Turn Your Radio On

If you can take a slice of life from Southwest Virginia by ear. The last three Friday essays at WVTF are by local writers including my friends Colleen Redman and former Floyd Countian, Jim Minick. Each is about three and a half minutes long. Take a listen.

Essay by Fred First - 6.29.07
If you find yourself swatting at annoying insects that abound as you mow the lawn or attempt to enjoy the outdoors this summer, you're certainly not alone. But WVTF essayist Fred First has a different reaction. Fred First is the Floyd County author of "Slow Road Home: A Memoir of Place."

Essay by Jim Minick - 6.22.07
The summer months find many tending gardens. WVTF essayist Jim Minick stays busy protecting his tree farm. Jim Minick teaches English at Radford University

Essay by Colleen Redman - 6.15.07
There aren't as many farmers these days as in the past. But WVTF essayist Colleen Redman has a son whom she calls a farmer of sorts. Colleen Redman of Floyd blogs daily at looseleafnotes.com. Listen."

Plastics Are Forever

One word: plastic.

Benjamin Braddock as The Graduate in the 1967 film may not have been at all interested in it.

Meanwhile, America has swooned to the seduction of plastic after finding a generation ago that "cheap oil" could be made into so many versatile, colorful and inexpensive tools, toys and trinkets.

Every year, about 300 billion pounds of plastic are produced around the world. And the best thing about plastic we discovered since the sixties is that it is practically indestructible.

And maybe the worst thing about plastic, Benjamin: it is practically indestructible.

Take plastic shopping bags, for instance. They are so prevalent across the landscape that I propose that they be named the new national flower. Lifted to bloom on tree limbs by the prevailing traffic-winds of speeding eighteen-wheelers, they are the most lofty blossom of humanity's love affair with plastic.

It's hard to believe it has only been some 25 years since we were first faced with that awful but lightly dismissed environmental conundrum: paper or plastic? And overwhelmingly in recent years, the answer has been-you guessed it-plastic. Fully 80 percent of shoppers choose it. I read recently that "somewhere between 500 billion and a trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide each year".

But wait. Let me set the record straight: that many bags are made and are utilized. But dear hearts, they are NOT consumed. They are NEVER really consumed. They are however, unfortunately, sometimes eaten-but more about that distinction in a minute.

So. Where do all those trillion plastic bags go when they disappear from our lives-the ones that don't end up in the high branches of roadside trees? First, we'll watch a bag settle into Goose Creek right out my window here, blown from the back of someone's passing truck.

From there, it will wash into the South Fork and on downstream, into the main flow of the Roanoke River. It may perhaps in high water become temporarily hung up in the branches of a piedmont streamside alder. But eventually, it will find its way to the ocean. And there it will not be alone.

Let's follow our wayward bag to its not-quite-final end (a Styrofoam coffee cup would follow the same route) all the way into one of six ocean "gyres"-great swirls of listless ocean sometimes called the "horse latitudes" where much of the world's floatable trash ends up in unimaginable abundance. The North Pacific Subtropical Gyre between Hawaii and California can swell at times to twice the size of Texas and has come, just within our lifetimes, to contain many times more plastic than that area of ocean contains in living matter (biomass.)

Bad enough that our trash plastic unaltered and whole can strangle an albatross or seal (six-pack holders are notorious for this kind of death) or choke a green sea turtle that fatally mistakes our ocean-drifting plastic bag for a tasty jelly fish.

But perhaps the most ominous thing about the durability of plastic is that it can, over long stretches of time, wear down by sheer mechanical action into smaller and smaller particles without reverting back to its constituent carbons and hydrogens.

Many millions of pounds of these tiny non-digestible particles are destined over decades, centuries perhaps, to float in the ocean currents. In time, tiny bite-sized bits of plastic will be munched but not digested by zooplankton, the bottom tier of the marine food chain. These tiny animals by countless metric tons will be eaten by bigger and bigger fish, on up the food chain and into the grocery stores. And the plastic-and its constituents (a rogue's gallery of dangerous additives) lives on, and on, and on.

