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Just a quick mention that Cafe Spinless is now serving all your invertebrate favorites. Drop by and order something tasty. This installment of Circus of the Spineless has a little of everything--except vertebrae, of course. There's even a Fragments post of the butterfly flavor.
I had a few minutes on Saturday to swing over to the Blue Ridge Parkway--a route that was once my way to work and town. I got to know it well those two years we lived on Walnut Knob, and was able to see the thirteen mile stretch of the 400 mile parkway change through the seasons. I remember lamenting how much of the road's right-of-way had been taken over by Tree of Heaven, an oriental invasive crowding out native trees until there is ijn places nothing but an unbroken stand of this unlovely tree.
In just the short while since we drove the parkway regularly, it has been invaded by yet another oriental import: Oriental Bittersweet. I was shocked to see its orange fruits hanging in bush after shrub after tree for miles of the Scenic Hiway. Once established, the vine can grow until it's trunk is four inches thick, and it is almost impossible to eradicate. Kudzu with fancy fruits.
Here's one more instance where a 'good idea' horticulturally (useful in dried arrangements) has turned out to be a bad idea, environmentally. This plant was imported by somebody who like its looks. (Kudzu was imported ostensibly as fodder for cattle; multiflora rose as a 'living fence.') And it has now joined the list of 'invasive plants' defined as follows:
"Plants that have, or are likely to spread into native or minimally managed plant systems, and cause economic or environmental harm by developing self-sustaining populations and becoming dominant or disruptive to those systems".
A mere inconvenience, a minor cosmetic blemish on the countryside where it makes no difference, you might say. Well, I'll post later this week about an 'invasive' that may be changing the fate of the planet. Stay tuned!
...a Fragments retrospective from a year ago tomorrow, and an image I called Burning Bush.
"Oh, these vast, calm measureless mountain days, inciting at once to work and rest! Days in whose light every thing seems equally divine, opening a thousand windows to show us God." --John Muir
John Muir's nature-religious ecstacies are impossible for some to understand. And those of us who do are reluctant, perhaps, to confess it. But I have been to the mountaintop.
And from the mountain crest yesterday, came the strongest sense of metaphor--the copper sun as God's eye peering from behind me, over the edge of earth. He was watching. And I was known by the Light.
I will show you images this week of both the dawn and the dusk, from misty creek's edge to the rim of the Blue Ridge--from yesterday: a day of immersion in the Range of Light.
"These blessed mountains are so compactly filled with God's beauty, no petty personal hope or experience has room to be ... the whole body seems to feel beauty when exposed to it as it feels the campfire or sunshine, entering not by the eyes alone, but equally through all one's flesh like radiant heat, making a passionate ecstatic pleasure-glow not explainable. One's body then seems homogeneous throughout, sound as a crystal." --John Muir
I gave myself a lecture this morning: "You have far too much to do" I said most firmly, "and should limit your computer time today to the finishing of the test and labs for next week. Nobody much visits blogs on the weekend anyway, so give Fragments a rest." I wasn't happy, but agreed that this was a prudent plan.
But my feedreader button was just sitting there, unclicked for almost a week. I started at the top of the alphabet and darn if Marie Freeman didn't tempt me with her "leaf that looks like my dog" picture. Not that I have anything comparable--just a couple of frost-rimmed leaves here of no particular appeal at this resolution. Something has taken a big bite out of one of them. But through the microscope, every one of those little spots would appear as a teeming city of fungal threads already deconstructing last summer's solar panels, destined for complete recycling. It is a picture of compost hanging on the twig. By now, these leaves photographed a few days ago have hit the ground running. Make that rotting.
A little color. A short period of fading followed by shriveling. Abcission, then a short lilting tumble to cold earth, and a quick disappearing act. Who knows?
Released by fungi and bacteria as CO2, through the alchemy of photosynthesis, the carbons from this leaf could become part of next year's beans from our garden. I will eat the beans. They will become, momentarily, a part of me.
In a process called "cellular respiration" I will strip the energy from the bean starches that have taken up the leaf carbon. The term is misleading, but sparks my imagination. I can just see tiny cells exhaling a weeny puff of cell breath. Out in that puff go the carbons that once were leaf, then were bean, then were me. They travel in my blood like little commuters, holding on til then next stop:
The Lungs. End of the line. Watch your step as you exit, please. Off goes a carbon--a particle of soot--turned to gas, lofting, sailing, coming your way in the passing cold front.
Maybe this leaf that once was me will become a part of thee.
I remember as a novice woodburner many years ago, I asked my older, wiser, farm-raised neighbor what was the best kind of wood to use for my new woodstove. I'll never forget his answer, drawn from common knowledge from the experience of his peers.
"The best kind of wood to burn is the kind of wood you have plenty of" he said. And that made good sense to me. It was a kind of 'love the one you're with' answer, but there is a pragmatic wisdom here nontheless.
What is the best kind of picture to take? The ones you have plenty of.
Our valley provides opportunities for backlighting, and so I take advantage of that with spiderwebs, leaves or flowers that get full sun while the ridge behind them is still in deep shadow. It is one of the best ways to throw the subject full into the viewer's focus, leaving the background simple and dark, painting with light on a black velvet canvas.
Love the one you're with. This sumac wasn't the best shaped or the brightest colored specimen I've seen lately. But it was growing along the old logging road we walk several times a day, there ready for a portrait with its leaves outlined in frost just for that instant before the sun turned crystals to vapor.
I sometimes wish we lived back on Walnut Knob, with the vistas of the far-off horizon south into Carolina. But I am fully prepared to love the one I'm with. I just need to take the time to schedule more morning encounters, and carry my camera with me on our dates, just in case I get lucky.
Hard frost last night. Sky is pinking up. The reflection of the woodstove flame casts an orange animation on the windowpane against the utter calm, cold landscape on the other side of the glass. The barn roof is white, the butterfly bush limp with ice crystals fringing every curled and faded leaf.
How womblike--the warmth of the stove, the familiar touch of chair, desk, this old flannel shirt I wear as if it were my birth skin. I love this place, so constant, so fully known and at hand. This place: this room, this house, this valley, these mountains, this time in our lives. Especially now, as winter creeps closer and the days grow short, I appreciate the roof overhead, the full stacks of firewood, the canning in the basement and slow moments like this to see what too often I take for granted.
We can't know what's coming around the bend in the road. But it's been a very nice road, that's for sure.
I will be 'cleaning up nice' in a few weeks, best man for a very good friend's wedding. I'll be all scrubbed and polished--ya better look fast. (Pictures, I'm sure, will be posted.) My friend the groom has asked that I select a few Bible verses about marriage and add some appropriate commentary. I've started thinking about this, and so far, this is what I've come up with:
"With such nagging she prodded him day after day until he was tired to death."
Judges 16:16 New International Version (NIV)
Just kidding. Honey. Really, SugarLump.
I totally don't get how THIS kind of figure is generated. However, it would seem to suggest I quit my day job. Except I think this number is in Confederate dollars.
Let's see: what else is in the grab bag this morning: Here's Mr. Angry -- Mrs. Calm. You have to squint your eyes a little to make the transformation happen. Neat. I'm going to try this next time I violate the rules around the Ponderosa and Mrs. Angry is grimacing down at me. ((Squint! Mrs. Nice!))
Lose your way in this world, did ya? Compass gone wonky of a sudden? Regain your bearings cartographically: here's a very nicely done page of nested world maps. I put it in my Google Earth folder so I can find nearby cities to zoom in on near geological or biological features. Mark this one HANDY.
Should I worry? For the past two days, I haven't been able to double click and close Google News or Google Mail in Firefox. All other tabs will close as they should. Is Mr. Google trying to prepare me for the next big step: All Google All The Time? Weird.
And, before I slink off to my rock pile and start making gravel, here (for those of you of a certain age and dementedness) is a gallery of Mad Magazine covers through the ages. And in keeping with my previous post in which I told myself to chill, just let me add "What? Me Worry?"
A runner who doesn't run. A chef who doesn't cook. A writer who doesn't write.
What kind of mental state do you think they'd be in if for two months they didn't. Run. Cook. Write?
I just uploaded this image to a folder I started at the first of October. In the larger directory, there are well over a thousand images I've posted to Fragments in the past. Since starting this newest folder, there are fewer than 10. A photographer who takes no pictures. Is it any wonder I'm cut off from my air supply, my elan vital?
I've been called to task by more than one reader-friend in the past few weeks: Fred, lighten up. Get out more.
Good advice. And I will. And my center will return to the ground under my feet and the blessed now. I'll find remnants of beauty even in the bleak midwinter and words to remind me of their feel, and share it with any willing to walk with me.
But I am deeply disturbed by what is happening beyond Middle Earth where we live. My children are in the shadow or Mordor, and I want that damned ring destroyed. Oh, sorry, got lost in my own early morning fantasies. But you understand: we have to talk about this darned elephant. And more than that, we have to act.
My writing about environmental and health issues is a way of pacing the floor, muttering to myself, drawing up and then scrapping contingencies that should involve ME. Given these global issues so well supported by information so easily attainable by anyone, given an audience of kindred, quasi-kindred and even alien spirits among Fragments readers who will share a common fate, should they not pace the floor with me here, help me in my reflections and conundrums, and find their own purpose in what remains of our time to be agents of positive change here?
Just standing on the banks of Goose Creek for a moment yesterday has given me solace. There is always something about the flow, reflection, motion, and the sound of water that is calming and reassuring. Goose Creek is our surf, our shore, our riverway. We are mostly water, on a water planet. No mystery, then, we find it satisfies our thirst.
A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature. ~Henry David Thoreau
The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out. ~Annie Dillard
For whatever we lose (like a you or a me),
It's always our self we find in the sea. ~e.e. cummings
He that will learn to pray, let him go to sea. ~George Herbert
In less than a month, I'll possibly be looking for another place to store (and from which, perhaps to sell) my images. They've been here for over a year, and before I decide to recommit for another, I want to look at my options.
What I'd appreciate now is any suggestions on places you either store images, or view them, or successfully find and purchase or sell pictures on the net. Display properties for blogging purposes is also important. I'd like to be able to link to somewhat larger images (at least 800 pixels on the largest dimension) especially as many of my images are landscapes; landscapes lose a lot with the necessary reduction for blog post and need larger display size available by link to show their best.
So, if you have ideas, I'm needing to decide soon.
Ann made me a cross-stitch when we were still in school at Auburn. It was just a snip from a full verse in Ecclesiastes which reads
For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity.
On it were thread outlines of a giraffe, a butterfly, a salamander, and a bird. We moved that wall hanging from house to house over time, and I haven't seen it in years. But I think about it often.
