Fragments From Floyd

In the way of a dry run before the semester begins, if you need or want to email me, please use my Yahoo account. That would be fred1st plus the yahoo.com domain. You'll figure it out. I need to accumulate some email addresses there to be able to tinker with the Address Book features toward the end of use with students.

The Radford University email system is painfully slow at times, and not wonderfully reliable. My usual ISP email account is also quirky when accessed via the web. Gmail won't let me set up email lists. So, yahoo, for now.

Posted by fred1st at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

There is an ember of hope that avian flu might be stopped soon, while it remains only a spark and not a raging conflagration.

Will the nations with the most to lose economically gamble on the altruistic (read: economic self-preservation) move to put out the small fires in Indonesia, Viet Nam and Thailand by sending their supplies of antivirals and vaccines there to possibly contain the spread? A recent Washington Post article points out that...

"... unless antiviral drugs squelch a pandemic at the outset, their ultimate usefulness will be small. ... In theory, even a modest amount of vaccine might be useful. Fighting disease outbreaks is like fighting fires. You do not have to hose down the whole world to put the fire out, but you do have to hose down the perimeter to keep it from spreading. It might be possible to contain an H5N1 outbreak at its source if the surrounding population were immediately vaccinated.

Would the United States, Europe and Japan be willing to donate their precious vaccine supply to mount this long-shot defense? This is perhaps the biggest unanswered question in pandemic flu planning -- and one likely to be answered only at the moment of truth.

Officially, it is a possibility.

If it was done in consultation with the World Health Organization -- and with other governments that would make contributions, as well -- we would be more likely to consider it," said Gellin at HHS. But observers both in and out of the government said, not for quotation, that they doubt the U.S. government would ever send a significant amount of its vaccine stockpile overseas.

Even if this scenario played out and we gave up our stockpiles to put out small fires overseas, there remains the wildcard of spread over vast distance by bird migration (or infected airline passengers) starting too many small fires to handle; and the barrier of secrecy and disinformation across the vast Chinese borders where a significant brush fire may already be spreading.

We (global mankind, science and public health) have not adequately anticipated and prepared for such a scenario, even though we could have seen it coming for a decade or more. If we could turn back time 15 years and know with certainty the pathogens we would face in the future, would there have been any better cooperation between continents? Would we have wasted so much talent, wealth and technology (ostensibly) to protect our people and way of life from acts of terrorism if we'd accepted that it was emerging infectious disease that posed by far the greater threat to our economy and to our very survival?

It seems we may be very near the moment of truth. Is it too late to turn our swords into vaccines?

Posted by fred1st at 7:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

This life I'm living wasn't in my five-year plan. Certainly it wasn't in the overall life-goals mission statement I might have naively projected for myself in my twenties or thirties. I left teaching for many reasons, now whaddayaknow: I'm back in the classroom again. I stumbled on writing quite by accident, leading to the blog, the radio bits, the little newspaper column. I never set out to be a writer. At Hindman, I'll be among writers who ended up in that discipline and medium by design.

Or did they? Do any of us aim and hit the targets we think we're aiming for or are we all ad libbing our way from one happenstance to another with as much grace and seeming intention as possible? I think this parable (thanks, Melinama) pretty well describes it:

Once, a man dreamed of being the greatest archer who ever lived. He studied at the military academy in Moscow, learning to plant his feet and square his shoulders, to address the string with three fingers, to suspend his breath at the moment of release.

He became one with the target. Eventually he shot perfect bull's-eyes almost every time. He was traveling home from Moscow when he came upon a riveting sight: an enormous barn and on that barn a hundred targets. Some small, some big, some in the middle of the wall, some low, but in the center of every single target, an archer had shot a perfect bull's-eye.

Our archer marvelled: "I couldn't do that!" He asked a passing village to find the archer who had done it.

The villager came back shortly with a kid. "You did this?" the archer asked. "Uh-huh," replied the girl. "Can you teach me how?" "Uh-huh." And she showed him just how she liked to stand and hold the bow, and just how she pulled the string, and just how she held her breath at the moment of release.

And then she explained... "Just after your arrow hits the barn, take a bucket of paint, and paint a target all around it."

We'll see where this workshop lands on the barn. And afterwards, I'll have some more painting to do.

Posted by fred1st at 5:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

I have been flying over the Planet Earth lately, using my mouse to zoom down into steppes of Siberia; to traverse the highest mountain peaks of the Appalachians; to follow the great rivers to their sources, noting major cities and nameless villages built along them--the Nile, the Amazon, the Ganges. I cannot see the people there. I can know something of who they must be by seeing the topography of the land that shapes them. But I could know their heart if I could hear their music, and feel their dance. There is not a civilization yet that has not been moved by music--to sing, to cry, to dance. It is truly mankind's common language.

And so, being a spectator at the Friday Night Jamboree is more than a simple diversion or a voyeuristic peek at the peculiarities of a mountain community. It is more like communion--a sharing of a much larger celebration of life that, even in this sad and distressed world, is happening across the planet under thatched roofs and on sandy riverbanks; in opulent ballrooms and on livingroom rugs. The world sings, the world dances.

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music. ~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Fragments Web Galleries of music and dance: Jamboree; Winefest 1; Winefest 2

Posted by fred1st at 8:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

It's true: they showed up a little early. And it's true the St. Lawrences are not fully enculturated to the Floyd County way of doing things. But when your hostess in rubber boots greets you carrying a gun, well, it can be a bit unsettling, don't you know.

Yes, it is only a .22, but it is the psychological equalizer. Don't leave home without it, is Ann's latest motto. She's hoping the bear sees it and thinks it's a 30 ought six. She's also got this George W swagger thing going. She looks very manacing.

Bad. She's very bad. You see it in her walk. She's out for regime change.

Posted by fred1st at 7:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The title has no connection with my attire when I first spotted the bear recently. So lay off the 'bear in my boxers' jokes, 'kay?

Last night, Jungle Jim (a.k.a. Doug Thompson) brought Tsuga the dog a framed print: "The One That Got Away" to commemorate the pup's close encounter with a bear.

Only difference is, Doug shot his. With his famous 'long glass.' In fact, if you scroll down Doug's archive for the past few weeks, it's rather like a visit to the Wild Kingdom. You got yer deer, yer snakes, yer bobcat, yer coyote. Stay tuned. You just can't tell what you'll see next.

"Alligators photographed breeding in local stream on Sandy Flats. News at 10."

Posted by fred1st at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

BLOG IN SPACE ** I've decided what my next step as a writer will be. Earth is too small an audience for my erudite eruptions and mystical meanderings. I will send Fragments into space. Think of it: Tsuga, Space Ambassador to the Stars.

WATER, WATER ** This is surprising and encouraging: an environmental consciousness in China--and a willingness of the government to admit there are any flaws at all in the national fabric. Chief on the list of concerns of Chinese citizens is the availability of clean drinking water. Look for more and more conflict in the future of this crucial limiting factor, especially in the world's growing urban populations (including the US where 85% of people still get their water from public utilities.) Water utilities are increasingly under pressure to resort to privitized management under the ownership of foreign conglomerates. Not good.

SPEAKING OF CHINA ** Maybe you've heard of the 'mysterious illness' now in China. "A pig bacterium" is the official word from the government. "Under control" they reassure. If this is a bacterial disease, it is very odd indeed. Sounds more like a virus. Maybe two viruses that have joined forces.

SEASONAL SEASONINGS ** This piece from Books and Culture discusses the role of the seasons in art and in our psychology of nature and our relationship to it. The author quotes Diane Ackerman:"we’ve worked hard to exile ourselves from nature, yet we end up longing for what we’ve lost: a sense of connectedness."

BOYS TOYS ** Via CoolTools: 1) BugZooka. How could anyone not like a bug-and-spider sucker! 2) SketchUP (rhymes with Ketchup) is beyond most needs for a new toy (at $500) but it sounds really useful for the right needs. And wait! You can download a trial version for free and waste countless hours! and lastly, 3) A fully-functional (backpacking?) origama plate. No, it's a dish. No, it's a bowl. And it's just $6.

MEATING THE NEED ** What to do when chickens, pigs, and cows are no longer safe food sources for a burgeoning world population's protein needs? Prime without the rib. Laboratory-grown tissue-cultured meat! "With a single cell, you could theoretically produce the world's annual meat supply. And you could do it in a way that's better for the environment and human health. In the long term, this is a very feasible idea." I dunno. Vitro-Meat is starting to make tofu sound better.

WHISTLED LANGUAGE ** I'm a whistler. I also play the accordion. So shoot me. Turns out, whistling can be more than a way of making mouth music. It has a wide usage as a language as well, as you can read here, and listen to, here.

Posted by fred1st at 7:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Ani Difranco and others share full sample songs (maybe 45 minutes for the whole free taste) on the FloydFest site (doesn't work in Firefox.) Pretty cool.

Go, enjoy. What? No hurricanes this year. But expect the traditional mud after yesterday's rains, and then tonight's. They'll have to get along without us this time 'round. We enjoyed music from the main stage on that same beautiful knob overlooking Rock Castle Gorge just a few weeks ago at the first WineFest there.

Playing now: Asylum Street Spankers. Start at the beginning and pretend you're at FloydFest Number 4!

Posted by fred1st at 10:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

DNA testing of suspect fur may tell once and for all if Sasquatch lives among us.

Leeches are back in business. Pointer to this topic from the July 25 edition of NewYorker (long) article, Bloodsuckers, by John Colapinto.

Why "No Sweat" is not a comforting reassurance. (I'm a non-sweater, so I don't do heat. Not without whining, that is.) We're not home free on the heat and humidity yet. This article has some pointers for staying cool, plus the physiology behind your heat-regulating biology--or lack thereof.

And lastly, a video link I strongly suggest you watch--if for no other reason than the wonderful way complex and inaccessible material can be made entertaining and comprehensible to the lay public. If you watch this little video, you'll likely look back in five years and say "That weblink on Fragments was the first time I heard about RNI-i. Now, it's a household word." PBS Link, thanks to Fragments reader Eric, this fifteen-minute video narrated by Robert Krolwitch, describes what promises to be one of the most important discoveries of our times: the key to locking down undesirable genes associated with major diseases. And as you learn at the end of the film, RNA-i will also allow us to selectively suppress one gene at a time, possibly ultimately in every organism on the planet, to inventory gene function of life on earth. And all this from some very basic science problems related to petunia breeding. This will be a great investment of our time and attention in class next month.

Homework: give the scientific equivalent for 1) the scribes; 2) the castle; 3) the chefs; and 4) the policeman. You will receive a grade on this assignment. And don't tell me the dog ate it.

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

Passing through SWVa? There are other small towns farther west you might want to see. Damascus, written up in WaPo this week, was one of the places we considered when looking for a compatible spot to settle in our return to Virginia in the mid-nineties. It is situated IN the mountains, while Floyd is on a plateau with the view of mountains in the distance. Both the Appalachian Trail and the Virginia Creeper Trails pass right through town (as well as other trails described in the article.)

Damascus is about the same distance from I-81 as Floyd is, and it benefits from a similar can't-get-there-from-hereness as Floyd. If anything, from our visits there, it has stronger back-to-earth qualities than Floyd, with more of an emphasis on outdoor activities and nature, less on farming, crafts and music.

The Virginia Creeper rails-to-trails path from Whitetop to Abingdon is a real gem, and a suitable grade for bikers of all ages. There's still plenty of time to plan an outting in (or passing through) Damascus. And there's the Appalachian Trail Days every May--a grand event for through-hikers and passers-by alike.

Damascus is yet another example of the adage that sometime less can mean more.

Posted by fred1st at 7:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

This three-word bumper sticker is something that Lorianne and I concocted in our collective lament over the end of summer. While it's not as dismal and defeatist as it sounds, the phrase reflects the overwhelming pull of a teacher's attention, time and energy away from whatever or whoever they were during the freedom of summer. A return to the classroom--long before the actual first day of class--begins to hijack all that, channels all currents between narrow canyon walls and the flow of life moves relentlessly toward the next lecture, the next lab, the first test, and the long list of names and numbers that will be your responsibility soon for three months or more. And here on Goose Creek, this current away from blogging, photography and daydreaming started several weeks ago. Now we enter the rapids. Class starts in three weeks. I already hear the foaming cataract that is the rapidly approaching end of summer.

Between now and then, the fall garden needs planting and what harvest we have will come in. I'll spend a week at Hindman and come home overwhelmed with seeds of inspiration that are likely to fall on rocky ground during this hectic time. I have a presentation to give at the Floyd Library on the 18th. Our daughter and granddaughter will be with us for a week, and there's not room in a house for a blog if there is also a four year old and a dog. Know what I mean? So, I guess we've entered a new chapter in the lurching tale of this weblog.

Fragments will go on, in fits and starts. But you're likely to see a change in focus from personal perambulations to more biology-relevant and less general-blog-audience-relevant topics. And I have to admit, it has been exciting these past two weeks to re-enter the current events of biology in my daily browse, thinking how I might reach those latent riches of curiosity, excitement and passion that lie dormant in a typically inert and passive eighteen-year-old freshman non-major. It is quite a challenge, even though it seems it would be an easy task:

We live in such wonderful times when our tools can carry us to levels of knowledge we only dreamed about when I was eighteen. We live in such terrible times when our technology and its residual ills can alter entire systems--the weather, the oceans and bacterial resistance. How can a young person not be engaged in a living world where their knowledge or their ignorance of basic biology may tip the balance in the planet's future? Oops. Stepped up onto my soapbox there.

Anyway, teaching will end not everything, but it will alter many. I'll dance to a different drummer for a while. But then, after three and a half years of blogging, I've changed partners often enough to know, the dance will go on. In time, (I don't know if I'll be teaching one semester this year or two) I'll cycle back and find that when the rapids give way to wider, slower currents again, things here will not have changed all that much. And when some things end, that gives other exciting and challenging things an opportunity to begin. And here we go!

