Fragments From Floyd

Just one more little niggle to remind those of you who live on the eastern end of Floyd County and the western end of Roanoke County that you can come and be part of my VERY FIRST book gig--Thursday night at the Bent Mountain Library (behind the Elementary School) at 7:00. It promises to be a small and intimate group there in the children's book nook that seats a dozen, with overflow seating out into the computer lab.

Afterward, rumor has it, that there will be a contingent from the evening program that will continue the discussion just down the road at the Mexican restaurant where the speaker has been promised one of those wide, shallow glasses with salt crystals along the rim, an atoll above a shimmering if temporary pale green lagoon below.

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It hasn't, and perhaps it won't happen often. But it is the most gratifying part of this ongoing endeavor to extend the discussion with book readers that I have been having with blog readers now for some years. (Can it be that long?) I'd like to think that, for every vocal "resonator" in the readership, there are ten more silent ones. But the half dozen I've heard from gives me a lot of satisfaction. In those few, the parts and the whole of Slow Road Home has found that place in the reader that speaks of connection with the land and family, that satisfies a longing to belong to a place--even if it is not their place other than by way of the words of the book.

A few readers have told me "I understand what you tell us about how it feels to be who and where you are." That kind of connectedness is what I so hoped for when this weblog began in rather desparate and uncertain times four years ago. And now, to know at least in these few mails, emails, phone calls, conversations and blog posts that I was not, am not a tree falling in empty forest...well, I feel I have come home.

Robert Paterson lives on Prince Edward Island, a very far distance from Goose Creek. And yet, he doesn't. We live far closer than the map would make us think. He reviews the book in his blog to say that in his world and history are shared experiences, hopes and understandings with the story of the book--my story, my dog, our valley, sky, forest, and times. They are, in part, his dog, his sky. All I can say to Robert and other "resonators" who have let me know their feelings is a very heart-felt YES!

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What a perfect title. It cuts across a pervasive national, international and personal blindness to what has now become as close to truth as we will come in dealing with humanity's future. Until now, most people and some political parties here and abroad have knowingly looked away, found excuses, deferred seriously considering the implications of the "coming unpleasantness". It is called global warming. If nothing else, a summer movie will hold our eyes and minds on the issue, hit us in our guts, and force us to face the truth of what is happening to this planet, no matter how inconvenient it might be to our personal plans, political policies, or hopes for business-as-usual.

An Inconvenient Truth is the culmination of 25 years of interest and concern about this largely ignored issue. Al Gore has pursued this issue as a matter of personal passion even while a would-be votership has placed far more political support behind far lesser social and environmental problems. My hope is that the movie will be viewed on its own merit without regard to who belongs to what "party". We have this window of time to confront a terrible truth: that without changes in the way we live and work, travel and shop, build and pollute, future generations may face an altogether different and less healthy planet. The party is over. We may be too late and too little to affect a change. But to look the other way from an inconvenient truth is unconscionable, a kind of Grand Lie. Maybe--just maybe--this summer movie will be the catalyst to spark a conversation we've put off for far too long, and goad us to turn our new resolve for our children's sake into action.

You can hear interviews with Gore about the movie and the matter on Fresh Air or on the Diane Rehm show.

Opening is being staged over the summer (why?) and will be opening in Roanoke at the Grandin only (why?) on June 30. I'm hoping an armada of Floydians will go down mountain together and see it, discuss it, and keep the discussion going for the future. Floyd is poised to become a (small rural) center for "green" technology development. Maybe even very small towns and grass-roots bloggers like you and me can face and confront this very large and inconvenient truth.

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I won't look them up for you. You can find them--the reports in which the bubble poppers explain why the touted "hydrogen economy" isn't the long term answer to our looming energy crisis. So recently, there's an increased interest in biofuels--the use of land crops to supplement our rising demand for auto fuel. And here comes that pin, bursting yet another inflated hope for energy independence. I've put my hopes in both of these, and am sad to admit they look like fingers in the dike.

What's the problem with bio-conversion of crops? First, there's not enough to make a difference. If all the US's corn crop went into biofuel production, it would supply only about 7% of the country's needs--not to mention taking that much nutrition from our national breadbasket. But worse than that, it just isn't efficient. Corn, being the most efficient, is a net energy sink--more energy goes in than comes out of the process. Other bioresources like wood and grasses are even less productive of liquid fuel.

So where does the recent push come from? It sure sounds "alternative energy" friendly, and even the Republicans seem to be getting behind biofuels.

According to David Pimentel, Cornell University agriculturalist whom many regard as the world's leading authority on the energy content of biofuels and their effects on food and agriculture as a whole, the drive towards biofuels is mostly about money:

U. S. government subsidies mean that companies producing corn ethanol receive payments totaling $7 per bushel of corn processed. The corn farmers alas receive less than a 2-cent per bushel subsidy related to ethanol production.

We're a better species than this. We can get through this very difficult period ahead and leave the planet able to sustain its essential services compatible with both human and non-human survival. But if we do what we've always done, we'll get what we've always got. Something has to come along and rattle our cage so that people across all cultural and political realms GET IT, change their lives accordingly, and work together.

Will it take another, two or a dozen more, national or international disasters to get our attention? Has the debate about "is there a problem?" (about an oil crisis or global warming) reached a consensus agreement? Are we ready to move on to "so what can be done?" We may be almost to that point at last. More on this, soon.

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~ We had occasion to accumulate lots of glass bottles over the weekend. All of them would have gone to recycling six months ago. Today, most of them will end up in the local land fill. Why? Because suddenly, there is a policy that only CLEAR glass is recyclable. That accounts for maybe 5% of our weekend collection. And it seems that is a local rather than a national change. I'm still trying to get to the bottom of why this unfortunate change has come about. Any ideas?

~ Now this is way cool. Too bad I'm not teaching A & P this semester. Tweak the controls of this program that shows you all the muscles involved in facial expression, how each operates, and overlays all that over the bone structure of the face. From ArtAnatomy.

~ I'm re-writing the lyrics to the Beach Boys song: "There's a place where I can't go to tell my troubles to...in HER room." The Ann-ex is not quite complete, but it was usable Saturday night. She's still trying to decide if I'll have visiting priviledges out there.

~ Lucid Daydreams: one of the musings in Slow Road Home that has made one reader ask "What y'all smoke out there on Goose Creek?" It really does record the closest thing I guess I've had to a lucid dream, though I was awake and intentionally letting my mind wander--a daydream unconstrained by logic, experience or reason in which I was both object and subject. Maybe I'll read up on lucid dreams.

~ If you aren't backing up your important files, you're asking for grief. I have an external hard drive for the desktop. For the laptop, I registered (free) for MOZY six months ago and it automatically saves any changed file to an external site. It's a no-brainer, folks.

~ I'm in the process of writing a little something on sneezing, yawning and such, and ran across this reference to "sneezing fettishism." Dear me. I'll never sneeze in public again.

~ ScrapBook recently won 'Most Useful Upgraded Extension' prize in the Extend Firefox Contest. It saves the site, not just the link, for those web references that might disappear before you glean what you want from them. You can mark up text to save pertinent quotes (good as a blogger's tool!) Very handy.

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As we walked the pasture loop this morning, it struck me: I had thought when the third week of May came 'round again, I'd revisit the exact time and place where last year the lighting and scene somewhere nearby had been image-worthy. But that time is gone by today, I realize with a certain sadness. I missed revisiting what may have been a one-time-only opportunity. I have to wonder: was I not receptive as I had been a year ago, or had subtle changes happened in the forest, the lay of the land, the turn of the earth on its axis so that what I saw, thought, understood from any particular vantage point last year will never come for me, or for anyone, ever again?

Today, unbidden, possibilities and projects, ideas, phrases and poems have presented themselves while I swept the new room for tonight's company; while I walked the dog down to the low-water bridge and back on our perfunctory morning leg-stretch; even while I showered--often, while I shower, isolated and confined in a warm womb of space, separated from the larger, terrestrial world beyond. I oscillate with eyes closed under a soothing warm curtain of water, and thoughts come. And by the time I have dressed and open the door, they are gone into the troposphere with the steam of my shower. Most of them never come down to earth again, though the scents and echos of their passing remains, ungrasped, unspoken, unwritten.

