Dana Dee

Warning: Contains Sappy Material

2012-02-13T11:25:00.002-05:00

Most people are surprised (and some mortified) to learn that February is my second favorite month*. February is often a greuling month. It is cold. It has been cold. Work is sparce. Winter is getting old. People are sick. The weather is often dreary. How, might you wonder with a twinge of bafflement and disgust, could February possibly be someone's second favorite month? I will tell you; the answer is twofold. First, it is the intensity of the end of winter that I love. I love that it has been winter for long enough that I am finally surrending to the fact of it being winter. My body has adjusted; I can handle the cold better. It is as if I have completely given myself to the winter and the dark side of the year. And (reason number two), it is simply a beautiful fact that just at the time I have completely given over to winter, the light begins to come back. The days are reaching their icy fingers a little longer into the evening, and twilight seems to extend well into dinner time. The extension of daylight imparts a fresher smell in the cold air, and the birds start singing their Songs of Early Spring. It is a month of promise.
I have also discovered this weekend that I may have realized a third reason to choose February as a second favorite month. What with Valentines Day and all, it is the perfect time of year to nuture and love the people in my life, including myself. It warms the heart and prepares it for spring, which, with all its sexiness and popularity, can be a rather brutal time for many of us with melancholic dispositions.
Saturday night was cold. Awful cold. Something deep and visceral told me to stay home and hunker down. However, something perhaps even deeper informed me to doll it up and venture out to the party I was invited to weeks ago, at which I had committed to setting up a Libation Station with my Portable Hospitality Kit. I threw on my leopard print body suit and a flowery apron and topped it off with a rabbit fur coat for fashion and warmth. I fired up the Subaru and made it to the big city in time to catch the last half of the music and dance performance art which was graciously shared by the host and hostess. (I do love a party when people perform!!!) I made my way to the stove and set up camp- tiny china cups, lovely embroidered fabric, blah blah blah. I whipped up some hot chocolate and set out the optional "works," and people lined up to be served. I loved it! Someone made a comment about how great it is to be nutured, and I noticed how warming it is also to nuture. I, in turn, was fed by the dance and song performances of many other party goers and by lovely platters of delicious foods set out by the hosts. When the libations were gone, it was time for me to go home, heart-warmed and not exhausted and very glad I had ventured out into the cold.
Sunday, Jenna and I made Valentines ALL DAY LONG. Literally. We only stopped to eat, use the bathroom, and do a few stretches and exercises. For dinner, we nourished our own hearts with heart beets, inspired by both Susie and Rachel's blog. We fell into deep, warm sleeps after a day of co-creating expressions of love. It was the perfect activity for another cold cold day.
To sum it up, the points of these little stories is to:
a) get you to consider making February your second favorite month
b) get you consider sharing the love this month; it doesn't have to be only romantic to warm the heart,
c) share this February Libation idea with you:

February Libation:

Ingredients:
1 quart half and half
1/2 to 1 quart good clean water
1 tub of Ghiradelli hot chocolate mix

Optional "The Works" ingredients:
cheap (or not cheap) whiskey- I use Rebel Yell
rose petal tincture (or you could try rosewater)**
tulsi basil tincture (Susie grew and made mine- mmmmm)***

Make the hot chocolate, stirring the whole time so it doesn't boil over or any other thing bad. When it is good and hot and the chocolate is all stirred in, ladle some into a special cup, only filling about half way. Add a generous splash of whiskey and a dropperful each of rose and tulsi tincture. Fill the cup the rest of the way up with more hot chocolate. Serve or drink with love.

Notes:
* For information on my first favorite month, click here or here
** Rose petals nourish the yin, and are a lovely Valentines tonic.
***Tulsi basil is warming.

Tales from the Whistle Pig

2012-02-04T20:15:00.004-05:00

Got your attention? Groundhog's Day 2012 rocked my socks off. The day began as dark and drizzly, but early afternoon gave way to clearing skies and mostly comfortable temperatures. Dear friend, MM, arrived just after my mid-day meal with her two mild mannered and sure-footed horses for our Imbolc bareback ride. I mounted the short stout one Marlene, while MM jumped up onto the lovely white Appaloosa, Winter. We walked, trotted and cantered through the long, narrow ridge-top pastures that descend from my home place, stopping to converse and allow the horses their snacking indulgences, all the while enjoying the mild and carefree quality to the old pagan first day of spring. In truth, the ride was rather short, as my horse-gripping leg muscles were more than a little rusty and un-used, but the feeling of moving through the fresh air over the cool mountain terrain with a dear friend was truly the stuff dreams are made of. After dismounting and re-acclimating to the strange sensation of carrying ourselves on our own two legs, MM and I made our way on our feet up to the Sunset Spot, which generously delivers a breath-taking view of Mill Ridge and Rich Mountain and beyond that in the distance, a misty vision of Bluff. We allowed the afternoon to ramble with ease through overgrown pastures and sweet, seldom used forest paths, stopping whenever we pleased to rest, admire the slick and muscular trunk of a young ironwood, examine a fallen bird nest, bask in the sun, chit-chat, what have you.
If the occurrences of February 2 can be decoded to foretell the season to come, I'll take it! Bring it on, 2012...

Winter workout

2012-01-28T21:30:00.003-05:00

My new favorite exercise program:

Frustration Increases with Rainfall

2012-01-21T10:26:00.004-05:00

Shelton Laurel resident Dana Nagle awoke this morning to the sound of rain pounding on the roof of her temporary home, a 1971 Tradewinds Land Yacht Airstream. Yawning and blinking herself into full consciousness, Nagle groaned. "It's so loud," she said in vain to the dog, who couldn't hear her due to the volumes of both the rain and the dog's snoring. She closed her eyes to try to block out the reality of yet another deluge. Even through her closed eyelids, she saw the electric flash of unseasonal lightening. A few moments later, the thunder roared ominously, a long threatening rumble, like a trumpeting warning to all of humanity. Nagle thought to herself, 'that sky is MAD.'
She reluctantly rose from the little bed in the kitchen and forced the dog to accompany her outside. Both bladders needed relief from a nighttime of slumbering containment. The rain poured on the leaky tin shed rood awning in front of the camper, dripping in here and splattering in there, allowing no true shelter from the downpour. In spite of the aching bladders, neither human nor beast had the slightest inkling of desire to step out into the water. They stood, dampening even under the cover, looking pathetic as they gazed out at the river which used to be the driveway. Muddy water flowed in a steady stream from both coves and the construction site and the garden, gathering momentum and volume as it approached and ultimately flowed into the branch just below the spring. Large puddles covered most other surfaces of the ground. It was a dictionary definition of supersaturation.
Dana Nagle felt an unsettling heat begin to churn in a deep part of her.
"Goddammit!" she said to no one, realizing the source of the heat was nothing other than a rain inspired Bad Mood.
Dog and woman stood miserably for a few minutes in the deafening deluge before the grumpy lady ushered them both back inside. The shelter of the aluminum camper, while warm and mostly dry, offered absolutely no refuge from the roar of the rain. "It's exactly 100% like being in a human sized tin can," Nagle sometimes tries to explain to others, a meager attempt to describe the "difficult to describe-" the experience of being in an Airstream in the Pouring Rain.
A half hour passed, and the rain finally let up enough for Dana and dog to step out and use nature's facilities. Dana decided to seize the moment to unload a large metal table from her truck, awkwardly hoisting its wet weight out into a puddle, all the while slipping and sliding on the earth's muddy surface. The internal heat of the Bad Mood rose again, and again she cursed, to no one in particular.
Stepping back into the camper, she felt like a wet rat. While attempting to dry off, she accidentally kicked over the dog's bowl of water, which flowed across the slightly unlevel floor. Again, Nagle cursed.
When the floor was mostly dried, the dog returned from her morning business. Nagle let her in, towel in hand, determined to wipe muddy paws and contain the uncontainable mud and mess. Dog shook and muddy watered splattered upon the surfaces of most belongings in the camper.

Nagle cursed.