Consider this: "Except for the small amount that's been incinerated-and it's a very small amount-every bit of plastic ever made still exists." Each of us tosses about 185 pounds of plastic per year. And you have to wonder: do we need filtered-water bottles that will last for 500 years?

Where does this leave you and me? Perhaps we are on the verge of a slow substitution of non-degradable with break-downable "plastic-like" shopping bags and six-pack holders and drink containers and Barbies and Kens that don't require fossil fuels. As nearby as Virginia Tech, new, less persistent polymers for this purpose are being created using chicken feathers!

So the next time the nice young man at Slaughters presents me with that impossible paper-or-plastic dilemma and I don't know how to answer, I'll be toting a canvas shopping bag (it's a start, and something we can do in the near term) and I'll smile as I imagine a green sea turtle off the coast of Myrtle Beach munching contentedly on a real, digestible, peanut-butter-and-jellyfish.

Recommended:
Polymers are Forever http://urltea.com/ji0
Plastic Ocean http://urltea.com/rcx
Plastic A'int my Bag http://urltea.com/ucj

Uptown, Downtown

If you're headed to Floyd this weekend, be prepared to not be the only one.

This may well be the buzziest couple of days all summer long--or at least the first of what promises to be a lot of summer days when cars pile up behind the one traffic light in town.

Ann's scooping ice cream from two til five for the Partnership for Floyd, so I know I'll be wandering around with my camera slung across my neck. Looks like fun.

If you're wondering what's coming up in the weeks ahead in Floyd County and the Greater Floyd area, there's good news: Check out this CALENDAR OF EVENTS which I will certainly put in my sidebar, once the new WordPress blog is ready to go. But here's what appears on the near horizon.

---

22 Special Grand Re-Opening Weekend of Concerts
The newly renovated Floyd Country Store will celebrate with a spectacular Friday Night Jamboree with Special Guests Olen Gardner & Friends at 6:30 p.m., Wayne Henderson and Friends at 7:30 p.m. and The Looping Brothers at 8 p.m. It's a night not to miss! The Floyd Country Store is just south of the stoplight on State Road 8 near the crossroads with Route 221.
For more information: www.floydcountrystore.com or

23 Ice Cream Social
Citizens of Floyd are invited to a free Ice Cream Social to Discuss Developments in Downtown Floyd. From 2:00-5:00 PM at the Sun Music Hall Floyd's Town Manager and members of the Partnership for Floyd will be available with information about Community Development seeking input from our Floyd County residents. See our web site for more details http://partnershipforfloyd.blogspot.com/

23 Saturday Night Re-Opening Concert at the Floyd Country Store
The newly renovated Floyd Country Store will celebrate with a Grand Re-Opening Concert featuring Jimmy Costa, Tina Liza Jones and Rounder Recording Artists, King Wilkie. 7:30 p.m. The Floyd Country Store is just south of the stoplight on State Road 8 near the crossroads with Route 221.
For more information: www.floydcountrystore.com or Learn more about the performers at www.dipconcerts.com.

23 A Play Called "Cotton Patch"
The Greatest Story ever Retold is a musical of the Gospel of Matthew and is set in contemporary Georgia. The music and lyrics are the final works of Harry Chapin and the storyline is based on the book by Tom Key and Russ Treyz. Sponsored by Friends of the Oak Grove Pavilion. 7:30 p.m. Rain or shine. Admission is free but a freewill donation is encouraged at intermission. More than $40,000 has been raised for local charities over the years. Oak Grove Pavilion is a gorgeous, covered pavilion in back of Zion Lutheran Church at 635 Needmore Lane NE, Floyd.
For more information: www.floydlutherans.org

This picture of Mac and Jenny Traynham came from Saturday's Oak Grove Pavilion event.

A Poem for Father's Day

So here we are, the parental empty-nesters, sandwiched once more on the late spring calendar between Special Days for mothers and fathers. Our adult offspring (the term we substitute in recent years for the word "children" when describing our small but matured brood) live far away and it's easy to misplace even the memory of the satisfaction and anguish of having actively, presently, physically been someone's parent so long ago and far away.

