way to live, an altered state of being, with a different center. It is more like being than doing. Words that passed fleeting and dismissed as I hurried to work -- the images, alliteration and allusion of internal dialogue -- are finally sifting down onto paper, or its phosphor equivalent, finding a voice beyond the stifled thought world of one man alone carried by the currents of a busy life.

Writing has become a daily celebration, and I have begun to learn who I have been under the costume all these years. Fortunately, I am mostly happy with what I see, and read, of this man, myself, and to know through the kindness of readers and correspondents there are others who know this struggle and this joy as well.

And yet I am not at fully at rest in this inbetween state. I do not yet know fully what I should do with my life. But in his well-crafted look at 900 others who also ask this question, Po Bronson offers comfort to me in his showing that the question is worth asking. I haven't yet found my place, but I have reason to believe it can be found. I leave you a few disjointed excerpts from his excellent piece at fastcompany... do read it all.

[...]The previous era of business was defined by the question, Where's the opportunity? I'm convinced that business success in the future starts with the question, What should I do with my life?

[...]I have spent the better part of the past two years in the company of people who have dared to confront where they belong. They didn't always find an ultimate answer, but taking the question seriously helped get them closer. We are all writing the story of our own life. It's not a story of conquest. It's a story of discovery. Through trial and error, we learn what gifts we have to offer the world and are pushed to greater recognition about what we really need. The Big Bold Leap turns out to be only the first step.

[...]There is nothing more brave than filtering out the chatter that tells you to be someone you're not. There is nothing more genuine than breaking away from the chorus to learn the sound of your own voice. Asking The Question is nothing short of an act of courage: It requires a level of commitment and clarity that is almost foreign to our working lives.

[...]Your calling isn't something you inherently "know," some kind of destiny. Far from it. Almost all of the people I interviewed found their calling after great difficulty. They had made mistakes before getting it right.

[...]Asking What Should I Do With My Life? is the modern, secular version of the great timeless questions about our identity. Asking The Question aspires to end the conflict between who you are and what you do. Answering The Question is the way to protect yourself from being lathed into someone you're not. What is freedom for if not the chance to define for yourself who you are?

[...]What am I good at? is the wrong starting point. People who attempt to deduce an answer usually end up mistaking intensity for passion. To the heart, they are vastly different. Intensity comes across as a pale busyness, while passion is meaningful and fulfilling. A simple test: Is your choice something that will stimulate you for a year or something that you can be passionate about for 10 years?

[...]Those who are lit by that passion are the object of envy among their peers and the subject of intense curiosity. They are the source of good ideas. They make the extra effort. They demonstrate the commitment. They are the ones who, day by day, will rescue this drifting ship. And they will be rewarded. With money, sure, and responsibility, undoubtedly. But with something even better too: the kind of satisfaction that comes with knowing your place in the world.

Posted by fred1st at 8:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Thank you BD for your kind words. My ears are burning.

I sound like my blog. Oh dear. Fragmented, demented and down on my face to the ground watching millipedes crawling and grass growing. That's how my weblog sounds. I once described Fragments being like the transcript of what Euell Gibbons would say to Gary Larson over a second bottle of scotch whilst playing scrabble. But I know what you mean, BD, and it is accepted as a compliment. I am nothing if not WYSIWYG. And regarding the drawling accent, well sir, I resemble that remark!

The CD was fun to make, horrifying to listen to, and a lesson of things to NOT do if I try it again next Christmas.

And, by the way, don't you folks like his new layout! Especially that duck up at the top of the page. Eh?

This is almost but not quite his final home. Stay tuned. Good things happening!

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I confessed to my benign poke at Poppa Popdex the other day, and lived to tell it. I wrote Popdex to explain my lighthearted ribbing, lest I be misunderstood. Again. He turned around and posted it here on the Popdex Blog.

That's good to learn. I thought maybe those hits on the Pooping Podex post were coming from lawyers, given my recent history of good intentions gone south.

Several readers suggested that 'false visits' may be from pages that post new entries via weblog.com and other linkback utilities. Apparently this is the case. Poppa Popdex is working on it. But darn, if he fixes it, I'll never get in the top 100 again!