Living the dream (with my Survivor flashlight)

2012-01-18T09:10:00.005-05:00

With full awareness that my blog has been a rather "journal-like blog" of late, I hereby will describe to you a most excellent evening of mine in my new locale. Two evenings ago, the clouds hung low, and the breeze was unseasonably balmy. January in the North Carolina mountains is typically frozen and white, but this one has been primarily rainy, muddy and grey. Nighttime began its descent at about sometime between 5:30 and 6:00, and I set out for a walk around the hood. I mosied around the Gephart fields for a while before arriving to G and K's at dark to feed their dogs, as they are outta town. With my handy "Survivor" flashlight, I paused underneath G's bird feeder, which is mounted on a tulip poplar outside their main room window at a height of about 12 or 15 feet. I heard some quiet munching above me and when I shined the light up there, I was delighted to discover about 6 or 8 very busy, very quick moving flying squirrels feeding above me. Curious little things, those critters are. They move so quickly it is hard to follow, jumping from branch to branch, extending their little front and back legs to outstretch their odd flap of skin and then gliding from one branch to another and from one tree to another. Their beady little eyes shown in the light of the Survivor, and they took turns nibbling sunflower seeds. It was a show- a quick little configuration of dancing and gliding cute rodents. I an unsure as to the proper identification of the critters- Northern Flying Squirrels (Glaucomys sabrinus) differ only slightly from Southern Flying Squirrels (Glaucomys volans), and according to Peterson's A Field Guide to the Mammals of America North of Mexico, the ranges of both overlap here in this very western part of North Carolina.

From G and K's, a continued on, through field and forest, headed to the sweet one room cabin home of S and T to celebrate S's birthday with hot chocolate and shortbread cookies and talking and laughing. On the way there, my Survivor flashlight found many sets of nicely spaced eyes glowing on the edges of the pastures. White-tailed deer (Odocoileus viginianus) resting and grazing without fear is a beautiful sight to behold. These abundant creatures are both graceful and mighty, and always induce awe and admiration in me.

After a lovely evening of birthday communion, I walked home at about 10:00, back through field and forest, by the old cemetery. My walking companion was Ruby, S's little funny orange dog, who bounced excitedly up the hill, wagging her little funny waggedy tail all the while. Upon arrival at my domain, I scanned the edges of the clearing with the trusty Survivor, in my routine attempt to catch my nocturnal neighbors in the acts of their familiar. I spotted two little closely set beady eyes glowing atop of the compost pile, and, just as my eyes were able to make out the rest of the opossum form (Didelphis marsupialis), little Ruby bounded into the stream of light and grabbed the possum in her mouth, taking it down to the ground with a hearty shake of her funny little head. Just as quickly, she dismounted her prey and looked up at me with a funny little questioning look as I approached the scenario. The possum lay curled into a little ball of sorts, looking lifeless. Its mouth was open to expose its pointy little ugly teeth, and its long grotesque tongue was dramatically curled out as if to say, "I am soooo dead!" I felt skeptical. You can never trust those little suckers to be dead when they look dead. And even when they are dead, like hit by a car and killed cold in the highway, there still might be a little surprise if you reach into the pouch- there might be a small collection of hidden baby marsupials in there, alive as can be... I poked it with my toe and it breathed, but then quickly resumed its dead pose. I walked away and went to fetch water for my bucket bath. When I returned, the possum was gone. Go figure. They don't call it "playing possum" for nothing.

I dosed off reading in the camper while the bath water heated on the stove, and woke up in time for another glorious bathing experience outside under the low clouds in the mild and strange midwinter breeze. I truly am living the dream.

Family

2012-01-14T19:55:00.002-05:00

My darling nephews and their dog Scooter...

Of course...

2012-01-13T14:08:00.005-05:00

Mom and I are in Dayton, the heartbeat of the midwest. Of course as we journeyed up I-75 yesterday, it was a full-on winter friggin storm blow-out as we traveled from Kentucky (www.kentuckyunbridledspirit.com) over the Cincinnati Bridge and into Ohio. Ohio in winter, contrary to popular belief, can be unbelievable cold, grey and windy. I know, you wouldn't-a thought it, huh? Luckily, here in Dayton we have the warmth of family and the hugs of my cute and dear little nephews and Dot's meat market, which is where I am off to now...

Sissy bouncin* in the ATX

2012-01-02T12:15:00.013-05:00

I evacuated town for the last week of the year. Left my house, which is almost ready for final inspection; left my family in the middle of the holidays; left my Airstream to the rodents who apparently had a BIG heyday while I was gone... My trip to Austin was just the doctor ordered. A week with my lifelong best friend Meg was both epic and ordinary, filled with both the tedious day to day of life as a modern woman and the depth of connection that can only come with a lifetime of friendship. I watched in awe as her children channeled bits and pieces of her essence- her mannerisms, her humor, her deep loving affection, her nutty creativity. And I witnessed Meg's mother, Joanne, in Meg's mothering and marvelled at how present Joanne is in Meg's family, even though she died when we were young teens, murdered randomly while leaving work one night. Meg is a lot like the mother Joanne was, except without the cigarettes and Diet Coke- loving and indulgent with her children, yet stern at times, goofy and playful, and they look so much alike it's uncanny.

I was at Finn's birth 5 years ago. He's the younger. I was supposed to be as Oscar's too, but I couldn't make it. These children hold a special place in my heart. Oscar endeared himself to me this past week with his epic giggling combined with his persistent "peace and harmony" meditation, which he would go off and do in the treehouse or garden. Finn delighted me with funny mannerisms like Meg's and his sweet little voice, which would ask the most surprising and thoughful questions- questions that let me know he sure is taking a lot in for a little guy.

This last picture here was a real good time. We were taking a walk at a lovely place with gardens and trails, and Oscar wanted to be held close by Meg and told a fart story. The union of love and humor, which is so quintessentially Meg, flowed through the generations like an ion transfer in an atom as Meg's tale of a young unclothed boy's body gas flatulating on an overstuffed leather couch unfolded. She spoke in the deep voice of a black man and had us both rolling. Finn entertained himself...

Another day, Simon was kind enough to escort us ladies to the Austin Rifle Club shooting range for some education and practice with his 9mm. Both Meg and I have been fearful of firearms since her mother's death, so this experience with Simon was significant. Simon was a gentleman, and after signing us in as his guests (he is a card carrying member), he focused on safety as he instructed us with his piece...

(Thanks Simon!)

We journeyed to the Botanical Gardens, which is right up my alley, and loitered in the "prehistoric garden."

I fantasized yesterday on the way home about a(n unrealistic) world in which I would spend every other week with Meg in Austin. I wish we lived closer and I could show up at their house regularly for a large pancake with 5 chocolate chips and cinnamon butter and her kids could read me their night time stories with really awesome story reading voices and they could come spend the day with me in the woods and we could go swimming and romping around and Meg and I could Zumba twice or thrice a week together and I could build friction fires with Simon and joke about End Times. But at the same time it is grand to have a reason to go to Texas, and she has a built in retreat here at my mountain home. I hope she comes to it soon... Hear that Meg?

* We really wanted to go to this New Years Eve show, but it was sold out...

(Click on this) Sissy bounce

Picture-less postcard

2011-12-29T12:56:00.003-05:00

Dear Readers,
As the end quietly meanders toward its calendar ending, I find myself far from my wintry mountain home, in a flat land of mild temperatures, abundant sunshine and vast views of blue sky. The city of Austin (Texas) is as oasis of (relative) moisture and liberalism in a wider zone of arid republican terrain, with the Colorado River flowing through town and the abundance of music, arts and hip-ness creating enough of a political current to vote Donkey in an impossibly conservative state. Driving out into the country the other day, my friend Meg, the reason I am here, described the countryside as "inhospitable," with its dry heat and scrubby brush. I imagine that for most of the year it is so- the temperatures exceeded 100 degrees for a record 100 plus days this year, and wildfires uncomfortably close to the city threatened the collective psyche the general population here with the ancient elemental fears of this desert region.

But mid-Winter in Austin greets me with moist earth, pleasant and mild days, and chilly but manageable nights. Coupled with the good home cooking and familiar laughter of a life long best friend, I find this place more than hospitable. Days filled with trips to the park and Botanical Gardens, fun family yard work, Zumba at the Y, shooting at the Austin Rifle Club, and strolling around the weirdest and nastiest zoo in Texas are the perfect way to spend the last week of the year and what will be likely be my biggest solo vacation before the end of the Mayan calendar. The deep satisfaction of a lifelong friendship is nurturing and awesome beyond words, and I can relax here- away from home- and take comfort in the hospitality of this dear soul. God bless Texas and this gal who lives here.

I have some good pictures I will try to post soon.

Yours,
Dana

House update in photos

2011-12-24T16:16:00.013-05:00

I didn't move in before Christmas...(Still residing in the Airstream):

The house is steadily advancing toward its final inspection:House underpinned with a "skirt" of tile backer board (to be stuccoed by me early January I hope):

Kitchen cabinets with awesome 6 ft long sink:

Laura and Eddie's Vermont castings "Vigilant" stove connected with stovepipe to the out-of-doors:

Upstairs bathroom nook:

Fuel:

Stovepipe creatively exiting through the wall and edge of roof:

Stairwell of ash and walnut from the land, milled on site by none other than Carl Rice:

I end the year with gratitute for all the support I have from loving family, friends and neighbors to carry this creation of a home through.

