Fragments From Floyd

Sunrise ~ by Mary Oliver

You can
die for it-
an idea,
or the world. People
have done so,
brilliantly,
letting
their small bodies be bound
to the stake,
creating
an unforgettable
fury of light. But
this morning,
climbing the familiar hills
in the familiar
fabric of dawn, I thought
of China,
and India
and Europe, and I thought
how the sun
blazes
for everyone just
so joyfully
as it rises
under the lashes
of my own eyes, and I thought
I am so many!
What is my name?
What is the name
of the deep breath I would take
over and over
for all of us? Call it
whatever you want, it is
happiness, it is another one
of the ways to enter
fire.

Posted by fred1st at 5:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When we expose our greatest hopes and precious things to strangers, we may be thought a fool. But the ordinary treasures we share may touch lives in ways we cannot imagine. This is the tale of one hopeful fool.

He prepared them lovingly, his precious mementos and carefully pressed flowers. He arranged them prominently on simple benches near the road. Just beyond, by the barn, a rough oak plank set across two tree stumps formed a crude table to display all manner of clippings and cards that flapped in the breeze-some brittle and yellow with age, others crisp and white from yesterday's journal.

Someone might care to turn the thin pages and read the forgotten stories, said the farmer to himself. Up around the bend near the low-water bridge, photographs were pinned haphazardly on the dark trunks of the maple trees-dog-eared, roughly framed or not at all; some new, most sepia toned from the passage of time, worn with a patina of love and memory. Trinkets and curios, found things and very private bric-a-brac lined the dirt road along a quarter mile of this seldom traveled path in a remote part of a sparsely peopled region of the rural land of Erehwon.

"Who will come?" she asked derisively. "You are a foolish old man" said the farmer's wife, "and if anyone comes, they will think you mad".

"Friends I have never met will come", said the farmer without certainty." Strangers will come who did not know that they wanted to know about these things that they see here until they have seen them. In seeing them, they will see into me and trust me, and we will share the deep things of our hearts with each other, me and my visitors."

And so, the days and weeks passed. Visitors did come down his road, but more often than not, they drove by without stopping. Yet the farmer thought in their passing they might have acknowledged in some small way his racks and tables and adornments. Many came down his road quite by mistake, looking for the shopping mall or seeking out some strange and terrible story not contained in the farmer's collection. Some who came surely thought him mad.

Sadly the chalk boards and scratch pads and the green rusty mailbox near the stone walk to the farmer's door remained mostly empty. From time to time, a visitor would pen "hello I came by", or "my name is Mary. Nice tables and stuff". The farmer was always thrilled to see that the page was not empty, but dejected when he had given so much of himself and learned so little of his visitors. He began to feel foolish and doubted himself and wondered why he felt the need for such open display of his silly yard-sale memories and special things that were sacred only to him.

And yet, in his more hopeful moments, he thought "There is a point to this and a purpose for Good that I cannot yet see. If I am faithful to my dream, they will come and see these things. They will share and invite me to their roads. And when the strangers are able to put their precious things for all to see on all the roadsides of Erehwon and the larger world beyond, we will grow to trust and care for each other. We will learn from and come to understand those that seem strange and unfamiliar, as I must seem now to my visitors."

And so, the strange farmer of Erehwon still to this day searches in his garden and woods, and in his memories and hopes and golden dreams, to find wonderful things to display before his visitors every morning.

And if he is mad, he is harmless; but if his strange ways become the ways of the lands across Erehwon and beyond, his madness will have become our joy. - Fragments from Floyd, July 2002

Posted by fred1st at 4:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

Now, somebody's doing something about it. The movie, An Inconvenient Truth, is coming to the Grandin Theatre in Roanoke, starting June 30 and running til July 27 (so it seems.) So far, what I've read, while not without minor criticism, is supportive overall of the general factuality of the message. We'll see it, and hope to have a busload from Floyd maybe go together on the same night. TBA. Interested?

"Excellent," said William Schlesinger, dean of the Nicholas School of Environment and Earth Sciences at Duke University. "He got all the important material and got it right."

Robert Corell, chairman of the worldwide Arctic Climate Impact Assessment group of scientists, read the book and saw Gore give the slideshow presentation that is woven throughout the documentary.

"I sat there and I'm amazed at how thorough and accurate," Corell said. "After the presentation I said, `Al, I'm absolutely blown away. There's a lot of details you could get wrong.' ... I could find no error." link

And yet, another Inconvenient Truth

"As Al Gore's global warming call to action flickers on the screens of America's multiplexes, we must face another inconvenient truth.

We need to confront the really bad climate change news behind China's economic boom built on dirty coal.

And we also need to grasp the available market based solution to the global warming and sustainability crisis, one that can curb China's and our own poisonous habits."

This makes sense: "The key is to make what's polluting, depleting, and ecologically damaging more expensive than sustainable alternatives. The means replacing income taxes with ecological consumption taxes and enlisting the market price mechanism and business acumen in service to sustainability."

Free market economies that let corporate business as usual do what's best only for shareholders is NOT going to sustain this planet into the future. As distasteful as American business might find taxes, regulations, limits or being told what they can or can't do with their coal fields, power plants or farm land to the detriment of our "commons", the sustained and long-term health of the (oh what a loaded word it has become!) environment is what will get my vote in whatever elections I have left to vote it. Our leaders MUST understand that it is biology, not the economy, whose health is ultimately the foundation to "the good life."

Posted by fred1st at 5:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Expect a sunrise image a day for four. I came home yesterday from my morning walk wet, exhausted and with a few keepers. I rushed down the valley to beat the sun to the bend in the creek, to take advantage of the even light from the morning sky without stark shafts of light that would dapple the rushing riffles if I didn't hurry. I was too late after all, because although I had never noticed in years past, the sun in late June finds a notch in the mountain and shoots a beam right to the end of the ravine into a cove otherwise in shadow almost all day and all year. I'll go back and try again this morning.

But then, from the far end of the valley, I looked back toward the house and saw that fog had appeared out of nowhere, as if it had flowed down from Lick Ridge behind the house as I was racing the opposite way. It had draped itself, pink and orange, across the road and north end of the east ridge. Amber rays needled through the white pines and dying hemlocks on the ridge, and I race-walked back toward the house through the pasture that still held standing water from the weekend rains, to catch the light with a few shots before sun lifted full above the treeline.

This kind of lighting doesn't happen very often here. And even less often am I there to see it. And I get to share it with you! So there will be a few more yet. Now, if I could just find a way to share what the valley smelled like. The "mystery perfume" is back.

Posted by fred1st at 5:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Start from the beginning, here, at the top of the page. On the blue marble that is Earth, near the left curve of the planet is what we earthlings call the Middle East, with Africa on around a bit and just out of sight. Somewhere, on the exact opposite of this view, I sit at my computer in a place called Virginia this morning looking for perspective. And this seems like a pretty good exercise for just that end.

Look from this planet we are held to, spin on, live and die on, beyond, to the other chunks of rock and clouds of gas we call planets in our tiny wheel of galactic debris that whirls around our sun--not the largest, brightest, oldest or more energetic star in the galaxies, but exactly as it must be for us to have come to this moment, wherever on the surface we sit and spin and wonder and click the keys.

Keep going, down the page, along this continuum, taking the largest thing in our direct experience--the 7000 mile diameter of earth, and image yourself on Earth inside the circumference of our Day Star, it's firey mantle our new sky. And then, the sun, a thousand suns, into a red giant like Arcturus; and a thousand Arcturuses into the supergiant Antares, visible tonight in Scorpio.

This the largest form that aggregated matter takes in the universe, dwarfed beyond comprehension by the dimensions of space, of a single galaxy, of galaxy systems and strings, dotted across an expanding canvas, moving apart at the speed of light.

Ah, I think I'm properly grounded now, and ready to start the day with my perspectives appropriately adjusted. All that remains is to go back and read Pascal's "Man's Proportion" (Pensees 199) that carries us here:

"Let us then know our limits; we are something, and we are not everything; such existence we have takes from us the knowledge of first principles, which arise from nothingness; and the smallness of our existence hides infinity from our view...

"Behold: this is our true state. It is this which renders us incapable of knowing anything for certain or from being absolutely ignorant. We wander in a vast medium, always uncertain and drifting, pushed by one wind and then another. Whenever we find a fixed point to attach and fix ourselves to, it shifts and leaves us and, if we follow it, it slips away from us and flees from us eternally. Nothing stops for us. This is our natural state, but the one most contrary to our inclination; we burn with desire to find a firm seat, and a final, constant base on which to build a tower which will lift us to the infinite; but all our foundations crack, and the earth opens up into an abyss.

And..."finally, what is man in nature? He is nothing in comparison with the infinite, and everything in comparison with nothingness, a middle term between all and nothing. He is infinitely severed from comprehending the extremes; the end of things and their principle are for him invincibly hidden in an impenetrable secret; he is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he arises and the infinity into which he is engulfed."

Posted by fred1st at 6:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

The sun shines, steam rises and two humans and one dog scurry outside between storms into a saturated sponge of a valley. Branches bend under the weight of the wetness, falling into our path as the larger branches of trees will be draped across the road this morning as we attempt to leave this rice paddy for our workplaces. It is raining still in the dark, so we can't see what has become of the road. I feel certain I'll have to take the long way round, as the 10 inches of rain over the weekend may have trenched the road so even the truck can't get over them. Ann's trip is complicated by the south fork of the Roanoke River there at Alley's Store in Allegheny Spring Road; it may still be over the road, and there are no alternatives but to backtrack and drive to Floyd and up Route 8 on to Blacksburg, turning a 25 mile trip into a 60 mile trip.

My weakest link will be at the Pilot Post Office. If water isn't over the road this morning, it's a sure thing it was during the day yesterday. This afternoon, after another day of rain, we'll play the reverse, and wonder if we'll be able to get home. Without doubt, other than a hurricane, this storm system has brought us more water than we've seen here in our seven years on Goose Creek.