Carpe diem. It all passes so quickly unless we get it down, unless we capture images in words and pixels, and then can go beyond, to tell the larger story of what those tiny samples tell us in an enormous rushing life we are immersed it but too rarely aware of. The now becomes the water we swim in and ignore, until we pull from time to time outside its current and see what a different world spins around us today than a year ago, than a year ahead, than evermore.

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I'll let you use your ears today. Not many of you will want to listen online live at 6:50 or 8:50 in the morning, so go at your leisure (you DO have some of that rare commodity, I'm just certain!) and listen to the mp3 file stored on the WVTF Radio (Roanoke NPR) website. It's a piece from the book that I called "What We Have Eyes to See" and is about cemeteries, sight and insight.

If Roanoke listeners are dropping by Fragments today, I would like you to know I'll be doing a bit of reading from Slow Road Home next Thursday, June 1, at Bent Mountain Library (behind the elementary school) at 7:00. Come on up the mountain and join us.

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Suddenly, summer. We ate our evening meal on the front porch last night. A breeze stirred, and unlike it's short-day cold-day relative, it didn't make us draw in and pull our collars around our necks. The warm wind, sweet with whatever it is that makes the air smell like dessert, was as relaxing as that first instant in a hot shower. Ahhhh.

But with the warm air at the ground rising into cold air above, we were awakened at midnight with the first of what will likely be many more late-night thunderstorms. Lightning sent our bedroom black to white to black again with blinding quickness and brilliance, and thunder bellowed with such resonance it could have been coming from a mile below Goose Creek, shaking the house. The dog soon was standing beside me, both of us wide awake. I got up and unplugged the microwave, cut off the modem, unplugged my laptop, came back to bed and did not sleep.

What am I going to do about the gutters? I can't negotiate the 30 foot ladder it takes to get the job done--not anymore, since a back condition five years ago left my right calf with some permanent muscle damage. I called a fellow who had done this for us once before. He said he'd come, and didn't. Now, the gutters are full of tree trash, and all night long, water spilled in great sheets onto the metal roof of the front porch--not the pleasant patter that we are used to, but a war-drum whose beat told me for hours last night how sorry I was going to be when the wood rotted on the eaves. Bad homeowner! Slacker! Wimp! it pulsed, on and on.

But it was raining, at last. We were beginning to despair that another summer drought would be ahead. It still might be, of course. But the dust is settled on the road this morning; the blackberries and the garden needed deep moisture at this critical time; and the creeks, down to a thin ribbon, will run not full, but fuller today, and for a few more. I'll slip out on the porch here soon and see if I can hear the difference in the dark.

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I would say that I stay fairly busy. There are never any days I hang around here listless, wondering what the heck can I do to entertain myself. Trouble is, most of what I find to do these days is done with my butt in a chair, letting my fingers do the walking. Ann prys me out of the seat a couple of times a day to accompany her on one of many sanity-walks, but that is hardly a cardiovascular workout...

...unless we do "heart attack hill" or make the berrypatch loop. In terms of practical exercise, we are doing little with this place other than maintaining: we cut the grass, keep a bit of garden, find enough firewood to get us through winter. Should we create more of a working farm here? We have water, space, and time. Do I have the will to give it away to goats, chickens, meat rabbits, a few head of cattle?

Yesterday after visiting the Bent Mountain Library where I'll be speaking a week from tonight, I was invited to the nearby farm-home-managery of a fellow I met many years ago just once, a biology teacher, at a wildflower rally. We stood in one of his fenced enclosures and chatted about goat genetics; he's created some novel coat colors, it seems.

An alpaca (one of about 20) stood very close behind me and nibbled at my neck; I wondered if that same mouth was capable of taking off a stranger's ear, but managed to stand fast, and chat as if alpacas always nibbled my neck. Two (of about 20) pygmy goats stood either side of me with their front hooves on my hips while they nibbled on my shirt tail. The great white Pyrenees dog nuzzled at my hand to be petted, as a half dozen white pigeons circled in the pine branches overhead. The newest goats had just been dehorned. A baby alpaca born that morning was nursing aggressively as the milk just started filling momma's utters. So much life, so many things going on, such energy.

But how much of my waning energy do I want to sacrifice to live among assorted critters? And how much expense? Keeping goats would require very good fencing, and shelter, and a place to store feed, and constant vigilance against wild dogs, and vet bills and...I don't particularly care for goats milk. We have neighbors not a mile away that could sell it to us if we did.

On the other hand, having a meat source, or eggs, might be an asset worth the effort. I'm just thinking, and have the sense that it's time to move into a different pattern, lift up out of the comfortable rut, turn the wheel with whatever effort is required and see where things might go without the forces of habit and least effort. Vision. I need vision. Maybe I'll climb Heart-attack Hill and watch the sun go down later today, and see what I see from a high place.

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This is bad news: garlic mustard, which I've pretty well eliminated from our property but which has taken over the roadside margins along Goose Creek and hundreds of miles of Floyd County roads, is possibly creating disastrous effects on the eastern forest in general. It seems that a chemical given off by the plant (Alliaria petiolata) eliminates some of the good kind of fungus that some trees depend on for their nutrition:

...garlic mustard targets arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF), which form mutually beneficial relationships with many forest trees. These fungi have long filaments that penetrate the roots of plants, forming an intricate interwoven network that effectively extends the plant's root system. AMF depend on plants for energy and plants depend on the fungi for nutrients. When tree seedlings, which depend strongly on AMF, began to decline in the presence of garlic mustard, the researchers suspected that the invasive plant might thwart this symbiotic relationship.

"The mechanisms for this phenomenon and its potential long term impacts remain poorly understood," Stinson adds, "but one possibility is that invasive species may disrupt fragile ecological relationships that evolved over millions of years."

"This suggests garlic mustard invades the understory of mature forests by poisoning the allies of its main competitors," Stinson says. "By killing off native soil fungi, the appearance of this weed in an intact forest could stifle the next generation of dominant canopy trees. It could also invite other native and nonnative weedy plants that currently grow in low-AMF habitats, such as those disturbed by logging or development."

On the other hand, at least around here, this plant grows along margins, not in deep woods, far as I can tell. But apparently, at least in Ontario where this research was done, garlic mustard finds its way into clearings in the woods, so I'm certain it has the same potential in our forest. Our poor forests--one more insult to a long recent history of injury.

Here are some images so you can recognize garlic mustard on your own property, most easily found while in flower. If in doubt, crush and smell the toothed, heart-shaped leaves: you'll find just what the name suggests--a most definite aroma of garlic.

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Expect "Chaos and Panic", says a group of journalists.

"A new report finds that journalists covering public health issues see a government and society that is "thoroughly unprepared" for a pandemic flu outbreak."

I still follow the stranger-than-fiction development in the avian flu situation, as I have since fall semester, 2004. That is when one of my biology students told me that his uncle, a chicken farmer on the Chesapeake, told him that bird flu was the animal disease to watch. I'd never really given it much attention until then, but began investigating the status of a variant called H5N1. And the more I looked into it, even at that early stage when the virus was pretty much under the popular radar, the more serious the potential seemed for this virus to at least cause economic hardships in a world with increasing dependency on poultry as a protein source.

The problem has not and will not go away. It may never reach the *worst-case scenario that is known to be possible. But it seems this bird virus will become globally present in the wild bird population for years? decades? forever? And as such, the potential to mutate or recombine and pass human-to-human with some degree of ease becomes more likely. It will just be one of those impending risks that hang over our heads and those of generations to come that we will have to be aware, plan for, and overcome.

Meanwhile, some recent blips on the bird flu radar:

How Did Seven Family Members Get Infected With Bird Flu? "We still don't know how seven members of the same family in Indonesia became infected with the H5N1 bird flu virus strain. Six of them have died. It is vital to know whether some of them infected each other. If they did, this would mean that the virus might be changing."

Bird Flu Mortality Rate Rises Bird flu has killed 64 percent of those people known to be infected with the virus this year, according to World Health Organization statistics, with the number of fatalities since Jan. 1 surpassing 2005 levels." (The rate is currently 78% in Indonesia, perhaps the most likely place for origin of human-to-human transmission.)