Do I have what it takes?

2011-12-13T11:32:00.005-05:00

Let us not forget our mortality

2011-12-05T13:18:00.003-05:00

A recent brief but memorable conversation with my neighbor the other day left me pondering the winter season and our modern cultural relationships with the seasons of the year. This friend, RM, and I were discussing the winter holidays and noting the highly intensified stress levels we modern westerners seem to experience this time of year. Family dynamics often explode with lifetimes of festering subsurface funk, dormant human-feeding viruses wake up and feast upon the tired and cold among us, we break our banks buying stupid crap to give each other, and the widespread cultural expectation to be cheerful peers around from every corner, mercilessly laughing in our faces.
I expressed that it is absurd for our major holiday season to be held in the darkest, most difficult time of the year. RM explained that the original reason for these winter holidays was for that precise reason. She said that the dark season awakens very old fears in us, and that the holidays were intended to band people together to provide extra support for each other during the coldest, roughest time of the year.
Very old fears. A chill runs down my back, and the fears, buried shallowly beneath my modern illusions of invincibility stir and grumble. Fears of cold, of sickness, of starvation, of perish, of the icy fingers of death itself. These are indeed age-old fears; they are the same fears that drove each generation of ancestors to survive year after year, through whatever trials each season unveiled. They are old fears, but they are not irrelevant fears.
The lines between health and sickness, thriving and perishing, life and death are thinner than I like to be aware of. We are organisms among many on this earth, and despite our desperate desire to believe there is someone out there (who favors our type of organism) controlling it all, the bottom line is we are just as subject to the laws of nature as our cavemen ancestors, as the birds and the four-leggeds, and as the viruses that we try to kill with antibiotics. We are eating and being eaten, and we will ultimately perish at the benefit of someone or something else.
Let us not forget our mortality.
RM and I wondered whether we modern westerners have the skills to make the holidays what they were intended to be- to improve our collective strength by banding together in the toughest time of the year. I think we do. And if we don't, we ought to make it our business to remember what is surely as basic and ancient in our human psyches as the fear of winter. Let us remember how to find collective strength in the darkness.

The heartbeat of one dingle

2011-11-28T12:49:00.003-05:00

The wind is raging in its Novemeber strangeness, seeming to purge the land of this year's bright season. There is a suspiscious balminess erratically blowing through the mountains, tipping trees and conjuring angry and longing sounding squeaks and cries through the night and all the morning. Bitter Cold is sneering greedily around the corner, its shit-eating grin laced with all manners of human-hungry cold viruses and pneumonias, all the tiny little ones gearing up to feast and procreate during the dramatic front changes of late November, awaiting another winter of rapid adaptation and evolution. In the meantime, in one typically quiet mountain dingle*, one modern woman celebrates the arrival of water to the ridge above her house. Having planned and dreamed for the past 2 cycles of the sun, and having worked with a diverse team of modern mountain men during the entire course of the November moon, Dana Nagle rejoices to the bosom of the mother earth Herself and her trusty consort, Gravity, that the ram pump has settle into the magical configuration of adjustments which allows it to defy common sense and pump water up the mountain on its own, night and day, with no additional sources of power. The constant movement of the pump, which cycles with a hearty thump each second, will keep the water in liquid form as the nightime temperatures descend into the subfreeze realm this week. The sound of the pump ramming each second has become a comfort to Ms Nagle, who listens for it each time she steps out under the sun or moon. The thumping below, like the heartbeat of the mountain.

*dingle: a small wooded valley

Tank on the ridge, filling with water

Let's walk back down to the house:

Some numbers:
Water flow cycling through pump: 5 gallons/minute; 120 gallons/hour
Water arriving at tank on ridge: 1/6 gallon/minute; 10.3 gallons/hour; 248 gallons/
day
Efficiency rate of pump: 8%

All "waste" water from pump flows back into the branch, thus keeping the ecosystem wet and intact. The water is still clean.

Pumped 3

2011-11-12T21:23:00.008-05:00

Extra Extra Read all About it: Ram pump update...
The good news: The ram pump is installed and hooked up to lots of pipe.
The bad news: The pump is running- pumping like a heartbeat, but so far it is not pumping the water up to the tank.

Some details:
Gallons per minute of spring flow: currently about 4
Vertical drop from spring to pump: about 18-20 feet
Size pipe from spring to pump: 1 1/2 inch
Vertical rise from pump to tank: about 130 feet (over a distance of 700 feet)
Size pipe from pump to tank: 3/4 inch
Tank size: 600 gallons
Vertical fall from tank to house: about 80 feet

The pump should pump water up to 10 times higher than the fall from the source to the pump. My system falls within that range, but the pump has been running for 2 days straight with no water reaching the tank up on the ridge. My neighbor and friend, James Wilsom, came over this evening and maybe, just maybe figured out why. The pump has a standard pressure tank attached to it. The tank comes preset at 40 psi, but can be adjusted. For the pump to maximize its pumping capacity, the pressure tank should be set at slightly under the psi of the water between the tank on the ridge and the pump. Basically that is the pressure put back on the pump caused by the gravity of the water in the buried pipes. This number can be reached by taking the vertical rise from the pump to the tank and multiplying it times .43. 130 x .43 equals something around 56. So the pressure in the pressure tank should be adjusted (by adding air) to 56. I think it is currently set at 10 psi because we read the instructions wrong. Hopefully with this adjustment, the pump can get the water all the way up to the 600 gallon tank on the ridge. I will keep you posted. Go James, go. Thanks for the think "tank."

The pump is bolted to this stool:

This is a small tank at the spring that is piped down the hill to the ram pump:

This is the ram pump with the pressure tank on top:

Fire and water

2011-11-04T18:37:00.004-05:00

Early November finds me actualizing some of the major infrastructural plans of my little homestead. Water lines (all 2000 feet of them) are buried, power line is connected to the house, the house is plumbed to the septic tank, and the GORGEOUS wood stove is now in the house. (***There will be another whole post later about the stove itself and all it represents in the world of friendship and warmth.) The stove is not set up yet, but it is getting good and ready for that. My hydraulic ram pump has arrived in the mail, and it will be set up and connected to tie the whole water system together on Monday. A ram pump is a non-electric water pump that uses the force of water falling through a pipe to power itself to pump the water uphill to a point far above the original source. The plan is to pump the water up the hill (underground) to a 600 gallon storage tank which is buried on the ridge above the house- 600 feet from the house at about an 80 ft elevation rise. The water will be gravity fed to the house from that tank and will have good water pressure. The overflow water will go over the other side of the hill to share with some of the lovely neighbors, whose spring is fussy in dry weather. Assuming everything works as planned, very soon I will have a functional water system in place that meets my 3 goals: to get water to my house, to share water with the neighbors, and to keep the branch wet. (Most of the water that flows into the ram pump is used to pump a much smaller volume of water up the hill- and then splashes back out into the branch.) When the pump is up and running, I will dedicate a post to its glory. Same with the woodstove. Fire and water. For now, enjoy the pictures of a crazy ditch digging operation that occured last week... Sorry for the sideways ones.

Ode to Laura and Eddie

2011-10-23T20:25:00.003-05:00

I love it when Laura and Eduard come out for a sleepover. There is always a bonfire, and cooking on it, and settling in to good and meaningful conversation until way past dark, and whiskey drinking and laughing. There is also a lot of teasing and farting around, but it is balanced with idea sharing and contemplating life in these modern times. Visiting with these two always warms my heart and makes me wonder how I got to be so lucky to have such good friends and family around me. Susie and Todd and Jenna also came for the Sunday portion of the 24 hour bonfire, and Mom graced us with a quick visit. Susie and Laura strung garlands of Susie's fresh marigolds by the fire in the mid day sun on a most lovely Appalachian autumn day. It reminded me that Day of the Dead is just around the corner, so I pulled out a couple little skeletons and made them marigold skirts for some seasonal inspiration.
I thought Susie and Laura were the definition of lovely as they flower crafted by the fire...

I hope these cats come back real soon! Love you both!

By request

2011-10-16T12:12:00.006-05:00

Sometimes I look around at my surroundings and I feel like James Taylor in the 70s. Don't ask me why, but it happens kind of a lot, especially in the fall. I imagine myself as Jameshimself, relaxing by a small campfire in blue jeans and a flannel- the cool crisp air breezing through the clear Carolina blue sky. Gone to Carolina in my mind...Check out my camper scene:

Here is the view from the top of Lonesome mountain on the way home:

And here's what some of you all have requested- more picutres of the house:
This is the tile I have on the bathroom/laundry nook floor upstairs, a sample of the wood flooring to be used soon, and the shower stall downstairs.