The beasts now are both cause and victim of suffering. We make them sick with our chemicals and destroy the places they've lived since long before we became the dominant life form on the planet; they share their diseases with us now in a sad kind of symmetry.
BBC NEWS--Science/Nature--Animals 'hit by global warming'
"Nature has always had to adapt to changing climate conditions.
Indeed, it is one of the driving forces behind the process of evolution which has produced the staggering variety of life on Earth.
But the fear is that the changes currently under way are simply too rapid for species to evolve new strategies for survival."
Their options are also being narrowed by the rapid conversion of ecosystems such as the draining of wetlands, felling of forests and development of coastlines - so if their existing habitats are hit by global warming, there is literally no place to go.
Somebody came to the blog a while back having googled my name. This is not all that uncommon, but since I hadn't done a 'vanity search' on FFF or on my name (FF) in a long time, I wondered what I might find in the shadowy nooks of the web. And sure enough, looky here: a short story (true personal tale) I sent in over a year ago to an online e-zine: The DeadMule School of Southern Literature. Prestigious name, eh? I never got word it was online. Wouldn't have known, except for this serendipitous vanity search.
So, as fate has dumped this little autobiographical bit (called Child Evangelism) in my lap in this fortuitous way, I thought I'd pass it along. If you chose to read this 'creative non-fiction', you hear the author's voice in your head sounding in its southern-ness not entirely unlike that of the young Forest Gump--though I owned that voice long before Mr. Hanks impersonated it.
Also, with a submission to Dead Mule, a declaration of the author's "southern-ness" was required. You can read that, too, if'n your'a mind ta. I pasted it below. Read more>>
My first memories are southern smells: of wisteria and zoysia grass and summer ozone lifting from warm sidewalks after a storm. On those sultry days the drone of cicadas rose and fell. The screened-in porch glider squeaked back and forth and I drifted off to sleep, my head in momma’s lap and feet in grammaw's. We went barefoot from March to November and pretty well lived in our bathing suits in Birmingham, the Magic City. We caught lightning bugs in mayonnaise jars months before they show up here in the "south" of Virginia. Every summer night, we played outside until supper was ready–-the evening meal: something fried with ketchup as one of the vegetables–-then went back out 'til way past dark, hiding and seeking, peeing our pants with the excitement of summer nights. My internal rhythms will always be southern, and for that, I am thankful, even though some of the external markers of my heritage have faded.
I lost my drawl when I went to college (Auburn) and mixed with a more cosmopolitan crowd. I moved from the deepest south because–-I have to confess–-I couldn't stand the heat, so I got out of the kitchen. After grad school we moved to the mountains of southwest Virginia where we have real winters and cool summers and not so many biggie-sized mosquitoes. Now, I think of myself primarily as "mountain southern" because my preference is for higher and cooler places, and for maybe not quite so many rank and file pine trees that grow in rows acre after acre–-the 'new industrial forest-as-commodity disturbs me. But I miss the sweetgum and winter-blooming wildflowers. Sometimes I even long to smell the Kudzu, and this is a sure sign I've not lost my southern upbringing.
The house we live in now (in rural southwest Virginia) had two outhouses (his and hers, I suppose) the first time we saw it. We have a porch dog and a porch cat. In the corner of the county where we live (there's a single traffic light in the entire county) there are six people per square mile and the pace of life is slow–-a very familiar cadence for a boy who still carries Alabama in his bones. When you pass a stranger on the country roads in their 4WD truck or Subaru (the only choices with our winters), both you and they lift one or two fingers off the steering wheel in a neighborly wave. It's the way things are done in the south.
We can't take care of our own health. How can I hope we might understand we need to take care of our planet? Snips from this article follow. Tsk tsk.
By the end of 2005, twice as many people will have died from chronic diseases as from all infectious diseases, starvation and pregnancy and birth complications combined, international experts have warned.
The “neglected epidemic” of chronic disease will take 35 million lives in 2005, out of the total 58 million who will die globally. And contrary to popular belief, most of the deaths - 80% - from chronic conditions such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer will be in low to middle-income countries.
The two factors behind this epidemic are smoking and obesity.
While the world focuses on tackling the major infectious diseases – HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis – chronic diseases are largely overlooked, warns Horton. “Without concerted and coordinated political action, the gains achieved in reducing the burden of infectious disease will be washed away as a new wave of preventable illness engulfs those least able to protect themselves.”
HIV/AIDS is predicted to take 2.8 million lives around the world in 2005, for example, while the death toll from cardiovascular disease will be about 17.5 million globally.
The WHO proposes that if the projected deaths from chronic diseases can be reduced by just 2% a year until 2015, 36 million people around the world will be saved from dying prematurely. Key to achieving this is tackling preventable risk factors - for example, cutting salt in processed foods and taxing tobacco products. WHO estimates published in September 2005 suggested that one billion of the world’s population is now overweight or obese.
In its new report, the WHO attributes the deaths of 4.9 million people in 2004 to tobacco use, and 7.1 million deaths to raised blood pressure. While deaths from infectious diseases, pregnancy and birth complications and nutritional deficiencies are predicted to wane by 3% over the next 10 years, deaths due to chronic diseases are projected to rise by 17%.
Thirty five million people will die in 2005 of preventable causes. Gives one something to compare to if 10 million die in 2006 of infectious viral diseases. The chickens will have some catching up to do to pull even with human causes of human diseases.
The house was chilly when I got home--cooler inside than out. A somber October sun the color of sky, a few shades paler, offered little light, and less heat. I stepped into my rubber boots--a country-dweller's slippers--for the short walk to the woodpile for an armload of kindling. A small fire through the glass doors of the woodstove would cheerify the dark afternoon, would take the edge off the damp-cold before Ann got home. Standing in a fine mist, I zipped up my jacket on the stone walkway outside the back door, and breathed in the familiar smell of mid-autumn's demise in a million molding leaves. And then I heard it.
Truth is, the dog heard it first. His ears perked and he grew suddenly alert. The unsettling commotion above us was not in his or my repertoire of familiar country sounds; we put up our guard. It came from beyond the bare maples, from the near ridge behind the house--a rising backdrop where, a hundred yards away, you'd stand fifty feet higher, looking down on the metal roof of a toy house.
From somewhere hidden in those adolescent pine trees on the broken hillside, came the anxious, ventriloquial voices of birds. Thousands of birds. Their frantic sound filled the valley, louder even than the babel of the creeks. Grackles, probably, maybe mixed with other blackbird kin--the loathsome, hapless starlings. But I could see not a one of them. Their invisibility only added to the eeriness of their thousand opinions: Listen to me! I have an idea! Let's go that a'way! each one squeekchirped to his incorporeal companions.
Rising, falling as they turned on their perches as each new spokesman, spokesbird, took the podium, a hundred giant rainsticks inverted over and over, tinkling, waterdrop metallic voices that swelled just before they all took wing, became suddenly visible, followed the advice of the most insistent speaker, and they were gone from sight, then from sound only to rise and swirl and return to the same two trees out of hundreds of trees on the same ridge having vetoed their twentieth or twenty-first itinerary. Undecided voters, uncertain of where or when, sure that they must go, more or less south, more or less soon. And at once they flushed, and headed north.
A found Fragnent from October 2004
Teaching this 'enviro' biology class has tossed me quite fully into current events at the global scale. I can honestly say it has been almost thirty years since I was anything like as 'current' in my comprehension of ecological successes and failures as I have become in the past three months. And three decades ago, I had nothing like the information-gathering capabilities that the internet has brought a would-be armchair 'expert' to gather both breadth and depth from sources across the globe. I have a vast collection now of bookmarks, saved documents, tags and categories: global warming with ten subtopic areas; biodiversity and habitat destruction; environmental consequences of population growth; human and animal diseases related to environmental change; natural resources and energy 'footprint'; energy alternatives for future generations; environmental consequences of grain-fed meat; and so on.
That these are crucial issues facing the human enterprise seems apparent to me, the more so perhaps since I've now been looking at them again across more than thirty years. Coming back to these same issues that first loomed on my horizon in grad school in the early 70s is more of a shock than looking at these matters for the first time, as my freshmen are doing now. The intervening years have not been kind to the planet. There was hope, in the early 70s, that we could look forward to a 'greening of America' and the world, what with the newfound understanding of the interdependence of natural systems and the new flower-child back-to-the-earth sensitivities of the times. And major steps towards habitat, species, air, water and soil protection were put in place then. They have either been ineffective or abandoned or bureaucratically emasculated for the most part. For all their good intentions, environmentalists, conservationists and organic practioners of all stripes have won battles but are losing the war.
And so what I'm finding is an odd compartmentalized divided in my days of late. I'm either full-bore into researching and tyring to get a handle on the environmental issues my students are writing about in their research projects, digging deeper, accumulating more and more spin-off links that carry me down farther into the matter; or, I allow, even force myself to become completely distracted in some totally whimsical line of thought, visual project or web-geekly tweaking. Hours can pass and I am cocooned away with my small, solvable problems where things can be fixed, a resolution reached and life is better in some miniscule aesthetic or practical way.
I stuggle to find that balance between dealing with life issues that are too small, and those that are too large. In times like these, what should you feed your head?
Hmmm. I never thought of myself as a toxic risk to the planet. But considering my early history of dental amalgams, if I were to be cremated upon my demise (thinking this the most eco-friendly and eco-nomical way to end this incorporation) the mercury in those dental patches could increase the chances of brain damage in those who breathed the heavy metals that once was me. But is there a better way?
Yes, say the promessionists. Freeze-dry your earthly remains, segregating out the metals that persist in fillings and artificial joints, and bury the organic YOU in a biodegradable box. Then plant a tree to mark the spot. Promession, say its promoters, is a way of "taking care of human remains with highest dignity in order to make mulching possible."
Yeah, that's the ticket. I want to be recycled. I'm serious: this seems like a reasonable and environmentally responsible alternative to cremation, for a lot of reasons. But I must tell you, on this Friday morning of mental rambles, it put's me to mind of the poem called Cowboy Reincarnation. Read on...
"What does Reincarnation mean?"
A cowpoke asked his friend.
His pal replied, "It happens when
Yer life has reached its end.
They comb yer hair, and warsh yer neck,
And clean yer fingernails,
And lay you in a padded box
Away from life's travails."
"The box and you goes in a hole,
That's been dug into the ground.
Reincarnation starts in when
Yore planted 'neath a mound.
Them clods melt down, just like yer box,
And you who is inside.
And then yore just beginnin' on
Yer transformation ride."
"In a while, the grass'll grow
Upon yer rendered mound.
Till some day on yer moldered grave
A lonely flower is found.
And say a hoss should wander by
And graze upon this flower
That once wuz you, but now's become
Yer vegetative bower."