The image above isn't great, but it features one of my favorite things about summer rain: the way jewels bead up on the leaves of spicebush that grows thick in the shady places along the creeks. It would be interesting to take a peek at the leaf surface through a dissecting scope and see if there are hairs or glands that might account for why it holds such high surface tension, while other plants among spicebush's neighbors are flat, mat-dull green when wet.

Posted by fred1st at 5:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

From what I hear talking to teachers and parents of young children, there is a lot of dyslexia and ADHD and such among school-aged children these days--more, it seems, than even when our kids were in grade school. What's changed? Improved diagnosis? More of the one-eyed brain sucking baby-sitter? Food additives?

Here's some good news:

Last year, for example, researchers at Oxford published a study of 117 children suffering from dyspraxia(8). Dyspraxia causes learning difficulties, disruptive behavior and social problems. It affects about 5% of children. Some of the children were given supplements of omega 3 and 6 fatty acids, others were given placebos. The results were extraordinary. In three months the reading age of the experimental group rose by an average of 9.5 months, while the control group's rose by 3.3. Other studies have shown major improvements in attention, behavior and IQ.

This piece from Z-net goes on to tell that over the past thousands of years as we've migrated to farming societies living away from the coasts of continents, we have shifted drastically in our food mix from about equal amounts of O-3 and O-6 to our current average diet of 17 times more O-6 (found in vegetable oils.) Lack of Omega-3 fatty acids plays a role in a wide range of neurological problems. So let's just get smart and eat more fish.

But the global fish stocks are disappearing with heart-breaking rapidity due to over-fishing, heavy metal and other pollutants, and general ill health of the oceans. However...

And this is a big if uncertain however...it seems that a lowly algae may become the source of Omega-3 supplements for our diet, producible in large enough quantities and soon enough to make a difference. Where do you think the tuna, salmon, halibut and cod got theirs? From eating little fish that ate smaller fish that ate algae!

So, this just reinforces my hopes and I'll just say this one word, Benjamin: (no, not plastics) ALGAE. I predict one day we'll be able to harness the primary energy source of the sun and convert algal photosynthesis into a clean form of energy; we'll use them for food; use them to produce nutrients like amino acids and vitamins; and heck, maybe even keep them as house pets. Meanwhile, I guess I'll just eat almonds--and the purslane (weed) from the garden and put some flax seed on my morning cereal.

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

They done did. And so we will have a very quiet if moist day at home--quieter than usual because a large tree is across the road a couple hundred yards down the road. VDOT will come take care of it eventually, but until then, it seems a pretty good reason not to go to Explore Park with a load of books this morning. There's that, and the fact that NOAA radio is saying that Roanoke streets and underpasses are flooded in many places. Our neighbor's rain guage has tallied more than 7 inches since Saturday--about the amount we were behind for the year, which is good except for the fact that a large percentage of it will end up carrying our topsoil into the Atlantic.

Meanwhile...

On Saturday, I got a call from a Boone Family member who had a lot of good information for us about the house. Turns out it is older than we thought, that it was indeed built with lumber harvested from and prepared on site, and that it was built by some crackerjack carpenters who wanted to demonstrate some new joinery techniques when they built it in 1862. He has some pages from a thorough genealogy book about the house and land and will stop by some time and let me scan it.

Just when I hung up talking to that gentleman, another long-ago valley resident (who had come by the week before with his sister--a champion promoter of the book, by the way!) pulled up into the drive way to tell me this: that he had read my piece in the paper on Multiflora rose a couple of weeks ago, and more importantly, that it had made him think twice about clearing out the rose invasion on his place across the county, and here's why: it seems that once he read my article that talked about natural controls for this invasive, he is seeing it in many of the roses on his place: witches broom, dying canes that he couldn't explain. I had no idea it was present in Floyd County! So, he asked should he clear the ones that are "infected" with the rose rosette disease or let them be. Let them be was my advice, and even cut canes from infected plants and "innoculate" those that were not yet infected since the organism spreads slowly unless helped along a bit. That was pretty cool!

Gee, seems strange to be posting to Fragments at this time of day. But while I'm here, let me point you (few interested folk) toward some recent changes on the book's website: 1) I've started an additional excerpts page that will ultimately have about 50 paragraph excerpts from Slow Road (plus a few more images); and 2) I've posted an extensive interview that will tell a bit more of the story behind the book (pdf downloadable document.) These kinds of things make easily retrievable files for those who (he said hopefully) want to review the book or do future interviews, as well as just chronicling the ongoing process of moving forward with the life cycle of this little project.

Posted by fred1st at 10:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Groggy Monday morning after an all night rain--the first in memory. I'm not my usual perky self, so will show rather than tell. Here are some things to see while I decide if my brain is blog-worthy this morning.

Who Killed the Electric Car? A well-founded conspiracy theory (short video)

Touch Screen of the (near?) Future This is worth watching. Will the time come, should our species survive so long, that even use of the hands to control screen windows becomes obsolete? I envision a future time when eye movements and mental signals control what we see on whatever passes then for a computer screen. (short video)

Hubble Image Gallery (I just read that it may be losing one of its eyes! Again. Oh no!)

Amazing Insect Close-ups (and one frog) These are remarkable for their clarity and depth of field. I especially like #17 (right click and save-as to see file names.) And you wonder where those special-effects folks go for inspiration for Jaba the Hut, the creature off the Alien and so on...)

Posted by fred1st at 4:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Does this look like a view you could live with every morning for the rest of your life?

Down below, a quarter mile bend in Little River. Behind you, nothing by your land for a solid mile. You will never find more pleasant solitude than this. AND IT IS FOR SALE NOW!

Just listed at $1.3M, this magnificent 4000 sq ft home on 100 acres in Floyd County is not going to stay on the market long. It is truly spectacular, and of the highest quality workmanship, it's owner previously at the top of management of a local and highly-successful timber frame business.

I don't generally get involved in real estate sales, but in this case, it belongs to a friend who regrettably is leaving Floyd County, but who has also suggested that, if I can help find a buyer, she'll offer a little finder's fee. So if you buy, please let the agent know up front that FRED FIRST sent you. It could be worth the equivalent of quite a few book sales or patient treatment days! Heck, I might even be able to afford that wide-angle lens I've been wanting, and make a downpayment on something to replace the old Dodge DeerSlayer that's on its last legs.

Go HERE to see many images from inside and outside. I've been there. It is spectacular and reasonably priced (against the rising land values in the county and region.)

Posted by fred1st at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I had a reader of the book recently say to me "You don't seem to like winter very much" after reading the "Wind in Winter" piece from the first section. I was surprised to have someone glean that impression from the reading, because I harbor no ill feelings about that season, really. But he's only read part way. He hasn't come to the passages that talk about how central the woodstove is to our lives, or about the winter walks or the smell of snow. But he's right, in a way. I do think of winters now as more of a challenge--to stay warm, to be prepared to wait out a week without power in a winter ice storm, and to navigate these roads, a challenge in the dry and clear times, all the more an obstacle with a foot of snow on them. Yes, we do think about winter differently now than when we lived in the city limits of a southern suburb.

And I suppose we also feel somewhat different, too, about rain--both it's absence and its over-abundance. It is the latter that is of concern this morning. Heavy rains may bring 3-4 inches per hour, the weather people warn, and Ann left the house for work this morning carrying her rubber boots and a hiking stick. We know from previous years that this valley can fill quickly, and the road become impassible. There's one place the roadbed just disintegrates into the stream when the valley floods quickly. Could be, she'll have to park the car at a neighbor's, high up off the creek, and walk the ridge to get home. So, you might read some greater concerns over both drought (a forest fire would be a real problem) and floods in what I write. We live here pleasantly immersed in, surrounded by and at the whim and fickle nature of nature and the elements.

And as I write this, the low, gray clouds have parted, and a single sunlit, towering cumulus thunderhead sails southeast beyond the drowned pasture, moving like a great ship against a suddenly blue sky.

Posted by fred1st at 7:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Funny. I just looked up from my desk through the growing branches of the butterfly bush across to the pasture, to wonder how the baled hay had fared in last night's gulley washer. And it is all gone! Ronnie must have taken the day off and got it up during the day yesterday before we got home from work. There wasn't much of it this year, but it lends a Stonehenge kind of ambience to the valley, especially in the early mornings, giant monoliths of bound grasses and wildflowers.

Posted by fred1st at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, you asked

What did we do with the dead fawn? Well, that was one of those ups and downs I spoke of Thursday. Ann, wearing the gloves that morning, offered to carry the limp and lifeless fawn to the truck. I would pull it off in the woods somewhere between the house and the top of the road, where the beetles would finish what the buzzards and crows hadn't taken care of by the end of the day. I left the house an hour later, bound for the parkway, and up the road a half mile, I first met a hiway department dump truck rounding one of the 9 blind curves --not an easy side-by-side passing, but we managed; then another quarter mile, here came a DOT road grader--an even more massive challenge to pass, but good: it was at a relatively wide place in the road, and I reached the hardtop, the first leg of my morning journey completed. But no. I'd forgotten, in all the traffic encounters, to deposit the deer. So I had to turn around and head back into my own dust to the one place in the first mile of dirt road where I could pull off and leave the sad spotted form of what briefly was almost a deer. It wouldn't have been much of a calling card to show up at Chateau Morrisette Winery with a carcass in the truck bed .

Leavings

Long story short: I now have a dozen books in the Winery gift shop and at Poor Farmer's Country Store in Meadows of Dan. Monday, I'll go down mountain to Explore Park on the Parkway near Roanoke and put some books on the shelves at the Roanoke Trading Company, good both for the fact that it gets parkway traffic and that it has a strong education emphasis. I can see some possible connections that might arise from the book with environmental groups in the Roanoke area--a compatible group of potential Slow Road Home Readers. Also on Thursday, from a kind and well-timed prompt from blogger and author Caroline Kettlewell, I sent review copies and supporting paperwork to have the book considered for the Virginia Festival of the Book in Charlottesville next March. Later in the day, I received a request for a review copy (and a review should come from it) for the Alabama Writers Forum (bama being my home state) to appear in their Spring 07 First Draft magazine. So things are moving along slowly but more or less steadily.

