Fragments From Floyd

*** Yes, BJ has it right in her recent email. There's a disconnect in the image: the Slow Living Potentate of Goose Creek, sitting on the front porch, cradling an American Business Icon (The T42 Thinkpad) in his lap. But it's on its way, two to four weeks on backorder, direct from IBM. The Pentium M 1.7 and 1.86 chips are scarce, so I'll have to wait a while. But the phonecall to place the order was quick and painless. The rep tallied up the total cost and added "plus $96 tax."

Tax on an internet order? I yelped and balked, having already stepped over my budget. "Heck, I can get it other places without tax" I told her. "Wait just a minute" she said, and came back with "I can give you $100 off on this system." And I was pleased and impressed. So my first encounter with IBM has been a good one. Except I am still waiting for an email confirmation of this order and their customer care office is closed on weekends. Ah well.

*** This weekend was going to be the time I overhauled the tiller and walked it through the creek from the barn to the garden while the water was low. I would till the garden while the soil was moist but not wet. But the rains overnight put an end to that idea. There are some outside jobs I can do in-between showers. Unless, of course, that good fairy I keep hoping for has come along and cut, split and stacked the mountain of walnut at the top of the drive.

*** Newly-released images from the Hubble have been posted. In my next life, I wannabe an astronomer.

*** Wish I'd had this tiny tip over the past academic year during which more than once, a student has not been able to use a link because a long url got mangled in campus mail. TinyURL will take a long and complex web address and turn it into a short, easy one. Neat!

*** And did you realize (as I did NOT) that XP has its own compression program built in? If I keep taking uncompressed RAW image files, I'm going to need to squeeze as much space as I can on my hard drives until the guilt of my recent spend-binge has passed. Some day I may be following in Mr. Thompson's wake and have a TERABYTE hard drive or three stacked on my overflowing desktop. But not this VISA cycle.

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It is bound for Goose Creek. Three miles south and four hundred feet below this waterfall's base, this cold plunging flow will merge with Bottom Creek. From there, the South Fork will meet the North, and the Roanoke River will add more and more little tributaries like ours along the way, gaining volume and spreading out to flow lazily across the costal plain into Albemarle Sound and the Atlantic.

Water, wind and time have made these mountains smooth, so that when the land is so steep that it will not hold soil--as you can see here in this rock face--the stone underneath shows its history. It has been polished by time, worn away, every crag and jut, by the ages.

Sometimes in a beautiful spot like this one in the woods or mountains, I sense that there is more there than I'm seeing. ANd so I play what-if. It is a game that takes me beyond the ordinary way of seeing what my eyes alone can tell me about the place. In this mind-game, I feel free to take liberties with time and space.

I'm most often alone, so there is no one to tell of my fantasies, nor would I, mostly, as they are merely day dreams. And yet, they are dreams that help me come away from my revery with a bigger picture of the small field of view that my corporeal, time-stuck senses can perceive. An entire forest, biome or continent may be the focus of this surreal meditation, and so I might need to be suspended some distance above the earth to best see the results of my imaginary changes. Sitting beside this Floyd County waterfall this week, I mused:

What if: all the forests were shed--disappeared suddenly with no residue, so that only the bare earth of the Blue Ridge remained? It would seem in a way like a most terrible winter, only without the craggy brush of standing bare hardwoods that look from a distance like a pelt of suede or fur. Without its forest fur, these hills would be a monochrome wasteland, an alien place from another world. It is the broadleaved forest that we see when we look from a high place across ridge after ridge of corrogated Appalachian mountains. We remember mountains when we're away, but it is forest that comes up in our mind's eye--poplar and oak, cherry and locust, riding the undulating waves of granite and quartz, limestone and conglomerate below. But we haven't reached down to the heart of mountains. Not yet.

What if: after all the forest left, then all the topsoil and subsoil vanished--right down to bedrock, across all of southwest Virginia! In this naked earth, least changed to our vision would be the ridgetops. There, the soil is often only a few inches deep at best, or missing entirely from the exposed "outcrops" that create overlooks above the broad valleys below. Most strikingly altered to our view would be the valleys where eroded rock above has turned to soil and where streams over the eons have left a burden of silt and sand--tiny fragments, the crumbs of mountaintops, in layer upon layer. But valley soils can accumulate to great thickness, and when they suddenly disappear, our valleys at their full geologic depth would stand in stark contrast to the bare backbones of ridgetop high above. And in the Great Valley, there would be gaping holes in the floor of limestone--exposing the vast system of caverns and sinkholes that pock this stony mantle of rock normally hidden by the sediments of ages.

After some while floating above earth in my self-imposed phantasmic world, a bird called from a tree nearby. I shook off my daydream, and headed home. The soft humus that yielded to my steps and the trees I clutched as I slid down the steep rocky sides of the holler only moments before had been stolen away by a strange incantation. And I thought with a smile how, whenever I claim to love these mountains here, I'll know in my heart that it takes more than stone to make one.

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Yesterday, I cancelled the Dead Dell Laptop exchange and scheduled a full return and refund. And I feel like I've been released from the netherworld. I don't think I would ever have been able to regain confidence that the company would stand behind the machine, should the replacement konk out a few weeks down the road.

So. I'm looking at this IBM Thinkpad (T42) from NewEgg. The reviews are quite positive. And I can get it for about what the Inspiron was going to run me, less the 1 GB of RAM, but I can add that later. If anybody knows any reason why this man and this computer should not be united, let him speak now or forever hold her peace. (I suppose that is the current PC way to phrase that time-worn phrase. Eh?)

I do wonder if there are other vendors I should look at. NewEgg seems to get good customer reviews, but I've never used them. Thoughts?

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And soon it will be gone to the thick-bladed dark greens of summer. Every spring, it seems the most colorful ever. (Click here for larger image.)

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The dog barked his bark that means "What the heck?" and so I dropped what I was doing and went out to see what the heck. Tsuga was behind the house, facing up into the pine trees, asking WHO GOES THERE? and I supposed it was a deer in the cover of the spring foliage. No sooner had I rounded the corner of the house when a black shape appeared. Small at first: a dog. Then, growing suddenly larger: a bear. Then to my amazement the thing launched itself from the hillside in a flurry of wings and disappeared the other side of the house, at about rooftop level. It was an enormous turkey gobbler, and had not gone far. I could hear it calling from whereever it had landed. I ran inside to grab my camera (and took the dog with me, and left him there, of course. A boon to wildlife he is not, after the initial LOOK WHAT I FOUND bark.)

With my long lens ready, I eased up to the north corner of the house and peered around it discretely with one eye, scanning the edge of the pasture. I could still hear the gobbler cluck cluck clucking, but for the life of me I couldn't tell where it was coming from. I waited. Then I took a cautious step from my hiding place. Just then, almost directly over head, came the flutter and squawk of the turkey who had all along been perched almost directly over my head in the maple tree at the corner of our front porch. And off he went through the trees, safe from my autofocus, and the image was missed.

But as I stood there photographically unfulfilled, a pair of ravens circled unusually close overhead, and I grabbed a shot. But hey: I am not Doug Thompson who stops his car on the side of the road, sees a bird, pulls off the shot with is 4000mm infrared heat seeking lens and comes back with a full-frame 16 megapixel eagle against the setting sun. So I got a nice, boring shot of a raven against a featureless blue sky and had to photoshop the black bird onto a cloud picture from my archives to appear Thompsonian. But as they say, imitation is the sincerest form of laziness and mediocrity.

Til I capture the real thing, I'll have to cobble and hack my inspirational visions from fragments. But the combo of raven and cloud does bring to mind some lofty thoughts for the day:

High Flight
by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds...and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of...wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up, the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, nor even eagle flew.
And while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space...
...put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

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Later this morning, after the sun rises, with any luck, through soft diffusing clouds, Ann and I will be hiking to a nearby waterfall. I'll carry camera and tripod, but more than likely, this will just be a reconnaisance visit to find vantage points, compositions and get an idea of when lighting might best suit the lay of the land. This is the kind of close-to-home adventure that will warrant another jot on that calendar last week's radio essay talked about. And maybe, later today, there will be pictures!

(The old milldam is on Goose Creek just before it meets Bottom Creek to form the South Fork of the Roanoke River. If it were a couple hundred yards upstream, we could include it in the lovely features of Floyd County. But it is actually in Montgomery. Click on the image for an enlargement.)

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...you're still a rat.

But now that the race is over, what am I?