"The posy that the hoss done ate
Up, with his other feed,
Makes bone, and fat, and muscle
Essential to the steed,
But some is left that he can't use
And so it passes through,
And finally lays upon the ground
This thing, that once wuz you."
"Then say, by chance, I wanders by
And sees this upon the ground,
And I ponders, and I wonders at,
This object that I found.
I thinks of reincarnation,
Of life and death, and such,
And come away concludin': 'Slim,
You ain't changed, all that much
A year ago this week, raking leaves beside the shed, I lifted a flat rock to move it out of the way. This is what I found under it--so disarmingly green that at first I thought I must be seeing things. It turned out to be a rare sight, indeed, and a new record for our county. Below, the entry that will go in the upcoming issue of Virginia's Herpetological Society publication, Catesbeiana.
Opheodrys vernalis (Smooth Greensnake). VA: Floyd Co., Co. Rt. 111, 3.2 km (2 mi) west of junction with Co. Rt. 222. 24 October 2004. Fred B. First, Jr.
On 24 October 2004, I found an immature smooth greensnake (17 cm total length) under a flat rock near an outbuilding at my residence in remote northeastern Floyd County. The location is a south-facing slope at approximately 640 meters (2100 feet) adjacent to regenerating mixed-growth forest. The site is some 100 meters north of Goose Creek, a tributary at the headwaters of the South Fork of the Roanoke River. The snake was photographed and released. An adult smooth greensnake was found crossing a gravel drive less than 30 meters from the above location in late summer 2003. The mature snake (approximately 37 cm total length) was examined and released.
This is the first report of smooth greensnakes from Floyd County (Mitchell, J. C. 1994. The Reptiles of Virginia. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC. 352 pp.; Mitchell, J. C. and K. K. Reay. 1999. Atlas of Amphibians and Reptiles in Virginia. Special Publication Number 1, Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, Richmond, VA. 122 pp.).
A digital photograph of the immature snake has been submitted to the VHS archives (digital archive #70).
My head and heart are pulled in so many directions this morning, a day flushed with the feeling of fallness and all the energy that lets go in me. I want to write, to read, to study, to photograph and I want to just sit on one of the porches--no, all of the porches during the day--and take in October. But my seat needs to be planted at the dining table where I must be surrounded by five four-inch stacks of lab reports to grade and record--I'm guessing six hours of work--before Monday. Responsibility makes for an impotent muse.
If I had time, I'd talk about Bioneers, discovered via a sent link. I like much about their purpose and hopes. There seemed to be a new-agey feel, a Californishness about it all--a perception supported upon finding that the audio broadcasts are co-produced by Michael Toms and New Dimensions with which we are familiar from NPR. I do look forward to listening to the second audio file entitled "CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE NEXT INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION" that interviews Bill McKibben. Heck, I may become a Bioneer myself.
There is much physical work to do today, if I can balance that against the rooted eye-hand work of paper grading. The garden is spent and should be tilled (except for the turnips which continue to put down their rounded roots for a future soup meal, recipes thanks to BJ.) The woodpile relocation program is well underway (I'd better get some BEFORE pictures soon) and the room addition to the back of the house (no, not a swimming pool or water garden as some had guessed) seems imminent, if possibly delayed in its start by Hurricane Wilma.
If I weren't distracted by work duties, I'd love to tell you about this week's lab--a microscopic scavenger hunt--and all the neat creatures my students and I discovered in pond water samples. Makes me want to go back to school and get a PhD on Rotifer taxonomy. What an amazing, small world where Horton Hears a Who. We had quite a lot of fun, in a most unsophisticated unacademic gee-whiz sort of way. And I heard those incredibly rare words an instructor can only hope to hear once a decade, where upon leaving a bio lab period, students are overheard to say "That was KEWL!"
But I can't talk about any of this. My self-imposed schedule has me doing 8 lab notebooks at 8, 1 and 7 every day til 120 of them are done. So I'm already ten minutes tardy. I gotta go.
Don't you know the person who got to name this new species just giggled. Literally translated, the latin name given to a newly discovered worm off the coast of Sweden -- Osedax mucofloris -- means just what the title of this post says.
"They look like flowers poking out of the whale bone. The analogy goes a bit further because they have a root system that goes into the bone," Dr Glover, a researcher at London's Natural History Museum, told the BBC News website.
The specialized niche for this new species discovered off Sweden is the same as that of far-removed and much deeper living worms: whale skeletons on the ocean floor. They absorb the oils and fats from the bone with the help of symbiotic bacteria, and are related to similar creatures found only in the deep sea hydrothermal vents.
There are still so many things we haven't yet learned about our planet. Makes me wish I could start my professional life over again--as a tropical pharmacologist, a benthic invertebrate specialist, or a digital cartographer. But then again, there are more and more times I'm perfectly happy to be an armchair explorer, gaining breadth of appreciation from the comfort of my ergonomic office chair while the younger folks do all the heavy lifting.
I don't know how to couch this delicate medical subject in creative writing terms. I could possibly weave it into a paragraph concerning the group Fungi, since that kingdom will be today's lecture topic. I could mention that I once had the regular opportunity to view the feet of nursing home and other physical therapy patients, and segue into a discussion of mycotic diseases. But eventually, I'd have to tell a reader that 1) I have one toenail going to the fungal side. And 2) the recommended treatment for a single involved nail is removal (OUCH!); 3) there is an effective oral medication that would cost $300 for a full course. It takes at least three months of daily medication to work, and the patient runs the rare risk of severe liver damage, so requires liver tests while taking the drug. Oh great.
But what I really wanted to tell readers (especially the ones that have owned their toenails now for fifty or more years) is: there seems to be a folk remedy that works. A physician friend of mine used it successfully for this problem on his own personal toe. I've been doing it for two weeks and see definite improvement. There is no liver dysfunction involved, but it will cost you: about two dollars.
It is a product that many of you will be familiar with, especially, I think, if you are in my age cohort. It was a one-time favorite of mothers across the country in the early baby-booming years. My own mother would slather it on a diaper that she would then pin to my jammies overnight. She'd stick a spoonful in the vaporizer under a sheet-tent draped over my baby bed (I remember this very well!) And she'd stick it up our noses or slide a glob of it on a gagging finger into the back of our throats. There wasn't much that this miracle goo couldn't do for the ills of childhood. Select an orifice, stick it in. Voila! And now, decades later, it works against the evil spores of a human dermatomycotic pathogen out to disfigure toenails in the Silver Years of our lives. What is this miracle drug? Do you know? Click "read more>>" to find the answer.
Did you guess it? Mine still comes from the dark blue glass bottle that may have been in our medicine cabinet for thirty years! Perhaps more recently purchased Vicks VapoRub comes in a plastic container, but I can't imagine it working nearly as well. There is some magic in the blue glass. Yeah, that's the ticket.
So, remember I am NOT a doctor and do not play one on television. Your mycological mileage may vary. And if you get good results using this ointment on your fungally-disfigured toe, why not try sticking some in your ear. You never know: it just might make you smarter!
In the fall of 1995--exactly a decade ago--our kids had fledged, our nest was empty, and we couldn't wait to get back to Wytheville. We still had friends there from twelve years of having called that place home. But two years later, to our surprise, we had returned to Virginia, but to Floyd County, not Wythe. Why and how in the world did we end up here?
About fifty percent of today's Floydians are here by adoption, not by birth, and could tell you their own version of 'finding Floyd.' One theme that would run through these tales would be the him-versus-her divide: one of each couple is relentlessly pulled here, the other not at all certain. My wife and I had this very debate ourselves. I've heard it often, and as a matter fact, I overheard it just a few days ago in downtown Floyd.
Café del Sol was crowded on Friday afternoon. Slumped back in my chair, I nursed a cup of coffee and unavoidably eavesdropped on the conversation at the table behind me. The couple was obviously from somewhere else. Their conversation made plain the fact that they'd been riding around the county all the rainy day, trying to imagine it as their future home. Their impassioned exchange left no doubt they had not reached a final consensus on the matter of rural immersion.
Him: "I would go bananas living here" he said. "I know you love it-the lack of noise and traffic, the country charm and all that. But I'm a city person, always will be. I need the energy, the variety, the convenience of a city. I'd wither and die here. There isn't anything to do!" he declared with certainty.
Her: "You'd be surprised. We'd make friends here. And there's plenty to do, and getting to Roanoke for dinner doesn't take any longer than we spend now driving across the city to the theatre or stadium, you know. We could have our privacy or quiet here when we wanted, or drive to Blacksburg for a play or football game. It would be the best of both worlds" she gushed, as if her sincere conviction might win him over to the Floyd side.
I just pretended to be reading my newspaper oblivious to their relocation melodrama. But oh, how I wanted to turn around to these complete strangers and proclaim to them how, exactly ten years ago my wife and I were standing at the edge of the same precipice of uncertainty. Would we be happy here in a pleasantly smaller pond? Would we find friends and community where people live at the ends of long lanes that wind through the pleasant hollers of the blue ridges? Moving anywhere is a life trauma; moving to a place far different from where you're used to is a scary leap of faith. But in the end, the decision for my wife and I to move to Floyd seemed somehow not entirely ours.
"If you're meant to live here, something about Floyd County is likely to draw you here" I wanted to tell these strangers at the next table. "It is an energy or inspiration beyond mere logic and cold pragmatic choice. You will choose to live here or not, but here must chose you as well. You'll know it when the fit is right." But of course, I said nothing, and watched them leave, get in their car and drive away without the benefit of my uninvited soliloquy. Something makes me think that I will never see them again.
Next month marks the beginning of my family's ninth year here. We know for sure that in all the world, this was the right choice for us. But rural living-in Floyd, or Willis or anywhere-is not the right choice for some people, even if on one rainy October afternoon, they think it might be. Many who leave metro areas for the lesser crossroads of more remote places give up their hopeful, assumed lifestyles after a year or two, and go back to cities and suburbs that are familiar and crowded with the things they couldn't do without. It's a fact that the costs and benefits of small town life can be hidden or distorted by the rosy glow of love-at-first sight infatuation.
I know quite a few native Floydians who have family roots here that go back for generations. I envy their family memories and their long history here; I am growing to understand and hold their strong sense of place. But I also appreciate the stories of 'chosing Floyd' that other neighbors have told me. I can't help but think of the mother who explained to her small son, that no, he wasn't her child by birth. But he was very special: out of all the little babies in the nursery, she could tell that he was the one that should live with her and be her child forever.
By birth or by adoption, we all love where we live, even if it isn't always easy to explain to ourselves or others exactly what mystique makes this geography so dear and special to us. The pull of place makes those of us who live here together determined to stay and grow deep and lasting roots. In the end, it is just home, and for all of us, there's no place like it.