Build an Ark

We needed rain. Boy howdy, last night we got it. Bummer though, as a bonfire church outing was planned for this weekend, and here down our valley. Ann worked hard mowing and fretting with clearing a place before we knew the pasture would be cut by the planned weekend, but it kept her out of trouble. Anywho, yes, we got a frog choker last night, including one VERY CLOSE lightning strike that set off the surge protector on the computer system and tripped some breakers on wall outlets in the kitchen. Appliances seem intact this morning, we haven't checked yet to see if the 2 x 12 bridge is still in place, but Ann and Tsuga just left to reconnoiter. Oh btw, she discovered a massive snapping turtle yesterday afternoon--no, make that T-dog discovered it, and it did NOT want to play tag. It lunged at an overly-inquisitive dog snout and darned near got a bite of it.

Healing Arts and Crafts

I celebrate my six month anniversary of my return to clinical work as a physical therapist, and soon maybe, some reflections on that very different "hat" from the one I wear in my setting here. But meanwhile, a couple of links. Exercise Pro offers a free download that does everything but print out the very nice customized exercise prescriptions that therapists use in practice. For anyone really into stretching, strengthening or balance exercises, this 75MB download is incredible. And I'll tell you about a book I just got yesterday ahead of my actually reading or using it. If you or someone you know has Fibromyalgia, Myofascial Pain Syndrome or any muscle-centered pain condition, I can tell you that there are means to control those pains, and this book gets a good foreword endorsement from David Simons, one of the foundational clinicians in the study of trigger point pain. The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook brings the lay person an understanding of and means for self-care in this perplexing kind of muscle pain--of which I am both personally and professionally familiar.

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

Yesterday was an exercise in resilience: for every ahhh! there was an oh-NO! For every beauty, a corresponding ugliness in a day of peaks and troughs. Early in the morning, I had a tranquil moment of satisfaction upon completing a writing task, patting myself on the back and ready to treat myself to a few minutes on the porch to take in the morning. I noticed the dog coming in, then out of the edge of the woods along the pasture, furtively, as if he could not quite decide what to do next.

Then, he decided. He would show his latest find: a fawn born so recently it still showed a bloody spot at the umbilicus. The dog didn't intend to eat it. But in the process of repeatedly bundling its long legs in his mouth to bring it out for display, it was nearly dead by the time I reached it. The dog relinquished it, not easily, but not running away with it as he does a groundhog or other "food".

It was barely bigger than a jack rabbit. Holding it by the back legs at the level of my belt, its lifeless front hooves didn't touch the ground. Was it afraid? Did it suffer? Had it ever even moved from the place where it was dropped by the doe, no more than a few hours before?

And a short while later, I was back inside, lost in the daily flood of emails, deadlines, and plans, thinking in the back of my mind of how tenuous and fragile is this life I take for granted. Some lives last less than a single day, while others rise and fall through thousands and tens of thousands of them. Somehow that thought made each moment of my Thursday, good and bad, more precious. And life goes on.

Posted by fred1st at 5:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

It was sound that first caught my attention this morning: how rich an acoustic world we live in here on the creeks. A whipoorwill's call echoed off the edge of forest before first light. The wrens that have built their nest in the hanging petunia planter were whirring their wings flitting who-knows-where before they could see to feed. And always, the creeks bubbling, chuckling, carrying on their eternal conversations with whoever will listen.

Then, some time later, I happened to look out the window by my desk and could see the fog hanging low over the pasture. I found the tripod and my barn boots, and when Ann got up at 5:30, I was wandering over in the field, experimenting with the flat, blue light in a dead calm. How would Ann's "ditch daisies" (her family common name for these wild Crysanthemums) photograph at 1 second in the shadowless reflected light from the not-quite-dawn sky?

Back at the house, I remembered my project I had been working on when the fog distracted me: learning about NPR's "audio postcards". Here's what is required:

To start with, they project a strong sense of place. Just as a picture postcard from a far-away vacation spot brings that sunny beach, or brightly adorned Buddhist temple, or multi-lingual corner market right into your suburban mailbox, an audio postcard should put listeners in a place right away -- and keep them there. You can argue that a sense of place is an ingredient of almost all good radio stories, and that's certainly true, but it's one of the dominant features of a postcard. The reporter is right here, wherever "here" is -- walking along a path with monks in Tibet, listening to the rhythms of a construction site in Chicago or surrounded by a hundred fishermen in Connecticut as they compete in a casting contest.

An audio postcard is heavy on the audio. An effective postcard often envelops the listener in sound. And that means the sound should somehow be remarkable -- the rasping of 17-year cicadas so loud it drowns out conversation; the music of church bells in the medieval German city resonating with history and spirituality and celebration; the midnight creaking and snapping of birches in the Maine woods in January eerie and otherworldly. This is sound that is not just ambience. It's the audio equivalent of that four-color photo. It should really make listeners feel they were there.

Sight or sound? They are both drawing me this morning--a good day to be alive, and well and full of coffee!

Posted by fred1st at 6:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

I had hopes for doing better than this, but realistically, I know I won't go back a half dozen times with the camera on a tripod at different times during the afternoon to find just the right bit of dappled afternoon sun hitting just the right pool where these fish happen to be bunched up for a group shot. And I should add that they are not floating motionless waiting for me to snap the shutter. This image was taken at 1000th of a second, or these fish would be nothing but finny blurs. The closest I came to having an ideal perspective was from the truck when I was driving across the creek to carry some things to the barn. I discovered that looking straight down out of the driver's side window put me directly above and very close to my subject, but for the telephoto lens it was too close, and with the 18-80mm lens, I was too far away.

I have, however, spent a total of some hours watching the courtship and aggressive display of the males keeping herd over their harem of females--seven of the latter in this shot, if you look closely. You can see the distinctive spots at the base of dorsal and pectoral fins, but can't see the pattern of spots and lines very well. The ladies are actually quite attractive in their own right, but eclipsed, as is often the case with regard to color and sheer gaudiness, by the males (the master of this harem in the lower left corner) in breeding attire.

If I've identified this fish correctly (I'll be consulting my guide to freshwater fishes later on) this is a Mountain Red Bellied Dace living here in Goose Creek, that forms part of the headwaters of the south fork of the Roanoke River. You can see a fish-out-of-water image here. And I'm getting a little anxious about their future. The creeks are dwindling again. They went completely dry in 2003, and this is the first year the fish population has come back strong and healthy. We badly need rain.

Posted by fred1st at 5:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Not good. Melting permafrost in Alaska and Siberia turns out to have even more of a downside than had been originally appreciated. It turns out, according to a recent study, that it represents a carbon source (not frozen but in its rapidly thawing state) that is almost equal to that of all land vegetation in its contribution to atmospheric carbon dioxide. Melting permafrost, then, is yet another of those "positive feedback" components in which global warming is creating conditions that amplify the rate of global warming.

Preliminary assessments by scientists from Russia, the University of Florida, and the University of Alaska Fairbanks indicate that loess permafrost, which covers more than a million square kilometers in Siberia and Alaska, is a large carbon reservoir with the potential to be a significant contributor of atmospheric carbon, yet it is seldom incorporated into analyses of changes in global carbon reservoirs.

"The unique aspect of the Siberian loess permafrost is that it is quite deep--20 to 40 meters--and has a surprisingly high carbon concentration at depth for a mineral soil," said Terry Chapin, co-author from the Institute of Arctic Biology at UAF. "This paper explains the processes that led to the accumulation of large amounts of soil carbon and the processes that could lead to its return to the atmosphere."

The largest carbon reservoir on Earth is the ocean, which scientists estimate holds about 40,000 gigatons; soils contain about 2,500 Gt and vegetation about 650 Gt. According to the authors, about 500 Gt of carbon are contained in the thaw-threatened loess, also called yedoma, of Siberia and Alaska.

"If these rates continue as field observations suggest, most carbon in recently thawed yedoma will be released within a century--a striking contrast to the preservation of carbon for tens of thousands of years when frozen in permafrost," state the authors.

Posted by fred1st at 5:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Some weeks back, a new sign appeared suddenly at the crest of the hill coming into Floyd from the north on Route 8. In a small community like Floyd, anything new is noticed and brings comment. Certainly, the point of signage is to attract attention, and this one got it. There are tasteful signs around town that I both notice and appreciate for their craftsmanship and aesthetic qualities. They bring a positive kind of attention. They tell something about the nature of the business owners who took time and care to create an attractive sign that would make a passerby want to stop and visit. Hopefully, a merchant's public advertizing in their signage will reflect that they've taken into account the larger context of the community and setting into which their visible calling cards are placed. Thankfully, most Floyd merchants are making this choice.

Posted by fred1st at 4:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Insult to injury
It has never started easily, which has been a disappointment. I moved up a quality-notch the last time I bought a string trimmer--only the second I've ever owned. I really prefer manual tools, but my joints are getting a larger percentage of the votes lately, and they now have over 51% of the stock, and they say "buy". But this spring when I went to crank the Stihl Model Whatever, it just won't get gas. I knuckled and took it to the small engine repair place I pass on my way to work. And Saturday, I got the bad news. Only AFTER adding a carburetor kit and plug did the repairman reach the conclusion that it was getting no fire. "I even held the plug while I cranked it to be sure my meter wasn't wrong." Bottom line: the part and labor would equal more than half the cost of the machine. And worse: it has been three, not the under-warrantee two years since I bought it. So I pay repair costs on something that will go directly into the dumpster. And meanwhile, the branch and garden edges and road margins grow tall and rangy. Anybody got a goat I can borrow for a day?