I am writing minimally these days, but do not worry- I am not totally atrophying my writing muscle. I am doing a little Airstream diary for a certain friend. I might write a story on here soon. Thanks for looking.
Dana

House Details plus some killer bonus material

2011-10-09T20:18:00.002-05:00

Current house details:
Upstairs ceiling: white pine from the land with linseed oil
Upstairs trim: black walnut from the land with hippie polyurethane
Downstairs trim: ash and black walnut from the land with hippie-poly
Paint colors: "Earthen jug," "Steamed milk," "Delicious melon," " Tea light..."
In progress: clay colored tile in bathroom floor
Coming soon: hardwood floor of some sort

Special Bonus pictures: A Jenna and Susie impromtu dance at Pop-a-top rock...

Bone dry and witless update, brief

2011-10-04T18:58:00.003-05:00

It's full on up in here. I am residing in the Airstream now, and the days are getting shorter, so I find myself racing the sun every evening in order to get this or that done before the darkness settles in. Hopey, the lovely and charismatic accident prone plott hound is living with me in the Airstream now as of last night. She has a back injury and will be spending "lots" of time confined in there for the next month to heal. The house is coming along, getting more and more inside detail, which is beautiful and satisfying. I got another camera that works and will post new pictures soon. I don't have internet service at the camper, so world wide web activities are limited to a couple few times a week elsewhere.
This concludes my bone dry and witless update. Have a nice day.

Quickie

2011-09-28T20:01:00.002-05:00

Yo. This is part of my stairwell. The walnut trim is straight from the land, and it rocks my world.

Sullivan's Island in Images

2011-09-19T16:00:00.003-05:00

Compliments of Mom. The first three are from the empty elementary school, which I was notably obsessed with. As a blog reader, which do you like better, text, pictures, or a combo?

Low country cyber postcard

2011-09-14T07:53:00.006-05:00

The rising harvest moon found me purusing the low country streets of Sullivan's Island, SC on a cruiser bike with Mom. Riding loops around the empty carpool circle of the abandoned elementary school, palm trees rustling in the warm salt breeze, the moon quietly rose the warmest golden globe above the ocean and power lines. It peered around the brick corner of the spooky, vacant school and infused me with the heavy essence of Indian summer on the SC coast, a place that is haunted with old stories. That is the same moon that shone upon Edgar Allen Poe as his pen marked the page with weirdness here- it peered through the Gold Bug tree just across the island on the marsh side. It is the same moon that shone upon the tens of thousands of West Africans who arrived on the shores in captivity to be sold as slaves to plantation owners. It saw the construction of Fort Moultry into the dunes near to where the empty elementary school stands now, and it saw the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. It is the same moon, turning its devoted circles around our situation, that has born silent witness to all the years here, the patterns of suffering and change, pulling the tides in and back out and watching the drama below play itself out.

I caught my first glimpse of that amber harvest moon through the rustling leaves of a palm tree growing at the corner of that empty school. The sight of it and the perfection of the soft wind blowing off the ocean stopped me dead in my cruiser bicycle tracks for some moments. The spookiness of the school and the island in general overwhelmed me. This was the moment that, had I not broken my camera last month, I would have pulled it out and snapped some still lifes to post here for you people to see what I saw. But alas, as Poe did in his months of misplaced military service here on this island, I committed myself to the practice of old fashioned observation and dedication to the transferrence of information and experience through the art of the written word.

As I have mentioned twice already the breeze of the evening was warm and salty and perfect. I would call it divine, but the experience was one of such an earthly and impermanent nature I will instead call it delightful. The lights of the westerly sun setting and the harvest moon rising boldly in the east caused everything to appear warm and nostalgic and beautiful, even the piles of yard debris lying on the sides of the road waiting for pick up- palmetto leaves, pecan branches, live oak twigs with dying spanish moss. The houses we rode by were lit in the kitchens and the residents went about their kitchen chores with relaxed low-country pace. The smells- fish and salt, laundry detergent, strange, lovely and musty myrtle and other unfamiliar seaside flowery smells, the faint odor of garbage sneaking out of trash cans. Crickets softly sang with the wind, and a few island birds cawed and crowed now and then. Mom and I didn't speak much, just pedalled and enjoyed the falling of the summer into the gentle arms of the Harvest Moon.

My love for the low country has been rekindled. Within the shadows of the live oaks, there seems to linger pieces of memories from years past and a still acceptance of the laws of nature, to which, no matter how hard we try to escape them, we are all still subject. Time will age us, and we will die. Fall will follow summer. Always.

Time Again Already!

2011-09-09T20:01:00.004-05:00

Do you think because you live in the Appalachian Mountains you are confined to poke salad, venison, black walnuts and all things edgy and gamey when you want to get your wild food on? Think again, mountain dwellers. If you have not experienced the creamy, dreamy tropically ecstacy of eating a paw paw, run don't walk to the nearest paw paw tree and get on that right now. It is really and truly the stuff dreams are made of. Smooth and rich, sweet and thick, soft and delicious, the meat in that fruit is like eating a morsel of concentrated heaven. Blend it with raw cow's milk into a shake and you will never, ever go back. (As in this is definitely not a hit it and quit it situation...)
I know I wrote about paw paws this time last year and probably this time the year before that, but repetition can be a beautiful thing, no? Like driving down Dry Branch in mid September and quietly approaching the 2 mature paw paw trees with excited anticipation, utterly amazed each time at the abundance of mango shaped greenish yellowish brownish fruits dangling in heavy clusters ALL OVER the tree. Picking up about 20 pounds of prefectly good untouched windfall fruit from the ground and then harvesting about another 30 pounds from the lower branches. Smelling the old gorgeous pink rose that graces the back of the abandoned farm house, neglected and empty after a sad divorce of husband and wife some years ago. The ever so intense flavor of the soft fruit in my mouth, like a cross between a banana and a mango, with a creamy custardy texture and flavor, sweet with a sometimes barely detectable bitter note. The sad chorus of crickets singing to a cool night, which began so much earlier than a night did a month ago. The still dew that settles on the chill of a September morning, eyes groggy from a night of deep sleeping and dreaming under a comforter. The melancholy of the summer giving way to fall, the earth turning, making its way around the sun another time, leaving us mortals to squirrel away our nuts in preparation for the dark half of the year. These things are common and recurring and understood as the way things are, yet more precious than I could ever put into words.

So to sum it up, eat yourself a paw paw this fall!

Love, Dana Dee

Tails of Compassion: My 24 Hours with "Billy Graham"

2011-09-05T20:01:00.004-05:00

The other evening I arrived home at about 6:00. Immediately my ears became aware of a different sort of sound- an animal no doubt- a high pitched chirpy wine, almost birdlike, but different and more insistent. I followed the sound into the garden to the patch of red clover cover behind the corn, and found who was to eventually become known as "Billy Graham," a tiny furry squirrel with eyes still closed from birth. He stumbled blindly through the foliage, crying and yelling for his mama.

At this point in the story I will stop and comment for a moment. The first thing I will say is, I do not know for the life of me how anyone, I mean Anyone, can encounter a baby animal of any sort and respond with anything other than unadulterated care and compassion. Even if the ultimate action chosen is to kill, is there not a biologically hard-wired response to help and care for the helpless babies? Someone, no names will be mentioned, said to me upon hearing of my night with Billy Graham- "Why all the fuss- it's just a squirrel- a tree rat," and went on to inform me that his/her course of action would be to put it in a bucket and drown it. A) I think that is bullcrap- I don't think this person would kill anything, and B) I am convinced that the response I had to Billy Graham is one that pretty much anyone would have.

First I picked up Billy Graham and talked pretty to him for a good long time while I thought. While I was thinking and pretty talking I heard the demanding chatter of an adult squirrel coming from the woods, not too far away. I followed the sound, carrying Billy Graham in the palm of my hand, until I saw a messy nest of leaves up in a tree in the general vicinity of the chattering adult. I decided to leave Billy Graham in a flat nook at the base of a nearby hemlock tree and give him a chance to be fetched by his mother before dark. I wished him well and set off to do some chores.

At just dark, I returned to the hemlock tree where I had left Billy Graham, and found him curled up in a tiny ball, sleeping soundly. I figured he didn't stand much of a chance overnight on his own like that, so I gently scooped him up, startling him into a brief fit of spastic yelps, and took him down with me to the camper. I didn't have much on hand in the way of baby squirrel formula, so I heated a bit of raw cow's milk and fed it to Billy Graham through a tincture dropper. I tried to feed him slowly enough that it wouldn't give him a belly ache. When I reckoned he had had enough, I put him into a bus tub with dry sawdust and leaves. He immediately burrowed down to the bottom of the bedding, managing to completely hide himself and insulate his wee little body from the nighttime chill.