Suddenly, back in August, I faced the opportunity for a return to a role I thought I'd left behind almost twenty years ago. Since then, life has been full, but the liver has stepped back into the shadows of his own life. Teaching from new texts for classes where there are no old notes to start from has made for an academic year heavy in preparation. For the 100 hours of lecture over the two semesters, I've spent roughly 400 hours of study, 120 hours of travel, and sixty hours in labs. Part-time teaching has largely taken center stage. But now the act is over, and I think I've forgotten my lines.

It is an odd place to be this morning. Some new spaces are opening; others are drawing to a close. Where do I fit in to the life ahead?

It is the transition from must to might. I might do any number of things with the freedoms that will come over the summer. What should I do? And who determines the shoulds?

Bear with me as I sort out this new script.

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Photographs often help me center on what's trustworthy, true and good in this odd life. The pure light of a new day, my presence by chance at just such a place and time makes me look for the good things, the beauty in a fallen world.

I have a very busy day ahead, but I'll carry this moment of quiet peace with me. Maybe you can, too. (Click image for enlargement.)

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A few of you gave me a ribbing last week over my ecstatic, geekly post in anticipation of the laptop. I had anquished and fretted in front of you over this major purchase. I'd deliberated, compared, read the reviews, listened to your advice. And even when I decided, yes, I would have enough reason to order and use a laptop and yes, in spite of my misgivings, I would get the customized Dell, I knew: No matter how good it is, the new will wear off. There will be times I want to throw it across the room. There will be times I think of the other things I could have done with the money it took me two months of teaching to earn. I knew that so many times in this life, it is the journey, not the destination. Better to travel hopefully than to arrive.

And so I spoke of the new arrival as if it were an adopted baby coming into the nursery so carefully prepared for it. All I really wanted was for it to have all its little fingers and toes, knowing that sometimes in the gestation process, errors occur and things don't work. At the very least, I expected some colicky days from time to time. But really, remembering the dead Dimension XPS from July a year ago, what were the chances that two in a row would be still born? Should I let myself get excited? This was going to be one of very few significant things coming into my life. It would be another tool in my writing, in communications, with the photography. Why shouldn't I celebrate a little. It arrived in great jubilation on Friday. It lived less than twenty four hours.

I called Dell Exchange Department yesterday (and was misdirected three times--with long holds-- before I got there.) From start to finish, my laptop purchase and return experience was bracketed early and late by english speaking helpful folk. In between, I visited India, Sri Lanka and Burma. I spent an hour on the phone just in working out the exchange. In that frustrating hour I moved from thinking exchange to thinking return and good riddance. But I relented, even though Dell would do nothing to compensate a loyal but very dissatisfied customer. No upgrade on the hard drive, no free microphone, no token of good will. I'm expecting the replacement in a week or so, but forgive me if I do not have great expectations.

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The radio essay this past Friday, as usual, did bring a few new visitors to Fragments. And the best part is, those who hear the broadcast live are from our area--neighbors, practically.

The early essays starting in October, 2002, were the most effective way I had of finding new readers from near home. Then--and still--I have more readers in a typical day from London than I do from Floyd. Matter of fact, Jean from GB wrote to say she heard the radio broadcast via the web, and there is a nice world-shrinking feeling to that.

Several of you wrote to say you were sorry you missed it, or that you only caught the last part of it. I made a copy of the 3.5 minute little story using my crude setup here. You can listen to the mp3 file by clicking on this link. Be sure your sound is turned up.

UPDATE: After I posted this, I noticed visits from the radio station website. They've started a new feature, apparently, and you can listen to the Friday essay directly from their site!

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Moles must smell--powerfully. He can be running across the pasture at full tilt, suddenly stop on a dime, start digging in the soft soil. A minute and lots of flying dirt later, he marches triumphantly out of the tall grass carrying a wiggling sausage-shaped suede covered pink nosed mole.

And they must taste awful. Tsuga's never eaten one that we know of. He just carries the small soggy carcass around for hours, off and on. And if we come outside, and especially if we get near his trophy by then ignored in some corner of the yard, he rediscovers and reanimates it by throwing it in the air, often catching it before it hits the ground again. (A larger, more sophisticated pose from the same romp in the yard is here.)

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It didn't feel especially like spring yesterday, but it certainly looked the part. The season has crested on the summer side of spring, not pausing nearly long enough in that in-between state I love so much. But this morning, it is snowing sideways. We've still one foot in winter yet and are pulling smaller pieces of firewood from the dwindling pile out the back door for the woodstove. I'd thought we might be done with that, but no. I have to remember there was the spring when all the poplar leaves, by then well developed, were burned black by a late May freeze. We'll just take whatever season the day brings us.

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The good news: I didn't have to wait long for tech support.

The bad news: the touchpad is very sick. And of course they wanted to repair it. I insisted the system was going to be replaced, and will call to schedule a return on Monday. I spent hours yesterday loading software, tweaking XP, setting up My Document folders and such--that will all have to done again.

So. That's two Dell systems in a row that have gone back within the first week of use. This sure calls into question my disregard for this experience and the groundless hope things would be different this time. My only consolation is that, once my desktop was finally made to work almost two years ago, it has performed flawlessly ever since.

Meanwhile, it is absolutely the PEAK of spring, and Goose Creek never looks any more picturesque than this third week of April. Wish you were here.

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I console myself with the fact that I came home this morning with at least one usable image. However, for reasons I attribute to the phenomenon of things falling apart in twos and threes, my ftp information for my servers has been wiped clean and I can't upload images just now after all. I'd hoped to do so before beginning what promises to be a long day on the phone--day two with the laptop--with Dell technical support. The cursor disappears when the system comes back from hibernation. This is like a bad dream. Meanwhile, see a good one here.

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Here's one that didn't make the slide show (see link in previous post.) I can't stand not to get an image up since I don't have Anatomy notes staring me in the face this morning. The Buffalo hike was such a good time, devoted as it was to nothing but photography. I've been up before with folks who reach the top, look around a minute, and say "Well, there's nothing up here. Let's go back down now."

As the slide show tells, we stayed until there was no more sun. We stumbled back down the mountain in the light of the moon. Did I say it was a great trip? What a unique place, and how thankful I am--if I never get back up there--I brought memories home to keep. I am most thankful for my working knees, my free time and my camera. Abundant riches, indeed!

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THE SHOW MUST GO ON: Well it has been a morning of dead-ends. I wanted to do something other than put up the weeny image size dictated by the blog page. Landscapes--like the ones I brought back from the Buffalo on Wednesday--just lose their impact viewed in miniature. But my Exposure Manager gallery is inexplicably unavailable; Flickr doesn't tell me how to do what I need to do; and the Quicktime Movie I can make is way too large to download. So, for those of you who want to see a little movie of Buffalo Mountain (11 slides, 10 seconds a piece) you can download it here, and it will play with Shockwave Flash, which most computers will have. I didn't add music to keep the file size small. Do let me know if this works for you. I suggest you enlarge your Flash viewer once the slides start; it should hold up to at least 640 x 480 size.

IS IT JUST ME?: Last year, we let the Government keep way too much of our money til our whopper tax return in May. But we didn't make any changes to our witholding, nor were there any significant changes in our income this past year (my teaching income made hardly a blip on the screen). So we were counting our chickens: we had our last year's tax return amount allocated to 1) new desk; 2) son's college expenses; 3) savings; 4) laptop; and 5) trip to Vancouver. But NO. We were shocked to get our return back and find less than half what we expected. The explanation (according to the CPA): the president's tax cut already gave that (missing) amount back to you in the recent tax reductions. Oh yeah? I couldn't see a bit more take home than the previous year. Well it went SOMEWHERE. What's going on here!

READING: Well thank goodness. The radio essay sounded better than I'd feared. But I do find one thing that is regrettable about the time constraints of such a reading: there's not much time for pregnant pauses. A couple of places where I took a breath between paragraphs--more for emphasis than respiration--were edited out. And so the break between thoughts isn't there, and it makes it harder for a listener to follow the story. Ah well. I may try to get a digital recording when it rebroadcasts at 8:55. I have a few of them in digital form (the last thanks to a Fragments listener-friend!) and may see if Audacity is capable of recording directly from the sound card.

RECORDING: Lots happening in Virginia in the coming years. Next year is Floyd's 175th birthday. And the next is Jamestown's 400th. History, tradition and culture can be viewed under glass in a museum. But largely, it resides in the people. Here is an excellent guide on how to interview someone in an oral history project. Thanks to Kathleen from the local historical society for the link. A meeting to discuss this method and a local project is upcoming in future weeks.

RECEIVING: The laptop approacheth. It's somewhere in Roanoke, according to UPS tracking. Oh please, people, don't throw that box around. Let's make this DELL like the first ones I ordered ten years ago that have all their parts and work like they should from the git-go. The wireless hub was supposed to arrive early in a separate package. It hasn't. Anxious? Well yes, just a bit. I think I've made a good decision (both to spend the money and in the choice of system I've made) but won't know for sure until a few weeks of use. Thanks, all, for your helpful advice. I may have more questions, especially in the wireless realm. Old dogs. New tricks. Woof.