Hated to See it Go
I was so looking forward to seeing the grasses at their peak. The pasture was as pretty as I've ever seen it early last week, the unnamed grasses about to flower, their sheaths opening slowly to show sprays of mauve and taupe, panicles of tiny blooms that moved in rhythm to the eddies of warm June winds. And then on Wednesday, we heard the sound of the neighbor's tractor. Just like that, it was laid down in long swaths, flattened against the sandy soil, wildflowers and grasses together. Thursday, turned. Friday, rowed. And Saturday, baled--a good quality hay, but only about half as much as usual because of the cool weather we had all spring. It is beautiful when first cut, but I miss the scene I would have seen this morning in first light had all those stems been standing, sequened in dew.

About the picture
This is the seasonal/orientational reverse of the image that is on the cover of Slow Road Home. The cover image was taken in the fall, and looking west; the one above, in the summer, looking east. If you were standing at the spot from which this picture was taken the other morning as we set out on our walk, I would be able to see you from my window by the porch if I would lean forward at my desk just a bit. Ah, there you are!

How Much Soaking?
Oops. I turned on the soaker hose that I had trailed down in the bean rows last night at 8:15 and planned to turn it off a half hour later before getting ready for bed. I didn't, I realized with a start this morning as I looked at the weather page's mention of possible rain later today. And so I'm wondering how many gallons of soaking that one line of beans got last night. We'll just call this an experiment. Maybe an all-night soak is just what is required. I never used these leaky tubes before, so could be my screw-up was a happy accident. Oh well. What we need is rain. The creeks are really no better off than they were a month ago, with spotty and scant rainfall since then.

Posted by fred1st at 6:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

That America's health care is badly broken is no secret. I don't know a happy physician, or hospital pharmacist, or nurse or administrator. There is a pallor of dysfunction hanging over those professionals and institutions who we think will be ready when that dreaded time comes and we need skilled intervention and need it fast. And yet, there goes your father to his second or third hospital after the understaffed EMS finally arrived to begin treating his heart attack. Every second counts. And instead of 7 minutes to the nearest ER, he was transported to the third nearest, 32 minutes away.

With different priorities, couldn't this have been prevented? And what will happen if we have double or quadruple the number of emergency calls during a period of medical crisis? Hello, Homeland Whatchamacall it. I DON'T feel--you know--.

WASHINGTON Jun 14, 2006(AP)--Half a million times a year about once every minute an ambulance carrying a sick patient is turned away from a full emergency room and sent to another one farther away. It's a sobering symptom of how the nation's emergency-care system is overcrowded and overwhelmed, "at its breaking point," concludes a major investigation by the influential Institute of Medicine. That crisis comes from just day-to-day emergencies. Emergency rooms are far from ready to handle the mass casualties that a bird flu epidemic or terrorist strike would bring, the institute warned Wednesday in a three-volume report.

And emergency medical services received only 4 percent of the $3 billion distributed by the Department of Homeland Security in 2002 and 2003 for emergency preparedness.

Children have even scarcer help. They make up more than a quarter of all ER visits, yet one survey found only 6 percent of emergency departments had all the supplies needed, such as child-size equipment, to treat them.

Posted by fred1st at 5:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

First, you can watch a book (Slow Road Home, as a matter of fact!) in the process of finding its way into someone's bookshelf! Colleen captured the unfolding in action at Cafe del Sol a few days back!

And feedback please: I've uploaded two mp3 files that together constitute the Studio Virginia interview that aired on Thursday, June 15, on WVTF. Do please let me know if you have any problems accessing these, and I'll find another way to make them available. And as you listen, your task is to give me feedback on this one thing: Do I sound WAY TOO SOUTHERN?

• Studio Virginia Part One
• Studio Virginia Part Two

Okay. I'm out to the garden to trim tomato suckers. See you all (every last one of you--no excuses!)--at Notebooks in Floyd, 4:00 sharp.

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

Sometimes, when you are haunted by the same issue again and again in the period of a few days, and seemingly in random unrelated conversations, you might start to think that there is an idea, an inspiration, a message knocking at your door. And you probably ought to go see who's there before they change their mind and think you're not worthy of the call.

Four times in two days, I've had occasion to discuss something like these questions with four people, two times initiated by them, not me:

"Why do you suppose that so few of the adults you know seem to be curious? What relationship does our capacity to wonder have with our collective intellect and culture? How does one nurture a sense of unknowing, unassuming curiosity, the child's mind, that expectant freshness when encountering the ordinary to think maybe there are understandings both above and below the surface of things that, pondered, would make us richer in spirit?"

So, that is what I'm thinking about today, with hopes of reaching some conclusions by next Thursday's deadline for the "Road Less Traveled" column in the Floyd Press. There's something here worth exploring, and I'd be happy for your experiences, ideas and comments on this topic.

This is a rich vein, and not likely to be wrapped up in one 700 word essay. Heck, there may be a book here. It is central to so much of what has driven me, and drawn me, over these past years of writing--the sense that there are worlds within worlds beyond our jaded senses. Because we have so many facts, we think we've reached the end of the matter. That's just nature, climate, consciousness, memory or language. Ho hum. And we look for stimulation in television and computer "realities" that really don't carry us anywhere worth going.

Help me here. I haven't give you much, I know. But I'll get back to you soon. Promise.

Keep'em coming folks. You're writing my column for me! So, to go a step further: how are curiosity and imagination related, and how does a cultivated imagination in today's children, college students and adults compare to past generations, or can we make that call? I wonder if what we're talking about here, painted with a broader brush, could be called "vision" in adults: the propensity to look beyond one's own comfort, possessions, culture and ego to something beyond--with an expectation of a greater good, greater beauty, greater truth? There is something of this in "curiosity" but wonder and awe are different, somehow, and I'm "studying on that" as the old-timers around here say of the matters of their curiosity.

Posted by fred1st at 5:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

This is an early day. My first patient lives 45 minutes away, so I'll leave the house by 8, and be home tonight about 8. There are two "open houses" in town after work, so I'll just hang out and go visit before I come home. But I'm shortish of time to write, and have much to record.

Lyrebird: No Lie!
Before I forget: treat yourself to this 3 minute video of David Attenborough, but he's not the star. You WILL NOT BELIEVE the mimicry of the lyrebird recorded here, who obviously gets his share of screen time. He's come to imitate the sounds he hears in the forest full of photographers, including the click of a camera, complete with motor drive, AND (sadly) the sound of chainsaws and crashing trees; this last is perhaps one of the saddest things I've ever heard--the bird mimicking the sounds of the destruction of his very world. I kid you not. If you're at work and can't take the time, send this bookmark home and call the kids: http://tinyurl.com/jakjt

Coffeeshop Conversation
I had the darndest conversation in Cafe del Sol yesterday--one of those "I couldn't help but overhear what you were saying" things, where D and I were talking about the time-sink of internet rabbit-holes and other distractions in our short and easily-unfocused lives. To make a 45 minute story very short, our guest who overheard our conversation was from the northwest, in Floyd visiting friends. His day job was as mathematician / IT troubleshooter / inventor-patent holder with a large aircraft manufacturer from our west. He and D exchanged esoteric and erudite opinions on Steven Wolfram's theorems and talked about D's recent purchase of Mathematica for fun. Names like Richard Feynman came into the conversation. "I studied under him at Berkeley in 1968" said D. "His son was my office mate for 10 years at X corp" said our guest." But most interesting was that our visitor's heart's love was singing; his card says simply "baritone" and we're not talking shower tunes. His card has links to some of his operatic appearances. Anyway, he'll be back next year, and we plan to meet up and spend more time together. He bought Slow Road Home before he left, and who knows where this tale will end.

Studio Virginia
I didn't know until after 6:00 that my WVTF Studio Virginia interview would air last night. I must say, I was very anxious about how it would sound on the air, and very relieved that the generous 14 minutes of air time went rather well, I thought. I recorded it, but now have to convert to mp3. I'll put up a segment somewhere this weekend if you're interested in hearing. Gene, the host, was very kind to plug the Sunday reading and the others through the summer already scheduled. I've had several folks say they'll be there, and the Black Water Loft over the bookstore (Notebooks in Floyd) seems a very comfortable place for a book-related gathering.

Tell Your Friends
Last weekend, we were visited by a couple who knew this house and valley better and for much longer than we have. M gifted us with a three-ring binder of the genealogy and various histories of the founder and father of the builders of this house in the 1870s. What a generous gift and wonderful thing to have and pass along. She'd already sent word of the book to the many cousins, not a few of whom had purchased from their wide-flung home across the country, and all with roots in Goose Creek. Now she says she's send the book info to 12 more and has 24 more in mind. Wow! And let that be an inspiration, eh? Have you sent word about Slow Road Home to everybody on your email list yet? Hmmmm?

Posted by fred1st at 5:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

It is still good, but it is not the same. The morning writing on a public weblog seems in the past year to have become not much more than an echo of my private thoughts and narrations, a record of the things that have drawn my attention from the inner and the outer world set down on record, on a timeline with postcards--a way of marking the passing of thought, attention and time. And that is a good thing. But blogging is not for me what it once was, and that's alright, I guess. I'm reminded of an oriental proverb that says something to the effect of: pilgrim, once having been shown the moon, you no longer watch the finger that pointed you to it. Life goes on, and the blog goes on, but I don't expect from it or get from it what I once did. I no longer look to it, rely on it or on my readers and their conversations to form the bridge between my solitude and a belonging to something larger.

The blog has achieved its initial purposes many times over. It was, in the early days, a beacon signal from a lonely outpost saying "I'm here, still living, and I have things to show you, things to say, and a need to hear from you that I am not alone." The writing was a hand reaching out to welcome others into my life, and to make me in some way a small part of theirs. The end, from the beginning, was for the writing to become a way of connecting me with the people I would see when I walked from the bank to the hardware store, to find my niche, not merely virtual, in this growing collection of experience and skills and personalities among flesh-and-blood neighbors. And for some months, years perhaps, Fragments was the microphone and headset I relied on when I broadcast the trivial but often beautiful or poignant things I would have preferred to have shared in a conversation on our front porch.

