Fragments From Floyd

I've been awake since three, after one of those days where there was too much to process before going to bed, and the wheels just never stopped turning--some nocturnal energies for the good, some not so.

We had a vicious storm Wednesday night. It washed out our ford by the barn--the 22 tons of rock that repaired the aftermath of Hurricanes Fran, Jeanne, Ivan and crew will have to be replaced in November after this year's yet-to-be-known Katrinas and Ritas have come and gone. I can't get across for my firewood in the truck and that's not good. What's left of the garden after the wind and hale was eaten to the ground by deer the night of the storm. I am so discouraged. Gardening, quite frankly, is scant pleasure these past few years since my hands hurt so from arthritis. My inclination is to never garden again. There's just too little return for the pain and effort. And yet, I've never felt the need any more than I do in these days to be self-sufficient. This kind of conflict keeps a fella stewing in his juices in the very wee hours. I'll be give out by end of day, for sure.

However, yesterday was very productive of book-related happenings in Roanoke, where I spent the whole day. (I'll spare you all the details, but tell two nice occurrences.) First, I stopped by the radio station to record an essay, the "hawks" piece from a short while back. While there, I planned to offer Slow Road Home as a gift to the very well organized Radio Reader program for the visually impaired that is coordinated by the NPR station. Ben, the director of the program, was most appreciative of the book, but immediately suggested "Why don't YOU read it?" and I thought that was a great idea. This will mean several hours in the studio over several weeks in September, and I'm looking forward to that.

And, with all my running around, I had an hour to fill before the matinee of An Inconvenient Truth at the Grandin (a future blog post for certain) so I went down the road to the local library branch. I thought I might as well inquire at the desk about who to contact in the Roanoke Library system for possible readings and such, so I plopped my book down to begin my inquiry to the young man behind the counter. "Oh, I know that book! I was on the selection committee for the 'local voices' panel for the Valley Bookfest and you were one of the five authors selected!" Due to an oversight, nobody had notified me on July 1 per their stated schedule, so wasn't this a nice surprise! I've since confirmed I am one of the five, but I'm still awaiting details of the August 26 event. Fortunately, we hadn't scheduled a conflict except for the granddaughter being with us then for a few days. We can work around that.

So isn't this just the way life is? What it gives with one hand, it takes away with the other. And we roll with the punches. Still, I think about those canning jars of beans and tomatoes that the deer wiped out and about the hopeless task of keeping a stream in its banks, and if it weren't Friday, I'd get plumb discouraged.