The next morning, Billy Graham woke up hungry. I gave him a couple more droppers of the warmed milk and left him in his little box under the hemlock when I went to work, hoping that he would wake up hungry and cry for his mama- and that she would come for him in the daylight.

All day long I thought about Billy Graham, wondering how he was faring, and thinking of what I would do if I came home and he was still there. I posed a question to my co-workers: If any of them happened to be a lactating woman, would they extract a little of their own milk and feed it to Billy Graham with a dropper. Most of the answers were a grossed out negative. I was curious where people drew the line. My answer was hands down, without even thinking about it- of course I would. The instinct to help a baby seems so natural and it's not like one that small would require a lot of it.

On the way home from work I bought some goat's milk to feed Billy Graham in case he was still there. My neighbor said that cow's milk is really hard on a baby squirrel but that goat's is easier. When I got home he was gone. I found out that Todd had been up there working and heard Billy Graham screaming and went into the woods to find that he had climbed out of his box and was stumbling around 30 ft away, crying of hunger. Todd fell in love and fed him some milk through the dropper, which was laying out, and returned him to the box. What happened in the 2 hours between that feeding and when I came home will remain a mystery. Did Billy Graham wander away? Did his mother come for him? Did a natural predator eat him up and survive another day by the bounties of the forest?

I am completely comfortable not knowing the fate of Billy Graham. I wish him the best- I knew him to be a survivor with a lot of vitality left in him. Mostly I will remember him for how strongly he made me aware of my core inclination to help animals. Somehow it is comforting to remember that Life wants to perpetuate Life. I believe it is one of the great laws of the planet we live on, and the fact that it crosses the boundaries of species and rationality brings me much delight.

Greasy Beans and Dramatic Weather

2011-09-04T22:24:00.004-05:00

Some of you die-hard readers (all two of you) may remember me being pumped about my new neighbor giving me some local heirloom greasy bean seeds at the beginning of this season. Well, I grew them out and Mom and I went out and picked yesterday a bit before the spell of dramatic weather which is moving in tonight. Mom prepped (strung) and cooked a big mess of them for dinner and froze a couple gallons for later. I have to say, as someone who feels entirely neutral about the world of green beans, those things pretty much rocked.

Speaking of the dramatic weather, I have decided that dramatic weather is the thing I am skeered of. As in s-k-double e-red. People are saying we might get 10 inches of rain in the next three days. Yay for the rain. Boo for the dramatic presentation. Last night I got home to the camper in the pitch dark, and started the project of trying to weather proof the leaking spot for the Big Rain. One of the window areas, after caulking and sealing, still leaks in water, and it is right over the foot of my sleeping area. I imagined waking up to the sound of wind and rain driving into my little aluminum box. I could feel the wet feet and hear the angry roar of the storm. It felt kind of familiar to be out in the dark with a flash light, jury rigging something as a guard against weather-induced damage. Standing out there on a chair with a flashlight, duct taping a piece of plastic over the leaky window as the rain began to drizzle, my mind was "flooded" with memories of recent years past. 2 am trips up the ladder in my cotton candy pink fluffy bathrobe to scrape loads of heavy wet snow off the once intact awning... Waking to the deadly sounding crack of a poplar tree falling onto the camper above my bed and opening my eyes to find myself face to face with the long-defunct AC unit which had been mounted on top of the roof... The raging roar of flash flood waters flushing large logs into my camper step, a tile saw from its resting spot in the barn into a culvert under the road, and a large glass door into the creek bank... The clatter of gumball sized hail like bullets pummeling the top of the camper and the little tin shed roof out front. Wading through the raging flash flood river in cowgirl boots and my trusty pink robe to take shelter within the caving in walls of Shorty and Starling Gentry's old house on higher ground.
Oh, the special times I have had with the Ladyhawk.
But I admit, weather and time have made me softer, or wiser, or just fearful of god, and after I rigged up that heavy duty clear plastic over my leaky window and took care of a few other preparations, I turned right back around and drove to Hot Springs, to take shelter in a more sturdy and leakproof shelter for the duration of this bout of "dramatic weather." The final straw was realizing that when nature called (I mean really called) I would be out in whatever kind of rain or storm with my little shovel digging and doing my business in the elements. Damn I need to dig that outhouse...

Stay tuned for Tails of Compassion: My 24 hours with "Billy Graham"

News from the Home Front

2011-08-26T20:23:00.003-05:00

With Hurricane Irene pending, I have two items of news from the new home front:
1) I am moving back into the Airstream, where I plan to reside until I move into the house.

2) The upstairs ceiling in the house was completed today, with left over siding wood (white pine from the land- planed, sanded and oiled). The upstairs is now ready to paint.

Tales of Spontaneous Combustion

2011-08-23T20:36:00.005-05:00

Act One: It was a clear, crisp, pleasant August late afternoon (yesterday, to be exact), and certain carpenters were preparing to leave their jobsite (my house, to be exact) for the day. A certain M.A., whose humor is so dry and deadpan that I still, after almost a year of regular dealings with him, cannot decipher when my leg is being pulled, calmly and casually mentioned something about a pile of oily rags spontaneously combusting and not putting them too near the house. What he was saying kind of "went in one ear and out the other" until I noticed the aforementioned linseed oil-soaked rags in a neat little pile, smoldering and smoking away.

Act Two: It was a hot, steamy summer day in North Asheville (a recent day this summer), and L.C. was busily working in her family's garden shop in Woodfin. All was ho-hum daily grind, until L.C. noticed that a coconut hull- lined hanging basket had burst into flames upon receiving a concentrated ray of sunlight from a nearby ornamental glass garden globe. Rushing to the site of spontaneous combustion, she grabbed the flaming planter and tossed it into the small creek which runs between the shop and its garden- the very same creek that a poor raccoon met its fatal fate a recent night in a flash flood and became rather grotesquely "hung up" on the small bridge which crosses the little creek.

Act Three: It was a cold late winter day in South Asheville, and J.L. (aka Lil Razz) was enjoying a rare weekend day alone in her shared house. She stepped into the kitchen to find a little snack, and noticed a small round burnt spot on the counter top, where earlier that day had lain a solitary Advil pill. The burn spot was the size and shape of the Advil, and the Advil was gone. After several minutes of concentrated investigative thinking, J.L. realized a ray of sunlight had streamlined through the kitchen window and through a clear glass pitcher of water on the counter in perfect relation to an Advil to cause a "magnifying glass" combustion of this particular over-the-counter muscle relaxing pain pill. Pity the pre-menstrual housemate who came home to discover the pill had ceased to be available.

Act Four: It was a warm spring evening at the Asheville Pizza and Brewing Company, where three friends awaited a cheese pizza. One of the friends stepped out for a breath of fresh air and a look about, and noticed billows of smokes rising from the mulch on the side of the driveway of the neighboring food enterprise "Heavenly Ham". She quickly ascended the steep and uneven steps between the two parking lots and discovered a sizable "mulch fire" just outside Heavenly Ham. Too hot to stomp out, the fire needed "a little something more." The investigative pizza customer noticed a group of young Heavenly Ham employees loitering around a dumpster not far away, smoking cigarettes and laughing. She approached the posse, and said, "There's a mulch fire in your mulch." One of the Heavenly Ham employees sighed and said, "Not again," before casually retrieving a bucket of water and tossing it upon the smoldering wood matter.

When you think about it, there is danger everywhere. Matter waiting to spontaneously combust. Fires waiting to burn. Danger, I tell you. Beware, fellow flesh-wearers, of material that generates its own heat and of glass that magnifies light. As M.W. so poignantly put it: "Prismatic-like objects- they're not just for rainbows..."

Cemetery: Post Decoration

2011-08-22T20:59:00.004-05:00

This little cemetery is about a 2 minute walk from my new place, closer than the nearest neighbors. The descendents of the souls who rest here mow and decorate the graves every summer. I find it astounding that these people, some of whom died more than a hundred years ago, are still honored yearly with bush hogging and placement of colorful fake flowers. I have heard people wiser than myself say that a most important part of finding spiritual wholeness in life is to honor ones ancestors. I should pay attention and follow the example of my new neighbors who practice the tradition of Decoration Day. I ought to find a way to celebrate my family legacy- those random, unknown predecessors of me. I should make them known to myself.

I like the way the late summer evening light angling into the cemetery has a presence of its own, like the collective spirits of the deceased, remembering themselves in this place.