I wrote this rough draft with the thought that it might become a Floyd Press piece, but it was nixed by the local censorship board (of One) as 'controversial', as well as the justifiable mention that it was not yet very tightly constructed. Maybe I'll dust it off and tighten it up someday.
It involved the forceful relocation of hundreds; perhaps thousands. They once had their place in the world, their order. And one day, the mandate came from a Higher Power that they should all be force-marched to another place--a place unsuitable for them, hard to reach and unsightly. The shock of it was all the more awful for the suddenness: in one week, they would all have to be moved, disappeared, to make way for a relentless force that some called progress, others called Ann's Folly.
This weekend, the backhoe will come and create a large muddy hole behind the house. Then cement trucks will soon follow. To reach the site of this created chaos, three cords of wood--painstakingly cut, split and neatly stacked--will have to be moved, piece by piece by piece, marginalized to some inconvenient, unattractive and disorganized pile so this home improvement can be completed before the snows come. The woodcutter is not happy.
But the Higher Power purrs like a kitten on catnip.
To be sure, there will be future installments in the Trail of Blisters saga. Stay tuned.
If avian flu arrives in your town, what you'll need to remain free of the disease are things you learned in grammar school. There will be no 'better living through chemistry' as the DuPont ad used to tout. Neither antivirals or present-day vaccines are likely to be much help for very many very soon. Changed behaviors may be your best prophyllaxis.Wash your hands. Cover your mouth.
When you become aware of it, it's amazing how many publically handled surfaces your fingertips come in contact with--dollar bills in the change from the last fill-up, handrails, doorknobs, cold drinks from a machine--any of which could have been handled by an infected person. And too, it becomes apparent how often you put your hands on or near your face. I have a bad habit of moistening my fingers when shuffling through papers. Or I HAD a habit. I rest my chin in my hand while reading, I stroke my beard when thinking.
Simple handwashing could be the single most effective measure against your own personal infection--of the common cold, the regular seasonal flu, or the bird flu du jour.
I started using Purell disenfectant hand cleaner recently, mostly to clean up my chalk dusted hands after lecture. It is 99.99% effective against invisible microbes on your hands. Great! I thought, til Ann told me about a recent infection control meeting at her hospital where a public health physician told her this kind of antimicrobial application is an evolutionary force weeding out susceptibles and leaving resistant bacteria in the places where there are the greatest variety of different pathogens: hospitals. Makes sense.
The good news is that bird flu (at this point) requires close contact to spread person to person. Coughs and sneezes are the main culprit (though at least some variants seem to involve the GI route, I've read). Infection is spread by way of larger droplets whose effective range is a few feet, so keeping your distance from a sick person can significantly reduce risk of infection--unless, of course, they are in an airplane or in an elevator with you. How long can you hold your breath?
One tip I've read that I think is good advice for everyone all the time is this: don't cough or sneeze into your hand. Use the crook of your elbow to muzzle the aerosol mist of potentially infected droplets.
Another thing I've realized related to all this is that surgical type masks are more for the infected than those hoping to avoid infection. The mask reduces the probability that infected droplets are being propagated when the sick person coughs or sneezes. Masks would become commonplace during the peak of a local outbreak as a common courtesy and prophyllactic measure, which along with hand washing could go a long way to minimize infection.
It is one of the most memorable phrases from my undergrad education in the early days of the 'ecological movement:'
In the environment, in ecosystems, you can never do only one thing.
In the muddle of human ignorance, greed and excess, it is also true.
The South American rainforests are drier than they'be been in decades because the strong Atlantic storms of the summer have sucked moisture northward.
The rape of the Brazilian rainforest is rampaging at unparelled levels because the terrain is so dry that it has become accessible to illegal loggers. The largest percentage of that illegal and not-soon-to-be-replaced exotic wood comes to the US. That's us.
Reach your own conclusions.
I regret to say that so far, this fall season has been cancelled due to--who knows why. There is scant color in the hills even at mid-October, and as far as our five maples that surround the house, they ended their season with a wimper, not a bang. Most of their leaves turned brown, and fell on one day last week in a heavy rain. A few stragglers remain on the branches, and at least in the last slanting light of dusk, showed a bit of color, but yellow--not last year's gold.
There will be more color to come, toward the end of the month, and especially after a hard frost. Hey, what's with the frost? When we lived here in the 70s and 80s, first frost of fall was on or about September 15, and a freeze not long after. Yesterday, I raked leaves in shorts and had to come in for sunscreen. Seems warmer these days. Wonder what's going on?
I snuck out yesterday morning while I was supposed to have my nose to the grindstone here and took one picture, uploaded and worked with it, and got it ready to post before I left for school. I couldn't help it: the light was just too tempting--a golden glowing October moment for the scrapbook of days, perhaps especially so since I would be leaving it behind for a day inside buildings among ten thousand milling students. Then, I left the house without posting this picture, so here 'tis.
The mums in this picture were crippled at birth this year, first delayed by the prolonged drought of summer, then only just blossomed out when they were pummelled by the wind and hard rains earlier in the week. They always get leggy and lodge over too soon, hanging forlornly over the edge of the rock wall. Usually, this happens after a week of countless bees visitors, and wasps and hairy tachinid flies that come to nectar and pollen. The Monarchs are frequent visitors, too, passing through. The mums look so rangy now, perhaps I'll put them out of their misery later today, if there's any resilience left in my bones after raking leaves. I don't think we've ever had so many leaves to come down all at once, and I'm wishing we had children left at home to enjoy them (meaning, rake them, get them out of the gutters, carry them to the garden, and such.)
Speaking of the garden: I quite forgot what all I'd planted in the fall greens category this year. I was merrily harvesting the tops of whatever was growing in the wide beds, when I notice some large bulges appearing above ground at the base of some of the tall greens. Duh. They were turnip greens, and what we have is a couple of bushels of turnips growing in the 20 foot long bed. Great! Now, if I just could make myself get excited about eating them. My revulsion stems not so much from the taste as from the childhood memories of a houseful of turnip-flavored air that would gag a maggot. My recollection of that fetid odour is that it was like the smell of a home permanent in a room full of dirty socks. But I'm willing to give them another chance, especially as how they have managed to survive the drought, the deer, the moles and the various beetles and caterpillars of summer. Maybe, if I hold my nose...
"What's this all about" asked a student, after he'd already chosen the topic, then wondered what he'd gotten himself into.
I explained briefly that the rain forests of Brazil (now that the same type of rainforests of Central America have already largely gone that way) are being slashed and burned to create pasture to rear 'economical' beef for the fast food industry.
"Next triplethick with cheese that you buy at BlubberBurger, think how you're eating food that has been extracted in exchange for the food and shelter Virginia's warblers would have loved to find when they arrived in Brazil from their fall migration."
I am certain this student will find more than enough for a good paper. I sent him this link for starters:
Hamburger Connection Fuels Amazon Destruction from the Center for International Forestry Research. Appalling.
Let your mind, your expectations relax. Look at this picture. You are cruising the Blue Ridge with Google Earth. Country roads strike off at open angles from the rural route, plowing straight through dense forests of beech, maple, hickory. Some tulip poplars are still green, while many of the oaks have gone suddenly to a clotted brown.
Or else it is the midvein and angular collaterals, the woody vessels that once supplied water and minerals to leaf blade tissue now being set upon by the decomposers. Necrotic black splotches are being consumed from the inside by rampaging fungal threads; red and golden copses appear where the greens of chlorophyll are washed away, gone for the summer, gone as is this leaf, forever, recycled for next year's leaf, carbons that will make a beetle or a baby's brain.
"Thousands of shotgun-wielding British hunters, huddled behind duck blinds and crouching in marshes, have been empowered by the government to play a key role in their country's battle to prevent an avian-flu epidemic from overtaking the country.
The government's veterinary authorities, fearful of infected birds making their way into Britain from flu-prone regions of eastern Russia, have given the hunters, as well as conservation groups and birdwatchers, bird-flu testing kits and asked them to shoot down as many birds as possible, test them for the disease, and otherwise stand guard against these menacing foreign invaders." from the Globe and Mail
Shoot down as many birds as possible? Is this a prudent sampling or an extermination?
I've heard from the birder-bloggers for some time that they have feared a panic backlash against migrating birds, though they insist the impending disease should really be called 'poultry flu' since it is domestic chickens and ducks who are the main reservoir for the disease. On the other hand, migrating birds have carried H5N1 out of China and SE Asia, and they should be monitored. But giving hunters open license to shoot everything that flies over is a scary thought. I envision a bourbon-sotted British hunter picking up bloody birds in his bare hands and an hour later slinging down his brace of potentially-virus-laden geese, cormorants and a few woodpeckers across the table at the nearest pub. "Check out these beauties, laddies."
I have this sinking feeling we are transitioning into the period of doing far too much far too quickly after doing far too little far too slowly in this perhaps largest public health issue of our times. The pendulum finally swings--in excess. The hysteria and hype that perhaps could have been averted with more honest and full disclosure six months ago is soon upon us.
UPDATE Thursday 6 pm: unable to confirm this 'shoot all birds' thing, so assume it is as preposterous as it sounds. Thankfully so.
Here's the text for the CastPost audio file I know a few attempted to listen to and fewer succeeded at. Due to sheer laziness (and being up to my elbows in academic alligators) I'll post it here, perhaps my sole post for the day, for any stalwarts who can last more than the typical blogging three paragraphs. Have a good'un.
I've been flying all over the planet these past months, soaring from the equator to the poles. I travel to new places, looking down tens or hundreds of miles from my earth orbiting spacecraft or high-elevation spy plane; or I hover for a closer look at ten thousand feet in my hot-air balloon. My craft is called Google Earth, and it is not a toy.
For a map-loving arm-chair explorer like me, this free digital globe program is the most wonderful educational tool to come along in my not-particularly-well traveled life! I've followed the waters of the Nile and the New Rivers from their sources to their respective oceans and found the highest peaks of all the great mountain ranges from the Andes to the Appalachians. I've soared over Pakistan, Madagascar, Chile, New Zealand and Afghanistan and learned things about each place that I never would have comprehended from a textbook description or from a flat black and white picture of these places.
I am mystified as the world turns below with a slight nudge of the computer mouse. It stands against the blackness of space, a seamless and unified blue marble that has been compared to a single, large living cell. No artificial lines divide the Koreas, no boundaries show between the Hindu nation and the Muslim nation next door; they are all of one piece. Northern Ireland blends imperceptibly with the south. There is no color coding to divide the red states from the blue ones. From a Space Station view, it looks as if there should be plenty of room, adequate air and soil, and enough of every necessity for all the humans, plants and animals invisible below who live together on the Water Planet. From a distance, it seems such a pleasant Eden, but going down for a closer look sometimes bursts my bubble of perfect-world fantasy.