Contaminated water might spread bird flu to humans Open water such as reservoirs, lakes or rivers which have been contaminated by infected migratory birds might be able to spread the H5N1 bird flu virus to humans who drink or swim in the water, but there is insufficient data to be sure concludes a recent World Health Organization report.

And from a comment at Effect Measure: It is also worth noting that H5N1 has not decreased it's killing ability even as cluster sizes have increased. I continue to maintain that the 1918 pandemic kill rate is not the *worst case scenario. It is entirely possible that H5N1 could become a pandemic strain with its current kill rate. That is the real worst case scenario.

And finally, from the Daily Kos, a summary of recent events and possible interpreations.

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Snakes? No, I don't much think about stepping on a snake while out in the pasture and woods in the summertime. What I dread is the inevitable stepping into or mowing up of a yellow jacket's nest. You should have seen me run, and fall, and get up and run again while swinging an opened umbrella in a wide and frantic circle over my head during a rainy walk in the field last year. Got zapped three times on the neck, as I recall.

Here's all I'll need for organic pest control:

• A plastic dish pan or wash basin.


• A tablespoon of liquid dish soap, preferably non-scented.


• 3 sticks about 13 inches long.


• 2 or 3 tie wires.


• A 3 or 4 inch piece of wire.


• 12 inches of string.


• A piece of raw fish.

While this recipe from Alaska uses FISH, I think a chunk of raw pork or beef would work as well. I aim to find out, maybe before this weekend when we'll be enticing the little demons to visit Chez First with an outdoor crowd carrying paper plates full of pot-luck YJ bait.

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Nine Easy Steps to Fight Age-Related Memory Loss

The things we need to do to protect ourselves from dementia, are pretty close to the things we need to do to protect ourselves from the other great fear - heart disease. High cholesterol, hypertension, diabetes and smoking have long been considered--and aggressively treated--as risk factors for cardiovascular disease. These same cardiovascular risk factors in middle age may also increase significantly the risk of dementia in old age, according to Kaiser Permanente researchers. Here are the nine steps. The linked article has additional references in support of each of these.

• *Get physical exercise
• **Protect your head
• **Get mental stimulation
• **Build social networks
• Improve your diet
• Improve your blood pressure
• Improve your cholesterol
• Avoid tobacco
• Don't abuse alcohol

* Interestingly, decline in physical abilities may be a warning sign of impending mental decline:

First Signs of Alzheimer's May Be Trouble with Balance, Walking

"Everyone had expected the earliest signs of dementia would be subtle cognitive changes," said Eric B. Larson, MD, MPH, director of Group Health Center for Health Studies. "We were surprised to find that physical changes can precede declines in thinking." What is considered a brain disease may be intimately connected to physical fitness, he added.

In the study, the first indicators of future dementia appeared to be problems with walking and balance. A weak handgrip may be a later sign of the development of dementia in older people."

** I figure if I wear a helmet while blogging I've got three out of nine pretty well covered. Makes me feel downright healthy--regardless what SHE tells me as I pound the keys. Yes, dear. Exercise. Think I'll walk to the fridge and get a beer.

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I remarked to a friend recently that standing on this side of the book is giving me some different perspectives on my methods and motives, on what must have stood at the root of the writing those days in which I was "at sea" and convinced there was no direction to the morning exercises. I haven't come far in this new understanding, but have begun. One of Rebecca Blood's questions gave me an opportunity to say a bit about one of these "hidden things" I had been thinking about, related to some of those larger and deeper "telling things" that unconsciously guide our ships across open seas. I hope someday to say more.

Rebecca asked: What is the most telling thing about you?

Fred replied: Telling? Meaning a small but apparent feature in one's personal makeup that points to a larger and deeper truth about who and what they are all about?

One characteristic about me that is more or less evident on the blog and the book is that I am readily amazed and often in awe of nature, human and otherwise. This reflects a genuine and life-long sense of wonder--a trait that has made me, at times, a successful biology teacher and which sustains me as a nature-and-place blogger and writer. And what this state of mind tells about who I am on a deeper level is that, since I was very young, I've had the haunting conviction that what we see, think, hear, and "know" is a shadow world; that there are layers and layers of reality and truth below the surface. Along with C.S. Lewis and other Christian mystics, I hold the sense that the physical world of nature is not accidentally laden with true metaphor, nesting dolls of meaning or beauty to which we are often blind or indifferent. Someone long ago said that, in wonder, is the beginning of wisdom. To quote one of my favorite authors...

We have so little time in the present and there is so very much to take in and share. There are wonders all around. From our everyday lives, these familiar things may seem unremarkable to us. But in these precious instants in time, if we keep our eyes open and our hearts ready to know it, there is nothing ordinary.

From the Author's Note, Slow Road Home ~ A Blue Ridge Book of Days, by Fred First

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This time last year, it was pasture grasses and flowers that dominated the photo-folders. I was thinking then about the possibility of creating four seasonal sets of gift cards. I'm thinking about it again, to sell in the same places as the book, and online too.

Speaking of books (can you imagine!)...I acted on a wild hair yesterday on the way back from Blacksburg (where the book is now at Easy Chair Book Store) and pulled in at Cracker Barrel. Their gift shops are always crawling with travelers waiting their turn at the turnip greens, and heck, it was worth a quick stop. Granted, at present, at least the Christiansburg facility didn't have books other than cook books, but I'm going back to talk with the manager. What would be great in a perfect world would be that he would say yes to that location and help me get it in Cracker Barrels up and down the I-81 corridor through Virginia.

Yeah, I know. If wishes were horses...

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This true yarn was first posted to Fragments during my first-year "grampa tales" era, when I was putting down many of the retold stories from days gone by. It seemed timely to pull it out recently when I was clawing desperately to have something to send the Floyd Press for the biweekly column.

"I wouldn't step foot in that pasture again 'til there's snow on the ground if I were you" a concerned Floyd County neighbor told me recently. With the coming of warm weather "snakes hide in that tall grass. You'd better be careful!"

I could tell that fear and loathing of those creatures would make her an unsympathetic listener to my old snake stories. It seemed her feelings about snakes were not altogether different from those of the edentulous old gentleman who rolled down his truck window to ask just what was I doing in a wet-weedy ditch along the side of an Auburn, Alabama dirt road long ago. "I'm hunting for snakes" I said, matter-of-factly. And as he quickly rolled up his window and sped away, he proclaimed "You must be in league wit da devil!" I assure you, this is not the case, but there was a time even my wife might have thought so.

We were newly married, and I had started my first semester of graduate school, majoring in zoology. The herpetology class I was taking awarded points for the different snakes, turtles, lizards and salamanders we collected from the neighboring counties. I just happened to be listening to the twelve-noon radio swap shop one day when a caller announced he had a "big ol' snake in a clothes hamper, if anybody wants it." And of course, I did, and brought it home to our college apartment.

This particular gray rat snake was a big one-almost five feet long, powerful but mild of temperament as this species typically is. Since it was a weekend, I would have to find room and board for the creature until I could take it in to the professor on Monday and register my easy points. So, I put it in a large Styrofoam ice chest in the closet of our bedroom, with the lid slightly open and a couple of Ann's huge pharmacy textbooks on top to hold it down securely while we went to dinner in town.

When we returned, my wife of two weeks discovered that, contrary to my assurances otherwise, the snake had indeed been able to bench press twenty pounds of books. He was now somewhere in the apartment! In the next instant, my newlywed bride was up on the bed doing a little dance of dread in the middle of our bed. Between gasps she told me "If I'd known this is what it would be like to be married to a biology major, I'd have married an accountant!" Our future marital bliss demanded that I find that snake right away, and so I set about the task, reassuring her I'd find it in three minutes. How many hiding places could there be, after all, in a one-bedroom apartment!