News from the Garden (aka: as if the exact thing you want to do in mid-August is read about someone else's damn garden)

2011-08-13T21:18:00.005-05:00

Even though it has not rained in weeks, and the very green life beneath my feet is wilting and withering away, I am still pretty pumped about the garden. Even though a raccoon or two is prancing into the garden at night like a spoiled only boy-child in China and sampling ear after ear of corn until it finds just the right one, I am still actually thrilled about the garden. Even though the cucumber vines grow and grow, spilling their lucsious looking selves over this and that and the other yet don't get enough water to actually mature their little fruits, I am tickled pink about the garden. You get the gist. The past two days I have combed the carnage of the raccoonage and salvaged what of corn I could for eating fresh or drying, and with the rest I have salvaged the fresh silks for tincturing. (Don't worry, I didn't gather silks that would have had raccoon saliva all over them...) I have neatly arranged rows of bloody butcher corn on blankets in my bedroom floor, in an attempt to dry them off the stalk for grinding corn meal this coming year. My little green-grey jarradale pumpkin-y squashes are growing, regardless of the dry spell, as are the butternuts. The wild green-headed coneflowers (also called sochan) are gorgeous in full bloom along the garden edges.

My biggest thrill is coming from the compost cage I have built and the righteous mound of decay I am assembling inside of it. Truckloads of leaf and twig chips, manure from the neighbors' barn, and year-old leaf mold in neat rectangular layers really floats my boat. Next I will be layering in the sawdust that I stashed in large piles from the sawmill operation of last summer and more manure from the neighbors' barn. This fall, I'll add freshly fallen leaves and, you guessed it- more manure. Oh yeah, I might also be busting up scraps of drywall from the house and composting that too for the gypsum and such, but first I have to find out if it contains any anti-bacterial agents because that just wouldn't work in the compost or soil. Come spring, the compost cage is going to be bustin at the seams with rich usable, fluffy black gold.

I think I am going to ask a neighbor to plow the whole garden under again this fall and sow it with a winter cover again. Next year I plan to really go at at.

The sky is always pinker on the other side of the state line

2011-08-09T20:30:00.006-05:00

Living minutes from the NC/TN state line, our sun always sets in Tennessee.

What my phone camera would not take a picture of was the dreamy pastel rainbow in the clouds above Lovers' Leap on the NC side. It was the stuff poetry is made of. Take that, you lawless, cock fightin', non- snow plowin', knife flingin', crazy muffin top breedin' east Tennessee! We have good things in the sky too, even if they are not breath-stopping neon orange pink sunset displays that make you pine for the open road and the Loretta Lynn Diner and Gift Shop.
(ps-I love you anyways, Tennessee, even if I will never call you home...)

This Post is for Kerry

2011-08-08T19:45:00.002-05:00

For my dear old friend Kerry, who used to occasionally utilize the "list" method of blogging, which I would find to be a surprisingly interesting and insightful glimpse into her daily life. Although she and I have vastly different lifestyles (she being a jet-setting Mommy blogger, professional theatrical director and play-writer, and mother of 2 gorgeous young'uns, and I being whatever I am...), I think we can both kick out some interesting and colorful task lists.

What I accomplished on my day off today:

- slept in until 7:45
- watched a lone otter swim, frolic, fish, and ride the creek rapids
- purchased a crystal as an awesome birthday gift for a friend at local gift shop
- did some banking
- met with house builders and acquired a new list of things to do
- built a new compost cage
- unloaded truck load of shredded leaves and twigs into new compost cage
- cleaned out part of neighbor's horse/cow/sheep barn aisle and took a truckload of manure
to the new compost cage
- visited with choice neighbor Moonie and caught up on some local gossip
- mowed some grass and clover in the rain
- took lawn mower to "Todd's Mechanics" for oil change and tune up
- scored some freshy fresh produce from Susie
- got my "cardio" on in the creek (aka- swam laps, including a series of sprints with
the kickboard)
- bleached and scrubbed the shower
- ate cucumbers and tomatoes for dinner (again- this does not get old)
- successfully finished fighting a summer cold (gotcha, Bitch)

Things To Do In the Immediate Future:

- live trap skunk that has taken residence at the Mountain Magnolia and remove from
premises without getting sprayed
- call electrician
- call plumber
- call insulation guy
- procure shower stall
- procure inside doors
- procure water heater
- step up Chinese herb starts
- write a letter to Kerry, including current info about Larry Belk
- research raising trout on a small scale
- select a ram pump model
- set up water system at house
- choose indoor paint colors
- buy a 4 wheel drive vehicle
- get firewood ready for winter
- get a wood stove
- tan the rattlesnake hide that JL gave me and is in the freezer, then make a kick-
ass headband
- clean Jenna's cds
- fold laundry
- vacuum
- cut Nauni's hair
- weed Nauni's flower beds
- pay bills
- buy a new camara
- quit eating so much chocolate
- get more manure
- landscape Kerry's yard
- get a .22

I'm off to eat a little chocolate and read more of Prodigal Summer before sleeping.

Lammas

2011-08-01T18:00:00.002-05:00

Merriam-Webster hooked it up today with a bitchin' Word of the Day.

(My lammas harvest offerings)

Lammas\LAM-us\

noun

1 : August 1 originally celebrated in England as a harvest festival — called also Lammas Day

2 : the time of the year around Lammas Day

The word "Lammas" evolved from Old English "hlāfmæsse" ("hlāf" meaning "loaf" and "mæsse" meaning "mass"). It originated from the fact that on August first of each year, the early English church celebrated the harvesting of the first ripe grain by consecrating loaves made from it — hence, "loaf mass." Shakespeareans will be sure to add that the eve of Lammas is Juliet's birthday, as her nurse tells us in Romeo and Juliet, "Come Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen." In addition, the phrase "latter Lammas" was used humorously to refer to a day that will never come, as in "he will pay at latter Lammas."

This holiday also goes by the older name of Lughnasadh, after the celtic god, Lugh. Either way, it is a celebration of the harvest and an auspicious day, worthy of honoring. I plan to celebrate all month, cuz August is my favie-fav!

My 301st post

2011-07-28T22:11:00.002-05:00

Tonight I was a little early for a little gathering at a certain friend's boyfriend's gift shop in downtown Hot Springs. Since it had been one of those days where there were a ridiculous number of back-to-back technological snafus in the morning and the heat of the afternoon was so intense it put me in a psychadelic state of being where I was sweating like a wild lady sasquatch and thinking crazy thoughts, I mixed me up a stiff one on the rocks after work (and after a cold dippy-poo in the creek) and decided to get my Relax on. To kill a little time before the 9 pm gathering, I took my little highball on a slow walk through Hot Springs, whose main street was surprisingly quiet and devoid of people. The evening air was warm and perfect- the height of summer.
When I got to the bridge over Spring Creek, some movement caught my eye, and I spotted a skunk emerge from the creek bank and scurry up the hill. Relaxed and slighty buzzed from the whiskey and the day's heat, I immediately transistioned into stalking mode and followed the critter silently across another ditch and through the parking lot behind the outfitters store and the rafting company. So focused was I on the skunk that I didn't notice a posse of ole boys hanging around outside the Town of Hot Springs maintenence center. They startled me by speaking to me, and I wondered how long they had been watching me stalk the skunk and if they thought I looked weird. Apprently me chasing the skunk was nothing to them though, because they proceded to let on that they knew exactly where the skunk goes every night and exactly what to do to avoid getting sprayed if you catch a skunk in your live trap (something that's actually been heavy on my mind this week). I was also told by one of these fellers that if you catch a skunk, you can go on and take it to the vet and have it's spray glands removed and "it'll make you a good house cat."
Thank god for Hot Springs.

Wildlife Enthusiast Gets "Wowed" By Coincidence

2011-07-20T20:06:00.005-05:00

Thirty-something Hot Springs resident and self-proclaimed wildlife enthusiast Dana Nagle was in for a surprise this morning when she stepped outside. Little did she know that political fashion would meet herpotology in an unexpected crossroads of perfect timing.

Thinking it was a normal day with much to get done, Nagle dressed in one of her sun protective gardening blouses. This particular shirt was still adorned with a button that local business owner Daniel FP Gallagher had recently given her.

The button, which reads: Mutants for Nuclear Power, caught the thirty-something's eye (hee hee) while she purchased some Irish tea at Gallagher's local store a few days ago. Not typcially being inclined toward opinionated bumper stickers or buttons, Nagle found this particular item to be humorously naughty.
"I thought to myself, that's pretty funny," explained Nagle.

Imagine the lady's surprised when she stepped out of the cool house into the midsummer humidity, donning the smiley cyclops button, and discovered a one-eyed box turtle in the driveway.

" He was a healthy, mature male!" exclaimed Nagle. "There was no indication that he ever had a left eye- no eye socket there- nothing!"