On my first high-altitude visit over the Amazon rain forests of Brazil, an odd blemish caught my attention, even from five hundred miles up. A bottle-brush pattern of lighter strokes stood out against the darkest green of untouched forest. A double-click on the spot took me down, down for a closer view to satisfy my curiosity. Below me, from a main road 200 miles long, ten-mile side roads bristled every mile, and side roads from them, and along each road, bare brown earth. Hardwoods had been taken from the virgin tropical forest across an area of more than twenty thousand square miles-the surface equivalent of five Floyd Counties-just in this one operation alone! I think of this disappeared habitat now as I watch the south-migrating warblers out my window. Many of them are bound for tropical forests. It will be a hungry winter for them there, and some will never make it back to Virginia. I wonder if the winter season itself will be altered in coming years, as more trees are removed than are replanted.
One thing Google Earth will show you as well: there are still remote and beautiful places left on the planet to explore-including the mountains and forests of southwest Virginia. Many regions of the world still have sizable patches of sustainable forest, prairie or jungle wilderness intact. We've learned much in the last fifty years about how Earth's ecosystems and creatures get along, and at times, we have created ways to conserve and protect them.
But our numbers on Earth continue to grow and humanity's material and energy needs seem inexhaustible, while the little blue ball is finite. Both the planet's immensity and variety and its susceptibility to the uses and misuses of civilization become more real when you see them with your own eyes from above. "Oh, I've been there!" I say when I read about the melting glaciers of Nepal or the remote lakes of China where bird flu was found recently in wild geese.
Maps orient us to place. Google Earth does this especially well for me. In its three-dimensionality and interactivity it makes me, in a sense, a participant in the place. The global browser as a mapping tool gives the user a literal grounding to the environmental and human stories that unfold in natural landscapes around the world. We are affected more than ever by events that happen on the dark side of our daytime world. They are closer to us than we imagine. I encourage you to go see for yourself.
You can download Google Earth free at http://earth.google.com/ . It requires a fast computer and a high-speed connection (like Citizens' DSL) for proper operation.
I'd hestitate a bit before I chomped into something with this kind of a face, wouldn't you? Suppose it's not a coincidence this caterpillar looks like he's already decided on his Halloween mask?
Tsuga playfully picked up a fallen maple branch, but quickly dropped it, as if something had alarmed him. He sniffed at the branch cautiously. So of course, I had to investigate. And this is what I found. Not only is it scary looking, but it emitted a strong odor, which of course, I had to whiff up close and personal, to add to my repertoire of natural fragrances, aromas and stinks. The smell was pleasantly obnoxious, with overtones of floor polish.
I don't have time to ID this critter. It shouldn't be hard as it is quite distinctive! Help, anyone? And if you have a link to more info, I'd appreciate.
Okay, 'fessor Fred. Back to the textbook.
Wednesday is, as a rule, blogging-lite day. I sleep a little later, and have lecture, then three labs back to back. I'll get home tonight around nine. By the time I get home, Ann will have returned from her week away, and we'll resume the ancient rhythms in the awkward-pleasant dance that is married life.
And so, my looking out to the world beyond my door is looking back--to this week last year, when the season was moister, the leaves more colorful before they fell. We'll not see it like that this year, but have the memories in the images of an almost perfect fall in 2004. The picture above, I never posted because it is a bit odd in perspective. But then, I'm feeling a mite odd in my perspective these days, so here tis. Click for a larger view.
Well, I'd best get in Spiffy Mode, since the White Glove of Cleanliness returns tonight! Should I fail in these lurking obligations, there will be the devil to pay. What? You think you know what that phrase means? You're not even close, maties.
Today the expression "devil to pay" is used primarily to describe having an unpleasant result from some action that has been taken, as in someone has done something they shouldn't have and, as a result, "there will be the devil to pay." Originally, this expression described one of the unpleasant tasks aboard a wooden ship.The "devil" was the wooden ship's longest seam in the hull. Caulking was done with "pay" or pitch (a kind of tar). The task of "paying the devil" (caulking the longest seam) by squatting in the bilges was despised by every seaman.
I have to coordinate the 2500 word research papers of 120 students with whom I cannot efficiently meet one on one on campus, due to their schedules and mine. What I needed was the equivalent of a chat-type medium where simlutaneous edits and comments could be seen and saved. What I found, and so far am very happy with, is Writely. While it's in beta, the technical support folks have been very helpful. (I could only get a corner of the full page screen shot in my 450 pixel image here.)
I have five labs, each with 24 students, divided into three large topic areas: Global Warming / Climate Change; Threatened Resources: Air, Water, Soil and Species; and Human and Animal Environmental Health Issues.
So now I have five pages in Writely, and when each is updated, I can see that from my main page that shows all five document's status. Each page collaborates only with the students in that lab, any of which can make changes from any computer, and I can monitor from home, office or the road. It is working out rather well, except for the fact that I have oodles of feedback to add to the screens.
You might want to check it out. It's free now, parts will remain so even when it comes out of beta.
I don't guess during this dry summer past that we've have occasion to even worry about the plank, the ten foot long 2 x 12 that serves as our footbridge across the three foot wide Goose Creek. That crossing carries us over to the barn, the pasture and our daily walks. We've not had enough rain to make the creeks audible, much less cause them to rise suddenly and threaten (yet again) to carry our simple footbridge towards the James and the Chesapeake Bay. But with the rains of the past few days, heavy at times, I pulled the plank up so that most of it was on the bank, just in case the waters should swell suddently and carry our bridge downstream. Unwittingly, it was a kind of a setup for comedy at the dog's expense.
Tsuga-dog stays outside--well, in, then out, then in--when I'm home. From the back porch or walkway, he keeps a watchful eye on the pasture, lest a groundhog or deer--or bear or bobcat--should violate his domain. During the rain a few days ago, I watched him stand, then bristle, then tear off down the drive and toward the creek. He stopped in the road to get his sights on the intruders (I never did see what he was seeing.) He saw the plank, two thirds on the bank, one third hanging in thin air.
He took off down the plank (since that's how he often crosses, behind or in front of his rubber-booted human companions). But he hadn't bothered to notice it wasn't in its usual place. And so the point came where Tsuga became Wile E Coyote, at the end of a bridge to nowhere. You could almost hear the sound effects, see the forlorn look of helpless dismay, and anticipate the little puff of dust that would rise from Wile's splat in the desert below. The board, of course, didn't hold him when he passed its tipping point, and he baled at the last instant, with a look of utter shock on his face.
All we needed was the Road Runner swooshing past down the soggy gravel road to make the scene complete. BeEE BeEEP!
Three plus years ago in a galaxy far, far away, I turned on a virtual beacon signal from a remote place--not quite a desert island, but in those days, I felt almost that isolated from the rest of the world here on the edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The signal went out every day, in the mornings, usually: Hello, anyone. If you'll read what I write, I'll tell you who and where I am. Where, mostly. I'm hoping to find kindred souls, and particularly those who live near me or who share some of my love of the place most of you have never heard of. It's called Floyd, Virginia. These are fragments of daily life from this desert place in my life, this far-away beautiful place in the planet's geography. Please acknowledge. Anyone?
Bloggers have said hello who never heard of Floyd and will never come here but feel they know this place, even the family dog, through this journal. Bloggers have come here, met me in town and had coffee or shared a meal with me, some even spent the nights here. Bloggers have found ties to families and land in Floyd they rarely see now, living across the country or the world. They check in from time to time to see that life goes on here in these gentle mountains, come to watch the seasons change. And bloggers have moved here, not because of this journal, but reinforced perhaps by the images and stories, knowing with greater certainty that this is, indeed, a place where they will fit in. There have been so many unpredictable encounters and friendships and opportunities that have come because real people have heard the ping of the daily beacon. I am here. Join me.
This week I've heard from a lady who lives across the country who has decided Floyd is the place for her. She's meeting with a realtor this weekend, I think. Some, who began looking in the Floyd area emailed this week; they have ended up instead over on Groundhog Mountain on the Parkway, but I imagine in time, we'll cross paths. Sean is a new acquaintance from Boones Mill; his family wants to visit Floyd soon, and perhaps we can have a sandwich at Momma Lazardos; who knows. Today, I'll meet Jim and his family briefly in town; he has native roots here but lives north and urban. And a few days back, "live2write" who has connections to Floyd sent a link to an essay she has written about the county and lifestyle here, having found Fragments, I suppose, by looking for connections to Floyd. Good to 'meet' you all, and I appreciate your participation in the smallish community of those who know and love this part of southwest Virginia along with me.
I confess that, what with the never-ending but enjoyable burden of class preparation plus the weight of current and dreaded future events in the larger world, my mind and heart have been at times far from centered on this blog and its readers and my real and virtual friends that I meet and touch through Fragments, or in real life. I can't say that's likely to change much in the coming weeks or months. I'm far away from the place I live now, even though it is just outside my window--far from the creeks, from the changing season, from the feel of the air and sound of morning. I am temporarily disconnected from my roots in the visual, the sensory, the details of the very here, very now. And since this blog has pretty much been all along a blog about place, it is not altogether the same voice, the same feel, or the original 'brand' of blog it has mostly always been. You understand: if one writes from the heart, and writes what he knows, if he writes open and honest, the patterns will change. And change back, ebb and flow, for richer or for poorer. And so it goes. Thanks all, for your tolerant sharing in this fragmented life.
Okay. While the She-mouse is away, the He-mouse will, well, whatever he can get into. I'm just glad there is no way to do a graphic plot of my day, because it would look the web of a spider on LSD. I've seen digressions spring off of my diversions that have arisen spontaneously from my putterings--and this was in my more focused moments over the weekend. So...
This is a test. This is only a test. Well no, it's the real thing: Fragments Radio.
This recording (of a recent Floyd Press column piece) will consume five precious minutes of your time. Life is short. Think about it. But if you decide to fritter away a few hundred heartbeats, listen to Himself reading the most recent homily, dedicated, no less, to one of my favorite diversions--strike that--TOOLS: Google Earth. It is called Floyd County: From a distance and comes to you care of CastPost and as a consequence of the fact that this tasty morsel of techy goodness was dangled in front of my face while working diligently on next week's labs, test and lecture--a temptation for which I thank the kind proprietess of SoulKnitting. She may have started somethin'.
(The link may take a minute to load, but when it does, the sound file is pretty much ready to play.)
Not being in the corporate mileage reimbursement arena since the per mile travel was at $0.37, I wondered how recent upward trends in gas prices had effected this number. What I find is a going rate of $0.485 a mile. Might as well figure 50 cents. And I always assumed this was the VERY LOWEST possible allowance the corporate beancounters could get away with in paying the driver for all the costs of maintaining and using his or her personal auto for travel for the company store.