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Just a quick note for those couple of you who would scold me if I didn't give you a heads-up. Got another radio piece coming up tomorrow, and the details are below.

You can listen via Real Audio: HERE (Live, real-time only)

Or if you're local: Regional radio broadcast: 89.1 - Roanoke; 89.5 - Lynchburg; 88.5 - Charlottesville 89.3 & 89.7 - Charlottesville, Waynesboro & Staunton; 91.9 - Marion, Wytheville, Galax & Abingdon

Date: Friday April 22, 2004

Time: Immediately after the regular short Civil War series that airs at 6:50 and again at 8:50 a.m., EST... so ~ 6:55 and 8:55-ish

Anywho, you've already read this little story in Fragments a few months back. Listen at your own risk.

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Sometimes you just pick a day and do it, and fate does not cooperate. Yesterday was one of those days, and it wasn't. But it was the only day I could have climbed to the top of Buffalo Mountain before the soft greens of spring turned to a sea of chlorophyll as far as the eye can see. It was the thin translucent green of early spring I wanted to experience from Floyd County's highest peak. If it had to happen yesterday, I would see it through the haze of a lingering warm front that would weaken the colors like too much water in a painter' brush. But I've scolded myself many times before for condemning a day for some imperfection, only to find that it turned out far different and better than I'd predicted, and I was sitting home wishing I'd just carried my rain gear or extra-warm clothes and gone ahead to see what the day would offer. And so, yesterday, I went expecting little and was pleasantly surprised.

The last several ridges along the 360-degree horizon were barely visible in the pale blue haze. Later in the day as the sun began to drop, the winds picked up smartly and it was hard to stand on the exposed summit. We stayed until the sun sank through that blue veil that had washed out color more and more with each ridge into the distance. Now, that water vapor and dust did just what we had hoped it would ultimately do to the setting sun.

I'm very happy with my catch of the day and will be processing them and showing them to you (probably in a slide show) in the next day or two. I took all RAW files (in fact I filled up my 512MB card with them for the first time ever!) and there ARE some keepers. Wish I had more time to get them up this morning, but, because I played all day yesterday, I have school work before today's lecture. Sigh.

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I slow down often when we pass this old barn on Georges Run. I sits in the middle of what once was pasture, but now is somebody's yard. It serves no purpose that I can tell other than to catch my eye--for reasons I had never given much thought. But this once, I stopped with my camera, while the neighborhood dogs barked and curtains pulled back in distant windows to see what the fuss was all about. If they'd asked me why I was bothering to take a picture of this useless barn, I'm not sure what I would have told them except that I liked the way the light from the east hits it in the mornings.

Now, after being able to hold this image still before me, I see things missed at 40 miles an hour. This is a sight worth seeing. It is because of the light, but it is also the story you can read in the skin of the old place. It tells of making do. One section of wall rots away, you take pieces from somewhere else less vital and patch it--whatever it takes to cover the empty places, get the job done, keep the good critters in and bad ones out. Appearance is nothing, function is everything--the chickens could care less what keeps out the weasels. That this pragmatic history makes an interesting pattern of shapes, textures and light is only an accident of rural economy.

The question of why a photographer's eye is drawn to its subject is an appropriate focus for this very day. Five years ago on April 20 I got my first digital camera. One of my first subjects was spicebush--to which I've recently returned. One year ago today, I got my current SLR digital. Yes, I remember these anniversaries as significant markers in my life. For more than half of it, the lens of a camera has been a way of seeing, feeling, remembering. And so when a new one comes (my current is only my third), so does a new vision of ordinary things. Once, every picture was a very private experience. Most images were quickly hidden in a drawer or slide tray, out of sight and mind. Now, the very vision that meets my eye I show to you, sometime within minutes. Being able to 'say' what I see in this way is a blessing of our times for which I am most thankful here on this anniversary.

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I feel like an expectant parent preparing the nursery for baby. Even though it will be another two weeks before the laptop arrives, I'm thinking about where it will stay, what I must do to keep it safe and give it enough but not too much attention, and wondering if I really know the first thing about little laptops. How do I hold it? What if I drop it on its little head, and it's never right again? Will it keep me up nights? What if it gets sick, out here so far in the wilderness? If I smile at it, will it smile back? Being a new father is so stressful.

Okay. Enough already with the bad analogies. But seriously, I have concerns. One is that I not suffer the musculoskeletal complaints I've been able to eliminate from my desktop setup, applying all the good ergonomics I used to preach when I was a practicing physical therapist. With screen and keyboard inseparable, there are new risks, but there are some ways to adapt. Here are Five Tips for Laptop users from the Ergo department at Cornell. And (not just for laptops) a good explanation for the wisdom of using negative keyboard positioning. I used to have such a hard time making people understand this. And I still go into a place like the local or Tech library and all their keyboards are cocked up high in the back! I know they wonder who keeps coming in there messing with the keyboards!

And, I have a newbie question re laptops: other than using a USB memory-key or CDRW disk, how does one get files uploaded from the laptop to the desktop? What's the best way? Is there a cable of some sort for this purpose? Will it come with the machine or do I need to purchase it? It is too late to take a class for anxious laptop owners?

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If you listen carefully, you'll hear the sound of quickening currents from just around the next bend: it is the precipice of waterfalls that come before the peaceful float that comes afterward--for the survivors. The end of the semester, the end of my little sortee back into academics that began in August--is about to culminate in a flurry of four impossibly condensed lectures over the remaining 400 pages of the book; a lab practical a week from today that I cannot imagine how I will manage to set up alone (two cadavers, four cats, lots of diagrams to label); and at last, a final exam on May 5. And then, the uncharted green fields of summer (that will need constant mowing--not to spoil the metaphor.) Who knows what will rise up to fill that seemingly vast and empty space?

Closer to home: I think I'll venture back up onto the Buffalo this Wednesday--a little earlier in the season than last year's foggy hike up with Doug and Joe. I may take a sandwich and stay long enough to see the sun set and the moon rise.

Friday, if you're nearby, stop by the Jacksonville Center for the Earth Day festivities. Be sure and stop by Sue Nees' place and enjoy her whimsy, wit and wisdom in paper and stone. You'll be glad you did. Sue, by the way, is involved in the soon-to-come Jacksonville School for Arts and Culture that will be opening its doors in early June.

And Saturday, we may be visiting once again the resurrected Pine Tavern Restaurant, recently reopened under new management. Most of our visits there were on Sunday nights for Open Mic Night, when our son, Nathan often performed the music he wrote. The clientele was quite Floyd-eclectic and ran the full spectrum of local and imported characters in World Dress of all sorts. After his first time performing there--which included a pair of 'interpretive dancers' who incongruously writhed and shimmied to Nate's ballads--Nate said he felt like he'd been an extra in the bar-room scene from Star Wars. (Guess you had to be there.)

Well, those are the known events for this week. We'll see what other unexpected happenings fall into place, as they always do, to keep life interesting. Oh, I remember one upcoming walk I'm looking foward to this week while the wildflowers bloom: a return visit to the waterfalls our neighbor told us about. Such magic makes one believe in fairy tales. You'll see!

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I told you that Tsuga has been ravaging the wildlife of late. Somehow, this scenario seemed all too familiar. Searching back first through the archives of memory, and then through the archives of Fragments (which more and more are beginning to be one and the same thing) I retrieved the following story. Methinks we're seeing a repeat of the same shrewd puppy behavior in a lighter shade of Lab.

The Carcass Redemption Program (April 2002)

We need help! As earnest and responsible parents of a three-yr-old black laborador retriever (Buster) we have recently become concerned that we are on our way toward creating a monster! Now, we have made some mistakes in parenting our children, in our utter ignorance as behavior managers. Thank God they have been able to overcome their upbringing and have turned out pretty darned normal. Mostly. The pup, however, has no similar internal gyrocompass, and depends on our reinforcement to mold his little doggie character. And this is our problem.

As the days warm here in early Spring, young Buster is prone to strike out on his own for a half hour or so. We do get a bit concerned about his disappearances, but lately, it is his returning that concerns us. Twice this month, after whistling and calling him for some time, he finally appears, prancing jauntily down the hill or up the road, with 'something' in his mouth. I will not offend your senses with a detailed description of what that 'something' is. Suffice it to say that it is very, very dead and has been so, and at some soil depth, for some time. Needless to say, Buster is reluctant to part with such a prize, and will not. Unless...