Now I will readily confess that I have a curmudgeonly and cynical opinion of these parental "holidays" as being manufactured for the bottom line of the likes of Hallmark Cards and Russell Stover Candies.
But I will also admit that at times, to be remembered in the small way of a special phone call, a hand-written letter or a cross-country trip on these designated days of appreciation are, well, genuinely appreciated.

Saved, Remembered, Found: a father's day poem-a toast (and cleverly veiled roast) for Father's Day 2004, received from our son, Nathan, then a single scholar just moved to British Columbia, and today married and moving into their first owned home in Columbia, Missouri-still far too far away.

I thought I would share Nate's poem with you this Father's Day in the hopes that it might help you to recall: that seeming crisis in your relationship with your dad that looking back was so silly you can laugh about it now; the way you respected him but never got around to telling him because at the time, he rightfully thwarted your idiot dreams; the lessons he taught you by example, good and bad; and the pride you know he has when he hears from you, a grown or growing young man or woman who occasionally takes the time to say "thanks, dad."

Do consider using the short phrases of this "poem" as a model, and give a single page a single hour of your time, a gift to give your dad this year, while there's time. Chances are, he'll never forget it.

---

A Father's Day Poem For Dad, 2004

For all the times you made me hold that damned ladder;

For all the times you said, "if you throw that tennis racquet again, we're going home," and I threw the tennis racquet again, and we went home;

For that time you wanted to go hiking in the Smokies, and I wanted to go to Amy Harris's pool party, and I pitched such a fit halfway to the Smokies that you turned the car around and drove us home at breakneck speeds, only to give in half an hour later after I pitched another fit, and we went to the Smokies, and had a nice time;

For beating me every time at every sport and every game, many years after I was sure I was better than you;

For the thirty-seven times you told me the name of the same green-metallic beetle, while each time I was thinking about some girl or some song I'd like to write, or some song I'd like to write about some girl, only half an hour later to see a green metallic beetle, and wonder what kind it was;

For the times you crushed between your fingers something sweet-smelling, or sharp-smelling, or minty-smelling, or putrid, and shoved it toward my nose, saying, "Nature snort;"

For all the arguments we've had about religion, and all the agreements we've had about politics;

For all the times we've called each other "smart-ass," audibly or otherwise;

For every time you should've made fun of me for the way I split wood, and the vast majority of times that you did;

For all those really stupid ideas I've had, which you vehemently opposed, until you knew I'd go through with them anyway, at which point you supported me;

For all those trips I've taken, and you've secretly worried about, even while you tried to project all your concerns for me onto "my mother;"

For teaching me to light the water heater-and to rake with full, efficient strokes, and curse at the weed-whacker, and spread the peanut-butter clean out to the crust;

For all the creative ways you punished me, with just enough consequence to sting, and just enough humor to tell stories about later;

For finding your craft, your voice, and a fulfilling sense of place--for living my aspiration and giving me a sense of belonging, even as odd as I feel to live vicariously through my father;

For all those times, all those lessons, all your friendship and love, this father's day I bought you an ice-cold bottle of beer,

Which I'm drinking now as I write you this poem,

All the while thinking, man, he would've enjoyed this.

Thanks, Dad. Love you. I'll spot you that beer sometime. -- Nate

John McCutcheon in Concert

Sunday, June 17 at 3:00 pm

Whitman Auditorium | Virginia Western Community College
Colonial Avenue | Roanoke Virginia
General Admission | $20 | Directions

This event is sponsored by the Social Justice Committee of Roanoke Friends (Quaker) Meeting and is a benefit whose proceeds will provide humanitarian aid to the people of Cuba.

If you don't know John McCutcheon, be prepared to be thoroughly entertained, and expect to carry home at least a couple of his CDs, if he has them available.

I first heard him play (his hammered dulcimer, I think) in the cafeteria at the community college where I had just started teaching at 26. He was playing music with some of my students (who have gone on themselves to be recognized local and regional musicians.) Our kids grew up to McCutcheon's music.