That being the case, I did me a little math. And after doing so, I stayed home all weekend long and entertained myself with watching the rain and the leaves fall. Better than watching your income go up in gas fumes and dollars. Round trip costs in current dollars per gallon:
Trip to the closest grocery store (Floyd) $16
Trip to Radford or Ann's job, or church $25
Trip to Roanoke Airport $36
Trip to St. Louis for Dec. Wedding $665!
When you go from keeping a 10 in the ashtray for gas, to keeping a 20, to keeping a 50, it sort of brings home true costs of our unthinking city planning, pleasure driving and love affairs with our wheels. It makes living secluded in the beautiful, serene countryside a mixed blessing as well. Every aspect of society will have to take this into account in the world's future. Let me rephrase that: it SHOULD take it into account. Even if we discover untapped oil, gas and coal supplies that can be economically extracted (pardon my doubt)-- should we continue to put heat, water vapor, particulates and carbon dioxide into the air and seas of an ailing planet?
What I can't punch into my calculator are the 'environmental services' provided by forests, soil, and oceans. We couldn't begin to fabricate technology to do what nature does, well, naturally--provided it remains in balance. If we spend all of that natural capital (that rarely figures into an economist's tally sheet), we soon become biologically bankrupt.
It's the environment, stupid.
I got a nice email from Grant B., editor of the "Double-Tongued Word Wrester Dictionary" (Oxford University Press) in response to my post yesterday to "Dance of the Lemons." Turns out, he'd already tagged that one for elaboration regarding its lemony roots in the spoken and written usage for the past twenty-odd years. You can trace the phrase back at least to 1981 in his fleshed-out research on the term.
Have any phrases you've created taken on a life of their own, even if in a smaller group than the entire English-speaking world?
I'd have to say that, when it comes to creating new, locally-maintained language in our household, it has come from our children when they were young. We STILL find ourselves calling the long yellow fruits NAMEENAMAs, which is what one of ours called banannas. And a large aggregation of birds we call a FLOP, since our son did so, much to our delight and his utter horror when we laughed at his mistake. The list is long, I shan't bore you with our Kidspeakisms. Willing to share some of your own? You KNOW you have them, parent-bloggers.
For some reptiles, a few degrees more or less makes all the difference--in the sex of their offspring. It's called Temperature Dependent Sex Determination--one of those odd quirks of biology that must certainly have some survival benefits in a normally fluctuating world. However, there are times when widespread changes in temperature can cause ominous changes in sex ratios. Some think the Cretaceous extinction of dinosaurs may have been the result of globally-warming temperatures. So, a warming planet ahead could result in the disappearance of many reptile species, in short order, in your lifetime.
Certain Female Lizards Choose Sex of Offspring
"This is the first time that temperature-dependent sex determination has been reported in a species that gives birth to live young, according to the researchers who described their findings in the August 16 issue of Nature.
Preliminary data indicate that when temperatures are warm, the female lizards give birth exclusively to males. That doesn't bode well for the future of the species if global warming models are correct, said Kylie Robert of the University of Sydney, a co-author of the report.
"This species is already restricted to mountain tops," she said. "With a 4-degree Celsius [7.2-degree Fahrenheit] rise as predicted by global warming models, they cannot retreat to cooler regions and will, in turn, produce entirely male offspring and eventually become extinct."
All Headline News - Global Warming Affects Turtles - October 8, 2005
"A study conducted by the British Trust for Ornithology reveals global warming is likely to have an adverse effect on migratory species.
The survey predicts the possible disappearance of male sea turtles. The organization says the change could disturb breeding for the animals and have a dismal effect on susceptible species like the marine turtle.
According to the Associated Press, warmer climates are expected to give rise to female turtle populations influenced by water temperature"
Three billion people live on less than $2 per day while 1.3 billion get by on less than $1 per day. Seventy percent of those living on less than $1 per day are women.
Put your salary into the box and see how incredibly rich you are by global standards.
So what? I earned it. Let THEM eat cake.
I should feel guilty and give all my worldly posessions away.
It makes me sad to think how little so many have. Is there anything in the way I live that results in making less for everybody else, and if so, how can I change what I think I NEED to be happy?
There are all sorts of possible responses when one comprehends the gap between rich and poor. What's yours?
"Children of women who experience stressful adverse life events appear to be prone to develop type 1 diabetes, a Swedish study indicates.
Type 1 diabetes arises when the immune system erroneously attacks and destroys the insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. What triggers this autoimmune reaction isn't clear.
The current study, involving nearly 6000 children and their families, shows that mothers' experience of divorce or violence raised the risk of diabetes-related autoimmunity in children at age 2.5 years by roughly threefold."
Long known to be an autoimmune form of diabetes, this may give some clues to the role that stress plays in this most terrible of diseases of young people. Be careful, little eyes, what you see. link
I am such a geek. (There, Trey, I beat you to the punch.)
Today's first (and possibly only) blog post is hosted someplace else. Click over to my spiffy new experimental WYSIWYG wiki site at JotSpot for today's Jots. Let me know if you have problems viewing the page. I may consider this wiki platform for future classes as it is very easy to format tables, etc. I'm using the free account at the moment; it takes about a minute to set it up.
NEWSFLASH: Unlike pbwiki that allows public access and only requires a password for those given permission to edit pages, JotSpot seems to want money for that priviledge. Well crap. So, here's the plain ol' plain ol' jots. (Thanks, LoriAnne for the heads-up.)
Geek Day At Home What with the rain, the dogs at the door and my general distractability yesterday, sloth and geekly curiosity ruled the day (to which my wife would ask "how does that make it different from any other day?") but as wife was not in state to make such judgements, I indulged. I now have a rudimentary deli.cio.us page set up with bookmarklets in FireFox. I have SAGE set up within same browser and all my blog feeds housed there. And I messed around with Jot Spot, which you see here--a WYSIWYG wiki editor that has some things going for it, and I'll consider using it when I teach again. Speaking of which...
A Semester Off I was offered one course, one lab section for the Spring Term starting in January. Seems RU has hired several new full-time faculty, so that leaves less for adjunkies like me. I was assured there would be plenty for me to do in the Fall, so looks like I'll be doing other things come December. And I have some other things I want to do, from a home base. Some paying work would be nice, so if anybody has ideas of a work-from-home job that doesn't require calling hundreds of people just as they are sitting down to dinner, I'm interested.
Worldly Words If a person professes to be a writer of sorts and at all 'with it', he or she must keep on top of the ever-changing english language. I offer you an excellent way to do just that: the Double-Tongued Word Wrester Dictionary, from which I have extracted what I think will be a lasting phrase useful in all sorts of bureaucratic settings. I give you:
dance of the lemons Part of Speech: n. It refers to an annual ballet in which bad tenured teachers are shuffled around within school districts because they can't be fired.
Don't Look, Ethel Soon in class we'll be talking about the perils of exotic species--alien invasives--that are crossing borders, both into and out of our country, and putting the native plant and animal life in various degrees of jeopardy. I can think of no better way to start this discussion than with this picture and story: A 13 foot Burmese python attempted to swallow a live six foot alligator, whole. Now this would not be a newsworthy story, perhaps in Burma. But it happened in OUR Everglades. Nor would it, unfortunately, been altogether interesting even there, except for the fact that, well, the python won't be having reptile for lunch ever again.
$100 Laptops: I'll Take Two MIT will soon be producing the laptops pictured here and selling them for $100. The new laptop represents a technology that could revolutionize how we educate the world's children. To achieve this goal, a new, non-profit association, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), has been created. The initiative was first announced by Nicholas Negroponte, Lab chairman and co-founder, at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland in January 2005.
Build an Ark Flooding possible today, they say, but our soil is so dry, I can't imagine it is anywhere near saturated. Even so, I'll probably take the chainsaw with me today, as heavy rains often mean that the roots of leaning trees pull out of saturated soil and a tree blocks the road home. Today, I have some in-town tasks that didn't get done yesterday, what with the pups visit and all. So, I'll fetch my 'brella for the mile or so I will be walking in the rain today on campus and to the bank in town, and be happy to imagine our ground water filling up again after months of withdrawals and no deposits.
I just thot my "plans" were screwed by the rain. Half hour ago, there was the pitter patter of little feet somewhere out on one of the porches. "The cat" I thought. But she lay curled up on the woodbox. Hmmm. Then again, no mistaking it this time. I looked out the glass of the front door. Nothing to be seen. But scurrying, scratching from somewhere just outside the door. A bird on the grapevine wreath, perhaps.
I opened the door cautiously. First one, then two, then three wiggly wet female puppies vascillated between approach and avoidance. They are now in Tsuga's pen--hungry, wet and futzing with my plans for the day in the largest way.
Nobody home at Animal Control. Maybe I can talk Doug Thompson into adopting them, ya think? Ideas as to breed? The brown one seems to have some German Shepard. What with the white and black markings, there's some Dalmation in there as well. Any other thots? I'm waiting for a return call from the pound. My illusion of 'free time' at home alone all day has completely ganged you know where. Wee tim'rous beasties, indeed.
UPDATE-- 1:45 PM: Two very caring folks came in their official white truck with clean kennel cages in the rear. I opened the door of the pen and the pups ran to greet them. We each picked up one and put them behind the round holes of the doors, through which their little noses immediately poked. "Got some pit in 'em" said the Animal Control Officer. I could see that in the squareness of the black and white sister's faces. I'm operating on the theory that they escaped from somewhere locally--they were VERY good at escaping, I can tell you. They showed no fear of people, and other than being very hungry, showed no ill treatment. I will have to call and find out if they were claimed. Funny how such a short time of contact (and even that, I was NOT a happy host) you get attached to the critters.
Well, it has rained on my parade. There will be no working in the garden, bucking up kindling for the woodstove or taking pictures of the spicebush berries today. And I've given myself and my students a short reprieve from Monday's test by postponing it til Wendesday. I love procrastination, when I get around to it. Ah, the luxury of time to indulge in reading the submissions to this installment of the Tangled Bank, a repository of current writing from blogs by scientists, naturalists or biophiles of all sorts--including a link to my post, Calling Them by Name. Stop by, leave a comment on a post you especially like. Encourage this kind of writing by encouraging this kind of writer.
I beat myself up when, through inertia or failure of discipline or will I don't do something I have told myself I OUGHT to do. (I try to keep my personal burden of OUGHTS small, as they have a habit of dropping themselves at my feet as gifts, as companion pieces to the MUSTS and SHOULDS that are the nibbling mice and baying hounds that belong to others. But that is another story.) This year, I told myself that I OUGHT to do a full series of photographs on meadow wildflowers. I passed them along county roads, coming and going, from home to whereever we were headed from late August to late September. And you never stopped. You doofus!