Sick Transit Gloria Monday. Or something like that.

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When the kids were small, we enjoyed several books by David Macaulay, including one called "City". Particularly, I was mesmerized by his architectual cross-section of a metropolis, looking up at it from its roots, showing the detail of what was underground below it. His images revealed a world of things and processes that were going on under our urban feet, day and night, to keep our city working... a world that was necessary and real, but out of mind and sight. I never saw the city the same way after that.

We once moved to a small farm where there was pasture but no water for cattle to drink. The old spring sat against the edge of a shallow bowl that was filled with mud and long ago invaded by willows and overgrown by alders. The closest I have come to witnessing magic was in the finding of the source of the spring. Over the course of a month, I dug further and further back into the muddy bank, until finally one day, I reached limestone. But there was no water. The next day, in that spot was a damp patch. With more digging, a slow seep. Finally, a miraculous flow that fed a pond where the kids would float on rafts and we would iceskate in winter. Water out of stone, the nearest thing to magic I have known.

There is a 'city' of structure under my feet here in this very spot, many miles from any city. Carry Mr. Macaulay's camera down a thousand feet below our pasture on the banks of the headwaters of Goose Creek. See above the impervious core of ancient rock a vast blanket of rock full of tiny pores and cracks. Through it run creeks and rivers in the dark. Contained by it are canyons, caves and lakes filled with ancient rain. Two thirds of the world's fresh water is down here in this underground liquid world we never think of.

In places this spongy-watery rock shows itself to the world above ground, and cold subterranean water oozes and flows from clefts in the side of snow-covered hills. Finding each other in low places, united by gravity, ribbons of mountain springwater merge and flow together cutting their way through the very rock from which they were born.

See. This water of Goose Creek rushing past with such apparent intention. It will someday rise from sea to cloud to move again over mountains to saturate the very foundations of earth. From under these ridges will pour light and sound into creeks to fill those who will stand on these banks, careless above river worlds underground.

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And so, contractor Karl and crew, and me, the home-moaner, are working on the construction of the little footbridge that now crosses our 'branch' beside the house. It is late summer, three years ago. We guys are toiling along about half-speed, in shorts and T-shirts, happy to be busy near the cool water in the shade while the flatlanders in Roanoke suffer record high temperatures. About that time a white SUV approaches. The coming of a vehicle is such a momentous occasion that everyone pulls up from their work to gawk. The strangers in the vehicle return gawk for gawk, and slowly come to a stop.

Now we got a lot of lookers here during those days as the neglected old house was undergoing a major facelift. The SUV slowing down in front of the mailbox was probably just another admirer stopping to compliment us on our efforts on behalf of this highly redeemable old homeplace. I'll try to not act too proud of the transformation, I think to myself, seeing as mostly I provided the financing and blueprints and a lot of the grunt work but little of the skilled craftmanship that brought about this amazing restorative wonder. I approached the vehicle as the woman driver rolled down her power windows.

"Excuse me" said the fancy lady with New Jersey license plates. "Can you tell me how you found this place?"

Just as I thought. An admirer. And I commenced in my owner's pride to tell the story about seeing the ad in the paper, recognizing the potential of the location, and a few details of where we were in the reconstruction schedule. Then there was a prenant moment of silence as the woman looked as if she might be suffering a slight cerebral aneurysm.

"I'm afraid there has been a serious mistake here. I think you are on my property".

to be continued...

Posted by fred1st at 5:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1)

...thy neighbors blog header. But I do, I DO! I'm tired of the tired old blue banner. I want color, I want images... like this mini-collage that the nice folks at Mandarin Design show me how to do.

And now, I need some ideas about layout. If you know, off the top of your head, or heck, from any part of your head, about a weblog that has a nice "banner" presentation (preferably using an image), give me a holler, up here in the holler. Then, if Fragments goes all to heck, you know I am walking where angels fear to tread, tweaking my templates.

UPDATE: Ooh, this is getting close at DollarShort.org. Thanks for that tip, geegaw. I see the code I see the code! Now here I sit wondering what I should do next. I don't know who said ignorance was bliss. Seems more like a pain in the acetabulum to me! Can brains greater than a half century old learn new tricks? Can I get there from here? Stay tuned.