Perhaps his most moving piece for which he wrote both music and lyrics is "Christmas in the Trenches", a wonderful story in a song. Please read the words, and understand, at this benefit many years later, John is acting on his longstanding commitment to peaceful coexistence across borders. Do come on down if you can.

Floyd Virginia : Musical Horizon

There's been some discussion of late over at Blue Ridge Muse in which a false distinction has been made between the washed and the unwashed of Floyd County. Who goes in which camp can be biased by a prejudice against "outsiders" who weren't born here.

If you'll come to the Oak Grove Pavilion performances this summer, any perceived barriers between these two populations of Floyd County residents will crumble. The long-time locals and the recently-arrived locals sit side by side, enjoying each other's company, the music, and the summer darkness under giant oaks, punctuated by the amber flash of fireflies.

This week, our buddies, Mac and Jenny Traynham, perform. They're sure to do quite a few cuts from the newly-released CD compilation of some of their way-back tunes, gospel and otherwise, that have become favorites of ours.

There's plenty of seating under the pavilion, more out under the stars. Bring a folding chair and a picnic dinner if you want, and get to know your neighbors--in tie-dye or bibbed overalls, good folk. See you there.

Click here for directions to Oak Grove Pavilion behind Zion Lutheran Church.

It's Just War

For a country whose (previously) predominant Christian moral code forbids killing, the proposition of war has been a difficult matter. Many have wrestled with the conditions that must be met to call a war JUST. This very day, our children die in a war about which, as parents, neighbors, friends of those soldiers, we must ask: Is it justified? We must each decide, and speak and vote and act accordingly.

And on this day of memorial, God bless Americans who serve and die or live beyond war with its many wounds, and God bless the fallen and displaced of Iraq.

Criteria of the Just War tradition:

• Probability of success: Arms may not be used in a futile cause or in a case where disproportionate measures are required to achieve success;


• Proportionality: The overall destruction expected from the use of force must be outweighed by the good to be achieved.[6]


• Last resort: Force may be used only after all peaceful and viable alternatives have been seriously tried and exhausted.


• recapturing things taken


• punishing people who have done wrong


• Comparative justice: While there may be rights and wrongs on all sides of a conflict, to override the presumption against the use of force, the injustice suffered by one party must significantly outweigh that suffered by the other;


• Legitimate authority: Only duly constituted public authorities may use deadly force or wage war;


• Right intention: Force may be used only in a truly just cause and solely for that purpose—correcting a suffered wrong is considered a right intention, while material gain or maintaining economies is not.

A Teachable Moment in a Climate of Fear

If I portray the days of my youth as somehow different and better, more free and more open than these, I suspect I'll be blamed for both selective memory and maudlin sentimentalism.

But I have just returned from a visit to my boyhood home of Birmingham, Alabama, and can't shake this sense of sadness and loss, convinced that city life where I grew up was, once upon a time, slower paced, friendlier, and far, far safer than today.

In conversation with a librarian near my mother's home, I mentioned the Leave No Child Inside author and his book about which I've written here recently. From that, the talk moved to how much I used to enjoy the vacant lot in our neighborhood of Crestwood where my playmates and I made forts, became cowboys and Indians, and watched the stars come out as we gathered outdoors past dark on balmy Alabama summer nights.

The volunteer in the library told her own memories of dances in downtown, after which she'd walk home with her friends three miles to Ensley, west of town. Nobody in their right mind would think of taking such a risk these days, she said sadly. Risk? Just walking home? Why are we so often oppressed by the threat of imminent danger in places once so safe?

I tried to remember: what did our parents fear for their children in those days? What were we warned of?

To look both ways; to avoid petting dogs we didn't know; and to not take candy from strangers. In all my childhood years I never knew of anyone from my schools that was abducted; or offered drugs; or killed by a drive-by shooter.

We live in a pervasive and escalating climate of fear. Global warming (a real enough threat, I'm convinced) has for the moment replaced the mushroom cloud looming overhead, while down on the ground, a terrorist lurks in every stranger to our shores and violence broods in our games, our music, and our streets. Colleges become killing fields.