And now all the meadows I have gone by are gone by, are past, gone to fruit, drab seedy heads of yesterday's meadow beauty. Kick, punch and a poke in the eye. Darn you, man, why didn't you just do it? I have just this one picture of Ironweed that I took (should I even tell you this?) during an obligatory stop at the recycling bins next to the greenboxes on Franklin Pike. Ah, if you could have seen this plant (and if I'd done what I OUGHT you would have) standing dense with goldenrod, wingstem and Queen of the Meadow (Joe Pye Weed.) T'was a sight to behold.
I post this image now because, frankly, I'm suffering from IDD, a disease that befalls lazy, undisciplined photographers. Image Deficit Disorder occurs when first, you only give your camera a ride, to and from some place never stopping, never getting the camera out of the bag, but at least you carry it along as if you might become suddenly inspired. And it progresses to the point where you think you're going to take it, but instead leave it sitting on the chair next to the door where you won't forget it. Then finally, the whole guilt-emitting mess of metal and glass goes in its bag into a closet where you can't see it, can't hear it tormenting you and your sorry, feeble plans that never come to fruit.
So, with Ann gone and my house pretty much in order (remember how small my OUGHT list is!) I had planned to spend today, tomorrow afternoon and Saturday with the camera, my goal to take 200 images, and from that bring home a half-dozen keepers. I'd agreed to override my concerns about gas and go to the Parkway for the day today, then to Floyd for the Jamboree tomorrow night, and to the Highlands Festival at Radford Saturday. So, it is with very mixed emotions that I hear the rain now on the metal roof, and face the most consistently rainy period we've had in far too long--heavy rain possible during much of the weekend. Lord, how we need it. But so much for my plans of living in the NOW. My head, it is no secret, has been too much in prospect drear, wee tim'rous beastie and wretched procratinating photographer that I am. With apologies to the Bard.
But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane, In proving foresight may be vain; The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men Gang aft agley, An'lea'e us nought but grief an' pain, For promis'd joy!
Still thou art blest, compar'd wi' me The present only toucheth thee: But, Och! I backward cast my e'e. On prospects drear! An' forward, tho' I canna see, I guess an' fear!
Clipped shamelessly from The Origins of Navy Terminology page, an explanation for Crow's Nest that might not be what you thought. Real Crows used to reside there.
The raven, or crow, was an essential part of the Vikings' navigation equipment. These land-lubbing birds were carried on aboard to help the ship's navigator determine where the closest land lay when weather prevented sighting the shore. In cases of poor visibility, a crow was released and the navigator plotted a course corresponding to the bird's flight path because the crow invariably headed towards land.The Norsemen carried the birds in a cage secured to the top of the mast. Later on, as ships grew and the lookout stood his watch in a tub located high on the main mast, the name "crow's nest" was given to this tub. While today's Navy still uses lookouts in addition to radars, etc., the crow's nest is a thing of the past.
Now ya know.
This is a from a post to our class blog where I asked students to see if they could find what was not explicit in the passage re intentions to isolate suspect airplane passengers:
What logical flaws do you see with the plan to quarantine a single "passenger suspected of having bird flu" from any given arriving flight to the US? The following from MSNBC:"The Bush order added pandemic influenza to the list of diseases for which quarantine is authorized. Pandemic flu is considered a novel or re-emergent strain to which there is little or no population immunity.
Under the directive, the Health and Human Services Department is given legal authority to detain or isolate any passenger suspected of having the avian flu to prevent the person from infecting others."
And several students have pointed out the obvious: will not this suspected symptomatic passenger have coughed and sneezed perhaps for many hours and passed contagion to everyone else (perhaps several hundred) who have rebreathed the same air? Pulling aside one passenger for testing will be one thing; isolating 275 for the incubation period of --what?--will be quite another. And this is small comfort:
"Quarantine of a person exposed to pandemic influenza would last for one incubation period. For annual influenza, the incubation period usually is as long as 4 days; however, this period could be different for a new type of influenza virus." from the CDC response to the recent executive order regarding quarantine.
We aren't yet sure what that period would be for whatever might emerge as the avian flu strain being quarantined. I think of this as an exercise, my wife to board six planes in the next week. And if an entire planeful of folks were set aside, in what kind of setting would it be so that each person was not in a position to become the next source of infection? Certainly, a ward-type setting won't do--like a superdome. And if two or three flights come in, back to back, each with suspected passengers, well...maybe the nitty-gritty of dealing with the logistics has at least entered the discussion, even if it is sugar-coated when it hits the press.
The best part of teaching is learning. I'm always better educated after the semester is over, even though I don't get college credit for the experience. But I'm always torn (at least in this freshman bio course I'm teaching now) between teaching the required chapters and simply following my nose, the news and the current events in the natural world that offer such great illustrations of the things we talk about in class. I've tried bringing in nature-objects to pass around in class as a substitute for a field trip: if you can't go to the field, bring the field in to the classroom. But this is usually disappointing in its impact on note-taking or napping students.
Today, I have a piece of Joe Pye Weed stem I cut down by the branch yesterday. It is perfectly hollow, you know, and grows in moist soil. I would tell them that if they've ever seen the cowboy movies where the hero hides from the bad guys by going under muddy water breathing through a hollow tube, this is what he might have used. But it won't be the same as it they'd seen the plant, and cut their own breathing tube.
On the way from my office to class Monday, I passed a Yew bush near McGuffy Hall. The foundation planting was covered in red "berries." But, being a gymnosperm--a 'naked seed' plant--this plant never had flowers, so I knew these weren't really berries in the usual sense. A thick fleshy cup, frosted red, holds a few seeds exposed, naked inside. The fleshy (tasty?) red cup, perhaps, is the same tactic employed by true flowering plants, like an apple tree. I'm colorful, I'm sweet, I'm nutritious. Eat me and spread my seeds. What a great illustration of how an historically older group solves a problem, then passes that solution on to later groups that add their own improvements--like flowers and seeds truly hidden, protected in a ripe ovary we call a fruit. So I passed this Yew branch around, waiting for 120 to see it, and forgot to talk about it. By the time it got all the way around, all the seeds had fallen off anyway. Doh!
On our one field trip, when we'd find a flowering plant 'gone to seed' we'd talk about possible mechanisms of seed dispersal. Touch-me-not has the exploding seed pod. Maple has the winged samaras or 'helicopters' as my kids used to call them. Beggars ticks have sticky hairs that attach them to passers-by. Great idea: dispersal carries the babies some distance away so they don't germinate near and compete with the parent plant. But some plant seeds become airborne. What a neat trick. The plant in the picture above is wild lettuce from our yard--a species we identified on the field trip, a specimen that was ten feet tall! What is the reproductive potential of this single plant, producing tens of thousands of seeds, each of which has the potential, given auspicious air currents, to circumnavigate the globe, literally!
Well, that was totally not where I intended to go with this, but my fingers, as they are wont to do in the early morning writing exercise, mutinied and took over the ship and turned us hard to starboard. A 'real writer' perhaps would deep six this, but a blogger--hey. A blogger hits PUBLISH and raises the sails to pick up whatever winds there be, and climbs the mast, looking for the next jut of land, distant light or perhaps an interesting insect crawling about the Crows Nest. You do know where the term Crow's Nest came from don't you? No? Well, I think we have our next post coming up on the radar.
Although, not being a bird fancier myself (at least not the indoor kind) I cannot imagine that, to many in Indonesia, man's best friend is not his dog or cat, but his caged birds.
If culling birds that live in close proximity to humans is necessary to staunch the spread of bird flu, let's imagine it was cats and dogs to blame for harboring the pestilence. A man in an official-looking uniform comes to your door, and tells you with regret that you must surrender your dog, Tsuga, for the greater good. What would you do?
As human deaths from bird flu begin to mount in Indonesia, the dilemma for the Indonesian authorities is as much how to save the birds as how to save the people.To say that Indonesians love their caged birds is a serious understatement. Almost every house has at least one cage, and often a row of them, hanging from the eaves.
Every major town has a crowded bird market lined with hundreds of cages, where a top-quality singing dove can sell for the same price as a house.
As in several other Muslims countries, doves occupy a special place of honour in the culture, with streets, companies and even a domestic airline - Merpati - named after them.
The doves are not merely kept for decoration - they are taken out and handled, treated as much-loved pets and taken to vets when they fall ill.
Tapes of champion singing doves are available in cassette shops, and are played at home to birds in the hope that they will learn to emulate the champions, and become champions themselves.
In Javanese folklore, a man is only considered to be fully a man if he has a house, a wife, a horse, a keris (traditional dagger) and a singing dove in a cage.
All last month as I drove the back roads of Floyd County or walked along our pasture road, I kept my eye out for the first Monarch of the year, but didn't see a one. Now it is October, and I was about to think this would be the first year in my adult life not to see them pass down the long ridges of the southern Appalachians in autumn. They have been under some pressure throughout their range and are in some danger as a species. It was sad to think that during what remains of my lifetime, the world might lose yet another familiar creature from its shrinking managerie.
Then, raking the leaves from the lane yesterday, a pair of wings sailed quickly by--wings the very color of the orange maple leaves underfoot. I wasn't sure at first, but then at last it lit for a moment on the chrysanthemums at the top of our drive. I was certain--here was my first Monarch of the year, at last. While the swallowtails by this time are tattered and pale, this butterfly had obviously hatched close by, a new floor model, low mileage, spotless and sleek and full of pep.
This male, told by the spot and thinner veins on the wings, was full of himself, expending more energy than was wise for one who still had an enormously long late autumn voyage to come. It was skittish and flitty as I approached with my camera for a portrait. I moved in close for a tight shot. But just when I touched the shutter, off he would flap-flap-flap in a large erratic circle, flying as far as the barn across the creek. It was as if he was out earning his learner's permit on new wings. I wondered if he was about to leave the neighborhood for good, but he always came back to the big cluster of pale orange mums. The flowers, open only since a day before, were as pristine and unblemished as this brand new butterfly.
I confess that I had never really noted the very different pattern of flight the Monarch displays compared to the Spicebush Swallowtails and Fritillaries that have been so common around here all summer. The Monarch pattern is very definitely flap-flap-flap G L I D E. And this passive gliding makes sense when you consider that this butterfly born in the mid-Atlantic east will need to winter fifteen hundred miles to the southwest.
If the Monarch did not know how to glide on the supportive and propulsive air, it would never be capable of its winter vacation (and death) in central Mexico each year. If it could not glide, it would not be able to rise in the thermals and coast effortlessly for miles, heading south and west. Watching this Monarch soar I remembered that I used to know how to fold a piece of wide-ruled school paper to make a glider airplane that would have amazing 'hang-time', almost floating on the air. It is that bit of aerodynamics that the Monarch knows.