Posted by fred1st at 6:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

There is a sense of feeling violated when you walk up a steep trail on your own land, only to find you are not the first to go up there after the blackberries. Several days ago, we discovered that many of the canes had been pushed down and almost every little nook where there would have been berries had been explored. There was no doubt about it: we were not the first to the wild fruit. We were outraged, and Ann, a little unsettled by the fact we had a trespasser so close to the house.

I joked with Ann that I would put a posted sign up near the top of the trail--so that the next time our intruder came, it would only be after he made the hot, sweaty climb to the very top. Then he would see we were on to his trespass. The sign would read:

THIS LAND IS MY LAND, THIS LAND IS MY LAND. GO AWAY.-- Woody Guthrie

And yet, the way the vines were beat back made no sense. Also, many of the higher berries--taller than my head, but certainly within reach of the average berry picker--were fat and juicy, unpicked. I wondered aloud if it could have been a bear, this being a small comfort to wifey, who just this week received her order for Counter Assault Bear Spray. This is a mace-like spray, only it is the proportions of a small fire extinguisher; she'll need a backpack to carry it, I told her, dismissing her concerns but yielding to her enhanced feeling of security with it on hand while I'm away. Silly woman, I thought. Now, I think not.

I could see Tsuga rise on alert from his torpor in the hot shade outside the window yesterday. Something had captured his attention, but then, it was probably just a groundhog; maybe a deer; maybe only his over-active canine imagination. He lay back down briefly, but was up again, his nose sniffing in the air, back and forth, picking up traces of something only dog noses can smell. And then suddenly, he barked his alarm bark and disappeared toward the road. I got up from my chair just in time to see him disappear from the side of the house, headed for the pasture.

I ran to the front porch, remembering at that moment that I was clad only in Joe Boxers, as Tsuga reached the road. From the foot bridge I had a clear view of the pasture just as Tsuga dipped into the notch of the creek and rose up the opposite bank, with his aim set far down the valley. He stood hesitantly on the far bank as I scanned the valley for deer. And as I saw what Tsuga had seen, he broke into a full run to intercept a massive, full grown jet-black bear that by then was lumbering in characteristic inchworm fashion, across the pasture, left to right. In the next instant, the dog was in full pursuit as I screamed his name, to absolutely no avail--helpless, shoeless, and in my underwear.

The bear in full sideview made for the shade of the west side of the valley where we take our daily walks, while I watched the dog's south end grow smaller and smaller into the distance, as I hollered another time or two before giving up. I ran inside thinking Oh Crap Oh Crap, jumped into my rubber boots, grabbed the .22 where it sat by the front door (in case of crows or rabbits in the garden). When I reached the road, I was relieved to see that the dog had stopped two thirds of the way down the field, about where I'd last seen the bear disappearing into the shadows.

But Tsuga was still agitated and I didn't know whether my presence would deter him from going after the bear or encourage him. He looked at the woods, he looked at me, back and forth several times, as excited as he was indecisive. What else could I do?--I fired a shot into the creek bank.

Miraculously, this was all it took to make the dog trust his instincts that told him THREAT! GO HOME NOW! The unfamiliar gunshot tipped the scale away from fight and toward flight. And he ran the length of the field, down into the creek, tongue hanging, and up to the back porch, almost as happy to be home as I was to have him here, with no sign he'd tangled with a bear three times his size at least.

We've dismissed Tsuga's sudden spells of spookiness on the trail over the past month, mostly, although that is one reason for Ann's mounting uneasiness that lead to the purchase of the jumbo cannister of bear spray. Turns out, his nose knows. Turns out, I might as well save my witty Woody Guthrie tribute. It may be that black bears will do what black bears most certainly do in the woods. They may leave signs. But they aren't likely to read one.

Posted by fred1st at 5:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (19) | TrackBacks (0)

No, I take that back. Very, very few roads lead to Floyd. But that's another story. Where was I?

I guess we always wonder: do others see us, see our lives, our worlds, as we see them? And as bloggers, do others who visit our worlds and meet us for the first time in those spheres, urban or rural, find from our writing in our blogs that they've been given the rose-colored version of a monochrome person, personality or place?

Peter and family only saw the heart of town, and only for a short while. But then, that's the neat thing about downtown Floyd: a hundred yard walk in two directions from THE traffic light shows you 75% of everything there is to see in the center of town. But even in this bucollic village on a drowsy Saturday afternoon, Peter and crew saw enough to want someday to come back. There is a certain conviviality of scale in a place so small. And as Peter and I discussed, there is, in all of us, a desire for such (perceived) 'unspoiled places' to exist--for their own sakes, like wilderness areas or tropical islands we will never visit. It's just good to know, somewhere, they exist.

There isn't much here. But then these days, too little is a welcome relief from too much; too slow a balm against frenzy and rush. And I'm glad that Peter got to see that, and even find something in it all to write about. And next time, Peter, try the Ginger Beer.

I have one concern of late, however, what with Lorianne's picture, and Doug's, now Peter's in the past month. I swear, the older I get, the worse grows the fidelity of cameras--strangely enough, only when pointed my direction. And those same lenses used to be so accurate in capturing the youth and vitality in my features that now are somehow lost. What's with the desaturated hair color, the noise in the facial qualities especially around the eyes, and less sharpness overall? Funny how that this delusional (self)imagery works, isn't it?

Posted by fred1st at 8:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

It is before 5 o'clock on a late July morning. All the windows were open overnight but it is already pasty muggy sticky hot in the house. Situated in this deep valley surrounded by a thousand-acre woods, it rarely is too warm in the early morning, and I am thankful for this. I lack my usual early-rising verve. I just want to sit very still so as to generate as little extra heat as possible. I stare at the empty screen and sit. Sit, and wait for signs of fall.

Today, Accuweather forecasts a high of 99 here. I've never seen temperatures that high since we moved here seven years ago. Record high for this date in Roanoke, always at least five degrees warmer than Goose Creek, was 98 set back in 1987. Today's heat may be a record breaker. And then, those signs of fall will come, when a cold front passes through tomorrow night. Next week, while I am at the mercy of summer in Kentucky, actually promises to be very pleasant by recent standards, cooling into the low fifties at night. The clouds may even show the change, as they do in early August.

And as I steeped and stewed in my dread of the day of heat ahead, I remembered: there are some good things coming in early August: signs of fall. The following (since I lack the energy to write this morning) is a minor rewrite from my first blogging summer in 2002:

It is August at last. True, there may not be a great deal of difference in day or night-time temperatures, yet. But here in southwest Virginia, we can typically expect a tantalizing preview of fall during the first half of the month, and there are 'signs of fall' already, if you know what to look for.

Autumn's plants are up, although they're not very conspicuous yet. You won't notice them as you drive along the highway for another three weeks or so. But it is part of the pattern of things that the goldenrod, Queen of the Meadow (Joe Pye Weed) and Ironweed are soon to bloom, adding rich deep yellow, dusky mauve and royal purple to the pallet of color in every meadow and pasture border.

The starlings will begin to grow restless, bunch up, then break apart into little groups again, like they cannot quite get comfortable with each other in a crowd. The instinct to migrate must be a powerful itch. It won't be long before an occasional Monarch butterfly shows up, passing by in loops and glides. Winged wisps of will, they lift on the rising heat, at first in no particular direction and free of hurry; then, later, and unfailingly westward, they move purposefully toward winter roosts in central Mexico, in such numbers that they break branches out of trees.

Wooly worms will show up here in the next week or two. Again, not in large numbers, discovered here and there under a piece of firewood or scattered slab of barn board. Later, they cross the roads of Floyd County in large numbers in their brown and black three piece suits, seeking shelter for the coming winter.

In August, the locusts and walnuts, last to get their spring leaves, are first to shed them. Harbingers of fall, the feather-pinnate leaves of Sumac will be among the first to redden along the wooded roadsides, followed soon by Virginia Creeper, both well ahead of the color change that will come later in poplars, hickories and maples.

Some of the 'fallness' that I know I will feel this week, or next, has nothing to do with changes in the visible sense. It will be a sensation that come from of the imperceptible loss of time as the days shorten minutes each day-a resetting of our internal clocks that wake us up at certain points in the season, just as our inner alarms awaken us promptly every morning. I am confident that if you blindfolded me, and spun me around ten times, and placed me anywhere on the calendar, I could tell you "this is early August", by the feel of it alone.

On such a day as this in early autumn, I will breathe in the new smells that August alone can give-the scent of old hay, of corn stalks going but not quite gone by-a potpourri of plant matter in profusion, baked dry and fragrant by the July sun: monarda and pennyroyal, spicebush and sassafras. These aromas were present but not appreciated in late July. Today I will be looking for them. I'll celebrate their presence, and stop more frequently for deep drafts of it during the day.

This week, or the next, I will exclaim "that is a Fall sky!" The round piled and billowed clouds of summer for a day or two will give way to clouds streaked and smeared, thin, high and attenuated with the ends turned up, against a turquoise sky.

Fall will make a few short sorties in August, then retreat, and return again to stay longer each visit. To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven. It is time for fall, even though the season has not yet quite arrived.

Posted by fred1st at 6:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Perhaps one of the things that makes the Friday Night Jamboree such a central event in the life of Floyd County is its predictability. Always three dollars at the door, when you finally decide to come in off the street. Always sultry as a tropical island inside with two hundred hot bodies radiant with the buzz of blue grass and twenty of them clogging on the wooden floor in front of the stage. And every week, while new faces from out of town and even out of country are always there, I've never once been to the jamboree I didn't see a half dozen of the same faces. For the Friday Night Regulars, if you don't see them in their usual seats on Friday night, you know something is bad wrong and the Hospitality Committee at the church is taking them covered baskets of homemade bread and chicken soup.

Slim here, as I call him, is one of the regulars. The Man in Black. There seems to be less and less of him every time I go, and it's true for all of the permanent fixtures on Friday night: this world is not their home, they're just a passin' through. But til then, Friday night is the peak of the week, a time to grab your old battered instrument for some street music, stash three bills in your pocket, an extra one for a cool drink, and join the Friday Night family in town. They'll be expecting you.

Posted by fred1st at 7:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

It has begun. Two stackable bins wait empty on the made beds upstairs. Over the next week, they will fill, one book, one pair of shorts, one coffee cup at a time. And next Sunday, I'll chose a route to Hindman, Kentucky. All are equally indirect. You can barely get there from here, or from anywhere else. But you can get there, to the forks of Troublesome Creek.

The workshop in Kentucky will be the closest I've ever come to accepting a blind date for a week. I've been amazed with how little information has come of the details of getting there, being there or writing there. Come to think of it, I've not even received the bill for the week's room and board and the workshops. Hindman, especially compared to the carefully structured program at the J C Campbell Folk Center, seems shockingly unstructured. This isn't altogether a bad thing, but it does leave a featureless expanse on my calendar. All I know is I will be in a very remote place, and by some accounts, it is a very beautiful place. And it is inhabited by the ghosts of some of the best and most beloved of the Appalachian literary giants--Jim Wayne Miller, James Still and others. These patrons of Appalachian rootedness and language still brood over a gathering family of writers who come each year, each spinning writer's thoughts--at meals, on front porches, in classrooms, on solitary walks--in the same way that I will be in such a place, among such hills and history, ghosts and spirits.

For many of my unmet companions and future friends there, the week at Hindman will be an annual pilgrimage. I have the sense that the place serves as a spiritual retreat center for a few of Kentucky's and the southern Appalachian's prominent writers and poets--a place to which they return to tap into the energy of group mind--there, apart from obligations, away from cell phones, and out of the presence of the sorts of folk who don't understand the writing temperament. Upon entering the settlement school boundaries, they are on familiar terrain, linked to known faces and shared histories--a kind of family reunion, bound not by blood but by the bonds of place.

For me, both a novice camper and a novice writer, I will be a lost and reticent outsider for an hour, or a day. And by the time I've made connections to the place, the pace and the people, and know who I am away from my desk at home, it will be Friday afternoon, and time to follow the breadcrumbs back toward Goose Creek.

So much will happen between the time I first step out of my car onto an unknown landscape and get back in it, filled to the bursting point with faces, memories, voices and inspiration. I have no doubt that, in ways I cannot yet anticipate, the week will seem like both a day and a month. I will thereafter never be quite the same, and in this there is a kind of wonderful dread to the prospect of going and to coming home.

While there hasn't been much in the way of official communication about the program or the school, I could have done more to educate myself about both. Had I been aware of it, I would have ordered and read Crossing Troublesome--a commemorative of Hindman's 100 year anniversary and an anthology of work arising from the authors and events from the first 25 years of the Writers Workshop there. It will be wonderful to have the opportunity to be a part of such a rich tradition, and who knows: maybe I'll become one of those folk who goes back time and again to this unknown place I can now only imagine.

Posted by fred1st at 6:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Looking at the gazeteer for Minnesota, this landform is in Koochiching County in the last tier of counties this side of Canada. Given this area was the site of heavy glaciation and glacial lakes abound, I'm wondering if these odd smears of flowing land (which in total are dominant over several hundred square miles both in Mn and southern Canada) are bogs--partially-filled-in glacially-scoured depressions dominated by sphagnum moss. These areas are often farmed for such things as sugar beets and cranberries. I wonder: what accounts for the blue and other non-green colors in this odd land?

Does anybody have any experience from northern Minnesota to shed some light on this earthly mystery?

Posted by fred1st at 9:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

On the way home last night from visit and dinner with Peter and family, I took the slow road. I was hoping for some backlit shots of Queen Anne's Lace but the sun was too piercing as it settled toward the horizon, rather than the muted red ball I was hoping for.

I found the usual livestock on this picturesque brow of pasture set against the Buffalo in the far background. And while all the sheep scampered away from the fence as I approached it, this one lone white cow stood her ground, a radiant sentinel on guard against intrusion by the Pasture Papparazi who might come between a ruminant and the chewing of her cud.