Nagle admits that her interest in one eyed smiley faces and one eyed turtles is partially fueled by a recent dream she had of a hedgerow of baby human cyclops.

When she relayed the story at the local store where she originally saw the button, it was speculated by some of the store employees that perhaps the turtle had been walking in circles for some 30 years.

"He's probably been out there walking in circles for 30 years," speculated one jolly male employee.

When asked what she thinks of the whole episode, Nagle supposed that there is a whole world of natural anomolies out there waiting to be witnessed. All we need to do is open our eye.

Mount of Mitchell

2011-07-13T20:32:00.004-05:00

Did you know that Mount Mitchell is the highest mountain east of the Mississippi? The way I figure it, it is clearly important to set aside a day to go on up there and be as close as realistically possible to the heavens for a while. Now, I'm typically a hard core fan of the under-appreciated mundane moments of holiness-the beauty found in the shadows of the daily grind, but the majestic awesomeness of the heights of Mount Mitchell cannot be ignored. Looking out over the mountains to the north, south, east and west, I was blown away by the stunning beauty of my home terrain, the southern Appalachian mountains. It was thrilling and intimidating to be at the top looking down on a world of ridges, valleys and coves below, each holding its own life communities, microclimate, and essence.

Below Mount Mitchell, the Toe River flows clear and cold, its numerous pools and boulders inviting and refreshing come midsummer.

A day a year, I travel to the mountain and the river, marvelling at the power of the elements, drinking in the goodness which is summer in the mountains, and remembering things that are important to remember.

Here are a few glimpses of the day:

(Anyone know this groovy purple mushroom?)

Angelica unfolding:

My sweet godson after he rocked going under water in the Toe River!

Solution

2011-07-08T05:28:00.009-05:00

There were three problems:
1) A back bumper on my trusty little Toyota pickup that was rusting plum off (and being held on by a single thread of tetnus with a yellow strap),
2) Lovely summer drives through the mountains (aka- commutes) were being disturbed by annoying tailgaters, particularly ones of the teenage boy and redneck lady variety, and
3) My busy summer schedule had me feeling a little too confined to my proverbial "box."

The solution to these three diverse and seemingly unrelated problems came to me as a single item with a wide array of delightful implications...

A new good-damn bumper.

First, a quick backstory: For approximately the last year and a half, I have been hassling my friend and co-worker Zoe, who is a lady of many talents, to make me a new bumper. First she was planning on it, but then she moved out of her metal working shop and it seemed impossible to do. I still hassled her a bit more about it though, and finally she said, "Dana, I can't make you a bumper." I mostly gave up on the idea, and just let my bumper rust and rot as I drove through the mountains, day in and day out.
Then one day earlier this summer, Jenna my sister saw my bumper and exclaimed, "Dana- what the $%^* is wrong with your $%^-@#$* bumper!" I told her that it was rusting off. I went on to tell her that originally Zoe was going to make me a new one, but that it wasn't going to work out because she didn't have a workshop anymore. Jenna, being the true and trusty good dedicated sister she is, had my back. "Do you want me to call Zoe for you and take care of it?" she asked. I said sure.
A two minute phone call later I was next in line for a custom made bumper. For those interested, the phone call went a little something like this:
Jenna: Hey Zoe. (pause) No- it's not Dana, it's Jenna.
Pause
Jenna: You need to make my sister a new bumper because her @#$%-ing bumper is falling off!
Pause
Jenna: (in a real sweet and sing-songy voice) Thank you Zoe.
Pause
Jenna: (in that same sweet and happy voice) I'm doing preeeeety good Zoe.

Simple as that.

In no time flat, Zoe had produced a bumper for me that:
1) saved me from that awful jury-rigged eyesore of a rusty piece of crap that I was rolling with on my tail end for so long
2) hooked me up with a bad ass piece of converted weight-lifting equipment and old car parts that I'm hoping one glance of will have even the boldest of tailgaters reaching that foot for the break, and
3) hoisted me out of my proverbial "box" for two exciting and unforgettable evening sessions of bumper work in two unique locations.

Session one: The removal of the old bumper and prep work for the new bumper
Location: The driveway, back porch and kitchen of Zoe's shared punk house of amiable chaos and prolific creativity
Tasks accomplished: Old bumper removal involved some manipulation of rusty bolts, some metal cutting with an angle grinder and some old fashioned sweating and grunting (paired with ample giggling); new metal brackets were fashioned and measurements were taken for the welding of the parts
What I did: Examine the floor to ceiling art displayed on all walls of the house while making commentary, ask a lot of detailed questions about the art and the housemates, take pictures, laugh a lot and hand Zoe tools when needed
What Zoe did: All the work (and laugh a lot)

I left at dark that night last week feeling pumped up from having spent an evening out of my little world and jazzed about the upcoming bumper installation session...Read on.

Session Two: The welding of the bumper
Location: Deep Six Cycles shop in south Asheville-
Tasks accomplished: Holes were drilled in the new brackets after measurements from Session One were confirmed correct; Brackets were resized to accomodate smooth tailgate opening and closing; New bumper was "tacked" to brackets on the actual truck sight; Welding was completed on a table in the shop, and bumper was secured to truck with bolts
What I did: Look around Tom's shop curiously while asking both him and Zoe a plethora of questions, take pictures, listen to death metal and Johnny Cash, check out Tom's motorcycle friend's brown recluse bite, tell stories, occasionally hand Zoe a tool
What Zoe did: All the work; be a bad ass

Much chuckling and marvelling at the world beyond my little cubby-hole of a life was done all evening. I felt like a tourist on a staycation over there in the motorcycle shop, and I relished every minute of it, inhaling deeply the refreshing smell of motor oil and auto parts and admiring the craftspersonship of both Zoe and her metal mentor Tom. One of my favorite things to do is watch someone work, particularly when that person loves their work.

There you have it. The lovely new bumper. I may be dreaming, but it seems to me that since it has been on, people behind me have been slowing down just a little bit before passing my slow granny driving ass. The only things I have left to do are spray the bumper with some rust inhibiting finish product, figure out a way to grow some tiny succulents back there on the new boy and hook Zoe up with delightful treats for a long time to come.

My American Locale

2011-07-04T21:31:00.004-05:00

Fourth of July Weekend in Images...

Jiao gu lan?

2011-06-27T20:25:00.003-05:00

I recently was rooting through my bag of weird shit I bought in China 2 winters ago. I have not really unpacked this bag for some reason. Perhaps it is because I don't quite know what to do with the bizarre cartooned face masks and blank journals that have blatent undercurrents of pro-Mao imagery. Or the vinyl holographic wall hangings of waterfalls and tigers. There is a red piece of "real silk" with dragons on it and several cheap reference books regarding Chinese medicine. The other day I pulled out the book I bought for a buck at the Carrefour (Walmart like store that was between our apartment and th hospital) about Chinese medicinal herbs. Loaded with groovy illustrations of plants and plant parts and weird animals and animal parts, it describes to the reader what to use each item for and how to use it. The only little thing is you have to read Chinese to get it. Otherwise, you are like me and you gaze longingly at the groovy illustrations and wonder what in god's name the stuff says. This book became a very popular item in Jenna's room at the hospital in Tianjin. Her 24 hour Chinese nurse/ helper "Lulu" would enthusiastically read the book every day, and then we would try to talk about it. The only thing was she spoke Chinese and I spoke American. I kept coming back to the page with the groovy illustration of a plant I am growing, which I know as "jiao gu lan." Lulu communicated to me that it grows like a weed all over the ground at the place she lives in the countryside, but I could not really gather the local herbal usages of the plant from our daily conversations. So I suckered one of the hospital translators into taking the book home with her and translating the page for me. A few days later she brought me back 2 pages of notes. After I thanked her, I apparently didn't thoroughly read the notes because a couple of days ago I was reviewing them and my mind was blown by something on the 2nd sheet of notes. Click on the picture to enlarge it, and see if you can guess what really got me... Enjoy.

ps. Upon reviewing the notes, I am now not so sure that either of the plants shown is jiao gu lan. I was thinking that the one on the left was, but who knows?

Solstice

2011-06-23T05:56:00.002-05:00

Midsummer Dawn to Duskin' it. Long are the days. Each long day holds endless possibilites of enjoyment of the bounty of the season. Wild berries to make pies from. Heavenly flowers to inhale. Cold mountain streams to dive into. Turtles to pick up and talk pretty to. Wild turkey chicks to watch taking their first flight. Poison ivy to avoid. Thunderstorms that are the very wrath of Thor Himself to ride out, talking to sweet Jesus until they pass. Work to do. Heat to surrender to. Ice cream to eat. You get the gist of it. Solstice time is bittersweet. The height of summer with all its glory reminds us of the turning of the seasons, the passing of time, the inevitability of winter, and the impermanence of life. It becomes urgently important to me to celebrate the moments of the season as they pass by.