Here is where we need your help, as pet psychologists:

The only way we can make the dog relinquish the mummified groundhog spine (oops sorry, I wasnt going to give details) is to offer him a "PUPPY TREAT". He has to spit the 'something' out to get the dry tasteless boneshaped piece of grain-waste. (Again, I confess,I don't understand the canine mind.)

We have this new horror that Buster is coming to see this as a CARCASS REDEMPTION PROGRAM. The boy has caught on: He uses his excellent sense of smell and his few moments of illegal freedom to find dead wildlife, he brings it to the Redemption Center where you can turn in dead-things for something really yummy!

Can you see where this is headed?

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But ya shoulda seen the one that got away.

I'm still having to learn to think in 'long glass mode'. I haven't had telephoto capabilities since 35mm days years ago. Then, I carried a straight 200mm that I rarely bothered getting out of the case, though there's no telling how many miles I toted that heavy sucker for thirty years. Now I have image-pulling power again, but I don't always consider the possibilities for such things as wildlife. One day last week as we set off on our next to next to last walk of the day (when Ann's home we take what seems like dozens) I remembered to change lenses to the long (heavy) one. Tsuga had flushed turkeys from around the far bend up the valley the day before. Odds were low they'd be there a second day at the same time, but hey: I had to hope, maybe.

It was 4:00 in the afternoon. Muted sun shafted down onto the valley floor, diffused by the pines three hundred feet above us along the western ridge. I had the camera on and set for high-speed motion at optimum focal distance for where a turkey might pass on the wing--just in case. We approached the end of the valley, Tsuga as usual taking the lead. He rounded the bend out of our vision, at a gallop and was gone for a few seconds when a flurry of dark shapes came directly at us down the grass-covered road. The first large spring gobbler got past me before I could raise the camera, but the second--who obligingly veered away so as to be both far enough away to nicely fill the frame and in the best possible light against the dark hillside--I framed wonderfully in the viewfinder. I squeezed the shutter triumphantly, expecting the gratifying shock and sound of the shutter. And there was nothing.

Quickly I checked to be sure the camera was on and lens cap off. Yes. What else? WHAT ELSE? Here came a fifth iridescent turkey still flushing from around the bend: set, compose, watch timing for rising of the wings. SNAP! Nothing. The viewfinder showed an odd message: eRR. What the...

Not only had I missed the best wildlife shot I'd thought about taking in a decade, but my camera was broken. I could feel my shoulders droop. I didn't talk much for the rest of the way home.

I figured it out, finally. When I'd put the lens on the body, the f-stop wasn't set to 22 as it should be, so that the lens's electronics mesh with the camera body. That was the eRR and the reason I only came back from that walk with the mental image of the beautifully composed perfect turkey gobbler at just the right distance in perfect light when I was prepared--well, almost prepared--to take his portrait in flight. Sigh.

The deer above were two young-of-the-year who chased each other up and down the neighbor's hillside as I was driving by. They cooperated briefly for a snapshot. There is an innocence in these creatures at this age that makes it hard to vilify them as adults for the harm they do our vegetation and the front ends of our vehicles. (Click image above for larger version.)

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Can you get ready for this? First, 3700 samples of one of the most deadly viruses in the history of human disease was MISTAKENLY sent to labs around the world. (Hello Terrorists, are you listening?) Now (great surprise) we learn that some of these samples (read: little cultures from which large volumes of spawn can be created) have come up missing. Between the stupidity of mankind and our inherent tendency toward inflicting suffering on our fellow nitwits, do we deserve to go on as a species? Are we seeing the machinations of a mad conspiracy to commit planetary suicide or merely Darwinian selection running its course here past the adaptive peak for our species?

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So, this morning, Walter Mitty, intrepid world traveler, explorer and fast-liver, has been taking images from a hundred miles above southwest Virginia in search of the perfect place to have a picnic lunch later today. (Click image for larger view).

Well I'll not get anything done today, after remembering Google Maps (maps.google.com) has recently added satellite equivalents for any (or at least most) of the maps you call up for your city or region. How cool is that--to be able to easily switch back and forth at the same scale between the county road map and the same view from a hundred miles in space, and click and drag from one place to another! For the map freak in your family (and all families seem to have one) this is just an incredible time-sink! Doh! Just what I needed!

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**Dude! I'm Gettin' a...** Thanks to those who've offered advice, encouragement and warnings in the Great Laptop Decision. Needless to say, this was a bewildering process of matching uncertain value against unknown risk, with any given company or system showing up on the web as both a useless piece of crap AND the best machine/vendor the earth has ever seen. So in the end, I ordered a Dell Inspiron 6000, going with the devil I know. The price on the system came down $400 on Thursday alone, so I got what is ostensibly a $2800 system for $1800. It will come with everything upgraded AND the "Gold" service package that gets me a secret decoder ring and a phone number (I'm supposed to get an answer within a minute) for instant tech support known only to the Dellerati. It will be here in early May.

**Homeland Security** Also in the (yawn) techie arena, I am finally doing things right in the computer backup realm. I got a fast 80GiG external drive this week. And I found what seems to be a very sophisticated, logically crafted and FREE backup software (i've looked at lots of them) called Simply Safe Backup. Now, if I would finally get around to changing the battery on my UPS, I'd be computer-copesetic.

**Homeland Insecurity** Meanwhile, I'm sorry to report, we've had to issue a YELLOW(LAB) alert in Peaceful Valley. Already this week, we've had two fatalities that have sent shudders of horror through the wildlife population here in our once-serene and secure little enclave. A year ago--not to belittle their value to our local community--only a few moles and butterflies met untimely ends here due to the Yellow Menace. Just this week, I'm sorry to tell you, both a black racer snake (too cold to put up a fight) and a rather large (but too-slow) rabbit fell victim to the cunning and speed of Tsuga the Terrible. And a gray squirrel narrowly escaped a similar fate. We think it will be just a matter of time until we add our first groundhog to the endangered species list; however, as our old dog Buster would tell you, whistlepigs wield large and powerful incisors and will not go silently into that good night. It will be interesting to see how our Resident Predator responds when he meets a snack that bites back.

**Good Neighbors** He moved into the valley in the mid-seventies. The house he lived in burned down. We knew that. But not until this week did he come have dinner, see how the house has changed since he visited friends here long ago, and tell us stories of his memories of this house, this valley, this community. He'd gone for groceries that night of a terrible storm. Arriving in the pitch blackness of this remote place, he walked up his steps in complete darkness carrying his groceries when he noticed something wasn't right. The house was gone--struck by lightning, reduced to smoldering embers. How had he found Floyd County? He moved here to visit a friend (still living on the ridge above us.) They had known each other as editor and assistant editor in the graphics department at Saturday Evening Post. Amazing the stories of people's lives--even those that drive past our porches every day. We wave to them, know their names, and would rush to their aide were they in need. But how little we know of our neighbors.

**Hindman** I'm considering going to the Appalachian Writers Workshop at Hindman Settlement School July 31 - August 5. Applicants need to say which genre they are interested in (Poetry, Short Story, Non-fiction or Memoir) and submit a 30 page manuscript of their work in that genre. Thirty pages is easy. Having it look like it is an 'ouvre' and not the contents of somebody's shoebox collection of word-doodles is the challenge. Taken together, the radio essays, seasonal pieces, personal reflections and nature musings I suppose fits into the creative non-fiction memoir and pointless short story genre. Funny. I don't see that on the list. I'll be ruminating (here, of course) about this decision in the next few weeks. Deadline for MS submission is May 15.

**Lost in Space** With all the distractions recently of classroom demands, technological decisions re computing and general seasonal ennui, I feel out of touch with both myself, my friends and my reader-visitors. If I've neglected to answer emails, respond appropriately to comments or seemed generally distant, it is only because my multitasking buffer has been exceeded and blogging and related correspondence has been regrettably pushed too far down the priorities list. When I lose touch with myself, it shows here, since this is my visible face where, like my neighbor, I tell my stories you would not otherwise have known. Or I drive by with a smile and a wave and a cloud of dust headed into my own little world. Thanks to those who remain faithful even when all work and little play makes Fred a dull boy.

(Image above is from circa 1976, Patrick County Virginia, Rock Castle Gorge--on a day that was probably my first to pass through Floyd County. It was almost exactly this time of year--when the Virginia Bluebells bloom along Rock Castle Creek. The tripod in the photo sits in the corner of the room not ten feet from my chair here. Everything else has changed.)

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This is the season when change is heaped on change, and while you look west, the world is morphing behind you to the east. Once it makes up its mind to begin after the cold rains of March and early April, spring comes all too quickly. Blooms, buds and shoots open like a dog stretching after a winter's nap. They take on color and form, imbibe water from the snow-soaked ground, and while I'm gone to town, they explode into field and forest, and spring has peaked for another year.