I looked high and low. There was no snake in the bathtub, and none behind the couch. There was no sign of it either, under the bed upon which my bride was bouncing in hysterics. Fifteen minutes later and at the end of my rope, I wondered if maybe a flashlight would help. I went to the desk drawer to fetch it, but the drawer wouldn't give. Odd it should suddenly be stuck, I thought, and pulled again. The third time I pulled, the drawer came open one synchronized and awful motion as the leading third of a five foot snake shot up and out of it, and stood upright like a cobra mere inches from my face. Confronted so suddenly, so unexpectedly and at such close range, even our brave, young snake-fancier suffered a jolt of sheer white terror (though it took him years to admit it.)

Removed from the drawer and securely tied up in a pillow case, our house guest left our apartment that very hour (the one and only stipulation of her or-else ultimatum) for a sandy aquarium in the zoology building on campus. By the time I got back home, she had her feet on the floor again, still not fully convinced I hadn't lost other snakes in our bedroom and never bothered to tell her. Don't be ridiculous, I probably would have told her. But come to think of it, I never did confess to the one that got lose in the Volkswagen. Never did find out what happened to that one.

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There's been nary a nibble at PayPal the past couple of days and no checks are coming in the mail lately. I guess the web readers that provided the first surge of book orders all have their copy of Slow Road Home, and no gift-buying occasions loom (until Fathers Day, June 18--are you listening?). I am just starting the speaking engagements, but have been told by other writers not to expect great turnouts or many book purchases through those events; they are more of a good-will, for-your-information kind of thing. Even so, my original plan was to wait until the fall or winter to consider attempting to get the book carried by a distributor with outlets through the bigboxbookstores. Guess I'll stick with the plan.

I don't have the fears of multiple cartons of unsold books mildewing over in the barn. This first printing will eventually get sold. I should hear soon if any of the Blue Ridge Parkway outlets will carry the book; that would be good news, indeed. Next Friday, a radio essay will air, and the book will be mentioned. That should stir up a small number of orders, maybe.

But I'm in the chicken and egg conundrum stage of this thing. Even if the book is placed in dozens of bookstores in several states, if there is no interest and demand so that folks go in asking for the book, there's not much chance they would stumble across it among thousands by chance alone. But the cost of travel for media exposure or readings is huge, though this seems to be the best way of lifting the book up into the radar so there's enough awareness that the bookstores will actually send it off their shelves in some numbers. There must be other web and from-home avenues I've yet to tap. I'll have to say, this lull, while a bit discouraging, was necessary to let me get my legs back under me. I actually got back to writing a bit over the weekend. And I'm ready for today's Spoken Word event at Cafe del Sol (4:00 in downtown Floyd) and thinking again about working on the photo-book, the audio-project and some other future endeavors.

Hindsight, I'm finding now, is helpful for understanding what and why and how I have written--and maybe to help me know what I will write up ahead. Being able to see all that through the eyes of others who read the book and tell me about my stories and wanderings through their eyes is helping me get my bearings now better than during the times when the writing was happening, to gain altitude above the span of years, to look down on a path from some distance, to be able to see more than just the few steps behind and ahead. Perspective, I guess is the word. I'm appreciative of the fact that the journey goes on, even when it seems that I'm just standing still. Still, and still moving. Eh?

Posted by fred1st at 8:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Keeping the good and finding it again is perhaps the hardest thing to accomplish when confronted by the enormous information mountain of the internet. Saving web pages is a poor method. Clipping and saving to a text editor is effective but boring. I've tried OneNote, Evernote, TurboNote, and Scrapbook extension in FireFox--you name it, I've tried it as a method of saving, then retrieving clips and snips for such things as comparing prices on hardware or software, booking plane tickets and lodging for upcoming trips, and environmental links for my students in class, not to mention future blog posts and items I want to keep in longer-term storage.

I've only been testing Google Notebook for a short while, but I think this actually is something I will use--a useful utility that will supplant several of the other methods I've used for keeping snips of web data, then using google's search to find it again.

I installed the FireFox extension that lets me keep a little window open for the current working Notebook, and also to right click a selection and click "Note this" which picks up the url of the page the clip comes from as well. If nothing is selected, it saves the url like a bookmark to Notebook, and then you can add comments or keywords and drag and drop the link into whatever notebook you want.

Unlike the other clip-savers mentioned above, this one is online, with a slick Ajax interface. So if you need a way to save web info across two or more computers, this might be just what you're looking for.

It also works as a low-luster quick and easy webpage maker. I cut-and-pasted some pages from the Slow Road Home wiki into a notebook I made public, just as an in-concept first attempt. We'll see if Google spiders crawl these pages like any other, or if anybody comes to the page from the search terms or "tags" on the page.

At this early stage, it lacks bullets, outlining, linking between notebooks...but I'd be willing to bet, these are not far off. OneNote 12 comes out as part of Windows Vista early next year, and it may have to hit the ground running, with its competition already well-established. Google versus Microsoft. Godzilla meets King Kong.

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Floyd County seems a strong candidate to receive some of the (rather embarassingly small pot of) monies being made available to American communities for cultural and historical preservation and to raise the visibility of such communities as travel destinations.

Currently, the Preserve America initiative also offers technical and financial assistance from Federal agencies that can be used to:

• bolster local heritage preservation efforts;


• support better integration of heritage preservation and economic development; and


• foster and enhance intergovernmental and public-private partnerships to accomplish these goals.

Floyd County residents can make such designation and grant offerings more likely by writing very soon to support inclusion in the Preserve America program. If you live in Floyd County, please consider writing a short letter before the deadline of May 29. Email (lmartin@floydcova.org) or fax (540 745-9305) your letter as soon as possible to Lydeana Martin, Floyd County's Community and Economic Development Director.

My letter is below in the "read more" window.

Preserve America Communities
Advisory Council on Historic Preservation
1100 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Suite 809
Washington DC 20004

May 20, 2006

Dear Councilperson,

Floyd County’s potential for remaining aesthetically viable and authentic to its agrarian roots lies in its richness of both natural and historical heritage. I am writing to strongly endorse Floyd County’s efforts to become a Preserve America community.

My wife and I settled permanently in Floyd County in 1997. Of all the places we considered for our final relocation, we easily decided on Floyd. Many who live here agree that somehow, this county has managed to maintain much the appearance and rhythm of a simpler time. The landscape still looks very much as it would have in my parent’s day, and yet the community of residents here is vibrant, progressive and eclectic.

In the past few years, an increasing number of others have felt the “magic” of Floyd. Some are moving here; more are coming to participate with local events in the town of Floyd or to enjoy the rich cultural offerings of music and art in outlying venues in the county. There is increasing tension between making opportunities and services available to visitors and new residents and maintaining the unique charms of the place that they come here or move here to enjoy.

The location of Floyd County makes it an easily accessible destination for area travelers. Situated just a short drive between the heavily-visited Blue Ridge Parkway (which forms the county’s southern borner) and the I-81 corridor, it can be reached readily by travelers passing through southwest Virginia. For those who come to sample music at Floyd’s many music venues or visit art studios and crafters scattered in the beautiful hills and hollers, their time here is both enjoyable and culturally enriching.

Recognition as a Preserve America community would hold up this Appalachian county as a model to other rural communities hoping to prosper and at the same time maintain their heritage and local culture. It would also demonstrate to those who plan Floyd County’s future that there are strong reasons to protect the town of Floyd and the county from the kinds of development that unfavorably alter the pleasant vistas, clean air and water, and slower pace of life that residents know and visitors come to share.

Thank you for your consideration of Floyd County, Virginia for inclusion in the Preserve America designation.

Sincerely,

Frederick B. First, MSPT and M. Ann First, PharmD

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"Only that day dawns to which we are awake" said Thoreau. Ann made me a cross-stitch of that quote soon after we were married.I guess with the blog and the book, being awake to each day has been something I've sought to do. Sometimes, it is very easy. How could one not be fully alive here in this quiet place each morning? And some days, it's possible to sleep all day, eyes open, not seeing or hearing--only doing the necessary, getting by.

I think I'm finally feeling the let-down that comes with a thing accomplished, after months of being driven by a task. Once completed, its force and gravity wanes, and there may not be a "next thing" waiting to take its place; or there may be too little energy left to pick up and move to projects neglected and stacked up to be done.