Posted by fred1st at 7:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Even though it was late in the day and they'd already spent hours on the road, his wife and kids were willing to let Peter of Slow Reads venture off the interstate and travel 25 miles down the road and decades back in time to visit downtown Floyd--a place that seems at times to be the Lake Wobegon of southwest Virginia. After hours on a Saturday, it seemed more like a diorama of a little town (that time forgot, which the decades could not improve) with most of the props stored back stage somewhere. Even so, it was a good visit that included sandwiches (and lots of peach soda!) at Momma Lazardos and as much conversation as you can shoehorn into an hour.

And there was a kind of blogging symmetry to Peter's visit. He'd just come from meeting his first blogger in the flesh: Kurt of A Happening, who, as it turns out, was the first blogger I ever met, almost three years ago now.

Maybe they'll come back some day and stay longer. I think that the hand-painted clothes in the windows of Winter Sun and the promise of sartorial abundance in Schoolhouse Fabrics might just lure the missus back to Floyd at some point in the future. That'd be good. Our non-blogging wives could shop. Peter and I could dig a little deeper in to areas of common interest that you just can't get around to in a first howjadoo, passing through.

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

Which of the three thimbles hides the pea? Are any of these internet stories true, partially true or wholecloth fabrications? Sometimes, it is impossible to tell. But all would fall into the 'if true, then significant' category. Since I've been following the topic of the first one, I give it a higher chance of being based on fact. The second is easy enough to check out to see if it is, indeed, as quoted in the actual print edition. And the third is in all likelihood at least partly true, but how will we know until it's too late. Caveat emptor.

1) Avian Flu is already a raging pandemic in China. From Recombinomics, a reliable source to date. I made this prediction a month ago to my wife. I'd just as soon lose this bet. Interesting: forum exchange in very broken English. Is this a news leak from behind the Bamboo Curtain?

2) The Bush Plan for retaliation after the next 9-11 type of attack on American soil is to nuke Iran. Justin Logan excerpting from the American Conservative. Hard copy examination yet to be carried out to verify an authentic quote.

3) Nuclear satchel bombs have already been smuggled across the Mexican border and are stored in or near American cities (source WorldNetDaily is some distance from the center (leaning right, mostly) but some of their scoops have turned out to beat the mainstream media to stories that eventually make the nightly news on CNN.)

How does one process so much information? Are we capable of dealing intelligently with so much potentially bad news without becoming inert to pending disaster warnings? Too much information too soon leads to panic and burnout. Too little too late results in unacceptable consequences of inaction and unpreparedness.

Bloggers, myself among them, would do well to study how those in the field of 'risk communication' approach crises (with regard to the link here, the crisis being communicated is avian flu) to get the word out, create a receptivity of concern, but not incite panic or a sense of lost control. This is a long article from the Pan American Health Organization, but worth the read. Perhaps your public health leaders would appreciate some guidance in this very awkward matter of risk communication. Another article in a similar vein is here.

Is the sky falling? Is the wolf really eating the sheep this time, or should we even listen to the warnings any more? Tune in at 11 for all the latest, with your intrepid news reporter, Turkey Lurkey.

Posted by fred1st at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Serving Suggestion: Prior to reading the paragraphs below, click here and open in a new window or tab. Turn up your sound.

While the grasses themselves had lost much of their orderly beauty and subtle color before the pasture was cut a few days ago, the insect inhabitants had begun to appear there in myriad abundance as the long warm days incubated eggs into larva, and pupae into adults. Earlier in the week, I steered the truck along the edge of the pasture to beat down a walking path through the high grass--as high as the top of my windshield. I navigated by the sky, not able to see the ground in front of me. When I got back to the barn, the hood of the truck was an entomological treasure trove--leafhoppers, spittlebugs, cinch bugs and grasshoppers--hundreds of grasshoppers like the one you see here.

A week before, I had watched and photographed this very type of small green grasshopper on a tall stem of grass. It moved methodically along the flower spike using its long antennae (several times the length of the body) to flick the pollen-heavy anthers. The male grass's sex organs hung dangling like tiny salt shakers, waiting for a gentle breeze to carry sperm (inside the ornately-sculpted pollen grain) to a female flower yards or miles away.

You can see some pollen grains floating away in this small image, as well as some of it on the grasshopper's antennae. And what I wish I'd taken the time to discover was whether these grasshoppers use their antennae intentionally to gather pollen. Some insects can pull their antennae through their mouths to clean them of mites and such. Could it be that in these very common pasture-dwelling grasshoppers, the antennae are used to collect pollen and then bring it to their mouths? This would explain the ridiculously long appendages, wouldn't it? And this relationship, then, would be a 'mutualism', helping both the insect (providing food) and the grass (pollen dispersal, costing only a few grains in payment to the insect for the service.)

But I'll not find the answer to this mystery this year. The grasses--along, most certainly, with a hundred thousand entombed long-eared grasshoppers--are now wrapped in tight round bales, stored under a barn roof up on Griffith Creek. I'll just have to wait until next July to confirm my antennae-as-feeding-hands hypothesis.

Posted by fred1st at 7:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For the better part of a week while we had house guests, I blogged away the early mornings when I should have been out tending the garden. So much changes out there when the weather is warm. Or maybe, it is simply that, in our gardens, we move slowly, often squat on our haunches or kneel close to the earth, and pay very close attention to the lives of growing things. We note every nuance of swelling bud, elongating stem, and the difference in color of swollen plant ovaries that will become our food--in a way we seldom do outside our garden fences.

Yesterday, when I took the GeorgiaOkeefish image of a squash flower, I didn't know about squash bees. I learned that in my little research session that is my daily education in the ways of the world. So today, armed with ew imformation, I went back purposefully to note the difference between this bee and the sadly uncommon honey bee, and to distinguish male from female squash bee by appearance, behaviour and location.

You could clearly see the females, most often on the male flowers, gathering protein-rich pollen for their brood. Time after time, the quick-flying males would dart in for a quicky. The female, with her receptive parts uppermost, would kick up her back legs with each attempted mating, signifying in bee language "I've got a sick headache." As soon as one male would leave by the front door, another would sneak in the back. It is quite the redlight district there in the golden interior of a squash he-flower.

This morning, I noticed how many squash blossoms are already past their prime. Most have dropped their fused corona of petals and are going or gone to fruit. Since yesterday, the curved pollen-bearing anthers have muted from dark yellow to a bright ocre, possibly signifying to the bees "Last call. Bar and dating service closes in fifteen minutes." I doubt there will be any flowers at all by tomorrow.

Posted by fred1st at 9:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Congratulations to Jim Minick, former Floyd County resident, for bringing his book, Finding a Clear Path, to press. Last night marked his first book signing, with copies just arrived at the last minute yesterday afternoon. The book is pending release via Amazon.com, expected within a couple of weeks. Other local speaking engagements are scheduled.

I look forward to reading my copy, and will reread the half dozen pieces that Jim read last night at the Floyd Library, hearing his voice in the written words--all the better. Perhaps before summer ends, I'll have a brief personal reflection when I've finished the book. But I can tell you now, I'm certain that Jim's clear path already has my footprints on it. There is a comfortable stride in his travels, and many of the landmarks along that path--geographic and symbolic--are familiar to those whose visions of and insights into the natural and manmade world come most clearly while walking expectantly. Read it. You'll see what I mean.

Meanwhile, I'll take the lazy way and clip an endorsement from the back cover that says it well:

"Another shining writer has emerged from the Southern landscape. Here, Jim Minick has written an exquisitely beautiful book about his Appalachian farm and his engagement in a life that makes sense. In impressive vignettes, Minick sketches his life and his desire to know the depths of it. 'I need to name what I love,' he writes. With merry deftness, he tells of counting osprey, growing beans, and finding box turtles, but beyond the immediate, his subjects outline a formula for a good life; community, rootedness, history, family, and the beauty of nature. The Virginia mountains are lucky to have Minick as a new voice. Would that every place find such a singer of praises." -- Janisse Ray, author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood and Pinbook

Posted by fred1st at 7:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm afraid I have good news for Timmy-watchers out there. Timmy is no longer a lost boy. I know few details. His family wasn't from around here. They didn't know Floyd had an animal shelter, so it took them until Wednesday to find their lost pet, who had been there waiting for them since Saturday.

Meanwhile, Doug Thompson's wife, Amy, had gone to the shelter up on Storker's Knob to see the little pup pictured here last weekend. She immediately fell in love, and was told "it's yours on Friday if he's not claimed." Monday afternoon, I got a call from a familiar voice telling me--in more colorful words--that my soul was doomed to perdition for putting his wife onto yet another mouth to feed. It sounded like the voice of god. I was afraid. I was very afraid. Not.

And so, what really was the best thing for this animal that obviously for a year or more had been the object of a family's attention and effection. But it was a sad disappointment at the House of Thompson, where the cats, at least in this one campaign, were united in feline solidarity. No dogs, no matter how cute!

Posted by fred1st at 5:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

It is a family recipe, once created by an unknown matriarch and thereafter, a legacy of memory passed from daughter to grandchild. And of course, with such a history, it has become a birthday tradition: a chocolate layer cake with marshmallowy pale green mint icing.

And in that peaceful far corner of our land where the steep hills come together like praying hands, we celebrated the family patriarch's 91st birthday with just such a cake again during his visit this week. There, we re-enacted his 89th in that hidden hollow in the woods. During the first celebration, a sudden afternoon thunderstorm had interrupted the festivities. I hurriedly covered the cake under its Tupperware dome and ran down the lane to store it safely in the cab of the truck that had brought our folding chairs along for the event.

Several steps before reaching the truck, the bottom of the cake caddy separated from the top. The cake fell scattered across the trail as summer lightning sent me scurrying quickly for cover. After the storm, we went back to clean up the mess.

And it was here in this moment that we experienced the epiphany of discovery. Here at this instant, we discovered the meaning of a song whose lyrics had puzzled us for decades. What could it possibly have been pointing to but this very event? We all burst into song (much to the consternation of my 11 year old nephew)-- a sacrament to the unknown, now revealed in our time.

All the sweet green icing flowing down? Never find that recipe again? Melting in the rain? This was the historical event anticipated by Jimmy Webb when he wrote McArthur Park back in the psychedelic sixties. We were living the lyrics. Life is amazing, isn't it?

But it remains to be revealed if we'll ever come to understand 'love's hot fevered iron like a striped pair of pants.' But maybe we have seen enough of this one. But even so, given this blessed revelation, I cannot help but hope that someday--maybe on grandpa's 95th--we'll be granted a similar visitation leading to an understanding of other late sixties mysteries.

"I am the Walrus", maybe. Crabalocker fishwife? Sitting on a cornflake? It's only a matter of time until we know.

Posted by fred1st at 11:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (1)

Appalachian Sustainable Development is on a short list as possible recipient of a million-dollar non-profit innovation award. I confess, I had never heard of this organization that presides over a ten-county area to our west. But I like what I see on their website, and wonder if their work and structure could be duplicated in the New River Valley area where we live.

Here's a thumbnail view from their ABOUT page:

Mission Statement

We come together as citizens living in and near the watersheds of the Clinch and Powell Rivers to affirm the need for development that is sustainable and beneficial for nature and people, for culture and community. Thus we pledge ourselves to work for this sustainable development:

• By promoting the values underlying a respect for people, nature, community and culture;
• By enabling local communities to meet their own needs;
• By establishing ecologically sensitive businesses;
• By creating services enhancing human potential; and
• By utilizing strategies building upon regional strengths

Our Vision

We envision a future in which the natural quality and great diversity of our forests, land and waterways are protected through an economic life greatly diversified and locally controlled. We envision an economic life that respects the connectedness of the human and natural communities and a system in which economic decision-making is more inclusive, democratic and effective. We envision more meaningful work opportunities created through a fuller, sustainable use of our productive resources. And, we envision a renewed commitment to act responsibly towards people, community, cultures and the earth.

Posted by fred1st at 6:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Okay. I guess now we know the answer.

Ann and I talk about how, if we had to, we could make-do here in times of reduced income, long periods of flooding or snow, or in the event of a national emergency like avian flu quarantine. We have firewood for heat (provided we can get gas for the chain saw.) We can get water from the well faucet, even if the power is out. But how much of our own food could we provide from the garden, if we had to depend on it as a source of food to get us through the winter? This year, I set out with a renewed determination to make the garden a top priority--a Victory Garden--to give us a better idea of what kind of food reserves we could produce and store without depending on the larger economy.

As far as canning vegetables that last from one the end of one gardening season to the beginning of the next, we've had the best luck with green beans. So this year, I devoted almost a third of the garden to Kentucky Wonder--a variety that has been productive in the five gardening years we've lived here. Well, you've heard my whining about how slow they've been to set fruit, and about the terrible problem with Japanese beetles that never before have plagued our garden veggies, and especially not this early in the season.

The corn failed after three plantings. Somebody suggested it might be seedcorn maggots that eat the seed before it germinates. I'm not the only one having problems with corn this year. Small comfort. The deer ate the tops out of most of the green peppers and the Early Girl tomatoes. There are still no flowers at all on the vining (and I think mislabled) beans. Today, I admit defeat. I'll pull up 250 foot-row of whatever those beetle-infested legumes are, and haul them to the edge of the pasture for the beetles and the deer--our winter source of protein that wasn't, fodder for the wildlife.

There is still time to replant. I don't relish it in this heat. And I'll have to escalate in the war against the insects. Several people have mentioned NEEM products and I'll check that out. Seems there is also a spray that is a clay-based product that is effective on Japanese beetles. Now we're in the rush to beat the first frost.

I also bought turnip, mustard, spinach and kale seed yesterday, and we can hope for a good fall garden. But you can only eat so many greens. They cook down so much we'd never be able to grow enough to can, I don't think.

So, we will enter the winter of 2006 as obligate recipients of someone else's efforts against the odds to grow, cultivate, pick, store and ship vegetables to us from California, Mexico and Brazil. But next year, I'll know some things NOT to do, some things NOT to plant, and maybe have some new weapons against them what eats what we would eat. Well have another chance to prove that we can feed ourselves. Or the deer and bugs.