Like an eagle, it knows how to adjust its wings and modify its flight path to air currents over vast distances with little effort by gliding and soaring on the thermals. Like a warbler, the Monarch knows how to orient to the invisible pull of unknown energies or to landmarks in the sky or on or under earth, and how to migrate over unfamiliar thousands of miles to a place they have never been before. They know how to feed on the sticky sap of milkweed that makes them unsavory food for would-be predators, insuring that at least some survive long enough to sail away to the West to take a long nap with hundreds of thousands of their kind. All of this they somehow know.
What they know about buoyancy and loft, about milkweed toxins and about the geography of the continent is hardwired, ordained, immutable and the same from one butterfly to its offspring--truth unchanging through an infinite procession of a thousand generations. A Monarch, with its tiny speck of brain simply knows that it knows what it knows and that is enough. These orange and black wisps of will know where they're going and how to get there, born with Heaven in their wiring and their wings.
This is a new image for a post from October, 2002. I've seen more Monarchs this year that the past three put together, this one, on what's left of the butterfly bush I can almost touch from my desk.
For a week, while Ann's away watching the granddaughter in South Dakota, the house thermostat, like the TV remote, if we had one, would be in my hands exclusively. My internal setting is from Mars, hers from Venus, and we are rarely both perfectly copesetic, temperature-wise, from September til June. She opts to build a fire on cool October mornings, no matter the fact that the day will warm later into the seventies. She wants, if nothing else, to hear the tick tick of a warming stove, to smell the reassuring smell of hot cast iron; and I am convinced, if I could import those nonthermal elements of a woodstove fire, it would be enough to banish goosebumps and blowing hot breath in the hands complaining of her suffering.
I, on the other side of the dial, choose to throw an afghan over my lap, and maybe one over my shoulders, too, while I'm typing or reading or grading papers; and drink way too much coffee followed by an equal amount of hot chocolate--and anything else I have to do to avoid spending our firestarter. The small, dry stuff is truly the limiting factor in a stove-burning existance. Twigs, pine cones and the smaller-than-your-arm stuff that makes the first heat is the most labor intensive, pound per pound, of the whole home industry. I am a miser when it comes to spending it frivilously. She claims I am a ice-water ogre and a miser, to boot.
And so last year, we indulged, and compromised, and lived happily ever after. When propane was cheap, in a relative way. If there was a nip in the mornings, we'd throw on two burners in the four-eyed radiant wall heater and leave the thermostat set so it would come on at just the point when the whining was about to start again. I kept my kindling supplies intact for those days when a long, sustained fire was called for; she had her instant heat that went away when the day warmed. And all was well.
Now, both the price and the fear of maldistribution in the months ahead have made us very stingy with the propane. We have to have it for cooking and hot water. We can conserve even this by taking shorter showers and cooking more meals (or at least warming them) on the woodstove. But I'm afraid neither of us will enjoy the instant, easy heat knowing there are others who don't have backup sources of energy for staying warm, taking showers or cooking. It's going to be a chilly winter on Goose Creek, global warming notwithstanding, but a whole lot more toasty here, I'm afraid, than for many who can't afford to fill their tanks again when the last flames die from last year's 'cheap' heating fuel.
Like leaves on trees the race of man is found; Now green in youth, now withering on the ground. Another race the following spring supplies: They fall successive, and successive rise. Alexander Pope (1688--1744)
It amazes me how a leaf knows when its time has come to fall. Perhaps some combination of day length and temperature gives the signal. But maybe it's just the good taste to abort, an inner sensitivity to the needs of the whole, giving its parent tree a chance to hibernate with its blood gone underground for the winter, safe from freezing. Whatever reason and whatever the trigger for the moment of leaf launch, I'm glad they don't all get the same idea on the same day.
First, the walnut and basswood and spicebush leaves fly in the first winds of tropical storms or sudden thunderstorms in late summer. The poplars and hickories, cherries and sumacs have the good manners to wait a while, until after a leaf has had the proper opportunity to strut its chameleon color changes during October before finally falling, drab and shriveled, in a north wind on a bleak November day.
An oak leaf will refuse to let go until December, clacking and waggling brown and brittle in the cold breezes. The serrated leaves of a smooth-boled American Beech turn almost white and become so thin and light, they seem to move on their own on a still January day. This year's beech leaf may persist on the twig until next spring's new baby leaf evicts it, finally, pushing it out and away, off into space, down to the black soil among the first of the spring mustards and violets.
Leaves enter my fantasies, I confess. I have wondered about them, individually, and as a race. If all of the leaves from the countless trees on our acres here fell and did not decompose by the following spring...if this happened year after year, how many years would it take to choke off all growth along the forest floor? Should our woods remain alive after even one year of such a calamity, which is doubtful, how many years of leaf-fall would it take to completely fill the bowl of our valley to the rim?
If all these same leaves could by some fairy-industry be stitched together, edge to edge, would it make one huge leaf as big as all of Floyd county?
And I wonder: If a fella were to lie on his back in these woods for a day, could he learn to tell all the leaves to species merely by the pattern of their falling from the tree on a still day? My hypothesis is 'yes', and I will likely undertake this study soon, purely for the sake of science, you understand.
Repost from September, 2005. I like the way the seasons of words return with the seasons of change in nature, always different and the same. Indulge me these retrospectives; when I can't find words in the present, or am too busy to hear them, I revisit where I was in autumns past.
This is something I considered for the local paper, but decided that not enough people had enough background information on these matters for this to be suitable now. Perhaps, for some of the web readership, it will say something useful. Since it was written two weeks ago, national magazines and TV have prominently discussed avian flu in their headlines. Unfortunately, in America, that is what it takes to legitimize any give "Oh Yeah" proposition.
There are two Great Questions we should ask of any proposed truth, grand hypothesis, pronouncement or explanation of the workings of history or of great inclusive systems, for example, the looming questions about the planet's weather or human health. How we answer these questions and respond to them will determine our futures, individually and collectively.
The two Great Questions we should ask are: 1) Oh yeah? and 2) So what?
The first Oh Yeah? question asks "What are your data, what is their source and from what bias do you interpret the numbers?" The second, So What? asks, if true, is the conclusion trivial or important, and how should we respond, if at all?
Two of the big and uncertain issues that loom at some unknown distance in our personal futures and the future of Floyd County have to do with the impact of global warming and avian flu pandemic.
Let me offer here a brief disclaimer: While I have forty years as a biology watcher that influences my opinions, they can be very wrong but are nonetheless mine and not reached casually. Having said that, let me offer the following personal convictions to Oh Yeah and So What on these matters:
Oh Yeah: Climate change (a warming planet) is certain; global warming (mankind's contribution to rising CO2 greenhouse gasses) is very likely. While next week's weather may not seem unusual, global climate is changing in ways that will have unpredictable consequences on every part of the planet.
Oh Yeah: Avian Flu (H5N1 the most likely combination as of late 2005) has the potential and as recently as mid-September has shown the growing reality of spreading human to human, reaching the World Health Organizations Level 5: a world-wide epidemic (pandemic) within the coming months or years seems inevitable. While fewer than seventy have died so far, millions or hundreds of millions might.
So What?
Here is where it is easy to become overwhelmed. Both the massive global weather machinery already in place and the genetic workings of a trillion trillion mutating viruses in southeast Asia are operating by forces beyond the control of man to prevent or avert in the short run. It is as inevitable that Southwest Virginia will partake of tomorrow's altered climate, as it is certain its borders would be no barrier to imported viruses with alarmingly high mortality rates. What is a person or community to do in the advancing shadows of such great and unstoppable change, should it come?
Certainly, we should all make the personal preparations necessary to weather increasingly frequent periods where life is not normal, even if it is just a typical three-day winter snow storm just months away. But there is more to these matters than the personal uncertainties that demand household planning. What is our Floyd County, southwest Virginia So What?
I have no easy answers leading to a collective response, but I certainly have questions of some urgency: How can Floyd County use its mix of skill sets, talents, knowledge and experience to deal in an exemplary fashion with those changes that may come our way? How can we be proactive, anticipating the needs of our elderly, our poor, our children, our farm animals and pets for the adjusted necessities of life in a time of hardship?
We have the blessing of time in the months to come to insure that we will be the good neighbors we are called to be to each other. But it will take every segment of our population working together in ways that we maybe have not, in the past, been called upon to work. Successfully weathering these potential storms will require each of us to see past the labels we might have put on the other political party, lifestyle or religion that is different from our own and be there for each other, side by side in the town and county, white collar and blue, native and newcomer.
I confess I find this a very difficult 'elephant in the room' to expose in this public place. But I cannot find comfort in the So What of this situation being to acquiesce, to drop our arms and stand slack-jawed and powerless in the face of crisis, to remain silent when we should be talking like we've never talked before. Many of us want to be part of the solution and that should begin to take shape very soon. Let's talk.
I went searching one day a good while back--two years, maybe--for some southernisms, I think, though I don't rightly remember now. And as it happens by serendipity, I ended up in a pleasant browsing cul de sac--a place called Remember Cliffside. It was (and is) a site created for this all-but-disappeared textile company town in western North Carolina. Someone had spent great care and much time archiving the little town and times in images, stories and memorabelia. That someone is Reno Bailey. And in his quest to honor his home town and those people and times, he has recently published, through Arcadia Publishing, "Cliffside: Portrait of a Carolina Mill Town."
I've known the book was in the works for some time, and now have a copy on my desk. At first glance, it seems to be a photo album of sorts, well captioned, nice in the hands; but not being from Cliffside, why would a reader do more than thumb through it, you might ask.
I read it cover to cover, very, very slowly. Maybe it has something to do with the book's southernness, me being from about as far south as you can get in Dixie. But then again in another context, Cliffside isn't far as the crow flies from our more recent home in Morganton, where we lived for seven years before moving to Floyd. We traveled through Cliffside's Rutherford County frequently on our trips back to Alabama and Mississippi to visit our own homeplaces, our families. And somehow with all this distant connectedness, I find myself turning pages and traveling back into my past, our past through the memories of Cliffside--a small, closely-knit family of families living in my grandmother's time. The architecture is spare, or it is extravagant; the hairstyles, likewise. They were natty dressers back then--bowler hats, suspenders and creases in their pants, even at work. Civility and roughness show in those American times in an unusual company town. And they were just like us. You see it in their eyes.
But then, as you know, I'm a sucker for images. They tell a thousand stories. And while Reno's captions are an education, it is the words that come to me out of the gingerbread, the front porches, the starched collars and creased brows that tell the tale. Cliffside's history as a mill town cobbled from nothing by one man is unique. Even so, if you're at all like me, you'll find yourself believing this is your story, too.
Cliffside: Portrait of a Carolina Mill Town can be purchased at the Remember Cliffside Company Store.