Yesterday, for the first time, a neighbor I had never met pulled into the drive, got out, introduced himself by name, and then as "one of your fans." He was reading the book; his wife had bought five of them last week and was mailing them off to friends of theirs who used to live here who would want to know that life goes on, and it goes rather well, on Goose Creek. Today, I'll leave the house early for a "nature hike" with a friend met by way of a "spoken word" event in town where I read some little bit from the blog a few years ago. Sunday, I'll be reading from the book in downtown Floyd, from a location not twenty paces from the space where my physical therapy clinic was located when we first moved here in 1997. I will meet new friends, share my story with them, and in time, learn some of theirs.

And so I'm feeling no small debt of gratitude to this medium, this special space I use each quiet morning to say hello to myself and a few who pass through briefly and silently each day. There is still a connection to you who make the effort to read beyond the first paragraph if there's not a picture to go with the post. But I feel a certain loss when I look back at the two-way energies that once powered this public journal. Some of that is due to the numerous technical problems with the blog nowadays. I will soon have to make some major changes so that I can respond directly to your comments by email, update properly via rss, add new blogs to my blogroll, post images directly to the server. There are many things that need correcting technically, and that is part of the distance I feel between now and those "good old days" of two or three years ago. But I digress. Heck, digression is what I do best. I should go with my strengths.

Sorry. I'm rambling. But I'm also ruminating with a purpoe, needing to find what comes next in a life that has changed so remarkably much since June 2002. Makes my head swim. I have so much more to say. I also have so much I need to do before first light, so I'd best get on with it. You couple of regular readers keep the public writing from being more than the dropping of a stone down a well to test the water. So thanks.

Posted by fred1st at 5:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (18) | TrackBacks (0)

There are moments when life seems gilded with grace and blessing. Most of those moments come early, before first light--no, there may be moonlight and the cold bioluminescent light of fireflies, just as I see it from the front porch this early morning. Those moments are often very still, like paintings, still-lifes with a few incongruous moving features--one branch on the maple off the front porch dips ever so slightly in the moonlight breeze that quickly brushes by and is gone; there is a glint of silver from the creek backlighting the shapes of summer grasses heavy with invisible dew. And there is quiet not absolute: voices, laughter maybe, from the creek. And far away, the trill of a screech owl as he yawns and stretches, going to bed while I come inside and sit down with that first cup of coffee before a blank sheet of paper, full of hope in a day that never was before the incredible now.

Posted by fred1st at 4:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

That sounds like a wonderful step toward responsibility on the part of a usually hamfisted, bigger-hammer corporate grocer. But is it?

Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma and The Botany of Desire, explains this is not exactly the case. The catch is really in the economics. To price organic food so cheaply, asserts Pollan...

"...would virtually guarantee that Wal-Mart's version of cheap organic food is not sustainable, at least not in any meaningful sense of that word. To index the price of organic to the price of conventional is to give up, right from the start, on the idea...that food should be priced not high or low but responsibly. As the organic movement has long maintained, cheap industrial food is cheap only because the real costs of producing it are not reflected in the price at the checkout. Rather, those costs are charged to the environment... To say you can sell organic food for 10 percent more than you sell irresponsibly priced food suggests that you don't really get it."

Posted by fred1st at 8:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have two techy issues looming today that I'm sure will bore you to tears (a consideration which has NEVER stopped me yet in four years of blahblahblogging.)

First matter: One day last week, I set up a microphone in front of the speaker to record my mother's "memoir" cassette tape to digital using Audacity. (Didn't have the right connectors for a line-in method.) That tape now resides as a 1 GB WAV file on my laptop hard drive. That's too big to go on one CD. Yes, I could covert the original Audacity file to mp3 and compress the size, but it wouldn't be usable for my mom on her CD player. I tried copying 600MB of the file so I could drop it into its own file for the first CD, but even with a gig of RAM, it freezes Audacity. I'll have to solve this myself, or carry it to Berny C for a higher level of hardware and know-how to get the job done.

Secondly: I am revisiting the "photomemoir" I did at the Appalachian Studies Association meeting in March 2005. The first planned use of it will be in October at the Sierra Club meeting where I'm scheduled to speak. It will make a fine alternative to talking directly about the book, and for those by then who will have read the book (he said with mock confidence) it will "show rather than tell" about those scenes from which the writing came. There are about 80 images in the program that fade from one scene to the next while I narrate. Tech issue: the program was done originally in Powerpoint. I'm wondering if it will import into Adobe Premier Elements so I can more easily edit the transitions and add more sound files.

You may yawn now.

Posted by fred1st at 5:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Well I'm Just Sick
After much taxonomic deliberation, the various wood experts have come to a consensus that it is elm. We had an epidemic of death up the valley two years ago--maybe three--in which this certain unfamiliar tree lost its bark suddenly and died, leaving us a windfall of winter firewood in its untimely death. Or so we thought. What I've come to learn, much to my disappointment and especially after 1) paying a professional to drop a large cluster of them--among the other oversized and awkward trees he felled for us last fall, and 2) after filling the back of the pickup with stove-length sections yesterday. Gleefully back at the house, I tossed the first piece from the truck, and set it on end, the grain already showing signs of drying, and we had so much of it! I hefted the monster-maul to my shoulder, looking forward to stacking the freshly-split wood on the woodpile by the house, a wealth that represents October's warm mornings to come. And instead of that satisfying explosion into two half-rounds of firewood, the maul's triangular mass sunk less than an inch and would go no farther. The wood cannot be split manually. So anything too big to go in the stove (maybe 80% of the tree) is waste. Or, Dennis, you have bowl-turning materials for the rest of our natural lives.

What It's All About
I don't know if this little book of mine will go as far as a second printing. I may never speak to an audience larger than what would fit in our living room here. But I'm satisfied, no matter. Some readers at least have persisted through the pages that run from the sublime to the ridiculous to "hear" the deeper purpose of the "book of days." Pablo, editor of Round Rock Journal, is one of those people, and it is so gratifying to have been able to share the moments over the years on Goose Creek with all of you. Thanks for this nice expression of your participation in the journey, Pablo. Thank you all.

Three Years Ago
Those of you who have read Slow Road Home will understand. As we look ahead a few weeks to Tsuga's third birthday, we also remember how difficult a time this was in June of 2003 when we knew that our black lab, Buster, was not going to recover from the never-identified illness that gave him such weakness and pain. We fed him pain pills in a fingerful of butter those last weeks, but knew the time approached when we would have to do the hard thing and end his suffering. You know, I don't have very many pictures of him. Black dogs are difficult photographic subjects. But here's a collection of black lab pictures, and so many of these poses and expressions bring back memories--of Buster, and of Zachary before him. They never really leave your heart, do they?

NRV Today
I'm understanding now how hard it is to gain the interest of receptive guests and motivate them to drive somewhere to hear an unknown writer yak about a book they never heard of. Tis a challenge. And over the weekend, I recruited the public service help of NRV (that's New River Valley) Today. Turns out Rose, the editor/producer, is a Floyd native and I may meet her at the Father's Day event at Notebooks / Black Water Loft on Sunday. She kindly posted an announcement of the gathering; and what's this! another Floyd Countian with a media focus--blogger David St Lawrence, in his new role as Executive Director at the Jacksonville Center!

One Note 2007
The Final App? Maybe, maybe not. I took the plunge and installed the beta yesterday after using One Note 2003 since the summer of 2003 when I first started putting together selections that would ultimately become Slow Road Home. I've loved the program, and hated it. The new version is much more visually appealing, way easier to organize and you can hotlink different pages to each other to move quickly between related material. The beta will lapse in February, by which time the app will be available (I hope) as a stand-alone product and as part of Office 12 or whatever the next generation will be called. If you're interested, it took a while for me to discover that, to download just a single program like OneNote, you have to go through all the various sign-up hoops, and then finally, you'll be taken to a page where you check which component you want to download. OneNote alone was a whopping 220MB but so far, it seems to work very well.

Posted by fred1st at 5:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

I appreciate the Book Note in yesterday's Roanoke Times. And a nice plug about Slow Road by Meredith Sue Willis, a prolific writer I met last summer at Hindman. She reviewed in at her Books For Readers site, and much appreciated.

Meanwhile, the book sits with almost 200 others in the Asheville BR Parkway office, waiting for hiring, maintenance and other Parkway needs to be dealt with before shipping it off to the next stage in this unlikely journey. Book purchases is rather down the list of priorities in a shoe-string bare-bones federal bureacracy, I suppose.

And no word yet from Mabry Mill, where the book was passed along toward a hopeful final positive decision at the resort headquarters in Arizona. The nice lady did say that "since you brought the book by, at least one person has asked for it specifically." That didn't hurt.

LAST CALL! You know you've been putting it off--getting that Father's Day gift for your father and father-in-law (you know your husband will forget and YOU'LL have to take charge!) So, do it today: order your copies of Slow Road Home and get them in the mail by the end of the week. Or, send me an email with dad's address and I'll send it directly with whatever inscription you'd like (within reason, of course.) He'll be glad you remembered him.

Posted by fred1st at 10:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the pleasures that I anticipated in that settled age we would some day find was to walk the same paths and drive the same slow country lanes, to watch them change through the seasons, year after year-to know them like the back of my hand. We've settled here and Floyd is home. We know those winding roads well now, and as we have traveled them through the years, the pasture borders and roadside fence rows of those peaceful lanes have become dominated by an aggressive alien plant--multiflora rose. Have you noticed the arching canes of white flowers along your road this week? Unchecked, what will those open spaces look like by the turn of the next decade? I can only imagine. Multiflora rose-a self-inflicted wound.

A native of Japan, this woody plant was imported at various times since the late 1700s as root stock for ornamental roses, for preventing soil erosion, as food for wildlife (the seeds) and as a "living fence". It now infests more than 45 million acres throughout the eastern US and has been declared a noxious weed by ten states, including Virginia. Once established, it is very difficult to control, much less to permanently eradicate from productive cropland or pasture. Here's why.