And there you have it: if it were necessary to feed ourselves by the work of our own hands this year from the bit of earth and sunlight we are blessed with, we would starve. It's kinda sobering.

ADDENDUM 10 a.m.: Reprieve Granted! Bean blossoms detected, beetles get one more taste of Rotenone spray (fingers crossed) and we'll see what happens. Meanwhile, I'll plant the new seeds I got at Ingram's Store yesterday, just as Bean Insurance.

Posted by fred1st at 6:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

This piece is from Floyd Press / The Road Less Traveled, July 7, 2005

And just for the record, even Ann likes the Purslane. Here are some links to recipes.

Click "Read More" for the story...

Garden Pests: Some Parts Might Be Edible!

In early June, open patches of carefully raked garden soil frame a gardener's vegetable sets and sprouted seeds against the dark earth. But a few weeks ago in our garden, those open patches between the intentional plantings became freckled with little dots of green--thousands of them, as if by some kind of evil magic--tiny zombie plants, spreading, multiplying, growing taller as I watch.

Resistance is futile. They are disgustingly hearty, these colonizers of bare soil. When they show up in our gardens by the thousands, we have a name for such an aggressive and discouragingly efficient species: we gardeners call it a weed-and that's a four-letter word. But one gardener's weed might become another's dinner. Let's look at a few examples.

Lamb's Quarters can grow taller than a man's head and take over a barn lot or neglected garden in days. It was introduced to America from Europe, where for centuries it was much sought after as a potherb. And no wonder: it contains almost twice as much calcium as milk; more Vitamin A than carrots; and more vitamin C than orange juice. A single average-sized plant will produce over 72 thousand seeds! And so it is both nutritious and prolific and grows without any care whatsoever: that sounds like the ideal jujitsu vegetable crop to me: you let the momentum of your opponent work to your advantage.

Long ago, I inflicted this pragmatic logic on my family in the form of a steaming pot of Lamb's Quarters greens I had pulled from the garden rows. But this 'wild foods' dish met with poor reception just a week after I had offered my wife and small children a plate of boiled milkweed pods that had cooked into an eerie, bright green-like spiny day-glow sea slugs! The kids have been leery of my cooking ever since.

Another self-seeded volunteer in our garden is Purslane. Low growing, with a thick red-tinged stem and leaves, it is classified as a succulent (meaning fleshy or juicy) and resembles a small jade plant. Like most weeds, it grows fast and uses water efficiently and will survive in too much or too little rain in all kinds of soil. Yikes! How's a gardener to stay ahead of such survival qualities as that? The answer: don't be a weed whacker. Be a weed eater!

And why shouldn't you? Purslane contains large amounts of Vitamins A, C and E, and five or more times the Omega-3 fatty acids in spinach. Fresh Purslane has a crisp texture (but is somewhat mucilaginous) and a slight pickle taste. It can be used fresh in salads instead of or in addition to lettuce, and you can find pictures and recipes for it on the 'net. Wait 'til mid-summer. There will more than enough to make a meal.

Growing just outside the garden fence is yet another wildly successful weedy plant that thankfully stays out of the garden and offsets its aggressive growth with both beauty and function. Jewelweed plants (a species of the genus Impatiens) have already hatched their little kidney-shaped leaves on watery transparent stems in moist places at the edge of our yard. Juice from the crushed stem is great for quelling itches and stings. And did you know you can eat the seeds that explode from the yellow or orange "touch me not" flowers in the fall? But here's a cautionary tale:

In the early eighties, we learned from Euell Gibbons that when it comes to native plants and invaders, 'many parts are edible.' "The tiny seeds from Touch-me-nots taste a lot like hickory nuts!" he encouraged us. So, in an effort to both educate our children and keep the two of them safely occupied for an hour or more, we assigned them the job of collecting enough touch-me-nuts to substitute for pecans in a batch of cookies. And a while later, right out of the oven, the seeds were nutlike and delicious. That afternoon, we walked the whole batch of them up to our elderly neighbors.

The next day in church, we asked them if they'd enjoyed the cookies.

"Well, yes" they said somewhat hesitantly. "But what were those little rocks you put in 'em?"

We hadn't known that our nut replacements would quickly lose their moisture and turn hard as pebbles as they cooled. It's a wonder somebody didn't break a tooth! Our kids will never let us forget that little experiment gone wrong. And score one more swing-and-a-miss in my efforts at family wild foods horizon-broadening.

But be encouraged, stalkers of the wild asparagus. There are some 50,000 edible plant species in the world, and I'm betting you eat no more than maybe 30 of them. So, if you add three kinds of "weeds" to your short list, you'll have increased your food choices by 10%. And without even leaving your own back yard! -- Fred First (c) 2005

Posted by fred1st at 8:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Once upon a time, it would have been honey bees doing much of the work in our garden, spreading plant sperm to plant egg--the essential process of pollination. Now, other bees, wasps and beetles have supplanted honey bees, whose hives in nature have been largely wiped out by varroa mites, displaced by Africanized bees, and decimated by pesticides. link

The bee pictured here on our summer yellow crookneck blossom is probably a Squash Bee, looking for a mate (if male) or a meal of pollen for its young (if female.)

And yet, pollination remains an essential 'service' if we are to have fruits and vegetables for food. The insect pollinators are perhaps the weakest link in the food chain, on which we place more and more pressure as population increases and there are ever more hungry mouths to feed. Here'a a good article that explains the essential role of pollinators, and some of the threats they (and therefore, we) face.

Consider: every third bite of food you eat, a bee or other insect probably made it possible. It is as much the labor of the pollinator as the farmer that feeds us.

Posted by fred1st at 7:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, running, actually.

On the very day I post about him neglecting to cut the pasture this year, our neighbor showed up unexpectedly this afternoon, and in an hour, the grasses of last week's photos were laid low. We have our level plain, our distant views, our agri-cultural tabula rasa once more!

As the sun sank and shadows sprawled across the pasture, Ann and I took a celebratory walk to the end of the valley, walking along the fine lines of grasses laid down in parallels by the noisy mower. It was too hot for boots, so I chose to walk in my Tevas (against Ann's instructions--but then, I regularly live my day to day life contrary to the admonishions of the Queen of Dire Consequences.)

How expansive the view, looking back at the house from the end of the pasture. How open the sky seemed now that the floor of the valley was once again a tidy horizontal. How fast I ran when the yellow jackets discovered my bare ankles, and how unpleasant the memory of the six nests we exterminated from that end of the valley last year!

No, she never said "I told you so."

Posted by fred1st at 5:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

You'll remember last episode, Timmy's life had taken yet another twist since he took to the road, searching for America. First, he finds the Tall Man who speaks softly and knows just where to scratch through Timmy's thick fur. The Lost Boy had found a friend at last. The Man fed Timmy, took him for a ride up the road in the truck, and protected him from the demented young monster-dog (the one he called Sugar in some foreign language) who, perhaps himself had once been a runaway dog just like Timmy. Who could say?

But alas, as good things so often do, the man betrayed young Timmy. Suddenly, before he understood the treachery at hand, Timmy found himself locked behind bars in some strange kind of canine gulag. There were others there that had been similarly exhiled from their Tall Men and Gentle Women. But why? What was to become of him? Would he ever find a place again where he belonged?

Stay tuned for Part Three in this saga. It WILL have a happy ending, you need not worry for our furry friend. But I can't tell you the end of the story until Friday.

Join us again for the next installment of Timmy's Tale, to be continued (quite likely) on another blog near you.

Posted by fred1st at 1:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

It is, by all measures, the full-blown middle of the summer: hot, hazy and humid. Too hazy for vistas or landscapes. Too humid to enjoy being over in the field or meadow after the first hint of brightening sky; and so hot that even the greens are going to brown.

To my disappointment, our pasture did not get cut for hay in early summer as it should have been. Our neighbor has tended this field for hay since long before we moved here. Since we culled away the leggy phalanx of pines from the pasture our first year year, R. has fertilized, limed and planted seed. It was at its very best, finally, this year, and sadly, it has gone to waste. It's not like R. to neglect to come by apologetically explaining why he's going to be a week late getting the first cutting. We heard nothing at all, and now our field looks like the matted and burred coat of a lost long-haired dog. The tall grasses, gray and taupe, are lodged over, this way and that, as the winds happen to hit the wet-heavy stems.

What we do have in abundance now are dragonflies--darting cruciform cursors of summer meadows, biplanic insects that flit and light, hover and spin. And they are welcome here to all they can eat. We watch them patrol near-space in the evenings. Above them, in near-space of that column of air 80 acres round that reaches the edge of the atmosphere, chimney sweeps swoop and twitter in twos and threes, in a terrible hurry; and soon, in the uppermost visible sphere of airspace over Goose Creek, the night hawks will come mysteriously, silently rowing in powerful strokes near the vanishing point.

Posted by fred1st at 8:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Looking through the saved links in my 'pending posts' drawer, these three below all seem to have something to say about the power of what we see to change the way we see things in ourselves and the world. Sometimes that change is a good thing; we desire to change in that way and we keep coming back again and again to look at a work of art, a beautiful architecture, a tranquil landscape. And other things our eyes fall on make us simultaneously want to look away, and look again.

Given my vantage point rather far up the slope of the rock of ages, the images at Age Maps have a similar if not identical visual impact as Ronni Bennett's sequence of her face through her ages of time, past to present. Both of these presentations capture the truth that eludes young people, and from which they actively flee: we all grow, we all grow old, we never change at our core. Fixed in our central selves, time passes through us, changing some things, leaving others as they have been since we first became selves. And so these images, to me, are both disturbing and comforting. What kinds of feelings do you have at Age Maps?

A little powder, a little paint--makes a lady what she ain't. So says a cross stitch that has hung in my mom's bathroom for decades. That same paint can do some serious and disturbing things to children painted to enhance their adult features, their sexuality--with eye liner, styled hair, pierced ears and such. I guess this was some bizarre kind of 'beauty contest.' And well, now I go to fetch the link, I see that "Angels with Attitude" has been disassembled. It was just too creepy and probably way too attractive to the wrong kind of people who love children.

Finally, a gallery that is part photographic and partly "a kind of contamination among the arts dissolving the boundaries which distinguish them". There is a 14th century Boschian quality to the artist's work--a surreality that is both repulsive, and attractive. Do you find you want to see more, or hurry off to the Dilbert page instead?

Posted by fred1st at 6:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Western shore birds in the US are dying. (Global warming?) Eastern shore birds in the US are dying, and so are geese in Brunwick, Georgia. Cause UNK. Quail in Thailand are dying. I'm afraid we know why.

Funny. Upstairs in the Very Back Room last week, I found a cross-stitch Ann did for me while we were still at Auburn and I was the budding young ecologist. On the faded cloth were colorful images of a giraffe, a dog, a wildflower, several birds. The words came from Ecclesiastes:

For that which befalleth the sons of man befalleth the beast. As the one dies, so dies the other.

Posted by fred1st at 7:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

The numbers, black on white, whirred past, a sign of the times. I leaned against the side of the truck and watched the Saturday morning crowd swarm into the Express Mart for sausage biscuits and coffee. I hadn't imagined it would be so busy on a weekend morning as the sun was coming up. The coolness was a welcome relief from the heat we would have again later in the day. I breathed deeply. My mind wandered.

The dial blurred--$10, $15, $20. But thirty dollars of gas these days hardly allows a fella enough time for a good daydream, I thought to myself. The fumes from the pumping gas--an insult in the clean air of early morning--made me wince and turn away. And yet, it was pleasant in a way, a smell so familiar. The sharp-edged oily memory of gasoline threads across my entire lifetime; a single whiff transports me back to Sunday afternoon car rides in a shiny black Buick. There in the cool shade I remembered the first time I filled the family car on a solo drive, spending my own money--the ultimate rite of passage. The gallons went quickly then, the dollars slowly, at 20 cents a gallon. Three dollars filled the tank of the VW beetle, and I got a free carwash with a fill-up. The smell of gas on my hands was the scent of manhood, independence, and personal empowerment.

A nostalgic sigh drew in another whiff of the volatile blood of the dinosaurs, the ancient perfume that has enchanted civilization for what will turn out to have been such a short blur of time on the larger scale of human history. It is the heady smell of mankind's rise to power, the eau de victory over distance--the power of horses harnessed to change raw chaos into the order of man-made things. Gasoline has allowed us to gain dominion over geography, to transform matter and to wield dominion over our fellow species on the planet, and to foul our nest. Of all the smells of our day, the vapors of octane is the patron-saint aroma of our times--ubiquitous, omnipresent, and finite.

And it dawned on me, an epiphany as a large man pushed his way out of the Express Mart with two heavy sacks of greasy egg and cheese biscuits: One day, someone will use the last drop of oil. It is a hard thing to get one's head around. That this is unavoidably true is as certain and as incomprehensible to most of us as the fact that our own heart beat will one day, one instant in time, cease. This will happen. The use of fossil fuels for world commerce will have ended years before. Then on a Tuesday at 3:12 in the afternoon, Walter M. Smith's high-efficiency gas-hydrogen antique minicar will come to a stop on Maple Street in Wilmington, Delaware, and he will abandon it there. The era of Fossil Fuels will have ended forever.

Efforts will be made in those times to preserve some remnant samples of octane, propane, kerosene, paraffin--perhaps even exhaust fumes. They will house them in museums--the hands-on kind--where you can briefly sniff samples of what was once the elixir of an age. Some of the very oldest visitors will barely remember the last time their grandparents filled up the family car while they stood by the pump, watching the numbers spin, smelling the perfume of a former time.

Posted by fred1st at 6:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday morning I traveled familiar roads to town at an ucommonly early hour, with a lost dog at my side. On the plateau, up out of our valley, there is an amazing amount of light at 7:15 when our holler is yet in shadow. I was on the lookout for opportunities for morning images I don't get from home.