This sunrise image is from last year this time--a simple scene of the sun rising through the treeline along the ridge. I was awake that dawn. Nothing brings me to full participation in the day like immersion in a scene like this followed by a happy hour bringing the image to life in the digital darkroom. A morning walk with the camera tomorrow, I think, will be just what the doctor ordered for temporary task fatigue.

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• This just in: Fred's Bloggers on Blogging interview now posted at Rebecca's Pocket.

It was the summer of '02. The page on my screen was called a "blog" and I had little clue why anyone needed such a thing--much less, me. But hey--maybe it could be a way for my family to keep abreast with the ups and downs of our daily lives here on Goose Creek (mostly DOWNS just then at a time when I had made the odd decision to do without a paycheck or professional identity and live for a while at home, but not knowing what I would "do for a living" beyond that time). Alas, the family ignored my new blog. Eventually, a few strangers wandered down the digital trail and found this place I called Fragments from Floyd--the latter term referring to the Virginia county we live in; the former, referring to the pieces my life was in, and at the same time, "fragments" looked ahead to those shards of knowing and contentment I expected to discover in living close to the land, even while the wife left the valley every day to help pay the bills.

Suddenly one day that first perplexing summer, my blog visits surged from an average somewhere barely in the double digits to more than 200! I was amazed! And I learned that the reason for this surge of visitors was that I'd been "linked"--something I thought happened to other people, not to the clueless mini-bloggers like me--by Rebecca Blood, who I came to find out, wrote the book on blogging that year. And what's more, she had "categorized" my blog into a group she finally settled upon calling "weblogs of place". A little light bulb lit up over my head that day--DING! Yes, I suppose that is what I'm all about--looking for my place on this place, indulging in being here, of all the places in the world. And my blogger's identity took a large step forward; my voice and purpose became clearer towards a path I should follow with Fragments From Floyd.

Now, almost four years later, Fred, the old Energizer Blogger, is still beating his drum and Rebecca wants to know what makes him keep going, and going, and... She's recorded my answers to her questions in her Bloggers on Blogging series. Sorry, it's the third longest thing I have written outside two Masters theses and of course, the book. The interview became my morning writing exercise a few weeks back, and it was fun to see how I'd answer her questions about writing, blogging and the changes in Fragments over almost four years!

Yes, I'm still around after all these years, but the blog-batteries will finally fizzle some day, and right in mid-sentence, I'll be chatting along on a post about the garden, and all of a sudd

Posted by fred1st at 5:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

~ We've lived in this valley and (I thought) walked every almost-vertical inch of it in every season. And yet, while I was away last weekend, Ann found not one but TWO widely-separated patches of Showy Orchis in off-the-path places here in our valley. I'd show you this plant from my digital archives, but the only one I had was among the 1000 images lost in 2002 in a hard drive that crashed while I was installing a CD-RW drive to back up my files. Sigh. But I'll have to go get a picture later this morning.

~ When we lived across the Parkway, this was the week we'd (revise that: I) would go out and gather a mess of ramps and make soup, put a few on a ham sandwich, or chop one or two up to eat with scrambled eggs and salsa. I see they've become popular. And expensive.

~ Colleen is letting our small world know about the Spoken Word event for this coming Sunday. Come on down--come early and tank up on your favorite form of caffeine and join the party.

~ I'm sending off the last of my first 100 book boxes today (with books inside, of course!) I've been pleased with the service from U-line. Purchased in lots of 100, the boxes (which will take up to 3 of my books) cost me $0.57 apiece--rather dear, but they do protect the contents and look nice. I may eventually find something less expensive and learn to live with no-so-bad.

~ We have tomato and pepper sets to get in the garden today, which means I'll have to get gas in the tiller, till the whole patch once more (as the weeds have already respouted since the first pass three weeks ago.) The carpenter ants are finding their way inside, as they do this time every year, so I'll have to spray around the foundation since it promises to be dry today. The weeds are coming up in the pavers on the walkway around the house; they're on the extermination list as well. So this is one of those weeks, that if I had a magic wand, I'm make at least a month long. April and May are always like this. I try not to be overwhelmed. Sometimes, I succeed.

~ Hard to believe we have a fire in the woodstove again this morning. Ann scraped ice off her windshield yesterday. I love May in the mountains of southwest Virginia, when the days are like late winter in the mornings and late spring in the afternoons!

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(Despite the title, this is FOR REAL): We were settling in to our too-narrow seats designed in the wasp-waisted, undernourished Donna Reed era, waiting for our flight from Birmingham to Charlotte to taxi onto the runway and depart. The stewardess's voice came on the PA and announced: Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to American West flight 3081 to Aruba."

There was a titter among the crowd. Some chuckled, more turned puzzled to their aislemate. "Did she say Aruba"?

And from there, it went steadily askew. Here are the parts I jotted down.

"If you have not been in an automobile since 1964, this is a seatbelt".

"Please remove, or pretend to remove, and read the safety instructions in the seat pocket in front of you".

"Please place your seats in the upright, locked and most uncomfortable position".

"Once you are through screaming, pull the mask over your head. Then, place the mask over the head of those who need help, like a child or husband".

"In the unlikely event that this flight turns into a cruise..."

"There are 50 ways to leave your lover. However, there are only 6 ways to leave this aircraft".

"This is a no smoking flight. However, if you feel you must light up, there is a smoking section on the right wing. Enjoy your smoke and we will enjoy watching Gone with the Wind".

"Ladies and gentlemen, we have arrived at Charlotte International AIrport. Please leave your seatbelts fastened until we arrive at the terminal". (Pause) 15F, that means you. Buckle it back. 9A. Anybody else want me to embarrass them"?

I must say, she got my attention. I just wonder--was this just her in-your-face schtick, impromptu for that flight, or was it a corporately-sanctioned way to engage customers in the actively-ignored preflight routine? Worked for me.

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This, just briefly to thank my mother's neighbor in the apartment above her for letting me share their wireless internet connection from the comfort of the fold-out couch here in Hoover, Alabama, on the south edge of my home town. I have been home for Mother's Day, and today I am going home--conflicted in the way that revisiting one's former haunts can do to a person, full of mixed feelings, memories, regret and gratitude.

Perhaps the most disturbing change in my years of absense from my home ground has to do with what I have learned about my summer swimming pool, a well known facility once and for decades called Cascade Plunge. How many youthful days I spent there, inside the surround of Cascade's walls and bleachers. The smell of chlorine and Coppertone, the cacophany of adolescent energy, the recollection of the power of teenage hormones comes back to me when I remember that place. And I learn now that it has been turned into a catch-your-own catfish pond! The horror!

I'll be back in pocket in a few hours, and woe--back among the aching joints and paperwork in the PT clinic this time tomorrow, gone for 72 hours and five decades.

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Have you seen me? (So says a placard in my mother's kitchen.) Fitting, because in a sense, this morning, I found me.

I think I am having one of those moments just now--literally JUST NOW-- when the magnitude and impact of what has come before has caught up with me all in a rush, and the enormity, promise and uncertainty of what lies ahead has come crashing in. Some combination of adrenalin, deferred introspection and sheer busy-ness has kept me from thinking too much about what all has happened in the past five months--until this moring. If I have been waiting to exhale, I won't wait any longer.

I am in a place not my usual, and I think this has given me a shift of perspective I needed to look at the present realities of my life in such a way that it lets me see how much getting here has cost all those who have been a part in this latest project of getting words to the page, and pages between covers. It has been both life-sucking and life-infusing, and here from this other place, I'm able to see it without covering the ground on which I have been standing.

I'm not saying this well, but perhaps well enough I'll remember to tell myself more about it when I'm back in my routine, my rut, once again. I think the biggest single piece of this morning's unfolding is that I have come to a place where I am more fully outside the book for the first time. It has been such an intensely subjective experience, me immersed in both the story and the writing and editing, that I haven't been able to look at either the "story" in the book or the experiences they record as an outsider--until this morning. Honestly, I haven't done much more than carry the books around from here to there in their three-by shrinkwrapped packages. This morning, from a chair not my own, I opened the book as if I were not its author, its eyes and ears. And lo and behold, I found a mistake early on. A glaring mistake. But maybe not an accidental one--a mistake that could be mistaken for intention. I won't even tell you what it is, but I will tell those who attend the Spoken Word at Cafe del Sol on Sunday evening, May 21. I found it, and I laughed til I cried. I think I cried for more reasons than that. It feels mighty good to exhale and breathe again.