Multiflora rose is a woody shrub that persists and grows larger year after year. Its canes, up to 25 feet long, are armed with sharp recurved thorns the plant is shunned by cattle. Flowers on a single long cane (of many canes that arise from roots of a single a plant) can produce up to 17,500 seeds that persist in the soil and continue producing seedlings for up to twenty years. Those seeds are eaten by songbirds (including starlings) and survive intact to be deposited in neighboring fields.

So there is good news, and there is bad news. The bad news is that this plant is especially difficult to control mechanically (by plowing or dozing it down to the ground) on steep or rocky hillsides-just the kind of terrain so common in some Floyd County areas. Chemical methods involve the application of strong herbicides like Roundup or Crossbow, and repeated applications are often necessary. Along fencerows, chemical means have been about the only choice for control.

The good news is that multiflora rose has natural enemies! It has been proposed that one of the reasons this plant "over-produces" seeds is that there are creatures that feed specifically on them and reduce the potential number of viable seeds. One such feeder is the tiny rose seed chalcid wasp that lays its eggs only in multiflora rose hips. In populations where the seed chalcid has spread, seed viability can be significantly reduced. This wasp's lifestyle has a negative impact on multiflora rose, and it is being spread slowly and naturally (probably traveling on birds) across all states that bear heavy rose infestation. I'll be curious to see if I can find the wasp larvae locally when, out of curiosity, I cut into multiflora rose hips with my pocket knife later this summer.

The second factor in the potential biological control of Rosa multiflora is rose rosette disease (RRD). This is a plant virus spread by a particular air-borne mite. When present, RRD causes "witches broom" growth on the rose plants. These abnormal growths are cold-sensitive and the canes usually killed during the winter. Mortality is high as ninety percent in those areas where RDD has spread. This plant pathogen would seem a natural solution to this thorny problem that confronts us along our favorite back roads. However, RDD infests ornamental roses as well, so some careful breeding for resistant or tolerant garden roses may be needed to keep everybody happy.

In the end, a few decades from now, the multiflora rose population explosion that plagues Floyd County today may be brought under control by a wasp, a mite and a virus-by predation and disease, the kinds of natural checks and balances that typically regulate excesses in natural systems. However, until then, the best offense is a good defense.

Catch them when they're small, and grub them up by the roots like we do along our logging roads here on Goose Creek. Or else stand back and watch them grow! You can stop and smell the roses as you walk your fields and woods this summer and fall. Then I'd suggest you whack the livin' daylights out of 'em. (Main source for facts in this column come from Invasive Plants of the Eastern US-see http://tinyurl.com/fjkdr )

This is the upcoming column for the local paper. Normally, I wouldn't post these pieces here until after they appear in the paper, but in this case, I've already waited too late for local roses to be clearly visible in flower. But maybe they're still flowering where you are, and this will make you notice them as you drive around your part of the country. Anybody know if there are ordinances or monies for eradication of this plant where you live? There ISN'T in Floyd.

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

At first the riot of unplanted volunteers along the branch was an interesting study in shape, form and shade of green. Now, it has become more of a mob of rank weeds competing for sunlight, filling the depression with knee-to-hip-high chaos, and I'll need to deal with it. Clearing the branch by the house, or the overgrowth along the creek wasn't an issue in the drought. Finally, we've had enough rain that the place is starting to look unkempt. I'll have to fire up the string trimmer. No, change that: I'll have to cuss and threaten to wrap the string trimmer around a tree a few more times before I give in and take it to Riner Small Engine to get the carburetor cleaned, of whatever it takes. I'd prefer a simple swingblade but that's orthopedically off the list of usable tools.

This shot is of the impatiens that grows along the branch, just outside the back door. The succulent stems glow like neon tubes of palest green glass, hollow columns of water pulled from the wet soil where they grow. We had a gentleman visitor over the weekend. He and I stood just where this shot was taken, and as he surveyed the weedy branch, he reminisced about the days in the 40's when children ran along the yard popping the touch-me-not fruits to make the seeds explode.

In the realm of "weeds", it's looking to be a very good berry year, but we've learned not to count our jam jars until we have blackberry seeds between our teeth. It can still turn too warm and dry, and the berries will be tight, hard, tasteless knots. Or it could (though it doesn't seem to be going that way) be too wet for a week or more at this critical time, and the berries grow watery and go to mold. Then, there's the matter of the bear in the berries. I remember last year, before we saw him lumbering across the pasture, we just knew somebody had been trespassing up in the berry patch. I was going to put up a sign. Glad I didn't bother. Our bears, I've heard, are illiterate.

Posted by fred1st at 4:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

...and we haven't kilt each other yet. Happy anni, Annie.

Posted by fred1st at 8:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

Yes, it cost me a half day's pay, a week's worth of groceries, but it was worth it. Two heavy-duty 75 foot garden hoses; one fifty foot soaker hose; one adjustable spray wand; and one flexible shut-off. That's what I had to spend on getting water to the garden in order to make it rain. But once this expense was secured on the credit card, the clouds began rolling in. Happy to do it. I just hope my investment brings enough to get some water into deep ground, as the creeks are vanishingly small and getting smaller.

Honestly, this "easy water" is the only good thing that has happened, garden-wise, this gardening year so far. It is so frustrating to work so hard and have so little to show for it. The crows pulled up right many bean seedlings--just used them as convenient leafy handles to pull up some soil in their search for grubs, I guess--tossed them aside, roots, leaves and cotyledons, to dry in the sun. So, I set about to replant them, hunkered down once more on my knees in the dust. There are gaps, too, where the four-across seeds I planted in a bed only brought up one or none. I push the replacement seed into the soft soil with my finger, and it plunges four inches deep--into a mole tunnel. So this is why those first seeds failed to germinate. They were in a construction zone. There must be a mile of underground infrastructure under our small garden, tubes and tunnels zigging and zagging, as eyeless insectivores paddle in the dark after the grubs of June bugs, Japanese beetles and bean beetles yet to hatch and work their own magic on hopeful food crops.

We've watered the garden from the creek in years past, using a small pump powered by a garden battery. But the creek has gone dry before, and getting all that set up, crossing the road with the hose, moving the heavy battery to and from the barn--it all made the job of watering a tedious and dreaded necessity. But we have the blessing of artesian pressure on our well, and a few years back, we had a standard faucet put directly on the well head, hidden over in the rows of firewood. So now, we just open up the shutoff on the hose from inside the garden fence, and voila! All the water the moles, grubs and other wildlife need to stay happily hydrated!

It's not a garden, really. We think of it as our Wildlife Salad Park. Maybe they'll leave us a nibble when all is said and done by the end of August. Man, it's raining like crazy. And you're welcome, Floyd County. Glad to help.

Posted by fred1st at 5:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

I thought this was an eye-catching graphic from NASA. Wow. Most people are convinced that adding enormous amounts of fossil carbon from coal, oil and natural gas to the atmosphere in the form of CO2 plays a large part in explaining what is happening in a world where thermal change over time is normal--but not this much this fast.

If we could thermally "condition" our home and business environments by non-polluting means and find alternatives to carbon-based energy for transportation, regardless of the cause of rapid global warming, that would be a good thing: fewer smokestacks, less acid rain, an end to mountaintop removal...

And I read about "residential attached greenhouses" and other measures that are do-able NOW that can make at least some existing well-oriented houses and most new ones energy independent. I would be so proud of our country if we were putting our collective monies into research and support for this kind of solution to climate change instead of...well, that's another post for another day.

Posted by fred1st at 5:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I am sitting in the sun on the front porch talking to my son, very long distance from Vancouver, when a flash of red catches my eye. Without missing a beat in the conversation, I walk down the steps into the yard and gently bat the unknown inch-long beetle out of air. It falls to the grass where I scoop him up with my hand, wondering about the strength of his mandibles as I cage him the curve of my fingers.

Still talking, I carry him inside where I have to announce to Nate that "I'll have to put the phone down for a minute and find a jar to put this beetle in." For some fathers, this might seem an odd thing to say in the middle of a phone conversation. Not for this one. "Ooooh! Gotta go! There's a hummingbird moth on the impatiens!"

More than one family member, neighbor or friend has been preempted by a beetle or butterfly. If the one pictured here had landed in some picturesque composition (rather than on the kitchen countertop--(Ann was not home to squeel "NOT INSIDE!")--well, I would have had no choice but to hang up quickly, and call them back after the excitement had settled and the entomological mission was accomplished.

And my caller will just chalk it up to Fred's personal weirdness. Sorry 'bout that, don't intend to diss you, but I can call you back. This instant in time, this fly-through passer-by, is a one-time opportunity, and I can't call it back once it's gone. You understand, I'm sure.

(Does anybody recognize this beetle by scientific or common name? I've never seen it before!)

UPDATE: Kudos to Jeremiah for identifying this long-horned beetle (that much I knew) as Purpuricenus humeralis (an enlargement here.) So I've learned something, and added one more fellow-creature to my life-list.

Posted by fred1st at 5:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

Doggy, my Aunt Fanny. We carry food home for Ann and Fred almost every time we eat out. We use this fact that the meal will feed us twice to justify the high price of eating out every once in a while. We most definitely eat leftovers--from our table at home, from tables elsewhere. (However, we have a well-rehearsed habit of leaving our take-out on our table or at the register and realize this only after we get home. ("I thought you had it.")

Almost without fail, in any restaurant we visit, half of what is served is left on our plates when we push back from the table, and it comes home with us. But I look around and see other people leaving their tables who had the same meals we did, and their plates are clean. It is good manners, after all, as we learned growing up, to eat everything on your plates. And herein lies a problem, about which maybe now, something is being done. Who decides to manage the balance between the calories we need and those we will consume if placed in front of us? Obviously, the American diner-outter makes poor decisions on that point.