We drive past the little one-room schoolhouse every time we go to Floyd. I don't know much about its history. Somebody keeps the grass cut and the building painted and repaired. There is a nicely-done sign near the road with the name of the school. Situated on a little knoll up off the road, you can easily drive by and not really see it. The trim little historic building had caught my eye a few years ago, about the same time of morning: the sun rises over the hill directly behind it, I noted. Someday, I need to be here early on a foggy summer morning, I thought to myself.

Yesterday, after passing it, I glanced in my mirror and knew: I would never forgive myself if I didn't turn around and go back. Who knows when I'll pass this way, at this time of day, with this kind of lighting again.

Posted by fred1st at 6:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

Where is Timmy ** He was going to town to get tutored, so he hopped right on up in the truck, happy as a clam. Most of the way, his front paws were across my lap, his little pointed snout and bright eyes looking up trustingly into my deceitful face. Tough love, I told him. This is the best thing for you. When really, what I meant was, I didn't have a clue what was the best thing for him but this was the most expedient thing for me--to stick him in an empty run first thing Saturday morning, turn on my heals with him wagging his tail, and drive way. I will be calling to learn his fate, and truly hope whoever has treated and trained him so well in the past will be reunited with little Timmy. (I wonder if they know that is his name?)

Lettuce Soup ** Thanks to a Fragments reader, we've hit on the idea of Lettuce Soup as an answer to what happens to 20 pounds of surplus garden lettuce. There are lots of recipes. We'll let you know how it turns out. (Worst part: cleaning grit and picking pine straw, grass and leafhoppers from a mound of lettuce leaves.)

Good News for Alzheimers ** "THE brains of Alzheimer's patients are not irretrievably damaged and have the ability to recover significantly, scientists have discovered. . A leading scientist in the field has shown that mice who developed Alzheimer's after being given the human gene for the disease were able to start remembering new things once it was "switched off." Via the Scotsman

Day is Dying in the West ** First, there was this, buried for some reason on the news back page. Had I not wandered to the Financial Times by accident, I would have missed this threat by a top Chinese general to nuke America over Taiwan.

Then, this morning, some disturbing news (as yet unconfirmed but from a previously reliable source used by Recombinonics) that China may have been exploring the possibility of using H5N1 virulent strain (known and present in the country since 2004) as a bioweapon, including possibly releasing it into the (expendable) public as a test.

Bad News for Public Broadcasting ** Or, All the News That's Fit to Muzzle. Major GOP Donor Favored as Next CPB Chairman: "Halpern's political activity and confirmation-hearing comments could make her elevation to chairman as controversial as CPB's recent hiring of its new president, Patricia Harrison, a former co-chairman of the Republican National Committee. Via WaPo

Email Two-Step ** After thinking seriously about using Gmail for communicating with university students this fall, I'm having second thoughts. As Lorianne pointed out, there doesn't seem to be any way to create mailing groups in Gmail, while the process is easy--for up to 100 per group-- with Yahoo Mail. Plus, Yahoo Mail's calendar and notepad functions are useful. So, I remain unsettled on this issue. If you have success stories (or horror stories) re Yahoo mail, please warn me or encourage me now. I'm staging for fall semester already.

Torture ** We have overflow house guests. Ann's father is sleeping not twenty feet from the noisy percolator full of what should be the hot coffee in my cup that marks the beginning of early morning consciousness. I dare not turn it on. We are as yet unprepared to be good hosts, badly in need of hot coffee. Doh!

Fragments Features ** Note two new sidebar additions: On the weekends, I click my Flickr Slideshow and revisit the week and month in pictures, each scene reminding me of places I've been, like marking milestones along a journey. And, I've submitted Fragments to BlogTopSites in the 'photoblog' category. You can go there and leave comments and "rate" me. Be kind.

Posted by fred1st at 6:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

We are, you must admit, a perverted lot. Missed planes, office arguments, marital bickering and getting lost on the freeway no longer bother us one bit. We simply think "I'm going to blog this!" and what seemed at first like a disaster turns into fodder for the daily blather. Sometimes, we even have our cameras handy--to take pictures of the plane we were supposed to be on, lifting off the runway; to show the front of the restaurant where our spouse was supposed to have met us an hour ago. But things really get kinky when the pulled pork turns into a conflagration and we see it as a bloggable moment--but wait: while the smoke alarms are squealing and the kids are screaming and the family dog is barking, what does a good blogger do? She grabs the camera, of course!

And this all makes me thankful there were disasters of this very kind in our house before digital photography and before blogger.com came along.

Many years ago in a land far, far away, Ann was warming some fatty bacon on the stove to get the grease out of it to put on the dog's food. She left it on low heat and went off and starting doing something else. Now slow heat, applied over the course of an hour, turns into an incendiary heat when the bacon cooks completely to carbon and there's nothing in the pan but grease. Which of course caught on fire. The smoke alarm went off. While I was in the shower.

I burst on the scene clad only in the garment in which God sent me into this word. I grabbed the hot pan and headed for the back door. It was about then that my teenage daughter rushed into the room and screamed. And it was not the fire that alarmed her. I dropped the bacon flameau--onto our newly-lineoleumed floor, and for the first time in my life, watched what hot grease does to vinyl.

Had anyone in my household then been a blogger..."Hold that pose, dad. I'll be right back with the camera."

Disclaimer: Kitchen ablaze is somebody else's problem (a borrowed internet image)--not taken in the kitchen of the blogger who tells the pulled pork story! But we all know: it coulda been one of us composing in our viewfinder while Rome burns.

Posted by fred1st at 12:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

The word is out: we have a Bed & Bone, and since Reggie went home and made the announcement, we have dogs stopping by wanting to check out our accommodations and take a look at the menu.

I don't know where this one came from. He wouldn't say. From the wear on his teeth and spring in his step, I suspect he's a teenager-- a runaway. But he seems to be having second thoughts about his vagabondage, and lacks the money for the bus trip home--if he could remember where that is. (My guess is, maybe he was out marking turf with the boys, got distracted by the scent of chipmunk, and became separated from the gang. He found our road quite by accident: "Oh yeah, I've heard of this place" he said, and just walked on down yesterday afternoon to pay us a visit.

Tsuga was the first to greet him (I call the minature collie Timmy--Quick! Find Lassie! She's fallen in a well somewhere for sure!) And unlike Reggie's leave-me-alone growl and three-body-length social distance, Timmy offered an immediate reciprocal sniff and wanted to know when was dinner.

But I knew Timmy had parents somewhere that were going to be worried about him, so brought T-dog inside, whereupon Timmy marched uncertainly off, headed west up the road (the way he had come?) and that was that. For a half hour. Then, we heard a mournful wail just outside the door. (Ann is at work, missing all of this excitement.) It was Timmy, and he confessed: he hadn't a clue how he'd arrived on our road or which way was home. I consoled him, came inside to make some phone calls, and of course, not a one of our neighbors was home. So, we prepared to take a road trip.

"Come on, Timmy, let's take a ride" I said dubiously, as I opened the door of the truck. (Meanwhile, Tsuga is standing at the window saying "That's not fair! I never get to ride in the truck!") I had figured I would have to reach down and pick up the little dog (who stands not much more than a foot at the back, a very petite pup indeed.) To my surprise, he hopped right up in the truck and plopped down on the seat like he owned the place.

We struck out with the neighbors on Daniels Run. Nobody had ever seen the lost boy. Oy. We have a houseful of company coming on Saturday and one dog is going to be one too many already. But the Humane Society line said the Animal Shelter people aren't open and don't pick up until Monday. Timmy, find help!

When we got home, the phone was ringing. It was the Animal Shelter rep. Though it will mean a trip to town first thing this morning (that means less vacuuming for moi!), I'm happy to know there is a place for the little pup where his owners certainly will look, first thing on Monday. If not, the lady assured me a dog such as the one I described would find a home quickly.

But he already has a home. His very long coat had obviously been brushed yesterday and was free of burs. When I told him to come or to sit, he did so immediately. This is a dog used to indoor living and copious affection. Somebody has cared for this dog and they want him back. The are anguishing about his inexplicable teenage disappearance and will be looking for his picture on cartons of milk. Where oh where is Timmy?

A different image of the Lost Boy is here.

Posted by fred1st at 5:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

I wonder what's going on with the Kentucky Wonder. This year, seven weeks after planting and the plants full size, there's not flower one and the tops are using all their energy to create vines. I've had to put up 'pea brush' for them to climb on, expecting some day to see the little swords of new green beans hanging from that pine-brush trellis. But there are as yet no fruits, and the Japanese beetles (I've never been bothered by them before this early!) are turning the leaves to a sickening lace. Getting the beans to make is always a rush against the insects, but so far, I've not seen many Mexican Bean Beetles, which are our usual scourge. It's a strange year.

Organic Schmorganic I hate using pesticides. You pass gardens around here this time of year and the potatoes and beans are white with 'bean dust'--something I stopped using twenty years ago when, on the morning after, I would go out and find scores of dead earthworms. Killing off the garden ecosystem so I could have beans didn't seem to make much sense. So this year, after using nothing at all in years past, I bought a rotenone product. Rotenone is a plant derivative and known as an 'organic' pesticide, and therefore assumed safe to use on your food crops. Or so I thought. But reading up on it, I'm not so sure. When injected IV at massive doses in rats, it causes Parkinsons-like symptoms. Keeping in mind the caveats about animal models and unrealistic doses, even so, I plan to use this stuff mostly on the inedible parts of the plant, wait several days should I spray something like the chard so the product can decompose in sunlight, and wash the heck out of it before eating. But on the other hand, I'm unimpressed with this product's effectiveness, so may go back to my former method of digital pest control (crush the little buggers between thumb and index finger.) It doesn't seem to leave ANY residual effect on the plant, and hours after spraying, the bugs are doing their filigree thing on the bean leaves again, munching happily.

Meanwhile, can I ship anyone four bushels of lettuce? The buttercrunch and valentines semi-heading lettuce is growing faster than we can eat it. It's wonderful, but doesn't grow much until it gets warm. And then it tends to bolt and get bitter. It is one of those vegetables you can't can, freeze or dry for later. I go back to my idea of several summers ago: if we could find a way to get garden vegetables into an email attachment (I suggested the *.sqs format, a new compression algorhytm known as a SQUASH file) we could transport surplus zuchinni and lettuce from places of surplus to places of dire need (though I confess, I've never suffered a zuchinni deficit myself. ANY of that tasteless gourd is too much, in my opinion.) So, I'll see if I can perfect the *.sqs attachments, and when I do, just send your return email address, and get the salad dressing ready.

(Garden pictures later today. Or tomorrow.)

Posted by fred1st at 8:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, I can't fight fire with fire. I concede that he got me, heat-stressed, fanning furiously and louder than I was hearing the governor's words, I was wondering about the actual likelihood of spontaneous human combustion. Should I suddenly ignite and leave nothing but a pile of ashes in the folding chair, would my life insurance pay the accidental death bonus? So Doug's painfully honest lens has caught me at my most vulnerable moment. (And I really need to see a physical therapist to see if there is anything to be done for the terrible forward-head posture!)

So, this shot of Himself is not exactly tit for tat. If he'd only thrown my image into this degree of blur, I'd still have my self image intact today. Ah well.

Posted by fred1st at 6:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

The summer of possibilities will end when I start back to class and I will have frittered away that great open space on the calendar when I had told myself I was going to finally have time to complete a half-dozen little projects. One of those projects was to create a prototype for greeting cards or note cards: to decide on a paper, a size, get the costs to me and set a price for purchase; think about how best to produce them; decide what images to use; and establish some sites where they could be sold.

I've not gotten very far. I did decide to find four images for each season, and if the test market shows any success at all, have four cards for each of the four seasons, and package them in Clearbags. Here are the images for summer, bearing the unimaginative names I gave them to keep them apart.

For fall, there is a lot to chose from: all the leaf changes and country road scenes. In winter, Burning Bush, Two Walkers, Oak Leaf in Ice, and more. Spring, I haven't thought that far ahead, but there are wildflowers, buds, and that wonderful translucent green that would make nice cards. I finally am building up enough of an archive that selecting images will be the easy part.

Here's where I could use some advice. Has anyone used any of the growing number of online sites where they will convert your craft into a commercial product (coffee mugs, mouse pads, t-shirts and such?) Someone recently recommended I look at CafePress, where folks could see the product and buy it online (with a hefty commission going to CafePress, of course.) Locally, I'm going go see what Kinkos will do, but my initial experience yesterday was less than impressive.

So if any of you have been there, done that, let me know your thoughts. I'd really like to pull this little task together in the next couple of weeks so I can go back into the confining halls of ivy thinking, well, I at least did THAT.

Posted by fred1st at 5:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by fred1st at 8:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

David James Duncan, writing in Orion Magazine, is a voice crying out from the wilderness of a "spiritual clearcut." And while I don't follow every nuance of his lament, it in many ways speaks to my growing sense of impoverishment and loss. Everything that I hold dear seems at risk: my country, my church, my land and my language. Duncan calls for conversion--an about-face from the direction we are going in our collective pilgrimage. It is time.

True evangelism, based on the example of Jesus, does not suggest the "missionary zeal" of self-righteous proselytizers. It implies, on the contrary, the kind of all-embracing universality evident in Mother Teresa's prayer: "May God break my heart so completely that the whole world falls in." Not just fellow nuns, Catholics, Calcuttans, Indians. The whole world. It gives me pause to realize that, were such a prayer said by me and answered by God, I would afterward possess a heart so open that even hate-driven zealots would fall inside. There is a self-righteous knot in me that finds zealotry so repugnant it wants to sit on the sidelines with the like-minded, plaster our cars with bumper stickers that say "Mean People Suck" and "No Billionaire Left Behind" and "Who would Jesus Bomb?", and leave it at that. But my sense of the world as a gift, my sense of a grace operative in this world despite its terrors, propels me to allow the world to open my heart still wider, even if the openness comes by breaking--for I have seen the whole world fall into a few hearts, and nothing has ever struck me as more beautiful.