And even though the waters here are murky with philosophical, psychosocial and moral-ethical complexity, we must ask: WHY? What lesser value have we come to place on the worth of human life; or what have we forgotten about the sanctity of the human soul once held almost universally true, so that today, death and violence of man against man is so horribly common in pop culture, entertainment and games, and the streets of home?

Finding the answers won't be easy, but the questions about our fears are bubbling to the surface in our conversations since April 16. Perhaps this will be for us a teachable moment and from the very bad, some good might come.

In this time of immense sorrow and sadness, maybe we will question the role of parental permissiveness and presence in our homes for our children, and re-examine mothers' and fathers' examples in shaping their children's play, their conversation, their judgment and respect for others. Play nice. Share. Don't call names. Don't hit back.

Perhaps this adversity will remind us how we were taught as children to take the measure of the stranger or the newcomer not by the sum of his material possessions or nationality but by the belief that he or she is endowed with inalienable rights and worthy by their very existence as human souls-bleeding, loving and hoping just like us. Trust so easily lost can be regained. It must.

Shakespeare referred to man as the "paragon of animals." And yet, the story of our noble species even during my short part of the drama has slipped a step back towards Darwin's brutish "nature red in tooth and claw".

The goods of industry and commerce, with the dominant traits of competition, cold efficiency and survival of the fittest, overshadow the goods of cooperation, trust and unmerited favor. But we are not merely animals driven solely by fear or by our lesser instincts for self-preservation and pleasure and freedom from want at any cost.

If anything positive is to come from the terrible events of the past weeks, then it may be in the fact that we all come back to these difficult and complex questions about the roots of human dignity, destiny and purpose.

What is our story all about? What can we do in our communities and county to swim against the current of hatred, violence, greed and fear? How can we grow together for good and reclaim our hope for peace on Earth, good will toward men?

This essay published 3 May 2007 in Road Less Traveled in the Floyd Press.

Clean Coal: Count the Costs

" More than 470 mountains have been destroyed by mountaintop removal coal mining. Watch this video about mountaintop removal, including excerpts from the documentary Kilowatt Ours, featuring Woody Harrelson and a soundtrack featuring an original recording of "Blowin' in the Wind," sung by Willie Nelson. (08:23)"

PLEASE do more than watch the video when you visit the link. Keep clicking on the page. Get an education. Then educate somebody else. Maybe even a politician.

You might also keep in mind this quote from a few days ago: "the Bush administration released a new energy plan in April 2001 that called for construction of 1,300 new power plants by 2020." And understand that "clean coal" mined just as you see here will power those plants. Unless WE SPEAK OUT for our mountains, streams, freedoms and rights.

Silage

Gary Boyd guessed correctly right off the bat: the boy's been around (country places).

Last week after having a blogger's lunch (Doug Thompson and Colleen Redman, who joined us accidentally for coffee) I stopped by the Jacksonville Center to explore the possibilities of my Note Cards being made available in the Retail Store there.

I spotted a familiar personality disappearing into the door of the old concrete silo--a prominent feature about which there has been talk for years: how can we use the structure (deemed to be sound from an engineering point of view) to best advantage?

Suzy Nees had just finished "decorating" the entry way and the silo interior. This involved removing considerable pigeon guano and spider webs, and them spreading bamboo canes and leaves around the perimeter of the great tube's interior mossy floor: in a few days, the silo would become a music studio.

I went by on Saturday and sure enough, a sign on the door said "do not enter: recording in progress". I'll let you know more when I find out WHO and WHAT about the music.

So, what you see when looking straight up is very like another planet: Planet Floyd, I suppose. And thanks to Suzy for snapping this picture of Fred, who seems to be suggesting that things are looking up in town these days. If you stop in town, be sure and visit the Jacksonville Center's retail shops, exhibits and galleries.

Waste Not, Want Not

Inefficiency: energy converted uselessly to heat of friction and incompletely burned energy residues: air and water pollutants.