WASHINGTON --The government is trying to enlist the help of the nation's eateries in fighting obesity. One of the first things on its list: cutting portion sizes.

With burgers, fries and pizza the top three eating-out favorites in this country, according to a study by The NPD Group, restaurants are in a prime position to help improve people's diets and combat obesity.

The (Food and Drug Administration) report encourages restaurants to shift the emphasis of their marketing to lower-calorie choices and include more such options on menus. In addition, restaurants could change portion sizes and the variety of foods available in mixed dishes to cut calories.

Bundling meals with more fruits and vegetables also could help. And letting consumers know how many calories are contained in a meal also could guide the choices they make, according to the report.

How do you feel about this? Will those same restaurants that cut portions also cut their prices? I'd be content to carry home fewer doggy bags, consume fewer calories and have more left in my wallet and less in my midsection. I think this is a wonderful plan. Now, if those same restaurants would clean up their menus so they don't cater to America's craving for triple patty double cheese croissant burgers. Talk about death on toast.

Posted by fred1st at 5:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

From my window seat I looked down on cobalt blue cloud shadows that drifted slowly east across green patches of forest. Their shapes shifted like Rorschach blots against the landscape and my mind conjured meaning and memories in their patterns. I was going home, back to Birmingham where so many of the parts of my life took root and form, going home for Mothers Day, the first with her since 2001.

That was the year when my mother, my wife and I had been traveling and away on Mothers Day. As we walked up the ramp into the Charlotte terminal on our return trip, we were startled to hear our names announced on the loud speakers. At the information desk, we learned the sad news that my mother's mother had died in the nursing home during the week we were gone. My grandmother's stories that I never knew were perhaps that day's greatest tragedy, and I was thinking about those conversations that she and I never had as I walked to my gate at the Charlotte terminal on my recent visit south, almost exactly five years later.

Mom is eighty now, independent and still drives-very, very slowly. She picked me up at the Birmingham airport and for a couple of hours, we revisited every place on the south side of town she thought I might remember. Each suburban street held stories of neighbors good or bad, of the local pets we both remembered by name, of girlfriends-names forgotten. Mom learned of petty pranks and transgressions of youth only now confessed. We pieced together the story of our lives from the places where they had happened. This was the same, that had changed.

"I may have told you this" she would begin, and without hesitating for a response, proceed to retell her mother's perspective about episodes in my young life from her adult point of view back in another age. I had heard most of it before. I so wanted to hear it again, because these connections with who and where we once had been are all too easy to forget with the geography that separates us now.

Back home at her apartment on Mother's Day 2006, I discovered that over the years, she had been recording her life story, putting down details remembered about her mother, and about her own childhood in Birmingham, a home town that she never left; about a grandfather that I never met, who died in a hunting accident when she was eleven; about her boyfriends and the sad-romantic times of the war years. She and I listened to the tape together, recorded haltingly in her sweet southern voice, little changed from those scratchy records from her public speaking classes at Woodlawn High School in the early '40s. She was passing on her stories to her children and family in her own voice, so that we would not forget.

Funny how things work out. I had come to see my mother on Mothers Day with a gift: the book I had written as a bridge between us. There wouldn't be so many meetings ahead for the two of us, and my hope had been to finish the book while she was here to know of it, to share with me in the accomplishment of this personal milestone, to hold my stories in her hand. And in return, she handed me her tape. This exchange was one of those rare symmetries that happen so seldom in the seemingly-patternless plodding along our separate ways, parent and child.

My mother and I had both realized the importance of storing and sharing the meaningful moments, of celebrating the people and places of our lives. On Mothers Day, 2006, we gave these gifts to each other while there was yet time. And I hoped that somewhere, my grandmother was watching.

Posted by fred1st at 6:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

From the June 2005 archives: a view I'll miss when the sun crests the ridge today. I'll be on my way to work.

It's cool this morning, and the warm first light will lift the vapors from everything the light touches. Dew will rise to cloud, to fall again, if we're fortunate, as rain. We need more moisture badly and let go these mesmerizing ghosts of vapor with some regret. Perhaps we'll see them again, as drops on the metal roof, pattering on the garden rows, kwelling the dust along the road.

Posted by fred1st at 6:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

~ In the wee hours, for the first time last night, I wondered if I can/should continue doing the newspaper column. It was easy when I was mostly submitting blog posts and book entries massaged slightly for the Floyd Press audience. Now, the book is out, and there doesn't seem to be enough time to do everything that needs doing--which should at some point include some new writing. I'm just thinking outloud close to a deadline during a period of writer's block, so don't mind me. Actually, I'm working this morning to research a time-sensitive piece that I had thought about getting in the column eventually, but NOW is the time--while people can see what I'm talking about. Multiflora rose is absolutely taking over the county, and in full flower, the invasion is impossible to miss. Once the petals fall (I hope not by next Thursday's column) folks will drive past fields choked with this rampant alien species without notice or concern.

~ An envelope came yesterday from Cracker Barrel. It came too fast and was too thin to be anything other than the rejection letter I've seen before. "Dear Mr. Frost, our organization receives hundreds of submissions of potential new products every hour. By declining your product, we are in no way saying that it lacks merit in its own right, but only that...blah blah blah". Okay. On to the Slow Road Hiway Traveler's Audio CD.

~ Early on, even before the book arrived, I looked at three Appalachian Lit journals to see how to submit a book for review. Combing through their websites, there were places for contributors to submit book reviews already completed, and essays, poems, and non-fiction stories. Nowhere did any of them say (that I could find) "here's how you get a book before our editors for consideration for review." So, I figured that, unless I could tailor some part or parts of the book as an essay, those possible avenues of book exposure were out. Yesterday, emboldened by encouraging words from a mentor who knows these publications and their editors well, I emailed each of them, got almost immediate responses inviting me to send the book, and have three books in the mail: to Appalachian Journal, Appalachian Heritage and Now & Then. Reviews are not assured, and may do more harm than good. Who knows. But it felt like a successful day, nonetheless.

~ Oh joy! For once, we are getting rain while almost no other place in the state is. Too many times these past weeks, the radar shows a solid blot of green and yellow moving our way, destined to wet the dusty road and powdery garden. And as the massive wave of rain approaches the X on the weather radar loop that marks home, the green parts east and west like the Red Sea, leaving the Children of Goose Creek parched and unblessed. And by the time I finished those couple of sentences, the rain had ended--not enough to get down to the level of bean seeds planted a week ago, dormant, dry, and waiting. Another week without a good soaking, our garden will not make harvest before frost, or late summer bean beetles, mildew and other season-enders.

~ For those few who wondered WHAT was under the house: We got home Sunday afternoon and the smell had disappeared. Monday morning it had returned. Monday afternoon I did the alligator crawl under the house with the 2 million candle power spotlight (yes, this is an accurate rating. It's massive--Ann's purchase for shining deer at night for the dog to chase.) I could see nothing to account for the musty smell, except maybe a bunch of rotting cardboard (where did that come from?) which I removed. I also (duh) opened the foundation vents. And I just heard complaints from the bedroom: it's that smell again. The stinky mystery continues.

Posted by fred1st at 5:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

The list of speaking opportunities is growing slowly, but I'm encouraged. Those who come, be they few or many, seem to hear not just the air waves of the words but the deeper content of the book's passages. And there will be more chances to share, with two events under my belt now. I have begun to explore the nature-conservation readership potential, and have a date with the Roanoke Sierra Club in October and an inquiry off to the Nature Convervancy.

I'll dust off the "photomemoir" starting this week, and bring the images more into some future programs. On a side table before and after the presentations, I've been setting up the laptop with a "slide show" of Fragments images to music--a very nice addition to add some visual connection with the writing.

The image above is from yesterday's event at the Jacksonville Center, photo credits to David St. Lawrence.

BULLETIN!!: There is still time to get a copy of Slow Road Home for your father AND father-in-law. Books ordered today will ship tomorrow, even if you order by check. Just let me know you want the book, and I'll send it while your payment comes via the mail.

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

~ We should have enough empty liter ginger ale bottles after today's Jacksonville Center book event to make several of these--a design for yellow jacket traps that is much better than the "fish on a stick" version I posted here a week or two ago.

~ Methinks something has somehow found its way under the house (our bedroom, in particular) and died. I'll have to take the flashlight into the crawl space, along with my bamboo pole with fire-poker attached (don't ask) and retrieve said carcass when we get home this evening. Something to look forward to.

~ Thanks to Lisa for her kind words about the book, even before actually reading it! She was looking for home a few years back, and it looked like we might have her family as Floyd neighbors. She and family seem to have landed "on their feet" elsewhere, however.

~ Thanks this morning also to ellamomma for emailing to tell me that she bought the last two copies of Slow Road Home from Easy Chair Books in Blacksburg, and particularly that she took these books to friends in Richmond. I need to have some Richmond readers to spread the word, and ultimately, to find a contact there to set up a reading this summer, if possible.

~ I was surprised to stop by Slaughters Grocery yesterday with my honey-do list and find they had sold 7 of the 9 books I left there a week ago! Move over, Cosmo, Redbook and Glamour. And I didn't even have to show any skin!

~ Finally, for now, you should be aware that blogger David St. Lawrence has just been named the Executive Director of the Jacksonville Center! Logically enough, one of his first steps to improve the Center's visibility and reach was to set up a website--a blog, of course. Do go by and take a look around. Congratulations, David, and we look forward to all the good ideas and actions we can make happen with the wonderful resources of space and arts equipment, creative energy and good will that have come together at the Jacksonville Center!

Posted by fred1st at 7:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

A nice sampling of local insects has come indoors to live with us over the past weeks. The outside door to the Ann-ex has remained open while the screen door goes on, and the entry door gets a coat of paint. I suppose the darkness of the doorway lures them, or curiosity, and they become lost and trapped inside, bumping up against the windows until they die unblemished, like this ichneumonid (ich-new-MON-id) wasp I found on the tile floor yesterday.