And so for every glimpse of this fleeting season I can catch on film, I am thankful. Like an April morning snow will fall softly from branches by noon and be gone from the south slope before dark, the thin pastels of spring will melt into the thick green wall of summer and be gone.

Yesterday began with morning fog that lifted like a curtain on springtime. Click the image for a larger view.

One of my favorite things about spring is the tender light that shines through through April leaves when they are the size of mouse ears and come in every shade of green and gold that God ever imagined. Here's an impressionist's memory of yesterday's April forest that will go in my scrapbook of seasons at home.

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Laminated placemats. Of Blue Ridge scenes (the ones you selected as favorites for the VMI photo contest, where, by the way, Autumn Morning did not even place.) The golden view from Rocky Knob. The October barn and road covered with russet maple leaves next to the green mailbox. You may remember some of those.

Well, I took a CD of images by Kinkos in Blacksburg last week and had 11 x 17 prints made of some of these images. I was very impressed how quickly the work was done and that for $1.78 the finished print (on plain paper) is quite good, actually. I took these prints with us to a meeting that night, and as soon as I laid them out on the table, our hostess said "Why those would make wonderful placemats!" Bingo.

Kinkos can liminate a print this size for $4, so I'd have $6 in each print. You'd sell placemats in groups of 4 or preferrably 6. I'd have to charge $10 a piece or maybe $50 for a set of 6 to make any profit (after shipping or driving them to distribution points along the Parkway, interstates etc.) That's probably more than a traveler would be willing to spend on something like this, don't you think? (I could also just sell the rolled-up prints for $5 a piece at the same outlets, plus notecards. But I'm getting ahead of myself.) The idea is so appealing and I could tailor future images to create nice packages: The BLue Ridge Parkway; Goose Creek through the Seasons; Nature Scenes; Leaves; Creeks; etc.

If I order more than 100 prints from Kinkos, the price per copy goes down. Now if I can find less expensive lamination, I think I might have a product here. Let the wild goose chase begin!

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While I am still waffling re the laptop decision, I am at least going down the mountain Friday to hold one in my grubby little hands. After looking at Acer, Toshiba, Dell and IBM, I have my eye now on Sony. Their VAIO machines get good marks for display quality and the folks I've run into who own Sony VAIOs have had nothing but good things to say about them. User Groups confirm they are reliable machines, but also that Sony has abandoned customer service and good luck if something breaks, even if under warranty. Oy.

Since I first broached this subject a week or more ago, two things have changed. First, I've realized I need to escalate how much I'll expect to spend to get the quality of performance and display I want. Second, I feel less guilt over the higher outlay since learning I'll have a five-section class of General Biology (that's 120 students and five labs--arrrggghh) in the Fall. So I will both have the income to afford the computer and need it for use from both lab and classroom with Radford's wireless.

At present, I'm focused on the Sony VAIO FS550 upgraded to 1GB RAM and XP PRO. Then I come to the issue of warranty service. It is available through BestBuy, but the fine print says they'll feel free to replace parts or a defective system with used or refurbished pieces. I don't like that. And UserGroup comments don't give Sony good marks at all for responding to customer needs.

And I wonder if I'm not thrown reluctantly back into the clutches of Dell. Of the six Dell systems I've owned, at least four have required next-business-day service and gotten it reliably. Even when we lived way out on Walnut Knob, the pimply little repairguy came out our cowpath road during the Month of Mud to our cabin and replaced the whatever like the contract says. Maybe I'm realizing the hold that Dell has: the best of the SOBs. What's a fella to do? Inspiron 6000 fully-loaded?

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I still remember the sad disappointment of coming back from a vacation or such with rolls and rolls of slide film. And finally they'd come back from the processor. The moment of truth. And thud: what I'd remembered of the moment and composition fell flat when reduced to the single little rectangle of emulsion or paper. It was much more than that. The image failed to recreate the experience. I guess you had to be there.

The digital camera, while still confined to the same single eye, offers more chances to 'say' the image like you want it said. But even so, those scenes that make me giddy with excitement often fail to evoke the same sensations when viewed on the screen an hour or day later after capturing a moment an hour or day before.

Digital imaging software, like Photoshop, gives the photographer/documentarian an important additional tool. With it, he can embellish the light, texture or color to make it say what needs to be said to reproduce in the viewer the experience had by the photographer. And then "Yes! That's what I saw, not with eyes alone, but with in-sight and all my senses taken together!"

It occurred to me after I posted the spicebush pictures the other day that what I 'saw' out in the pasture the other day did not come across in the images, even though they were adequate as a mere record of the light the camera received. But what I wanted to remember--and be able to communicate to those of you who were not there--is the strong sensation that, in those tiny backlit yellow flowers against the dark hillside--I saw fireflies pinned along branches against a summer nighttime sky.

And so I tweaked the original image with PS filters Distort/Diffuse Glow to enhance the flower-fireflies.

This is the way I saw the scene through my mind's--if not my visual--eye. And this recreates for me the experience of that particular moment. This lets me tell you not just what I saw but what in the fullest sense, I perceived.

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And just about the time I really NEED a spring tonic: the ramps are rising in the deep woods. What! You've never had ramp quiche? or ramp potato biscuits? or ramp soup? And I bet you don't even know how many ramps could you eat in three minutes without deRAMPING? Get educated: watch clips from The King of Stink--celebrating the spring gatherings centered on this pungent Appalachian onion. And watching is all I can do. Wife says: lips that touch ramps will never touch mine.

And while it may, officially, be spring, there is a fire in the woodstove this chilly morning and as the metal warms up, it ticks and pops just off my right shoulder--a comforting sound, and there's no cozier heat than wood. The ritual of tending the stove started in September, off and on--then in early November, round the clock. We've almost made it through one more year of feeding the beast. I wonder as every heating season ends how many more years I'll be able to gather my own wood; it's a massive job, neither as easy nor as enjoyable as it once was.

And as one ritual ends, another begins. When the sun comes back to us over the next few days, we'll be out with the mower hitting the few dark green patches that come up mysteriously thick near just behind the house. I think it has something to do with the dog's favorite spots to leave fertilizer, but that's just a theory.

One of my recurrent joys in spring--going back to my grad school years--has been photographing the wildflowers of the southern Appalachians. After getting my first digital (Nikon Coolpix 950) in 2000, I began amassing a collection of flower closeups. Close-up photography was a strong suit for this camera, first because it had a close focal distance of less than an inch; and second, because of the swivel body, you could view from vantage points (like from the very ground looking up under the flower) that made for interesting composition.

This will be the first spring in more than 30 years I won't be taking many flower closeups. The Coolpix died. The battery compartment door lock failed, but even if I tape it shut, the batteries drain in less than five minutes--some kinda short internally I guess. The D70 will bring back a few usable images in the next few weeks, but not the bugs-eye views I used to enjoy sharing.

And segueing from spring and spring flowers, let me give you few regional readers a heads-up:

The 31st Annual Mt Rogers Naturalist Rally will be held this year on May 6 and 7. Place: the Mt. Rogers area at Konnarock Community Center for Friday evening meal and speaker (Wallace Coffey, a birder of some reknown) and for convening the Saturday morning and afternoon field trips. Email me if you're interested in more specifics. I'm leading the Grindstone nature trail wildflower walk Saturday morning. I'll tell you about other trips here soon. Camping is available at several nearby locations. Outta be fun.

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"I want you to see something. Turn down that way" our resident tour guide told us last Friday. And two miles of single lane gravel later when we arrived at our objective, she asked "Have you ever seen the likes of that!?"

Well, yes, actually, I had. I came to this very house three times a week for a month a few years back. Walked past the oddly decorated shed many a time when I was seeing the lady of the house for physical therapy. A hip replacement, I think. Funny thing is, as great a photo-interesting as it is, I never even thought about taking pictures of the place. That was before I got my first digital camera almost five years ago.

And the stories inside the places I would visit could be equally as quaint and noteworthy, but that was also before I ever had a reason to take pictures with words.

I look back and think how many venerable old homes, barns and plain and genuine country folk I encountered during the 'home health' chapters of those days. Some memories remain, but most of the details are lost in the fog of forgetfulness.

"You can jus' call me Granny." I heard this from at least a half dozen of my lady patients then. "Ever body in this valley calls me Granny, if they're mine or not. I spose since you're under my roof and come to hep me, why, I'll be your granny too." And I rarely left without some flowers dug from her flower bed; or from another, a quart of apple butter; and another had nothing to offer but a piece of fruit, and would have been offended had I not accepted it before I left.