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~ Here's the handy cl1p, the "internet clipboard" utility I use often to store links and swap small files between the laptop and desktop, or between either of these machines and any other computer somewhere else. Bare bones, simple, free and fast.

~ David always has his camera ready, and he snapped a couple at the Bent-but-not-Broken Cafe del Sol yesterday as a few bloggers and blog readers gathered for chat and gab. (There's a sign on the door over the broken glass that says something like "Bambi was here.")

~ I should have included a detailed Table of Contents in the book so a reader could easily go back to a particular one of the 100 vignettes in the book, but I didn't. Second printing (he said with mock confidence)I'll include this list with page numbers. (pdf to your browser) You can print it, of course. Find goofs, let me know. I did this a bit hurriedly.

~ And now, something a little different: Ritual spitting This is the kind of thing that makes me think that people are some of the strangest folks I know.

~ I may be blogging light for a few days through the weekend. But come Monday, if I'm not wrong, I'll have a link to "more than you'd ever care to know" (as Garrison says) about this dog and pony show.

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Regarding yesterday's mystery plant: the common and accepted common name for the white fused-petaled flowering tree is Carolina Silverbells. Dayshade; Wedding Bells, WhiteBells, Petticoat Tree...great suggestions, and this tree could just as well be widely known by any of those names had they been offered at the time the species was described. Halesia carolina is mostly a southeastern plant of the piedmont and lower mountains, and according to the range map, I should have remembered it from Alabama, but I did my botanizing around Auburn, south of its range.

If we play the same game with the brilliantly colorful flower species above, you'll agree that common names don't have to be particularly accurate to detail in order to become common. This one is called Fire Pink. It is no more pink than Redbud flowers are red. Maybe we should campaign to call these two species Crimson Star and Pink Bud and see if we can right the longstanding errors caused by color-impaired taxonomists!

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~ I'm out of the loop, granted, when it comes to school-kid crazes, but apparently the food phenom among the younger set reported recenly on NPR is not new: Flaming Hot Cheetos are giving young kids unneeded calories, red-stained faces, hands and clothes, and an addictive rush of endorphins in response to very spicy "snacks" at school. Thank you, Frito Lay.

~ No one has commented, but you're bound to have noticed a few new headshots (fredshots?) over in the right sidebar of Fragments. David St. Lawrence took pity back a few months back when I inflicted my run-and-pose self-portraits on blog readers in anticipation of providing an image for the bio page in the book. At his invitation, I went over to David's one Sunday afternoon, and smiled, grimaced, winced, squinted and vogued for a total of over 200 images through Dave's lens, from which I can now chose for various book-related, or blog related uses. This is a great resource to have, in that since I am usually the one behind the camera, I have not had much to work with, portrait-wise, and now I do. Thanks, David!

~ Fragmentary Writing: See Impassio Press, "an independent literary press devoted to publishing a variety of fragmentary writing and a mix of genres, with special emphasis on establishing journals, diaries, and notebooks as a valid literary art form (as valid as the established, accepted forms of novels, short stories, poetry, etc.)" There is some interesting material here, especially for one who has indulged in "private writing" made public via the blog, then even more public in the book. Take a look at some of the published works from this small press. Take heart, if you keep a journal, that it might be a seedbed of "real" writing, even if fragmentary. Read more...

~ If I could bring you to a single moment here on Goose Creek that holds the essence of what is magic about this place for me, it would be a moment on the front steps before first light in mid-May. It would be about now on the calendar, because last night, for the first time this season, the fireflies lifted up out of the tall grass of the pasture, cast away from the trees at the edge of the meadow, to fall and rise in their illumined nuptials. The nights are warm now, and warm, they smell altogether different from the frost-scented air of spring. Water sounds are muted by mint and rush that grows along the edge of Goose Creek. Early, the Louisianna Water Thrush, Wood Thrush and Veerio add their notes to the liquid trill of creek. Far down the valley, a Whippoorwill warbles once, and is silent.

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Here's an exercise I sometimes used with students.

You have discovered in your ramblings a new wildflower in bloom--new to you, and imagine it is new to science, a discovery that you get to name. Yes, I know it is the Latin names that discoverers confer upon their finds, but your task is to give this new plant a COMMON NAME based on its appearance, growth habit, color, form, location, habitat--that sort of thing.

In the case of the flowering plant above, just based on appearance, give it a common name. (I'm assuming NO ONE will recognize it and connect it to its accepted and widely used common name.) I'll tell you more about it later--no big deal, just an old friend recently rediscovered, with a logical and descriptive name.

Hint: you folks in the NC mountains have a greater burden to be familiar with this plant (tree) species that grows in your mountain forests.

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Amazon listing for a book promises the reality of greater visibility, the possibility of a larger volume of sales, and the promise of much less profit per book. Here's the skinny. Should I? Ya think?

The book now sits on the shelves at the Tech Book Store on Main Street in Blacksburg, and is a likely resident on the shelves of Easy Chair and Volume Two bookstores there as well.

Readings/signings scheduled (firm tentative) on June 1 at Bent Mountain Library, June 4 at the Jacksonville Center in Floyd, June 18 at Notebooks in Floyd, and July 13 at Warm Heart Village in Blacksburg. Times and such TBA over on the book website.

Do's: an Exacto paper cutter with a lazer cutting guide--not a gimmick, it really helps!
Don'ts: A tape dispenser with button that supposedly heat-cuts the tape cleanly. The button is an ergonomic disaster, and the batteries lasted about 10 clicks. Doh!

This could be worth checking out: The eParks bookstores: all the places where the Park Service sells books. And of course, I'm particularly (if not exclusively) interested in the Blue Ridge Parkway and Shenandoah Drive.

Oooh! This just in! I just spoke with the RIGHT person who was very pleasant and helpful toward getting the book reviewed by the Park Service for possible distribution in their stores! Thanks for the contact, Elizabeth H! I'll be sending off a copy PDQ!

However, to do so, I must take hands away from the keyboard. More as it happens...

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And you probably think we sit around and watch the grass grow here in the backwaters of the "real world". Don't you believe it.

What a great gathering--ostensibly, a deck party, but the weather had us peeking from inside at the wonderful deck still waiting for a future summer crowd to christen it properly. The St. Lawrences had an eclectic bunch of folk over to celebrate their safe if not-entirely-unrocky home building and resettlement into the heart of the Floyd landscape and community. Their place looks great, and they are most definitely HOME!

Meanwhile, all is not well in Pleasantville. Even the animals have issues, as this one must have who entered and ransacked our only wireless coffeehouse in downtown Floyd on Monday.

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One of the spin-offs that will come from creating a book about a particular place is that this place has been special to many others over the years. Some of them are learning of the book, and offering me their stories of this land, the house and barn, and of those who called this home before us. I expect we'll have some of them drop by over the summer, to see the house still standing, cared for, and happily housing the Odd Couple and their wonderdog.

I've been promised pictures of the house from long ago. One, I hear, confirms our suspicion that the original house was just four rooms toward the front of the house. The other rooms--the ones that you have to step up to get to--came later.

I've had folks ask to send or share pictures of the house, so they can show their mother, now in the nursing home or a sister who lives overseas. I find I have at least 10 times more pictures of the barn than the house. It is, as I've said, the most photographed barn in Floyd County--or at least on Goose Creek. Now, and for who knows how long, it will have its glaringly new front door (an absolute unnecessity--I rather liked the dark opening that was there before, as it lent an air of mystery and depth, but I was outvoted.) This particular picture was inspired by the pendant golden maple flowers whose random beauty is so hard to capture.

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As I reflect back in coming years to the winter of '06--most intense period of time during which the book was taking shape--it will be the sound of drills and hammers I will hear in memory. Rarely was there a day when "the boys" were not here raising dust, making noise, driving the dog crazy because he couldn't go "help". I often worked with ear plugs, and over that, a set of headphones playing classical music at the lowest possible level so that I could still hear my own wheels turning.