The answer: Efficiency boosts--a much better solution to having more energy and less waste (including famously: greenhouse gases). Here's a snippet from a piece by Lester Brown on Huffingtonpost.com

" One crucial area of focus, a step we can take essentially immediately, is raising energy efficiency--especially in the United States.

When the Bush administration released a new energy plan in April 2001 that called for construction of 1,300 new power plants by 2020, Bill Prindle of the Washington-based Alliance to Save Energy responded by pointing out how the country could eliminate the need for those plants and save money in the process. He ticked off several steps that would reduce the demand for electricity:

* Improving efficiency standards for household appliances would eliminate the need for 127 power plants;

* More stringent residential air conditioner efficiency standards would eliminate 43 power plants;

* Raising commercial air conditioner standards would eliminate the need for 50 plants;

* Using tax credits and energy codes to improve the efficiency of new buildings would save another 170 plants;

* Similar steps to raise the energy efficiency of existing buildings would save 210 plants.

These five measures from the longer list suggested by Prindle would not only eliminate the need for 600 power plants, they would also save money. Although these calculations were made in 2001, they are still valid simply because there has been so little progress in raising U.S. energy efficiency since then."

Fred sez: When the time comes, I'll vote against the BIGGER HAMMER approach. Sometimes LESS is MORE.

On Losing Our Rootedness in the Soil

"Most people of my grandparents’ generation had an intuitive sense of agricultural basics: when various fruits and vegetables come into season, which ones keep through the winter, how to preserve the others. On what day autumn’s frost will likely fall on their county, and when to expect the last one in spring. Which crops can be planted before the last frost, and which must wait. What animals and vegetables thrive in one’s immediate region and how to live well on those, with little else thrown into the mix beyond a bag of flour, a pinch of salt, and a handful of coffee. Few people of my generation, and approximately none of our children, could answer any of those questions, let alone all of them. This knowledge has largely vanished from our culture."

by Barbara Kingsolver | Orion Magazine March-April 2007

Healing Harvest: Demonstration March 24

Join Jason Rutledge, the Healing Harvest Forest Foundation, and Virginia Forest Watch for a demonstration of what it means to be a Biological Woodsman serving the forested community of Copper Hill. Meet at the Apple Ridge Farm on Pine Forest Road in Copper Hill at 1:00 pm on March 24 to carpool to the demonstration. For more information telephone 929-4222.

I'm going (read more about it). So is my camera. See you there. Jason is a Floyd County low-impact horse-logger. And while you're thinking sustainable forestry, take a look at this!

Our second media production is now available!

This is a professionally edited one-hour film made at Biological Woodsmen's Week entitled: Community-Based Restorative Forestry, HHFF Style. It features a collection of national, regional and local media, plus homemade video never before seen by the public, including footage of working in the woods, and the panel discussion held at the Airlie Center in Warrenton, Virginia.

The panelists are Troy Firth, Gary Anderson, Wendell Berry and Jason Rutledge.

Floyd County: On or Off the Beaten Path?

This is a comment to yesterday's post, Floyd Among the Giants. This seemed a discussion worthy of more.

This is a real conundrum. Of course we want to live in a place that is a nice, comfortable and attractive, and off the beaten path. We want the town and county to survive, even prosper, but it's chief "product" perhaps is the lifestyle and setting that will be destroyed if enjoyed by too many living too close--or too many at once on a weekend or special event.

That rural places are being discovered is a certainty. That they are increasingly popular as home-building destinations is also certain if you look at what is happening to land prices in places where previously there was a "vacuum" of population.

Perhaps the best we can do for in Floyd County in this netherworld between bucolic isolation and popular exploitation is to 1) decide what's precious about the place, pace and pleasures we enjoy and 2) prepare to protect them by zoning, by conservation easement, by purchase by entities whose goal is preservation and not mere profit. We can exert our influence on our supervisors to listen to more than the cha-ching of the treasury at the prospect of dollars--regardless of impact on the "commons" of the county.

We MUST put values on our sense of place and common "ownership" of Floyd County that aren't measured exclusively in revenue. And yet, money talks. Farming is no longer a livelihood. Farmers own the land and can't pay taxes. And there go open spaces, watersheds, viewsheds, and fertile agricultural soils.