Other times, I'd see a patient at the clinic in town (right across from the Floyd Country Store) and we'd come to be friends during, but especially after their regular visits. There's an easy friendship comes when you lay hands on a person in a caring way, and they feel the better for it. So because of this, therapy often brought both the healer and the healed to a unique kind of relationship. And herein lay the rewards of the profession, and the part I miss. But I digress.

There was little Dee. She wasn't always so little. She drove to the clinic from her home where she lived alone, out on the parkway (a neighbor of ours, it turned out) to see if there was anything I could do to help with the pain from collapsed vertebrae. We tried all sorts of things, and honestly, nothing helped. But we became friends, and I admired her greatly, and was happy to come to her house on many occasions under the pretense of digging one thing or another from her yard. "Those are rare. I've had those since I got married in 1938. I can't get out to see them now, and if I got out here, I can't half see anyhow. You take them, put them near your new house on Goose Creek."

And we did. And the irises (she knew all their names) and the daffodils (the large double kind) and delphinium and bachelor buttons we brought home from Dee's are beginning to show now, as the days warm. Soon they will bud and bloom, reminders of a special friend, from a special time whose memory I have pictures of, stored where only I can see them. But none the less worthy of pulling out of the drawer from time to time for a look.

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I couldn't have asked to be dropped into this beautiful tragic planet at any spot on the calendar more congenial to my inner spirits that April. If one is feeling mopey about the passing of time, the way time does wonders to our woods is a perfect antidote. From that setting, I've adopted a Birthday Flower whose birth each year coincides with mine. Unfortunately, the tiny tufts of pale yellow-gold Spicebush flowers are so tiny and dispersed in the head-high branches that they aren't terribly photogenic.

Even so, I set out this morning to mark the occasion with an attempt to take birthday pictures of Lindera benzoin. It grows in profusion along Nameless Creek. The sun rising over the east ridge obliges by striking the understory while leaving the background in blue shadow.

Here are a few that came back in the camera today. The details are lost in the reduced image size, but there is still enough here to evoke the memory of the morning. There's no substitute for seeing it with one's own eyes, but maybe this will give you a taste.

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One of the few perqs of adding yet another candle to the cake is that we've lived long enough to have a grandchild. (Never mind that she lives in South Dakota.) And so as I was cruising the Fragments archives from April, wondering what was going on at the time of this momentous annual event last year, I found and played these crude recordings of Abby (then just turned 3) singing the nursery rhymes she'd learned at day care.

I think this is just what I needed at this auspcious moment: to get a sense of the Symmetry of Things. To remember that, to everything there is a season. Along came the rain; out came the sun.

Repeat post, shamelessly copied from last April:

_________________________________________________

In the interest of full-spectrum shameless public display of the tiniest shreds of the mundane from our ordinary lives, Fragments is pleased to make available for a short time only audio files of not one but THREE! nursury rhymes sung recently by little Easter Abby for her grampa, Dumpa Dumpy.

When she gets just a little older, we're taking our show on the road. Move over, Charlotte Church!

The Eensy-weensy Spider
The Turtle Song
Baa Baa Black Sheep

(These are Windows Media (WMA) files. Double click the link and I bet you have an audio player on your computer that will play it. If not, give me a call and I'll sing them for you.)

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Many new faces and family surnames have come to Floyd in the past thirty years. It's possible to be in a room full of county residents where not a soul was born and raised here. But if you are looking to understand the true and full identity of this or any rural county, you have to find the backstage: the quiet working farms and tiny well-tended little settlements off the main path where families have raised families and farm animals for three or more generations.

Yesterday, we spent the afternoon with a local octagenerian whose Floyd family roots go back to the 1790's--when her German-immigrant ancestors built a massive stone furnace not far from the center of town. We hoped to hear about it, but didn't expect she would offer to take us there for the grand tour. Or that we would stop by the pole barn I've passed a hundred times where she would tell us the story behind all the massive steam-powered lumber milling machinery obscured now by large round rolls of hay.

"My daddy stood here" she said, reinacting the process of feeding a tree into the massive steam-powered blade. "A sluiceway brought down water that went into that jacket. In a little while the fire (that went in here) built a head of steam to turn the belt (that went over those rollers) and a bit later, there'd be all the wood you needed for building a home, a bridge, or a barn. Momma stood over there and helped move the boards over onto a wagon that would carry them off to dry."

Our host yesterday was born in the house where her father was born and she now lives a hundred yards up the hill and across the road in the house she grew up in, back in the 20's. I try to imagine what it must be like to know your roots are long and deep. For new arrivals like me and most of the people I know here, it's comforting to learn there are those who are "from here" who know where they're from. This kind of grounding will help all of Floyd's citizens to decide where it is that we want to go from here.

Click here for a small page of clickable thumbnails from yesterday's "field trip" through space and time in Floyd County.

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Friday is catch-up day in my blog-life. During the week, I keep a list of things to come back to that I didn't have a chance to delve into during the academic week that ends for me on Thursdays. But by Fridays, I'm too overwhelmed to do much more than these bulleted jots and a picture or two. Let's see:

* Re the laptop: Of course I didn't do anything but angst over the prospect. And in the end, I'll probably go to Dell. Sounds like more good than bad experiences there lately from what you tell me. And I'll get the components some of you have implored me to afford, lest I be disappointed with performance. Advice well taken. I'll be watching the sales at Dell and may still be able to come up with something by our May 18 trip to Vancouver.

* We have new neighbors (or will in June) and one more joins the ranks of the small cadre of Floyd County bloggers. I'll let the story come from the source, should its inky hostess decide to tell it on her blog. Finding the right place is a long and often discouraging trudge, so we're happy to have been helpful in making this happen and looking forward to the new friends and neighbors on Goose Creek.

* While it's unlikely, there may be a possibility there are Roanoke Times readers among you. Before you line the parakeet cage with the April 6 issue, search out the insert for Roanoke Natural Foods. If you find it, could you mail it to me? They used one of my Fragments posts that became a radio essay that the RNF newsletter editor heard two years ago. I'd like a copy for my scrapbook. Email me for snail mail addy.

* I've booked an hour of access to a good microphone at the New Media Center at Virginia Tech on Monday. I'll record the "Photo Memoir" narration so that the voice pitch and volume are consistent across the whole 25 minutes. Having that file in hand, I may come back and struggle up the learning curve of Adobe Premiere ElLements. It's timeline sure is nice for making text fit images in a carefully choreographed way. And I will also follow the path of least resistance and add the sound file to the ImageMatics version of same.

* Outside our little valley: Recommend reading Ronni Bennett's thoughtful understanding of what gives a weblog value. It is not about numbers. It's the voices that come to us. And this has its pragmatic side as well. Read How You Will Hire and Get Hired (excerpted on Rob Patterson's business page) how blogs have become useful as resumes for prospective employees. You'll have to agree: the me you know from Fragments would vastly exceed the me you'd know from a two page CV or a one hour interview. That could be good. Or bad. Hmmmm.

* Suggested reading for y'all: what are southern manners and why do they matter? Sue Nees, local artist and Jacksonville Center incubator resident recently joined the discussion about keeping Floyd's identity intact. Our future will be changed on many fronts. One change I'd be sorry to lose would be the 'southern-ness' in our local culture that makes southwest Virginia so different from Northern Virginia (if you'll allow me to paint with a roller here.) Sue's piece is called Yankee Manners. From either side of the Mason-Dixon, there are good people. We often don't see the world through each other's eyes. But we could. Go. Read.

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Tim--a helpful Fragments visitor--offered a possible identification of the fungus I featured the other day, to which I gave credit for weakening the fallen hemlock.

Not a mycologist but accomplished artist, Tim says he thinks it is Fomes (pronounce Foam-eeze) fomentarius--the "tender polypore." I am not sure about this, as this fungus usually grows on birch trees and most often takes the form of a "hoof". But then again, fungus ID is notoriously difficult due to the variability of their form and habit.

Regardless of Fomes' role in our hemlock's catastrophic demise, it is a very interesting critter, as I learned from one of the "fungus of the month" pages. Here's a list of some of its properties and uses:

• Cauterization substance for wounds (described by Hippocrates in the fifth century BC)
• A styptic to stop bleeding-- used by surgeons barbers and dentists (sometimes called the "agaric of the chirurges" or "surgeon's agaric"
• Remedy against dysmenorrhea, hemorrhoids, and bladder disorders in Europe
• Diuretic, laxatives and nerve tonic in Indic folk medicine
• Treating cancers of the esophagus, stomach and uterus in China
• Used in smoking rituals in western Sibera and Hokkaido, burning the fruiting bodies overnight to banish evil spirits.
• Making clothing such as caps and chest protectors (after pounding)
• As pincushions to prevent pins and needles from rusting
• Used by entomologists to mount their delicate insects
• Used in Siberia as snuff or mixed with tobacco

And the author goes on to speculate that this Fomes fungus may have close taxonomic affinity to the widely known and broadly distributed roadside ditch species, Styrofomes (almost always white) which, of course, is one of the 'cup fungi.' (A little mycological humor. Ha ha?)