Many times, I had to drop my urgent agenda of the moment to deal with the thousand small decisions that have gone into such a small project, relative to the complete renovation of the house that happened in 1999. The construction of the new room, heretofore referred to as the Ann-ex, was HER idea, and met her needs. It is almost complete. Only a hundred small decisions, and a few larger ones, remain until the room is ready for use--empty, without furniture, but ready. She wants to have a house concert there this summer. I say let's wait until our mortgage is paid, a few months later. We'll see. Here are a few more shots of a not-so-photogenic partially formed, mud-moated addition.

The Ann-ex lies just beyond the roughly-hung French doors. We still have a ways to go, but the major projects in the First household--the book and the new room--have come a long way since they were only twinkles in his and her eye. Now. What life-consuming projects can we come up with next!?

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Can it be less than two weeks since the books came? Seems like so long ago, and without a doubt, the first couple of days were the most hectic. Things then weren't quite in their places yet, no system or method for doing any of the routine things required to track, pack or ship without getting things screwy. There were 45 orders pending on Day 1 from early interest among blog readers, and also review copies that needed to be sent right away. The first three days were consumed in the unfamiliar process, ultimately accomplished, but very much in the unsteady way of someone just learning to ride a bicycle--wobbly, cautious, a little stressed. Things are better now.

PayPal orders are coming to dominate the new requests for books now (checks were the dominant form early, before PayPal was firmly in place). I have a love-hate relationship with PayPal. Here's what's involved in processing a single order:

The order notification comes in as a G-mail popup. I click to the email and mark the email SRH-payment, then cut and paste the address information into storage. I go to the Excel spreadsheet and enter the order received date, name, amount and state tax, making sure I batch orders in groups based on when they leave the post office. Next, I go to the PayPal page, and after THIRTEEN mouse clicks, have printed the prepaid printing label page. It then takes four cuts to trim the actual label (almost as tall is my book box is wide) from the receipt part of the page. I mark the receipt in pencil with the date the book ships. Then, it takes four long pieces of regular scotch-type tape to seal the edges of the large label to the box (vs the small 2" x 1" typed, self-adhesive labels for non-paypal orders.) Love-hate. You understand?

Screw-ups? Why yes. I've signed books to individuals, boxed them, sent them, then found the book with the inscription still on the table. (Sorry, Ian.) I've paid for media mail for somebody's book, then come home and realized they paid via PayPal and already had a prepaid shipping label. And I'm sure there have been errors I don't even know about yet. So far, only one book returned--my brother's, and I will hand deliver it to him soon. I have to say, there is an incredible amount of detail to keep up with, but I do feel more in control than I did. But miles to go yet in the organizational department. Will it ever become so routine that I am actually able to WRITE something again?

There is writing and there is writing. In signing books, I'm doing much more of the "legible longhand" variety than I have in many years, having to focus carefully now in penmanship that I was supposed to have learned in the third grade. "Gee, Fred, I appreciate you signing the book, but what does it say?" For ten years now, about the longest handwritten document I've penned has been a personal check, and those would be legit, like a doctor's prescription, legible or not. Now, I am having to slow way down, make deliberate tops on my b's and l's, not to mention saying something that actually makes sense, if not simply signing name and date. And to my amazement, so far I haven't once signed my automatic work signature of "Fred First, MS, PT" that comes so reflexively. But I will do this eventually. Count on it. And my apologies in advance if you are the one that gets the professional sig in your copy of Slow Road.

I debate with myself before posting these mundane accounts of a not very interesting topic, but have decided that, since this blog all along has been about what finds its way to the center of my energies and attention, I'll probably continue to record the details du jour, even if as interesting as watching paint dry. Speaking of paint drying, I'm going to put up a link to some pix of the Ann-ex later this morning.

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Man, I don't think I've ever had such a colorful calendar. Green for travel; blue for bills due; orange for book events; yellow for in-town meetings; purple for visitors here.

Thursday was a busy day, looking back. I got an email on Tuesday from our county Director for Tourism and Development, asking if I could be the Floyd County host to a bunch of travel writers who would be spending time in Floyd County as part of the Crooked Road publicity. And so I got to schmooze with a dozen writers and photographers from all over the country, most of whom were visiting southwest Virginia, the Blue Ridge Parkway, and Floyd for the first time. We had lunch at Chateau Morisette Winery, and this was a very pleasant (and delicious) duty.

From there, I went west down the parkway, "peddling my brushes" in several places. The most exciting thing from that side-trip was the possible placement of the book at the shop at Mabry Mill--the most photographed spot on the 400+ miles of the parkway. It gets literally millions of visits in a travel season. But it is not, as I had thought, managed by the Park Service. It is owned by a resort company headquartered in Arizona (as are several other facilities along the parkway.) The store manager was very receptive, but the book has to go through several more approvals to find its way to the shelves. I think the book is perfect for curious travelers who want a "slice of life" from the modern-day Appalachians and Floyd County. I hope the decision-makers think so!

On the way back through town, I stopped off at the Jacksonville Center, Floyd's "cultural incubator", shops, school and studios for area artisans. The kind folks there have offered to sponsor a book reading and signing, and that might be coming up shortly. I'll certainly let you local folk know when a date is set!

Today, Ann and I are heading out on the Sixteen Hands pottery tour around Floyd County (and yes, I will be toting books in the back of the car!) We'll stop by Phoenix Hardwoods (whose shop on 221 has open-house all day) and begin the process of having them make a futon frame for us, for the Ann-ex. And tonight one or both of us will attend the going-away party of a graphic editor friend who was so kind to help me over the InDesign hurdles in the earlier stages of book preparation. Her husband has been highly involved in a prominent local timber frame company, and is now becoming CEO of a large facility in Seattle (I think I'm right.)

Tomorrow after church, we'll have lunch with friends for the first time at a little Italian Restaurant in Ironto (I didn't know there was ANYTHING in Ironto) and later, attend a deck-warming party (or in the cold drizzle, a deck-viewing party) where many blog posts and images will in all likelihood appear prominently on Floyd County blogs on Monday. And I hope to part with a few signed copies of the books for my good friends!

I'm dog-paddling against the current, so far, head above water, mostly. But wait! It's time to till the garden one more time and get tomato sets in! And what about all that oak dropped down in the pasture? Who do you think is going to cut and split all that into stove wood--good fairies? And the Floyd Press column that's due? And have you even thought about what you're going to say at a book reading, you loquacious moron! Get busy!

Posted by fred1st at 7:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

You ARE thinking about Mother's Day, May 14, and what special gift you can give to this special person in your life, AREN'T YOU? What better gift than a book that threatens no car crashes, sordid bodice-ripping, or shady characters--a book that will bring smiles of recognition, nods of fellow-feeling, and a relaxing tranquility just before nap or bedtime, or while sitting on the back porch taking the early summer air.

Did I have any particular book in mind, you ask? Well, as a matter of fact, I did.

A number of folks have requested copies of Slow Road Home for their moms, and their spouse's mom, too. I think this is a great gift idea. Don't you? Order by paypal, put mom's address, and she'll have it before her special day. I'll make sure of it.

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Morchella, Merkel, Dry Land Fish, Sponge Mushroom, or Pine Cone Mushroom--by any of its names, this rare find of the spring mushroom hunt is one wonderful addition to stroganoff or sphaghetti. And this week, we found enough to do more than add visual interest to our dinner. And so I suppose our supper that used all of these in the sauce was possibly our most expensive meal ever: dried, these go for $10 an ounce!

I need some magic mushrooms, Alice. One to make me slower, another to make me faster. There are not enough hours in the day, but not enough presense in the hours I have. While gathering mushrooms--one of the slowest, most careful and attentive outdoor activities I know--I realized that the busy-ness of the business has taken me away from my place in nature--the source I have found worthy of so many words these past years. When is the last time I simply sat on the creek bank and listened to the water? Sometimes, less is more. So maybe the mushrooms have already worked their magic.