Posted by fred1st at 5:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

The morning is warm with December sun
and he pretends it is a summer day.
On his back the old man lies
on the walkway outside his door
under a winter sky of torn aluminum.
Letting go, the forked maple inverted overhead
becomes the airways of the sky's lung --
trunk, branches and twigs
taper to absent aveolar leaves
lying all about him on cold stone.

Looking down, a passing winter raven
sees the boy-man far below
a cruciform shape
a tiny delicate asterisk
of legs, arms and head
with a punctate white heart
that is a warm cat
making biscuits on his chest.

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My son is working now with elderly to keep them independent in their homes as long as possible, by arranging volunteer services for them. He has learned a couple of lessons in his work. Lesson One: if a person is not a nice person when they are young, they will not automatically transform into a nice person with age. He has run into more than a few disagreeable, cantankerous old people in his work. It's easy to discount as hopeless a new 'client' when the first encounter ends with a cussing and outright rejection, or there appears to be 'nobody home' and the response is one of seeming indifference.

Lesson Two I learned back when I worked with chronic pain patients. Many of these carried a nasty first impression. They were the most unlikable, unlovely and difficult personalities among those I have encountered in health care. Lesson two says that, no matter how ill-clad, unattractive, unpleasant and seemingly irredeemably worthless a person seems at first meeting, keep in mind that it is entirely possible that "there is a pony in there somewhere". Keep digging until you find it. Here's the tale...

Once upon a time there were young twin brothers; one an optimist and one a pessimist. The parents of the twin boys wanted a professional opinion as to the differences in their children. The psychologist that arrived gave each boy a shovel and told him there was a surprise waiting for each of them in the barn. He instructed them to find a stall that needed cleaning, and shovel out all the pony poop that was there, in search of their prize. Both boys said ok, and headed for the barn.

About 30 minutes later, the pessimist child returned, threw down his shovel, and moaned that there was nothing in that stall except horseapples, that he was finished shoveling, that they were all lying and he didn't believe there was any prize waiting for him.

Several hours passed before the optimist child returned. He gently rested his shovel by the door, ran into the kitchen to get a large glass of water and upon drinking it down quickly, grabbed his shovel and headed back towards the barn. The psychologist called after him and asked him to stop and explain where he was going. The optimist child hollered back at him, "I'm going back to the stall, 'cause with all that pony-poop piled up, there's got to be a pony under there somewhere!"

Would that our world leaders would look for the pony this year. Regardless of color, dress, language or religion, that pony is under the poop. Presidents, using the shovel is what we are paying you to do. Now get busy!

Posted by fred1st at 7:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Does anybody know how Popdex generates it's "Citations" to any particular URL? I notice on my visits record that Fragments is listed on Popdex again today (#41 when I checked at 6:00 a.m.) for reasons I cannot fathom. Looking at the purported "citations", there are some familiar blogfolks who indeed linked to me yesterday or the day before in some small way; but then there are total unknowns (to me) and when I visit those sites, there is no mention of fragments. And might I add, at least one site that, well, I DON'T lean that way, okay boys? Anyhow, just curious WHY those pages got quoted as citations.

(I have a theory that Popdex is actually a pleasantly demented former librarian housed in a geriatric warehouse in the midwest who is charged with randomly clicking from a long list of URLs whenever a target webpage is displayed. I think she gets a small gulp of Ensure for each 100 URLs she randomly assigns citations. Pop is the guy in control, but it is really MommaDex who does the work. But this is just a theory.)

From wandering through these geriatrically assigned links, I did find a neat php-generated guitar chord tool. If your fingers work a lot better than mine, you can play a full C or full F chord. Not me buddy. Four out of six is just fine for these hands, anymore.

~ No offense, Mom and Popdex, this is just my ignorance looking for a place to expose itself. I'm sure your algorhythms are impeccable, or just ever so slightly peccable, and I'm happy to be sandwiched inbetween a story from the Israeli Insider and the Mothers Against Videogame Addiction and Violence. (and at least one Father Against same.) ~

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