Interested in mushroom identification? Here's a huge page of a hundred mushroom images. I've bookmarked it for future reference. (Anybody got a hot tip on the BEST mushroom ID book?)

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Stock photos: something I haven't taken a lot of--images, not particularly remarkable in their aesthetic or subject, but just to have in case the need arises. And it has. Turns out a couple of grab shots of a musician friend of ours, along with three or four other of my local scenics have been used on the Floyd County Chamber of Commerce brochure. So, I'll keep in mind that my ordinary may be somebody else's special and necessary. There are likely to be more people pictures ahead, and rural touches from outside of Goose Creek's little valley. Above is one I took looking down off the Parkway last week--nothing special. Just a little cloistered opening where a few homes and fields are nestled in rolling forest. Fifty feet behind the spot from which I snapped this image, the Blue Ridge escarpment plunges steeply--over a thousand feet--down to the piedmont.

But how will I keep up with all these images so I can find this particular one when somebody in a few years wants a picture of a little mountain settlement in the winter?

My friend Jonathan (who knows his business) recommended iViewMedia products (available for download and a free 21 day trial). Long story short: I couldn't use the $50 program because it can't view RAW files. But the Pro version was $200 from the software vendor. Too rich for my blood. But hey! Amazon has version 2.5 for $150. Upgrades thru version 2 are free (to the current 2.6). And BONUS: I'd been planning to get my own VISA just for the 'business' (read: hobby) and Amazon offered $30 off if you got their card. I did. And my software: for $120 delivered. With almost 10,000 images to sort, this software is SWEET! Happy birthday to me!

Even though what I really wanted was this. You want joke? Look in mirror, you ugly person! This site real. You order wadded paper origami boulder and see for yourself.

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Well by now, my technical advisors are all gone to lunch. If you just happen to wander by during the usually-visitor-lean mid-day hours, take a look at the deal on this Dell Inspiron 6000 that is (ENDING TODAY) discounted 30% as are all system upgrades. The $2000 system would ship next week for $1400. (Gig of RAM, 60Gb HD, monitor upgrade, 2 yrs warranty and accident.)

Anybody out there have this machine? Should I jump? or keep looking?

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Oh dread. I hate being either tempted by or convinced of the need to acquire more things. It wears me out. The good cop-bad cop dialogue says "you just gotta have this!" from one shoulder and from the other, a voice tells me my need is nothing more than a gilded want. This is the same very rational bubble-popping goodcop who tells me of a dozen better ways to spend the time I would devote to using/fixing/understanding this new THING.

And yet, I (at least at this moment of waffling weakness) have decided to purchase my very first laptop.

Help. I don't know where to start--only that I think I'll avoid being the poor dude that's going straight to Dell. The last half-dozen run-ins with unreachable and unresponsive and unintelligible tech support there has sent me looking somewhere else. But where? HP? Given your horror stories (and maybe some happy endings?), where should I fear to tread? Maybe you've even had--can it be possible?--some good experiences with vendors and their products.

I don't need much HD storage or speed. I guess I'd want at least 512MB of RAM. I'll be doing word processing, but also image viewing (but probaby not a lot of image manipulation) and will want to connect it to a digital projector. Wireless is a logical choice, though I've no experience with that. Is there something I should know here?

So this is the way the conversation is going from the shoulder-demons this week. I'd like to make an order very soon so I'll have the laptop by mid-May. I am very open to and needy of advice or suggestions. This is a big decision, given the harsh critics that sit on either side of my befuddled brain. We want at least ONE of them to be happy, after the fact.

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05 April 2005

First time to turn on the truck's air conditioner this year. First memory that, at the end of the last hot weather in the fall, the AC had stopped working.

First time to drive home from Radford with the windows down, then remembering what a waste of time it is to try to listen to the radio with the wind whistling through the open windows.

First time to come inside the house in the afternoon, find it cool, and think "THIS FEELS GOOD!"

First day of being HAPPY I didn't have to put on two layers of clothes (or more), get wood, split kindling, and start a fire in the woodstove quick before the cold-natured one got home.

First day of warm weather on campus, with anticipated blooming of halter tops, shorts, and very white legs.

First day of butterflies.

First day of obsessive dog chasing butterfly shadows. Same dog who thinks when he loses their shadow-tracks, this means DIG DIG DIG! HERE HERE HERE! They must have gone underground.

First time to see the dog notice the very large shadow of a passing hawk. He clearly was uncertain whether to dig or hide!

First Bloodroot blooming on the gravel road down into Goose Creek valley. And spicebushe's tiny golden dots now glow against the dark forest.

First day to get in my truck and wish I'd put up the windshield visor this morning when it was still too chilly to image being too hot.

First day to wear my jacket to work, and carry it from.

First day to smell the sweetness of the air. The aromasphere is reborn!

Midges rise in tiny thermals for the first time, spiraling up into shafts of sun through pines.

Today, for the first time, I remembered Tevas and bare toes--while walking in heavy boots and wool socks, and carrying my jacket.

Spring is all about new beginnings. My birthday was set for April so that I could understand this newness all over again every year. April is a season when Firsts are born!

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For the few of you who've downloaded first the INTRODUCTION two weeks ago, then the first part (LEAVES), last week, here is the third part-- (SPIDER WEBS)-- in its rough form. The sound is uneven. I think I bumped the microphone in one spot. The narration will have to be better than this. But it's a start on another 3 MB exe file that I'll cobble into the mix, and be ready to stitch them all together by this weekend. And then...well, I'm not sure what comes after that.

I know I will send a copy to Dr. Grace Edwards, head of the App Studies program at Radford who couldn't come to my presentation, and to Dr. Anita Puckett, head of the App Studies program at Va Tech--just because it was her Appalachian Identities course that was my first immersion into the general subject and we've kept in touch. Maybe they'll have some ideas of how it might find other uses and audiences.

And I'll have it ready to present locally. With the narration built into the program, I'll be free to limit my actual chatter to before and after the 25 minute photomemoir.

Will it be a marketable piece? I'm not sure. Maybe a few local folk or blog readers would want a copy for a few bucks. It will contain 80 someodd photos. It tells a story, and would make a nice accessory to the (?) future book. I'm just determined to get it together, then worry about why I did it when it's done.

Again, let me know your thoughts of how to improve it (other than use a good microphone.)

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Well, we didn't have many guesses at yesterday's photo quiz. A couple guessed ants or termites--not totally out in left field. But what you really need to make the positive ID is the two CD set of Bark Beetles of North America! Hurry! While supplies last.

There, you would discover the odd etchings in yesterday's image were found under elm bark and were made by tiny beetle larvae. Unfortunately, they kill the tree in the process of living there between the bark and the sapwood--an expensive pallete for their art. We lost five large ash trees along the margin of the pasture to their tunneling last spring alone. This was great for firewood and making hiking sticks but not so good for our beleaguered forest.

Here's another mystery: what caused this two-foot-thick hemlock to split off at the base? It looked healthy (by recent wooly adelgid-infested standards) and was the largest hemlock along our regular walk around our place. We'd not had wind or lightning. Why out of the blue did this one topple suddenly last week? It lodged in the crotch of another tree so its bare bones will be hanging there for a decade or more.

See the insert. There's your culprit, best I can figure. I can't identify it. Anybody know this polypore of eastern Hemlock? Anyone?

If the fungus hadn't nipped it, the adelgids would have. Like most, it had already lost many of its needles. We'll be seeing all sorts of opportunistic pathogens attacking the weakened trees, then living off the organic matter of the dead ones--an unfitting demise for one of the forest's finest and my (past) favorite among eastern conifers.

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If you're a friend of Floyd, or a potential visitor, retiree or merchant, join the conversation. We have the opportunity to be proactive as change comes to the county. What do we want to happen and how do we exert our wishes and our voices to guide--if not fully control--what comes next?

Read the comments to yesterday's Fragments entry, "Blogging the Gold Rush" and follow up with Doug Thompson's "What Road for Floyd?" from today.

I understand what many have said: that there is no turning back the tide of change. But I also agree with David St. Lawrence that blogging brings a new element into the process.

How have bloggers impacted their communities facing similar threats to over-development? Do you have any models we might look at as we grow in numbers and voice?