Posted by fred1st at 8:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

After an hour and 45 minutes in the sauna, while the governor was still fielding questions and promising follow-up on some Floyd County issues (I'd hate to be an administrator at the local nursing home this morning) I was approaching heat exhaustion. But as I was walking out the door, the guv called on someone near the back of the Country Store who was waving her arms frantically to ask "When will you announce that you are running for president in 2008" and the crowd went wild.

I had earlier remarked to someone that Governor Warner seems to have the qualities necessary to enter the short list of Democratic top-runners: He presents himself as extemporaneous and genuine and at ease in the spotlight. He, according to his remarks yesterday, comes from a "twenty year background in business" and has gotten the Commonwealth out of the deep hole it was in when he took office. (He said that he started Nextel; but then, Gore started the internet.) And he is a successful governor in one of the top states for fiscal health, one that is often the source of presidential candidates. And he has the chiseled good looks and the Kennedy overbite. Will he run in 2008? Don't be surprised.

And: The Guv's tour of Floyd spilled over into the local shops on Main Street, and up the road to the Jacksonville Center. Suzy Nees has more pix here and Doug's, here.

Posted by fred1st at 6:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

It was standing room only in the human cookery that is the Country Store on a July afternoon: windows and doors open, 250 townfolk generating hundred-watt lightbulbs worth of heat. And the governor was more than half an hour late to his appearance in Floyd yesterday. It must have been 95 in there, and a dead calm. I was wishing I had the concession on the Baptist church fans--the kind with the big tongue depressor handle and the picture of a long-haired tanned-Caucasian Jesus holding a baby lamb.)

It was some kind of hot. But nobody seemed to notice, and finally, the entourage of state troopers arrived, presaging the grand entrance, which, with everyone standing, I only was able to follow by the Rocky-style over the head double victory pump from the shirt-sleeved gubernatorial arms that appeared above the crowd--one hand unadorned, one encased in orthopedic rigging.

Seems in the case of promoting biking as a way of exercise, Governor Warner instead became the poster child for bike safety and ended up in the emergency room for x-rays, softcasting, and a big bill. While his disability seemed to distract him very little, I (as a physical therapist) couldn't take my mind off it, and it was danged near impossible to get a photo that didn't include it. When he would hold it up as he is in this picture, I envisioned His Excellency (as he was introduced) holding up a sock puppet and talking while barely moving his lips. "Say hello to the nice people of Floyd, Ollie."

I'll post another couple from yesterday, later this morning.

Posted by fred1st at 5:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Jim Minick has found it: the thread that weaves his essays and observations into a tapestry of life-stories from the southern Appalachians. His travels in literature, forest and garden have found their destination in a book newly released by West Virginia Press, called Finding a Clear Path.

Jim teaches composition and literature at Radford University. Until a few years back he lived in Floyd County and tended his blueberry farm here. When he's not teaching (or plugging his new book) he tends a farm and enjoys the rhythms of rural life near Rural Retreat, Virginia.

I plan to bring home a copy of his book next Thursday night. Jim will be speaking at the library in Floyd at 7:00, with readings from his book and discussion of the process of writing it, I'm sure. Also he'll be doing the Friday essay (with a selection from his book, I think) this week at WVTF at 6:55 and 8:55 for those of you who can tune in.

Given the reviews and description of both the voice and subject of his work, I think it is safe to suppose that Jim's book would be well received by Fragments readers. Jim and I come from the same country, and the country in which Jim lives, lives in him and through his writing. He has found his place and his path among these blue ridges. Go walk with him. Read the book.

Posted by fred1st at 9:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

"Why is he coming here?" people wonder, when they learn the governor will be speaking in the Country Store this afternoon.

He's coming because he's a politician. He's marketing for another term; for a future shot at the presidency. Who knows. Smoozing with the commoners is what politicians do. He has been instrumental in getting support for the Crooked Road initiative that includes the town of Floyd. Maybe he is coming for praise. And Richmond is mighty hot this time of year. Why wouldn't he want to come to the mountains? Sorry he picked the very warmest week of the summer.

I don't know exactly why he chose to come here, now, or why he's speaking from the Country Store where there is no air conditioning and not near enough seating for the crowd that's likely to show up. Maybe the setting will give him the excuse to take off his coat, roll up his sleeves and be one of us. A photo-op. And I know who's going to be clicking away at the foot of the podium. Look for gubernatorial pictures at another blog from Floyd tomorrow.

Posted by fred1st at 6:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

It is 5 o'clock in the morning, and it is 72 degrees. I don't think I can remember a night so warm on Goose Creek. Hour after hour, I tossed and turned and watched the shapeless gloom through the open window. Maybe it was the suffocating humidity that accounts for such a poor night's sleep, and maybe, too, it is the cause of the dream. In it, all the Horsemen of the Apocalypse converged in our pasture.

The first horseman carried vile potion in an Erlenmeyer flask, a roiling poison containing plagues that once poured out, would fell man and beast alike.

The second held aloft what looked like a bellows of toxic boiling vapor--fuming, smoky and acrid--that would foul the air and water around the world and lay waste to forest, jungle and desert.

And across the back of the black horse ridden by the third horseman were saddlebags carrying every manner of weapon--a gift called Death that would multiply like loaves and fishes for every hate-filled pack of jackals that would wield it, brother against brother.

The fourth horseman was a wraith, a gangling skeleton who had nothing to give; he came to take. And his horse was called Poverty and Hunger. And he delighted in the plagues of the other horsemen who so well served his end.

In our half-sleep, we are less able to consciously look away from those things we refuse to see in our waking hours.

As a species, we are at a turning point. Perhaps that point represents the contrary of the Enlightenment where we rose from the darkness we seem hell-bent on returning to. Maybe we are witnessing the Industrial Revolution in reverse, where the artificial world built by our magnificent tools is imploding upon us. We are successfully wrestling defeat from the jaws of victory. We have seen the enemy, and he is us. The heart is desparately wicked; who can know it.

But it was just a dream. Or, maybe I was just having one of these. (Click the image.)

Posted by fred1st at 5:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by fred1st at 11:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (1)

The Endangered Species Act is itself endangered and destined for extinction if Republicans have their way. A draft proposal for emasculating the act is being developed by the Bush administration and would automatically take the Endangered Species Act off the books in 2015.

While perhaps in need of gradual evolutionary changes, the current plan seeks to turn down the thermostat on the law formerly known as the Endangered Species Act by degrees so that maybe we won't notice it dying a slow death. In the end, we will have returned back to a happy world where only man (and especially homo corporativum) is free to flourish without dealing with those useless inedible animals and plants that get in the way of office park development, dams and Super Walmarts.

Here (via Bootstrap Analysis where there are additional links) are some of the consequences of the proposed changes:

The proposed bill (nauseatingly titled the "Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act of 2005") would:

• Limit critical habitat to include only areas currently occupied by a listed species, rather than including potential habitat (needed for recovery) or historical range.
• Limit protection for threatened species until they become endangered.
• Lower the current standard of recovery to a standard of mere survival.
• Consider the protection of endangered species as a "taking," requiring the government to compensate land owners (read a rabid editorial on this topic calling the ESA a "reign of terror" by one of Pombo's cronies at the right-wing APC).
• Narrow the reach, potentially exempting many federal actions now subject to review.
• Create many new layers of bureaucracy and requires mountains of redundant paperwork, hobbling the Act's effectiveness with the resultant delays, costs, and potential lawsuits.
• Automatically end the Endangered Species Act in 2015.

Posted by fred1st at 7:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

"A microbe discovered in the deepest, darkest reaches of the Pacific Ocean makes its living in an unlikely way--by photosynthesis. The newly described species, announced in the June 28 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, uses faint light emitted by deep-sea hydrothermal vents to power its metabolism." link

We have only scratched the surface--much less the below-the-surface--of life on the planet. We have not yet graduated from freshman biology and the age of discovery is far from past. And this microbe, found in the hot, sulfurous deep-sea "smokers" is a major find. It uses the weak invisible (to the human eye) light from superhot geysers to power photosynthesis in what we would think of as the darkest possible darkness miles below the ocean surface.

Just as hot electric-stove elements radiate light, black smokers glow dimly as 400-degree fluid emerges. Most of the glow lies in the infrared spectrum, which the microbes can't absorb, but part of the light reaches the edge of the visible spectrum. The microbes appear to eke out a living from that light, which the researchers can see only through night goggles.

What's the so-what? It suggests that photosynthesis as an energy-extracting lifestyle might be much older than previously expected. And makes me think that the astrobiologists might be reformulating the kinds of conditions and places where they would expect to find life of some kind on other planets.

Posted by fred1st at 5:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Here is another Gothic rendering added to the archives. I don't know exactly why I chose to post this particular image from the recently-gathered shots. It came from the road home Friday night as the sun was about to settle behind the edge of the county. Maybe it is a symbol for endings.

Lorianne just drove away home, and the house is eerily quiet again. And our friendship shifts: from virtual, to real, to virtual but real. Online friendships are odd that way.

Now, there is only one dog instead of two. Only one blogger instead of two. The conversation still reverberates from the pine walls.

We never found enough blackberries to pick. The whippoorwill that was part of the feature package that went with the guest room reneged on his contract. Even so, it was a good visit. God speed.

Posted by fred1st at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

A writer writes about the culture, desert, country or creature that he cherishes. He speaks of his desire that it's unique charm and character be preserved. While he praises its beauty and uniqueness, he describes too its fragile qualities that too easily might be lost. In his writing and speaking about it to those he would bring to share his concerns, he uses the name of that special place or special creature--a name that previously, few had known. People become curious. They take their vacations to go add the rare X bird to their life list. They come in droves to camp in the threatened forest of Y Scenic Area that had previously been poorly known and not often visited. And in the end, the writer who cared so much and wrote so passionately and often for his special forest or unique genus of prairie grass has been the cause of the very problem he set out to prevent.

"Fred, if you keep writing about Floyd and its charms, it won't be long before it grows to become a place not like the one you photograph and write about."

I hear something like this admonition with increasing frequency lately. And frankly, it is a conundrum from which I don't know how to escape.

"Write from the heart. Write what you know. Write every day." This is the discipline and mission that launched this blog three years ago. Short of moving to some seedy part of a large and very ugly metropolis, if I write what I know and describe and photograph what I see every day, then I seem doomed to save the village by destroying it.

Do you understand my dilemma? Is this something that arises from your blogging, speaking, writing or photography? And if so, how do you deal with this damned-if-you-do conundrum?

For those who already know about Floyd County and plan to come to visit anyway, this weblog is very visible and often visited to learn what living here is like. The presence of Fragments didn't create the interest or demand. It may, however, reinforce the visitor's desire to come here or reassure them that it is a destination for a night, a weekend, or for retirement years. But the blog doesn't actively encourage businesses to relocate here or strip malls to mushroom on the streets of town--as some of my doomsaying advisors warn.

To the contrary, I often try to point out in these posts that the population of Floyd County is (mostly) very concerned about the prospects of too much growth too fast. We don't have adequate zoning in place to deal with subdivision sprawl. We lack adequate water to meet the needs of a large population and may already be near the maximum sustainable drawdown on the water table. We have a charm that is a property of a certain scale of things, a certain rhythm and pace. Less is more. An influx of demanding urban-flight immigrants is not compatible with the consensus identity of who we are as a town, as a county.

I may have passively become somewhat of an ambassador for Floyd, as are other Floyd County bloggers. But none of us are active promoters or solicitors for real estate or commercial growth in Floyd, even while our blogs may indirectly provide the kind of information about living here that you don't get from a Chamber of Commerce or Parkway brochure. As Floyd County bloggers, we do have a responsibility to show both sides of living in a very rural, isolated and slow-moving Appalachian county. But if we write what we know, we can hardly avoid adding Google hits for the word Floyd. Our words and images do not have advertisement at their root. They may, however, have it as their fruit. And herein lies the rub.

Posted by fred1st at 6:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (1)

More often than not, it was the orientation you see here that followed the invisible lines of pull that make dogs relate to each other in this rostral-to-ventral, locomotive-to-caboose fashion.

Meanwhile, Tsuga is in his own private orbit, oblivious to Reggie. There are ripe black raspberries hanging just at eye-level in the puppy zone! And Reggie takes the rare opportunity to be the sniffor while Tsuga is the sniffee.

And, if you're interested in more of the story of Bloggers Weekend in Floyd, here's Doug's description (and movie) of recent local colors, and Lorianne's tale of, well, tails. Sean and Sarah, thank for joining us!

Posted by fred1st at 6:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

Posted by fred1st at 6:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm typing slowly and quietly so as to let sleeping dogs lie--one upstairs, one down. I don't expect to go anywhere with this post before Tsuga remembers it's time for his breakfast. And then Reggie will hear T-dog at the kibble and our double-dog duoblog day will have begun.

For now, just to tell those interested: Lorianne did arrive yesterday after a night in a tent with a wet dog (who slept just fine, thank you) and the two dogs have been coexisting reasonably well so far, considering that Tsuga is 14 and Reggie is 64.

"Ya wanna play chase, do ya, huh" Tsuga asks, bouncing on springs. "We could go down to the creek and dig in the mud. Come on!" he says, as he cavorts and spins, circling dizzily round and round a totally nonplused Reggie who just wants to find a quiet place to catch a nap. The older dog, in the face of Tsuga's obnoxious persistence merely gives a short whining growl from time to time, which translated means: "Good Grief!" or "Don't you have a leash tied to a tree somewhere?"