This problem is not going unnoticed, but I haven't heard a great, unified solution to it. And Floyd is a divided community--about fifty percent would welcome commercial development of any kind if it meant greater convenience and more jobs, even minimum wage.

I do know that, since new residents ARE going to move here, I'd rather have people move here that KNOW what life is like in the winter during ice storms; what it is like when you want Chinese takeout or to see a movie; what it is like living an hour's round trip from the nearest gallon of milk or expecting any of the other missing "necessities" of life in the towns from which they might hope to move. Most who would expect these things here are so NOT ready for Floyd.

While some bloggers actively promote development of the county and region, most I know are FAR more concerned with keeping the rate of growth very slow and in maintaining the kind of change compatible with the qualities that brought them here in the first place. Many who have moved here have already left and gone back to less isolated places, as I heard today at lunch in town.

Floyd is far from perfect. And I can't think of any of its problems that will be solved by a massive influx of retirement relocation all at once, or by importing the city amenities--Starbucks, W-mart, and convenience-at-hand--that might come with in-migrants if they don't plan to come to be adopted by the land and lifestyle rather than to remake it to suit their habits and preferences.

This is a matter actively discussed and of great concern: how to love Floyd County, hope for a prosperous future, have affordable land and jobs for the next generation, and not overwhelm the roads, the economy, the rural feel, and the quiet landscapes in the process.

Step It Up!

Speaking to a Dartmouth audience about changing global warming's impact by modified lifestyles and economies, Bill McKibben was accused of "preaching to the choir". How will converting the converts do any good, asked one person in the audience.

"Only if the choir sings five times louder is there any chance we'll get federal legislation to help stop global warming", McKibben said. "It's important now to get everyone in the choir to sing at the top of their lungs."

His timing may be right: Congress is considering more than a dozen global warming bills, Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" just won an Oscar, two global oil companies are investing in wind energy, and several corporations are backing legislation to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

A youthful-looking 46, McKibben was among the first to sound the alarm about global warming in 1989 with "The End of Nature." But after that book and nine others, he no longer seems content with just issuing warnings. He wants to lead people into action."

Step It Up happens in your area on Earth Day, April 14. Be there. (Click JOIN AN ACTION at top of stepitup web page to find an event near you.)

And I'm buying DEEP, McKibben's book (which he recommends you buy LOCALLY), published just this month. Here's an excerpt from the author's webpage that talks about the book:

"The time has come to move beyond "growth" as the paramount economic ideal and begin pursuing prosperity in a more local direction, with cities, suburbs, and regions producing more of their own food, generating more of their own energy, and even creating more of their own culture and entertainment."

Fools Names and Fools Faces

It was not hard to find evidence of Blue Ridge Parkway decline a few weeks back when I went looking for it for the purposes of a Parkway newsletter. Damage from the vagaries of weather--like the two ice storms we've had in the last month--one can to some degree overlook as "acts of God." But the saddest evidence of Parkway decline and abuse was this: graffiti at Rakes Mill Pond dam.

There is, after all, scant risk of being caught by a Park Ranger while in the act. Far too few have far too much territory to patrol to be any kind of threat to vandals and lowlifes with spray paint like Jody.

Do you suppose that people like this carry cases of black spray paint in the trunks of their rust- infested, Bondo-colored vehicles just in case they get the opportunity to become immortalized on an overpass, or even better, at a frequently visited and beautiful place in a national park?

Do you suppose that for Jody this was an act of rebellion, of machismo, or of sheer indifferent disregard that there might be anyone else in the world beside him (or her, as the case may be)?

I sympathize with graffiti in public places to the same extent that I appreciate people rolling down their windows and throwing the remnants of their Happy Meals along our road.

There are just aspects to the human condition and perspective that I simply do not understand. Carrying spray paint for Jody's purposes is certainly well outside my frame of reference. I can only imagine with some satisfaction that, while the park rangers won't catch him, someone else with a badge eventually will.