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Yes, it concerns me that while this page once had something almost every day about the real world of ridge and meadow, it now contains something almost every day about my doings, my complaints, my things or potential things. Baggage.

It bothers me too how much of my day is spent sitting watching letters appear as my fingers lift and fall; I read the words--my words like chewed cud--to myself silently while the world turns colors and blooms the other side of window panes that might as well be the bars of a cage.

I am trapped in an ergonomic chair. Self-condemned to a sedentary day of pointing, clicking, cutting and pasting. I've been banished from the island, and I was the only one who voted.

What ever happened to the balanced life? Where will I find the path that carries me back? And he answered:

For every hour typing, walk an hour.

For every page written, read one in a book.

For every hour inside, spend one under the sun.

For every minute indugled in self, help someone else.

For every dollar spent on (un)necessary toys, give one away.

For every minute blogging, read a blog.

Past your prime? You can't know that. Bloom late.

For every hour of sitting, stand-walk-run-climb-lift-push-pull an hour.

For every whining want, give thanks for blessings owned.

For every pain, find something that doesn't hurt. Surely there's something.

For each day that dawns, be awake. And caffeine can't help here. Awake. Now.

In all the parts, see the whole.

And don't stop having these conversations with yourself. You are your best audience. Listen. Do what's needed. Do what's right.

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I am happy to say I now have a piece of the Goose Creek Slide Show CD music in sight, thanks to Fragments reader and friend, Bud Bennett. Bud plays the banjo, whose roots are quintessentially Appalachian.

It was first played in these hollows by African slaves who brought the memory of their homeland 'banjer' with them and used groundhog hide for the round soundboard. (The first-ever four-day "Black Banjo Then and Now Gathering" will be held in Boone this very weekend.)

Bud writes his pieces and plays his instrument in a somewhat BelaFleckian style. His tunes cover a wide area of tone and tempo. I particular like "Touch the Water" (you can listen to it by clicking the link on Bud's music page.) This melody has qualities that make it both bright and melancholy, and fitting, I think, for the images that come and go.

I'll hope to have at least three tunes from local artists and will weave pieces of their music in and out through the 30 or 40 images.

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What do these cryptic runes mean? What have I discovered here?

Are they the faint fossils of Precambrian invertebrates? Can it be some ancient cave art or runic language that tells of the Pleistocene invasion of hideous land-lumbering jellyfish? Has our little pasture been visited by aliens who have left words in a language of the stars?

Can you interpret these signs?

(I'm curious to see how many people know where I discovered this odd glyph. Who'll be first to solve this mystery?)

Posted by fred1st at 5:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Floyd County is not (yet) bursting at the seams with people. In a county of 380-something square miles, the population of 14 thousand is not sitting house upon house. People are already looking at Floyd, as well as at other smaller, unspoiled, less busy places in the rural south to retire, or to raise their families. Potential residents or visitors search for information about our area, and come across the blogs of those of us who live here. They read generally good things about Floyd because we are generally positive in our writing. Floyd County bloggers--myself, Doug Thompson and Colleen Redman--are mostly pleased with our lives here, and say so in our blogs. Doug and I grab snatches of bucolic landscape with our cameras on our walks and drives around southwest Virginia, and are happy when readers are moved by what they see. But are we unintentionally advertizing a gold rush?

The topic of population density--related to the tourism visits promoted for the county's future, and to relocation--is starting to get more attention as Virginia's secret becomes better known. How is the county to respond to those who come here for an evening of music or with plans to spend their golden years in Floyd insisting that the county change to suit their expecations? Will they expect fast food, entertainment of more urban flavors and things for the kids to do besides play computer games in the back seat of the SUV? The new residents may demand easier access to theatres, shopping malls and restaurants than Floyd has or collectively wants at present. Whose voices are county planners to hear?

Our county is not without its warts and defects. And living the country life is not for all those who long for solutions to the stresses of city life. There are indeed more than a few things a Floyd Countian has to learn to live without. We welcome visitors and new residents. Tourism can have a major impact on our economy, and the influx of new energy and ideas has been largely beneficial. If managed correctly, these changes need not alter the things about Floyd that have made it desirable as a place to either visit or live.

But it is possible to love a place to death. And other small communities have sold out to the promise of jobs and tax dollars, and the golden goose has died an ignoble death at the hands of her hopeful caretakers. And there is no bringing her back.

Floyd County blogs will laud its beauty, its uniqueness and its lifestyle as we describe our daily comings and goings. We'll be happy to meet newcomers and visitors who read our websites looking for slices of life from the town and county. But be aware of the responsibility that falls on visitors and new residents to understand what it is that makes Floyd worth visiting. It is a charm easily lost if those who come cannot accept it, warts and all, and be patient as things change at a pace and in a way that preserves what is best about living here.

Posted by fred1st at 6:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBacks (0)

Meanwhile: The house up the road is still on the market--this, a small miracle--and a Fragments reader, blogger and artistic type (and her family) are headed down from MD to see it. Already looking in the area for some time, it would still be an interesting turn of events if another blogger ended up close by, nudged in this direction by an alert from the Goose Creek Culture and Real Estate Blog here. More to say soon about bloggers in the area and their role in creating interest and demand in the county vs merely writing about where they live (place blogging).

Uh-oh. That flash was too close for comfort. Shutting down here, back later.

Posted by fred1st at 5:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Oh the joy of an expanse of unspoken-for time. Well, at least not spoken-for by the demand to do nothing but create lecture notes and the questions for next Thursday's test. Where will I begin to eat the elephant on my plate?

Of course, the answer is: do something completely unproductive but fun! Eat dessert first!

And so I spent some time futzing around with a leftover image from the past snowstorm. It was a RAW image, which for the non-photogs, is the uncompressed and relatively HUGE files a digital camera takes to provide the best possible resolution. Image quality takes a bit hit in JPEG, which is a compressed and "lossy" way to take digital images, but it is cheap in the sense you can cram lots of images on a memory card. If I'm going to move beyond images for the web or monitor, I need to learn to process RAW images; and I'll need to invest in a bigger memory card, as well. Anyhow, here's the image, just posted at the gallery--a larger shot of the image above. I may print it later today.

And, also peripheral to what I ought to do but central to what I WANNA do, I've uploaded the second part of the "Glimpses" presentation. Some of you downloaded the first part--the introduction--to the March 19 presentation. After the intro, I move into a sequence of images (first of leaves, then webs, then winter...) that depict scenes from those months when I learned where I belonged by intentional being and seeing close to home. I'll probably be re-recording all the uneven cheap-microphone narration (maybe at the Media Center at Va Tech where I could use a good mic) and splicing all the smaller files together to go on CD or DVD. Meanwhile, here's part two: Leaves. Do let me know of any problems with sound, video or content. The exe format is just for testing purposes. I can also convert to Flash using the same software.

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We had a marital difference of opinion. But no, it was more than that. It was one of those domestic dichotomies that makes one wonder if he and she belong to the same species--Mars and Venus at their apogee. We couldn't be discussing the same trivial incident which to me shouldn't have merited more than a dozen words. And yet a hour after the fact, she was obviously not going to let the matter die a natural death. What was this all about? It was a pattern not unfamiliar after almost 35 years of marital, er, interaction.

The next day, as I lectured to my students about the endocrine system, I had an AHA! moment at about the point where I told them:

"The nervous system is high speed, immediate, responding to what the brain sees, hears and feels. It's input is processed, stored if necessary in memory, or dismissed and made ready for new data.

The endocrine system on the other hand (including the adrenal medulla which releases adrenalin) is slower to bring about its changes; but once the hormone cascade is triggered by a stressor, it's effects can be strong and sustained over a period of many hours and even days."

Bingo. The lights came on, shining back on the conflict of the day before:

To me, it was merely the image of a coffee spoon left on the kitchen counter. My senses recorded it, and promptly let it go.

For her, the spoon (for reasons that are still under investigation by the Goose Creek Department of Marital Research and Inexplicable Behavior) was a powerful endocrine alarm, signifying things invisible to my perception. From the image of that spoon surged a flood of cortisol, adrenalin, and all the other ingredients that go into the boiling soup of the stress response. And an hour, and two hours later, I recalled the scene faintly through the nervous system, she felt it powerfully through the endocrine.

Of course, I'm being a little sarcastic in my usual way. But there was a lesson in this connection between how differently two people's physiology can react to the same stimulus. It helps me better understand what the world looks like in a disagreement when threat is perceived, either by me or by the other guy (or gal). We are often victims of the hardwired physiology of protecting ourselves in the face of perceived threat. Even if the threat is a silly spoon that left a coffee spot on the formica.

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