The only physical encounter to speak of was after Tsuga found a deep pool in the creek and got thoroughly wet. He should have come with instructions: to engage hyperdrive, just add water. The younger dog's energy level was dangerously high before immersion; after, he was uncontainable. The best analogy I can think of is to imagine what a fully-inflated balloon does when you let it go. And we're not just talking about running. It is a kind of joyous running in which his rear end runs faster than his front end. We call it 'butt-scooting' and it somewhat resembles a dog on a unicycle, if you can imagine. And whilst in this butt-scooting balloon whirling state of jubilant agitation, Tsuga quite throughly ran right over his senior friend, tumbling him arse over teakettle. The good thing about older creatures is they have short memories and generous attitudes, and all was quickly forgiven.

We've gotten through the hours of mutual pee-sniffing and such things that are merely the traditional canine etiquette--a way by which one dog learns who the other dog is. (I'm convinced if dogs had blogs it would make a lot of that particular kind of sharing unnecessary.) Today will be the day for pup pix. This morning, after the sun comes up, there will be butterflies. And Tsuga will chase them obsessively, with his tongue hanging out, wired and on speed. And Reggie will yawn from some shady place: Good grief!

Posted by fred1st at 6:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (2)

To my knowledge, this was Tsuga's first encounter with some kind of large insectoid life form out of the branch. He only wanted to play with it, and they seemed to be getting along just fine as the dog held his new friend lightly in his jaws, trotting across the yard. Then suddenly, YOUCH! The thing has pinchers!

I was just about to compose the first shot when Tsuga slung the Pinching Monster with all his might to free it from his tender cheeks. Zing! It flew straight for the camera and my head. But my lightning-quick reflexes sent my upper torso quickly right. Bam! Tsuga pounced again, pawing, then grabbing it in the front of his mouth only to fling the Thing straight up in the air again.

And in the end, we've answered the question: yes, dog's CAN digest chitin.

Posted by fred1st at 8:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I have ceased to exist. A fluke, I thought, in my first days among the undead. I must be dreaming. I blog, therefore, I must be. I still get up every morning with the insulated cup of the hottest coffee I can brew and sit down to the computer and eject whatever has accumulated in my brain overnight onto the page and off into the ethers, where my extra verbiage is urgently needed. I sometimes get confirmation of my existence from disembodied readers who, along with me, inhabit this imaginary blog-world.

I will confess that from time to time I check on those external references that take our little pulses and blogging temperatures and report on our state of health--in as best a way as can be done given the present, primitive methods of measuring the vitality or morbidity of blogs: number of visits, number of references, number of links. This seems sort of like counting toes, or corpuscles or freckles--all of which can be had by a corpse--as measures of the life force of a blog. But nonetheless, I do look at Technorati and Truth Laid Bear Ecosystem as my fog-on-the-mirror indications that there is breath yet in the weblog from Goose Creek.

Alas, one day last week, there was no fog on the mirror. And I saw a bright light down a long tunnel...

Today, Techorati churns and churns, and finally coughs up this hairball: "The following error was encountered: Zero Sized Reply. Squid did not receive any data for this request." Heck, no wonder I've become one of the disappeared. They've got tentacled mollusks trained to keep track of my blog. They can't even hire high school dropouts.

And after climbing up from the ooze in the ecosystem for three years, I look over in my sidebar, and it says "I'm a ___________ in the TLB Ecosystem." I'm nothing but an empty blank! I rush over to the TLB emergency room. I ask if anyone has seen my lost blog. And over in a dark corner, a sheet has been draped over the slot where Fragments used to live, once on the 500 block. Toe tag says: #30,580. I pull back the sheet and gasp. There is a message: "This blog was not found."

I'm not certain how to take all this, but I'm getting a little paranoid. I'm beginning to rethink those times I used the words "nucular" and "turrists" in a mocking way. I'm truly sorry, sir. I know you have the power to erase me for the good of the country and all, menace as I am. But in spite of all my whining of late, I hadn't really planned to hang it up just yet, sir. No, I would not like to enter the witness relocation program. Yes, I'm really, really happy we're fytin' fer freedum and justice against the Evil Doers. I hate spotted owls. Just don't take away my blog. Pulllleeeeze!

Posted by fred1st at 6:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday was the first day-long rain we've had since the cold noreasters of winter. We have been very dry, and it has been more than a surface event. The creeks, fed by springs, have been in decline now for months. But yesterday, the fringes of Cindy's wet petticoats left us enough moisture at least to settle the dust and soak the garden. The blackberries, if Thursday's rain wasn't timed a week too late, will make enough fruit for jams, cobblers and cereal topping. The sound of rain, when it comes again, is sweet to hear--the sizzle of fine spray against the pasture grass that nods heavy-wet; the plop of fat drops from leaf tips to puddles along the road under the maples; the ping and splat against the metal roof and gargle outside the corner walls as it trickles in the downspout, bound again for Goose Creek that has regained its voice, full and happy.

Floyd is a well-watered county in one sense. The terrain of dissected ridges and its gentle contours providesfor lots of spring-fed surface water to course along the edge of meadows and through winding wooded valleys. All of it will find its way either to the Little River and from there to the Gulf of Mexico; or, only in our northeast section of the county, into the James River headed for the Atlantic. Being on a plateau, no water flows in to water the county. What we have, we give away to the New, to the James.

Three years ago, we had a drought the likes of which even the oldest of our neighbors had never seen before. Goose Creek became a sad, utterly dry creek bed. Almost a third of the wells in the county went dry and never came back. And in spite of this county's lush lace of creeks on the surface, it is our deep water that limits our potential to water our livestock, service our home needs for hundreds of gallons per day and provide essential services to industry that would locate here.

To our north, the Great Valley (known as the Ridge and Valley physiographic province to the geologists) is formed over ancient sediment. Limestone caverns form a vast reservoir of water storage to supply the needs of southwest Virginia's densest settlement along the I-81 corridor. Floyd County is squarely over the ancient heart of the Appalachians--igneous rock that bears water only in cracks and crevices into which our wells must tap like long straws. Already those straws must go hundreds of feet deep to find water.

Droughts like the one we've had deplete the limited reserves of water in those dark fractures. And the impact of doubling or trebling our population of residents and industry in this county is something we need to understand, and count the cost. In the end, the most clearly-understood limit to population growth will be water. Housing starts, subdivision permits and kinds of industry we chose to woe here must all keep this all-important limiting factor in mind. Our pleasant views may seem endless. Our water supply is not.

Posted by fred1st at 5:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Somehow, the joy of blogging has left the building. Not that the crisis and loss of life in London is somehow different or more tragic than the same kind of carnage that happens in a dozen places across the planet every day now. Maybe it is that we share a language and a history that makes an attack on England perhaps a bit more sickening than when the same senseless hatred happens to a culture with which we have less in common. But life goes on. And if we are frozen in fear and helplessness by this kind of cowardly act, then the perpetrators have the victory.

No pictures to post today (other than the Flickr link below.) However, I do recommend that you stop by Jonathan Kingston's site and check out some of his images. Among all his worldmap dots, there's one on tiny little Floyd. You might want to see at least that gallery. But don't stop there. This young man has been in a wider world than most twice his age, and he knows his way around a lens. Check out some of his mountain climbing and underwater photography as well.

Back in March and April, I had the opportunity to talk a good bit with Jonathan about his Floyd photographic project. I learned a lot of photography by osmosis in the process and look forward to crossing paths with him over the coming years, if and when he returns to his family home in southwest Virginia.

(Here's a picture of him taking a sunset shot on the Buffalo. Funny. He looks like he weighs 300 pounds, but it was the fierce wind filling his jacket that gives him a portly look. This one's a bit more flattering.)

Posted by fred1st at 12:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

He says yes. She says no. I'd like to see healthier aging become the norm, but mostly, that seems to boil down to lifestyle changes (which are well within our individual and collective control) and genes (which may someday (soon?) be largely within the control of science but near the bounds of ethics.)

I passed this one along to Ronni Bennett's Crabby Old Lady--the ruling Elder against agism and one not likely to take kindly to being defeated by somebody's misplaced quest for perpetual youth.

Posted by fred1st at 7:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Floyd in the news: Finally, this AP story someone forwarded to me out of the Richmond paper the other day is available in a web link. I've heard some say they regret Floyd is portrayed as such a quirky backwater in this piece. I don't think I agree. We have our peculiarities. We even have our eccentrics. But hey: given what's become of NORMAL lately, do YOU want to be centric?

Read the piece in USA Today.

Posted by fred1st at 6:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

We've just proven our technology could nail a comet hurdling through space at thousands of miles per hour. This may prove an easier task than stopping a hundred thousand geese flying at 20. And yet geese and other migratory birds may be the future feathered vectors of the feared flu pandemic.

Already, thousands of birds are reported dead in China. Six thousand I think is the number being reported FOUND dead. The actual number is likely one or two orders of magnitude greater than this. (How often do YOU see a dead bird vs the number that must die within your neighborhood each day?) H5N1 (though not the exact variant killing humans in Viet Nam, I think) has crossed species lines among domestic poultry, and now is in unfenced, unpinned wild birds who soon will be getting restless to move south. And it only takes one. Here, perhaps, is the weakest link in the chain.

The good news is that, from what I read, the present strain in wild geese in China is fairly lethal to the birds, and dead birds don't fly. When the virus' lethality drops, it becomes a greater problem. When, as already exists in domestic ducks, the bird can carry and shed the virus without any symptoms at all, that's a real clunker.

WHO's answer to the spread of H5N1 is to change the practices of backyard subsistence farmers across all of southeast asia. Change the way commerce has been done in 'wet markets' in thousands of villages large and small across the same area. Vaccinate hundreds of millions of chickens (many raised in high-density 'efficient' housing thanks to western poultry science's high productivity methods) who will only live a very short while at best anyway, may still harbor the virus if used as meat, and serve as a further selection pressure toward increased viral resistance.

This is the environmental-medical-political-social challenge of the coming decade: to work together while there is still time--and thankfully, there may yet be--to limit this pathogen to its current distribution, and then over the next ten years, refine and implement the WHO recommendations. The infected nations need an infusion of science and dollars. And the rich nations toss some pocket change on the table and walk away.

The affected nations have asked for $100 million in aid and expertise over the next three CRITICAL years. The west has offered chicken feed. But it is the short-sightedness of the US that disgusts me most. First, to offer pocket lint toward this mammoth problem is an isolationist let-them-eat-cake public health decision that makes no sense if we value every individual human life, born or unborn, as we say we do. And second, if for no other reason than our predominant economic raison d'etre--national economic health--we should see the wisdom of investing a little now to save a thousand times that investment from the economic losses that could be fatal to our economy and the world's if this pathogen is not contained.

Meanwhile, the US is spending roughly $177 million dollars (that's 1.7 times the three-year request from Asian Flu Virus nations) EVERY DAY in Iraq. Where are our priorities? Anyone? Anyone?

Once upon a time, a myopic villager would have been eaten by the bears. Maybe natural selection, Malthus-style, is upon us. Pass the pâté de foie gras, McGoo.

Yes, this is a rant. I think the 'facts' are correct. I know for certain about the attitude. It's all mine.

Posted by fred1st at 5:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

I am a recent convert to Bloglines. I've almost completely abandoned FeedDemon, since. I know next to nothing about either other than how to add to or change feeds.

What I wish I knew is how to change my feed 1) make my images show up like they do on, say, Blue Ridge Blog; and 2) how to show full entries rather than just two-line clips.

This can't be that hard, even for a broken-down, bird-watching, camera-toting physical therapist gone rural. Any help appreciated.

Posted by fred1st at 11:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

I once gained some discipline in meditation: the warding off of intrusive flashes of internal noise, that static which constantly pulses through our minds so that very rarely are we truly at rest. "Not that" I would say with each mental invasion, each niggling obligation, plan, street noise or rumination. And in this way, I would ward off distractions and train my mind to focus.

I think there is something of that meditative mindfulness in my love of detail in nature. In my concentration through the lens on the form, color, texture and depth of some small diorama in the grass, I put off the external world's concerns. A world that is too much with us.

"Not that; not that." This. This here, this now, this beauty. Beauty is truth, and truth beauty. And, for a moment, it is all I need to know.

Posted by fred1st at 7:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

How could I not be fired up and in the mood to write! This is the third day in a row that has begun well before first light with a flashlight in one hand, a full can of Raid Hornet Spray in the other.

In my black nylon jacket with the turnup collar, my camo cap with the earflaps turned down, and far more adrenalin than coffee is capable of, I've done battle with yellow jackets (building under the bottom row of siding, just over the cellar door) and hornets (with their paper nest bulging up between the floorboards of the upstairs porch.) And it is this second one whose elimination now is time-critical: we have a blogger-guest who will need the veranda and rockers on that porch for her on-the-road blog posts.

This is the same blogger who, when first offered the opportunity to meet, was warned by her non-blogging friends to beware: I might be an axe murder. (See picture, scroll down post.) "But I know this guy. I've even watched his dog Tsuga grow up from a mere pup!" she reassured them.

Well, this weekend Lorianne (of Hoarded Ordinaries) and her very own pup, Reggie, will be visiting Floyd. There'll be blog material aplenty just in the two dogs (we hope) romping and playing together. And while she's here, we'll take in the sites, and also have lots of time to talk, walk and of course, blog about the weekend. This will truly be a culture shift for Lorianne; or maybe less a shift in culture than in rhythm and scale. We like to think of Floyd as offering (my term) Progressive Living in the Slow Lane. I'll be interested in her outsider impressions from the field versus her feel for Floyd she's gathered from being a Fragments friend now for more than two years.

I think you can count on seeing a different side of Floyd, seen through the LA pencam and by way of her perceptive participant-observer place blogging style of which she is master. Or is that mistress?

So expect pictures of pups, barns, and creeks, and of course, sweeping panoramas of the skyline of the Greater Floyd Metropolitan Area. Should be a fun weekend! And I'm wondering if we won't be starting a whole new trend in this blogger connectedness thing: The Goose Creek BloggerPet Meetup! This IS GONNA BE BIG! Technorati, here we come!