Notice the very long "stinger". This is a female and the long appendage at her hind end is an egg-laying hypodermic, not a stinger as is often supposed. In some species, the ovipositor is more than four inches long--a formidable birthing tool, and the way she uses it is quite remarkable. Take a look at the "stinger" in action. Consider this relationship between the horntail wasp (food) and the ichneumonid (feeder) and a fungus (an essential ingredient in this unlikely lifestyle):

The drama begins as follows: the female horntail wood wasp, Tremex columba, drills eggs into a species of deciduous wood, usually beech. The eggs pick up spores of the wood fungus Cerrena unicolor. These spores are stored in her ovipositor. The mycelium from the germinating spores contains an extra-cellular enzyme that helps break down the cellulose on which the larvae feed. There is also evidence that the saliva of the larvae also helps in the pre-digestion.

The spores are stored in larval pouches called mycetangia and are squeezed out during the larval period. Since these spores called oidea are asexual they proliferated rapidly and produce an abundance of mycelium. When the larvae pupate the spores become part of the pupa. When the female wasp emerges, the spores by some magic become part of the egg sac (ovipositor). So we see an amazing symbiotic relationship between an insect and a basidiomycete - white rot fungus.

So, how does the ichneumonid parasitic wasp Megarhyssa become involved?

The $128 question is how does the female wasp find the horntail larvae tunneling deep in the dead wood? The fungus, Cerrena unicolor, forms conspicuous sporocarps that resemble wooly Polyporus versicolor (turkeytail) on the dead wood. The fungus produces a pheromone that lures the female wasp to the area. The female begins drilling into the wood with its remarkable flexible 4 - 6 inch needle-thin ovipositor. When the Megarhyssa larvae hatch they parasitize the horntail larvae in the tunnels. link

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

I feel like an exam is over. And I think I passed.

The interview at WVTF went very well--not a home run, but maybe a solid single plus a stolen base. Best thing: I didn't have to wear the headphones, which I dreaded because they give me something of a claustrophobic inside-your-own-head kind of detachment. We chatted for about 20 minutes; some of the questions were not unexpected, some more open-ended than I would have wanted, and I cut off my two minute answer after 30 seconds, not knowing where the interviewer might be going next or how many more questions he had. I managed to do some networking for the Floyd arts community, and also re-suggested that a program involving a half-dozen or so Roanoke and New River Valley authors (panel discussion, etc) might be worth considering; and he is doing so! Don't know yet when the interview will air, but the usual slot for Studio Virginia is Thursdays at 7:30 pm.

AND: my maiden voyage into the sea of speakerdom. It was fun! We set up seating for a dozen, and a few for overflow, expecting a good turnout by Bent Mt. standards. It is a small but close-knit community, and the word was OUT thanks to Jenny and others. There were at least twenty; a half-dozen I knew. One (Dave, proprietor of the MacBeanGene (or Here, There and Back?) has been a faceless Fragments correspondent for years, and just so happened, he was passing up 221 and stopped by for the program. Nice surprise. I managed to have two pages of notes and pretty much not use them, so that the chatter seemed more spontaneous than scripted. (Ann gave me the cut-throat sign and held up ONE finger when I had planned to read THREE more pieces. How long is long enough?) But people listened--so different from the coffee-house open mic readings where attention is 75% latte-drinking, 15% people-watching and 10% listening.

We met several couples at the meeting last night who I feel certain we'll have occasion to visit (or them, us) and I sold 18 books! Dang, I was so unprepared for SELLING in this setting that I forgot to bring cash for change. Ann and I talked on the way over about how hard it is to do something like this for the first time--the awkward fumbling un-automatic brain-draining obligation to go through motions that have had not structure before. (I remembered my first day teaching in 1975. Awful!) You've not fielded the questions, learned people's listening tolerance, figured out how to spread time between signing and chatting and eating the tea and crumpets the nice ladies have graciously provided while keeping up with the receipts and not spilling punch down the front of your shirt. That sort of thing. It will get easier. And more fun? I can't imagine!

NEXT OPPORTUNITY for a copy of Slow Road Home signed while you wait (and just in time to send a copy to your dad for Father's Day):

Hope to see a few of you (maybe for the first time!) Sunday, June 4 at 4:00 at the Jacksonville Center, Route 8, less than a mile south of THE traffic light in Floyd, at the top of the hill. Look for the silo on your right. The Center is housed in an old converted dairy barn you have to see from the inside to appreciate. Come early, browse the gallery and shops. See you then!

Posted by fred1st at 5:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has produced two 60-second television spots focusing on the alleged global warming crisis and the calls by some environmental groups and politicians for reduced energy use. The ads are airing in 14 U.S. cities from May 18 to May 28, 2006. NPR

The Gore backlash. Is this all they got? The Competitive Enterprise Institute, an organization devoted to "free market environmentalism" (?) and supported by corporate funding, has issued some videos that cut the feet out from under the idea that pollution is anything other than your corporate stockholdings at work. See the video, feel the sincerity, breathe deeply of the exhaust fumes and be well.

I agree (in my more optimistic moments) with something Mr. Gore told Terri Gross (and I paraphrase): "I think there will come a time, just as has happened with some of the people responsible for the misinformation perpetuated for so long in the tobacco issue, when those who deceive for the purpose of profit and to the detriment of human health and lives, will feel remorse for the unethical way they have behaved."

Watch the 60 second video. One of them will do. They're both the same message with the same unbelievable conclusion. This, folks, is not parody. The scariest part: this stuff will win hearts and minds. God help us.

They call it information. We call it horse apples.

Posted by fred1st at 5:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

The lighting looks perfect this morning to reproduce this shot taken last year, down the road near Camp Altamons. A heavy fog is settled over the pasture out my window, the grasses tall and supple and bend in the breezes. The tall spikes of orchard grass are full enough to give some detail to an image of sun slanting through trees on the ridge, an event expected about 9:15, when the sun finally rises high enough to bring us heat and light. But I will be on the road. This flower will bloom unseen, so I'm glad I have an archive of sunrises and fogs and wet pastures to look back on.

I'm heading down the mountain to Roanoke, to the radio station. I've pretty much gotten over the prickly heat I used to feel on entering the studio, and then even stronger tremors as I donned the headphones and multipositioned the microphone just so. Even after--what?--15 or so such radio readings, I still have heart palpatations, dry mouth, and a case of the stutters at first, until I reach the calm that does come after the initial adrenalin surge. And it was wonderful news, back in October of 2002 when I recorded my first radio piece, that any flubs could be deleted from the digital file; I could stop and breathe, start over, re-read any parts I didn't do well enough to suit me or the radio staff person. And I did this often then, and still will stop at least once in a three minute essay to "catch up with my breath."

Today will be different. I have no script. I won't be reading. I'll be responding to questions from an interviewer who has not shared any of the directions he might go as we talk about the book, the writing, the author. I wonder: has he read the book? If so, did he like it, or at least parts of it? Will I be on the defensive at all, or will he put me at ease the way that some of the radio staff is so able to do? I can talk glibly about the when, why and wherefores of my short writing history, the blog and the book under some circumstances. But sitting there with a stranger, unscripted and strapped into that head-harness, will I be able to relax, to think, to speak with any eloquence at all? While I'm trying not to think about it, I'm also trying to get my head in the right place, to keep it fun and light, to not take myself too seriously--or this tiny moment of public exposure--and just enjoy the opportunity.

Mostly, I'm thinking with satisfaction and gratitude at how my world has changed in four years; of all the things that have happened that would not have happened if I had clung white-knuckled to a career that gave me none of these non-monetary rewards, offered no creative expression, carried me only farther away from the me I've come to know during these odd and interesting times. Ain't life strange?

Posted by fred1st at 6:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Let's face it. We've whistled while we should have worked. We won't have an abundant, clean form of fuel as a bridge between fossil fuels and whatever comes next. As many problems as there have been and still are with nuclear fuel startup costs, meltdown risks, security and long-term waste issues, once the plants are in place, they don't generate greenhouse gasses or use carbon fuels. If they were less ponderous and expensive to build, posed less health and security risk, and decentralized, maybe they would be more attractive as a "bridge" source or long-term source of energy. Thanks to RW for sending along a resource that suggests such desirable features from nuclear sources may be in the works. link

"Physicists and engineers at Beijing's Tsinghua University have made the first great leap forward in a quarter century, building a new nuclear power facility: a pebble-bed reactor (PBR)--sometimes also known as a Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR). This reactor is small enough to be assembled from mass-produced parts and cheap enough for emerging economies. Its safety is a matter of physics, not operator skill or reinforced concrete. This reactor is meltdown-proof.

What makes it so safe is the fuel: instead of conventional fuel rods made of enriched uranium, PBRs use small, pyrolytic graphite coated pebbles with uranium cores. As a PBR reactor gets hotter, the rapid motion of atoms in the fuel decreases probability of neutron capture by U-235 atoms. This effect is known as Doppler Broadening. Nuclei of heated uranium move more rapidly in random directions generating a wider range of neutron speeds. U-238, the isotope which makes up most of the uranium in the reactor, is much more likely to absorb the faster moving neutrons. This reduces the number of neutrons available to spark U-235 fission. This, in turn, lowers heat output. This built-in negative feedback places a temperature limit on the fuel without operator intervention."

And a spin-off of this ostensibly safer and more economical form of nuclear energy is that it generates usable hydrogen (from water or helium) in the process.

Generation of hydrogen has been the biggest stumbling block to it adoption as a clean fuel. Hydrogen, found primarily in water, is expensive to extract as a gas. While the technical problems of handling, storage and use as fuel are largely solved, the high energy cost to produce hydrogen has made it an energy transport medium, not a source.

These new reactors run at high temperatures which are perfect for cracking abundant water or helium gas into hydrogen which can then be used as a green fuel – burning hydrogen just produces water vapor.

PBRs could produce cheap hydrogen that could be piped to areas of need or used in the local communities.

Posted by fred1st at 5:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)