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Dave, proprietor of Here, There and Back I have not met, but he's settled so close, our paths will surely cross--soon, perhaps. I'll be doing more traveling about the county in the coming months, peddling my wares. As a blogger, he is really getting his sea legs (or would that be mountain legs?) and is close enough to Floyd to be attracted to some of the local events and shops. I can imagine him ending up a bit futher east in the county, and on our front porch some day.

Lorianne of Hoarded Ordinaries is my blog-daughter, the only "away" blogger with whom I share reciprocal visits. She and WonderDog Reggie made the long trek down to Goose Creek from north of Boston two summers ago (I think). And when Ann and I were in Bean-Town some autumns ago, Lorianne gave me the grand tour of Walden Pond and environs. Her kind words about the book and its author are especially gratifying.

And Reno Bailey is a friend met in the most random of fashions: I was googling for the derivation of some "southernism" of language, and his site brought me the answer. I was so smitten by his "Remember Cliffside" site that I wrote to congratulate him on his memorial to a North Carolina mill town that once was home to so many. We've kept in touch ever since, and I was pleased to be able to congratulate him on the publication of his book a year or more ago. Thanks, Reno, for a nice image and blurb for Slow Road Home on your book page. Readers, dig deeper into this site; it is rich and rewarding.

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As confident and proud as I should be, and am, about the book just printed and into the hands of a handful of readers, I still feel a certain need to apologize for all the things the book is not. It is a book of glimpses, not a sweeping and continuous panorama of a single life, time or place. I call it a memoir of place, because its subject is as much the what and where that is seen as the one who sees it. It is a memoir, only partially, and in the sense of the term I learned from Joyce Dyer at Hindman last summer. She described the life of the memoirist as a house that others are allowed, more or less, to see into--not completely, and with different views of the interior depending on the angles allowed, the windows left open, the sheerness or opacity of the curtains. The owner may even rearrange the furniture often within those constant rooms of her life, so that the glimpses show the viewer some new side of the one who lives within those walls.

I opened the curtains, I trust, on enough windows so the reader could see inside, while most of the book comes from what I see looking out. The book's vignettes are snapshots taken from that larger panorama. They are as different from each other as each day may be different from the next--some peaks, more troughs. Ample humor, then melancholy. Some revelation, and the next day, obscurity and perplexion. I considered waiting to publish until I had a more homogenous whole--a book entirely of poetic prose; a whole book of natural history essays; a book in which the people in my life are the heroes or villains. But no, life is not homogeneous, so in the end, I decided the book shouldn't be. It is a book of fragments, none of them the same size, texture or shape as any other. And yet, I trust, taken together, they form a whole. Collectively, they open the window into one room of my house and bid you to both look inside and share the view through the open windows of my eyes.

Here are a few glimpses from the first part of the book. I hope you enjoy the view.

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"We've had some excitement at our place" they told me. "First we had the mystery of what was happening to the chicken feed. I blamed him and he blamed me."

Then, she walked into the barn--the kind with the open center that runs the length of the structure, and there just outside the far end was a very large, black bear. Apparently, he'd been around for some time: they found a clear path in the hillside where the bear had been coming regularly for the ants in the big white pine that was felled there last summer.

I told them I probably wouldn't tell Ann this news, but I let it slip. I did NOT tell Tsuga, but all morning, he's been very spooky, barking off into the distance with a line down his back--not the calm, self assured master of his domain as he appears in this picture from a few days back. He senses something OUT THERE. And I bet it's big, black and furry.

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Nothing gold can stay. Even when it comes to safe harbors for one's blog-child. Fragments must relocate once more. Here's why my current host is reluctantly casting a couple of bloggers back into the big pond. I don't blame him. I told him all along he needed to "say no" to some of his obligations; I just didn't mean ME.

Several folks have suggested Yahoo Small Business web hosting. I'm thinking I can get by with the starter package. Anybody have experience with this hosting situation?

And as is not uncommon for such crises, it comes at an inauspicious time. Just when I am poking my head up a bit and need to be seen by the radar (the book, not me personally) I really need to be visible. There are two upcoming events that might draw some attention to Fragments and from there to the book site (or vice versa). These are happening on May 15 and May 26. So somewhere in the interim, I'll need to make the move. I'd love to have a hand-holder in the process, and Doug says he can help with that. Once there (provided I go with Yahoo, will I ever have direct access to reliable technical support who has the least interest in my petty concerns about my well-traveled blog site? I doubt it. But go somewhere, I must, and soon. Rosanna Rosannadanna was right.

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And it is a black horizon passed, four years ago today. Had that unsufferable darkness not come; had it remained only dull gray sameness at an unrewarding job, I would be there still--trapped in routine, in unfulfilling sameness at the whim of those whose goods had nothing to do with me. I was a means toward their end, and too costly an experienced clinician at that. The harassment of the months leading up to this inevitable decision amounted to ageism, and I probably could have fought and "won". But instead, when I knew it was a lose-lose situation, I retreated. I surrendered. Go ahead. Hire a cheap new-grad replacement. I'll go and...I didn't know what I would go and do, only that I would go. Home. And I packed my boxes and left, with nothing planned for the rest of my life.

And it was from that helpless silence that the blog started. It was a way of talking to myself when I knew no one at "the company" was interested in anything I had to say, and I had given up finding a way or the will to suffer gray sameness. This is the anniversary that marks one the greatest and certainly, the most sudden and unintended changes of direction my life has ever taken. It seemed necessary at the time, but what came next, I could not say--only that it would have something to do with learning to take my bearings from where I lived, not from what I did for a living.

Early on, I had the strong conviction that the weblog, or the way of writing out of the images in my life that would be left there, would make a difference if I only persevered. Maybe I wouldn't find an income in it. The blog wouldn't make me rich or famous, but it would become a discipline worth the time and effort every morning. I knew this and told Ann so confidently, when she scolded me for "wasting time" in my fantasy world of disembodied stangers I spoke of as if there were "real people".

So much has happened since May 3, 2002--so many good things.

There was one particular person at my job of that time who I credit with being the driving force that caused me to resign. If I were to run into him today, I'd give the boy a big ol' hug and thank him. Had he not been the irritant he was, I never would have had the courage and will to jump ship. I never would have discovered the inner-writer, the weblog, and the friends, places and opportunities that have come because of his unpleasant and insufferable self. I'd just have to thank that sorry soul for making my life so miserable.

Funny how a little hindsight can cast a rosy glow on such dark clouds, isn't it?

Posted by fred1st at 6:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I just wanted to take a moment and thank all of you for your support and encouragement over the past four years, and now, for your enthusiastic interest in Slow Road Home and for the kind words showing up in the blogosphere now and then. Here are a few:

• Chas at Dustbury
• Fletch at No Direction Home
• Clarence at Can You Hear Me Now?

So, just to let you know: the rewards of this ongoing book project may only reach break-even on the spreadsheet. But it has already given me a bushel basket of satisfaction, smiles, good memories and great hopes for what is to come, increasingly profitable as I am able to share with old friends, new friends and strangers alike these small windows into a life and time that are recorded now between covers. Sappy. But true.

Posted by fred1st at 5:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (1)

There's some of each of these three commodities to go around this morning. I'll chose to think about the first and last in the series, and less about the middle for now.

Here's a link to just a few images of daughter, grand daughter and wife from the recent trip down to western Carolina.

And here's a link to an image of the house I was tinkering with in my thinking about promotional stuff for the book. I will offer a higher resolution version (with much smaller text) available as a bonus desktop image for the next ten people who purchase the book by check or PayPal from the website. I will send the image to the email address listed on paypal; if you order by check and want the image, just email me and let me know. (I'll announce when the offer is closed, after reader number 10 has ordered the book.)

The Bad: for starters, I woke up Friday morning (two days after hauling many cartons of books) and couldn't quite stand up straight. I missed work Friday. I'm some better, but not up to the tour of Blacksburg book stores I had planned for today, and not doing so well hunkered over the kitchen table boxing books. What's the converse of cloud's having silver linings? I guess something that expresses the observation that there is never a GOOD in this life that isn't tarnished with an edge of pain, decay or disorder. I gotta go get a fresh ice pack.

Posted by fred1st at 7:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

This is a repeat post, with a different symbolism than when it appeared a year ago. More about that later.

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