Posted by fred1st at 5:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

There was a time I didn't write. But even then, I often had streams of thought with a point of view, a few clever phrases that would make me chuckle to myself. Sometimes my rambling daydreams would even reach a pithy conclusion, this usually occurring while driving to work inspired and fresh in the mornings. Three years ago, those personal morning reflections became tentative public daily blog posts. I was still talking to myself, mostly, but words became visible and permanently 'stuck' on the page. I would need to take more care in how I laid out my thoughts, even if it was only I who would read them. I began to write with purpose and discipline, approaching the craft like any other skill slowly to be attained, haltingly, word by word, line by line.

Then along came a few readers--strangers who could know me only through the words on the page when I pushed the amazing SEND button. I wrote with great care about the things that were most dear to me at at time of personal struggle. I wrote with a strong sense of purpose--far more often than I do now--those first couple of years of blogging. More readers came, and passed on, and new ones came to stay for a while before they too moved on. But the process of writing and of being read was a profoundly meaningful and gratifying part of my daily life then. It was a daily ritual of long, often deep conversations with myself, but also included building relationships with those who read with empathy and appreciation.

Here I am three years and a half-million words later. Blogs proliferate by the tens of thousands each day. Only a small percentage of them will I ever visit and an even smaller number will I find worth returning to. I can barely stay caught up with the fifty blogs I have on my rss reader, and my past and present visitors have the same problem of diluted attention and fragmented time per blog.

Two curves pass each other going in opposite directions: the blog curve rises sharply leaving thousands of pages and millions of new words every day. The depth of reading and dwell-time per blog follows the opposite curve, growing incrementally smaller and smaller as the blogosphere swells to bursting. And in the process, I find I'm less compelled to write with any depth (to the limited extent of my abilities) knowing that blog reading has largely been reduced to information flow. And I even am starting to feel a bit guilty of contributing to the effluvium of a river of words that flow into the swelling sea of text that threatens to submerge us in too much data.

And so, I find in my evolution as a blogger, E pluribus unum, I have become an insipid and not terribly inspired writer and rely much more in the past year on visual quickies: here'a a thousand words, 450 pixels across. The dog, a flower, a landscape. See ya. But then, who wants to read several thousand words on screen, even if they are exceptional and wonderfully relevant to our interests and needs? Are we forced into superficiality and brevity by the very nature of the medium? Is it enough to portray a voice, style and persona with a few words as possible and save the pithy stuff for...for what? How and where does one get read deeply?

If I am going to continue to think of writing as an important part of my life, I must find a purpose and a practice of writing WITHOUT an audience--at least not an instantaneous one to be had in daily self-publication of a blog. I started writing regularly because there were readers. I gained some discipline (and many lasting connections with wonderful people) in the early blog years. The blog remains an wonderful introduction to interesting new people and is unparalleled as a "calling card" that continues to open new doors. But while the blog will continue, I've come to a juncture where writing needs to be something other than blogging. I frankly don't know how to begin to do this.

As a reader, how do I limit my reading quantity so that my reading quality gives the writer the attention their words deserve? How can I reclaim reading from the growing tendency to merely input text? What are we to do with ten million talking heads? Can this be turned to a force for good, or are we becoming more and more an electronic text-generating Tower of Babel? Why become a skilled writer if there are no skilled readers anymore?

Suggested reading on these matters: David St. Lawrence's suggestion of a possible solution. And Ed at BlorkBlog (via Cassandra Pages) discusses many of these readership issues in a far less rambling way than my stream-of-semiconsciousness here. The matter bears discussion.

Posted by fred1st at 7:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (27) | TrackBacks (0)

The first Wine Down the Music Trail scored two days of stormless weather, and I would think the organizers would be happy with the turnout of several thousand on Saturday. Whether there was as much buying as tasting, I can't say. We came home empty-handed, preferring the finer wines (that Ann calls Adult KoolAid) with the screw-off cap, and did not get our money's-worth of teaspoon-tastes from the dozen or so wineries represented. Peaks of Otter Winery had some very interesting fruity flavors, especially an apple-cinnamon that tempted me. But I've lived this long and not spent that much for a bottle of wine; why break a perfect record like that?

Frankly, it was often difficult to get a tasting because of the folks who parked their keisters at the bar and went through every one of the eight to ten offerings once; then couldn't quite make up their minds and went through them just once more; or maybe a third. For all that sipping, it was a well-behaved crowd. I didn't see that many folks I recognized from Floyd diluted among the Roanokers and North Carolinians who came upmountain for the event.

Yes, I carried my camera and looked forward to shooting in this very different setting from our field of grass. I did get some fair shots of some of the performers. Scott Perry is a local blues guitarist and vocalist who performed at one of several side-stages during the day. And the Hurrah Cloggers from Blacksburg gave a high-energy performance that would have had me rubber-legged after the first of a half-dozen rollicking, stomping dances. You can see my gallery of their act here.

And now it won't be but a few weeks that the same great site and main stage will host FloydFest 2005. Y'all come on up and join the fun.

Posted by fred1st at 5:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

A combination of conditions gives me some concern for the future well-being of Appalachian communities.

1) Appalachia as a whole still suffers from below-average poverty, education and jobs.

2) Though raped and pillaged by the extractive industries and patently declared a national sacrifice area more than a hundred years ago (and ever since), Appalachia remains rich in resources and relatively powerless, politically, to ward off future onslaughts for 'takings' of oil, gas, coal, and forest products. And there is renewed interest in raping and pillaging.

3) The recent supreme court ruling that lowers the bar on eminent domain and the 'greater good.'

First, the coal and gas industries will offer jobs, revenues and "a place for your young people to find work at home." If they fail in bringing the people on board with the carrot, there's always the stick. "Your nation needs the energy and wood for national s'kurty reasons. Ta fite turrists." End of story.

Posted by fred1st at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I usually blog lite on Mondays. Most bloggers are weekday readers. I'm a weekend poster. So Monday is a chance for you to catch up on what might have appeared on Fragments while you were out enjoying a weekend in real life-as-we-know-it. But I have a long list of things I want to "tell you" today and could easily fritter the morning away at the keyboard. Hello. Anyone? Oh heck, I forgot. You're not at work today reading your blogrolls. So this week, Tuesday is Monday. Sheesh!

Posted by fred1st at 7:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Our new neighbors want to use the old barn, and wanted to be sure that several tons of white pine didn't come crashing down on their goats, rabbits and doves they would house there. The tree had to come down, and it would not be an easy task. Its trunk was a good two feet in diameter and the tree probably 80 feet tall. It grew from a base up the bank not ten feet from the barn, its branches hung to the very middle of the barn's metal roof, and it was leaning onimously toward the corner of the old but usable structure.

We went over on Saturday morning to watch it come down. The hard work of studying the tree's weight and structure had been done. The even harder task of getting a rope up into it some sixty feet was done on Friday. Our treeman and friend Craig was almost certain that, with two ropes tied to two trucks, the tree would fall precisely down the narrow pasture, missing the corner of the barn. But you have to be prepared for a premature crack as your cutting the felling notch and for odd things that happen to the weight, even from a soaking of overnight dew or the slightest breeze, or a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil. Who knows?

Short story: it fell exactly as planned. The only crisis was that it snapped a hundred-dollar rope as it fell.

P and K will probably have a local sawmiller bring his portable saw in and plank it into quite a few hundred board feet of green lumber, with which they will give the barn a new hide of pine. So like our walnut tree cutting in the spring, getting the tree down will cost, but it will also bear products for use or barter.

Posted by fred1st at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

So much of the beauty I see in nature is truly in my own eye, in the small part or very particular pattern I see in the jumble of shapes and edges. This is especially true when it comes to plants, and most recently, the feral grasses along the edges of our pasture.

I want to explore a more circumscribed look at the natural world--one in which color and depth play less of a part, design and pattern, more. I can see, ultimately, a nice group of three or four framed images that all "say" something similar about the details too often missed when we see the forest and look right past the trees (or the individual grass blades and flowers.)

I'm curious. Can anybody tell me what kind of common roadside plant grows in the image here? (HINT: look at the faint traces of leaves in the larger image.)

Posted by fred1st at 7:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

The repair work on the barn foundation is almost complete. The large doors that barely hang on very old hinges will be put on a sliding track. After that, we'll do some much-needed spring cleaning inside, and consider how we might use the space for some kind of livestock. Small, unhooved livestock. Ann thinks chickens. I'm not so sure.

We don't eat that many eggs, and at least now, there are people at church and at Ann's work that have their surplus, organic, free-range eggs available for very reasonable prices. Yes, it might be nice to be self-sufficient for our own meat, but under the current public health uncertainties, I wonder if poultry is the way to go. As remote as we are, I suppose the chances of having an H5N1-infected flock is unlikely. But there is the unknown of the role migrating wild birds play in transmission.

So, yesterday, I asked our new rabbit-owner blogger-neighbor Polly if she had a source of breeder rabbits.

"Well, yes" she said, "but you ought to know: there's a terrible disease in rabbits that stands to wipe out the entire lot of them." Later, she sent me a link to rabbit hemorrhagic disease (previously called Rabbit Calicivirus.)

It turns out, this is an environmental solution that, as often happens, has brought its own residual problems down the road. The virus in this disease is the same one introduced into the rabbit population explosion in Australia back when they formed a "gray blanket" so thick that, when fences were put up to stop their spread, they piled up so deep at the fences that others walked over their backs to step across the fence. Turns out, the disease organism is now spreading in rabbitries in the US. Apparently, it only infects the European rabbits, not the native American yard bunny.

Well. Maybe meat rabbits isn't the way to go after all.

C, there to cut a whopper pine tree, came into the conversation on animal husbandry, thinking we were talking how to make a profit with animal rearing. "Raise mice" he said. And he described how his wife had made a 75% profit selling mice mostly to pet stores who sell them for snake food. He had it down to a fine art, and sold thousands every month. And this got the wheels to turning...

If Farley Mowat can live on them (described in Never Cry Wolf), it's something to consider.

"Floyd County's first MouseMeat Farm opens on Goose Creek" will read the headlines. "Recipes offered with every purchase."

Mouse Kabobs. Mouse Quiche. Rodent Rump Roastlets. Mickey Burgers. Mouse Meatballs. The possibilities are endless. I think I may have found our niche in the local economy, our key to financial and nutritional independence. Man, ya gotta think outside the box. Pass the ketchup.

Posted by fred1st at 6:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

It occurred to me the other day what a friendly place the world has become since I started blogging. I have friends now on continents I hadn't really noticed much until people made geography come alive. Wouldn't it be nice if bloggers began to post the images of their part of the world, just the way I would see it if I was flying over in an airplane? I would get a sense for they lay of their land and how it might shape their coming and going, their access to good restaurants, or (in our case) their isolation from urban centers, movie theatres and Chinese takeout.

So, I'm going to put up a permanent link on my sidebar that says "My Place on the Planet". It will contain a link to my Google Earth image of home from 30 thousand feet. Here, you can see the shape of home.

Note the Great Valley of western migration in the upper left, with Roanoke to left of center. Smith Mountain Lake is in the upper right corner. The Blue Ridge Parkway is off-image to the right, and the town of Floyd would be below the lower border by a bit. The neatest thing is, with Google Earth, from my place, if I type in your hometown, the program will "fly" between the two places, viewing all the topography inbetween.

I'm usually a day late and a dollar short, so somebody probably already has something like this up and running. But if you haven't run across this idea, think about it--especially you "place bloggers" out there. It will be a great link between bloggers to know where each other is from, at least from a visible, geographic point of view, for starters.

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

**Greatest Show Not On Earth** In the wee hours of the morning on July 4 (1:52 a.m. in New York) our curious bipedal tool-using species will boldly go where only imaginations went in the scifi of my youth. In NASA's Deep Impact mission, a refrigerator-sized "impactor" will be released from the flyby craft flying at 6.3 miles per second (that's NY to LA in 6.5 minutes!) The released 'bullet' will steer its way toward the surface of a comet about half the size of Manhattan, creating a crater that maybe be as deep and wide as a football stadium. When the bullet hits the target, you can be watching! And if I can figure out how to set an alarm so it wakes me up, but lets Sleeping Beauty sleep, I'll be there.

**Copyright** Someone asked me yesterday what I thought about copyrighting digital images shown on the web. Good question. I haven't really settled on what to do here. Mostly, I figure if the images are small and low resolution, they won't print or be useful for profit (they haven't exactly brought me riches!) and if somebody wants to use them for a grainy or tiled screen saver, fine. I know my "real photographer" friends do batch-copyright their images (although Marie says don't bother if images are Photoshopped, I guess meaning she registers RAW files only.) It costs $35 (can't remember how many you can batch at one time) and the forms are available from the patent office; we've used them to copyright our son's music several times.) Any thots on this matter of copyrighting digital 'for the web' images (or others?)

**Deerly Beloved** No more deer invasions recently (knock on wood.) Maybe the peanut butter lures on the electric fence did the trick. Maybe it was the human scent offerings whizzed near (but oh please, never ON) the electric fence. Maybe it's just dumb luck that the tomatos and peppers have survived the early cropping by deer teeth and now have flowers on them (will they fruit before frost now?) The Buttercrunch lettuce is heading, beans are vining, even while seeing their first Mexican Bean Banditos; and Hubbard squash starting to vine its way across the bare soil, soon to become the dominant green where just weeks ago, there was an empty canvas of earthy brown. I bought some Rotenone spray from Seven Springs, one of the local organic farms. Asta lavista, beetles.

**Baccanalia** Tomorrow, we'll be Wining Down the Trail...a wine and music, arts and crafts event to be held at the Floyd Fest property on the parkway. Of course we were obliged to go: the featured musicians (from 4 to 6) will be Goose Creek Symphony. We figured it was so nice of them to name their band after our little part of Floyd County, how could we not go show our support and appreciation.

**Do I Have a Deal For You!** Please check my inventory. You're bound to see something here you like. Just send me the cash. I'll take care of everything. Trust me. (Gold cap glints from his toothy unctuous smile.)

Posted by fred1st at 7:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by fred1st at 6:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)