A solstice bonfire with indulgence of cake and mead ensued after a long, hot, steamy day at work. The cake was chocolate, with a chocolate basswood blossom frosting (basswood flower infused cream based- whoa, good!), and the mead was that honeysuckle brew that Jenna and I concocted about a month ago. Our small gathering danced to Prince for baby Angelo and laughed and imbibed and discussed our thoughts on the season. Fireflies provided ornamentation. The moment was celebrated.

Greasy Beans and Greene County Okra

2011-06-14T06:50:00.003-05:00

Most neighbors around these parts are kind and generous with what they have. It is the natural way of living in rural mountain communities, where towns and cities are far and self reliance is more of a daily situation than it is in most of modern America. Of course modern conveniences are prevalent way out in the mountains these days too, but most people still feed themselves at least partly off their land, solve most of their own problems, kill their own varmin, take care of their own sick, and call their own neighbors when they need a hand. I have been amazed with the generosity with which I have been received as a new community member. I don't know if it has to do with being a lady gal who is stepping into rural mountain living solo or what, but the kindness has been off the chain. Just this weekend a neighbor friend from up Cedar Cliff gave me enough seeds to get my own patch of greasy beans and okra going. A cup of each should give a good start to eat some and save the rest for next year. The seeds were the great great grandchilden of seeds that had originally been given to him by older gardeners who had grown theirs out and saved seeds over the years. These seeds are prodigies of plants who have fed generous neighbors over the years and have been selected to thrive in our pretty little mountain region here. I planted mine out yesterday. Godspeed little seeds of good eating and human kindness...

Up on Cedar Cliff

2011-06-13T22:26:00.003-05:00

My Hero

2011-06-05T21:22:00.002-05:00

My sister:

My little sister shows me what it is to be a truly stellar human being. Her grace, beauty, humility, strength, endurance, gratitude and humor are real. She is my greatest teacher.

Anthropomorphic conversation

2011-05-30T19:23:00.005-05:00

"Mama, what's that shiny thing down there?"
"Oh- that thing? That's the metal roof on the new human's house."
"But mama... I thought you said this was our home!"
"Don't sweat it, Bambi. I'm pretty sure the new human is too chicken to shoot one of us. And don't worry about that vegetarian carpenter neither. Watch out for the electrician, though. He's the wild card..."

Drama in the canopy

2011-05-27T21:20:00.006-05:00

Technological advancements of our day allow and encourage us to attempt to engage in multiple very different activities at once. For example, one can dress oneself, nurse a baby or prepare food while digitally being informed of major world news. That same person can write an electronic note to a co-worker 1000 miles away while talking to a neighbor on the phone. Someone can plan a day's work by viewing an animated radar image of a weather system on a small handheld screen, and that same person can get in a car and move down a road at 60 miles an hour while simultaneously typing a grocery list for a spouse on that same handheld screen. You get the drift. As a person who is naturally inclined to side with the Luddites when it comes to the value of modern technology, I continue to find myself surprisingly adapted to the changes in American lifestyle that new technology imposes on our day to day personal habits.
I talk on the cell phone while driving. (Terrible habit.) I use the internet daily. I have a blog. I can text. I continually break my own taboos about what technologies are acceptable in my life and when it is acceptable to use them.
When I first got a cell phone it was for emergencies only. Then the convenience of calling people whenever and wherever trumped that ideal. But absolutely no talking while driving. The temptation to utilize my ridiculous commute time for multitasking won me over on that one. Then I decided that even when a cell tower came to Hot Springs I would never use the cell phone there- I figured there had to be a place in the world that I was only reachable the "old fashioned" way. That battle was lost in a year or two, but I vowed to never use the cell phone in the woods. Well, guess what, I do sometimes now. It doesn't seem right, but sometimes I can convince myself that making a phone call while hiking or strolling in the woods is a good use of time.
Yesterday morning I found myself with an unexpected day off of work. Between rain showers I laced up the ole leather walking shoes and headed out for a much needed hike up the local mountain, Lover's Leap. On the way out of the house, I grabbed the cell phone. I figured maybe while I was getting in some good old fashioned exercise I could make a couple of phone calls and thereby cross a couple things of the ole To Do list.
As soon as I stepped into the cool wet breezy Appalchian woods, I regained awareness of what is left of my truly human wit. Thank God and Daniel Boone and the pending rapture for that. It's in the cells (of my body, not the phone). My body relaxed. My breathing attuned itself to the wet, oxygen rich forest air. My ears settled into the complex awareness of multiple depths of the quiet and not so quiet sounds of the woods. I wanted nothing to do with my phone, and I felt like a fool for having considered using it while having such a lush opportunity not to.
I hiked up the backside of the mountain, by Silvermine through a little mini grove of wild paw paws and wood nettles. Back into the holler I remembered the friend who died back in the woods there when I was newer to the mountain. I realized how this mountain has helped me identify myself as a grown person, and that was marvelous to me. Up the trail there were the precious semi hidden secretive earthy blooms of wild ginger and delicate white wands of galax flowers. I noticed for the first time that each tiny little galax flower is comprised of 5 tiny petals. Fresh growth on the tips of rhododendrons were green and alive, sourwood leaves were shiny and vibrant, and the cool breeze perfectly complemented the wet day. At the top, green unripe blueberries on wild shrubs promised bountiful snacking later in the year.
Had I been on the cell phone, I would not have heard the sweet, delicate "witchity witchity witchity" of the common yellowthroat on the river side of the mountain. Nor would I have heard the insect-like buzz of the worm-eating warbler, who sat perched in the canopy singing its little heart out. I crouched silently and watched it for a while until it noticed me and proceded to fly down to the ground next to where I was perched, allowing me a good long close up look at its lovely markings before it circled me and headed back up to the canopy where it chirped calls of alert to whomever... Had I been on the phone I wouldn't have detected the twitching tail of a common grey squirrel who thought it was so sneaky down there, quickly gobbling up tidbits from the floor of the little nook where it foraged, protected. I would not have even noticed the multi-species bird squabble up in the canopy as I descended closer to the river- or the loud splash of a beaver's tail in the water beneath a low hanging birch branch. All of the spectacular arboreal drama would have been by-passed all together.

May I urge you, dear readers, to leave your devices behind and go for a good long walk in the woods, in this precious place that we live, and enjoy the precious phenomenon which is life all around us. It's unique to our planet, unless you believe in aliens.

Nectar, nectar- Read all about it!

2011-05-22T20:43:00.004-05:00

Childhood springtimes in Charlotte were spent riding bikes until dark, watching nests of robins hatch out in the camellia beside the house, playing in the overgrown run-off ditch which we called "the creek" (and which to this day still holds its place as one of the wildest, most mysterious and exciting places of nature in my psyche), and eating honeysuckle nectar on the edge of the yard. My sister and I and whoever else might be over would stand at the fenceline of the yard and pick one flower at a time, then simultaneously cut the bottom tip of the flower tube off with a finger nail and grab the stringy thing inside, pulling it down through the tube of the flower until a single drop of nectar would emerge from the opening. That nectar would carefully make its way onto the tip of our tongues, at which time there would be a comparison in size and sweetness of that particular drop to previous drops and inevitably some bragging about who was the most talented at finding the perfect honeysuckle. The yellow flowers give a sweeter nectar. No- the white ones do. No no no- the ones that are changing from white to yellow do... I think we would spend inconceivably long amounts of time standing at the fenceline eating honeysuckle nectar. I would always daydream about collecting a vessel of nectar, one drop at a time, and then drinking it down. That would be the best thing ever possible in life, I would think- and the impossibility of it would make each drop more precious.

Of all the childhood pleasures that are left behind for the practicality of adulthood, eating honeysuckle nectar simply cannot be abandoned. Each year I celebrate springtime with honeysuckle eating- straight-up one drop at a time from vines on someone's fencerow, and in more recent years, I have been enjoying more sophisticated variations of the sweet godlike nectar. Honeysuckle infused milk or cream allows an impossibly sweet floral and perfect base for honeysuckle ice cream, honeysuckle strawberry milkshakes, and honeysuckle chocolate truffles. The flavor that a handful of fresh blossoms imparts on a quart of milk or cream is utterly off.the.chain! Of course, you would only appreciate it if you are someone who likes complete awesomeness.

So it's May in the mountains, and the honeysuckles are in full bloom. You could say that they are pretty much getting their groove on in these parts right about now. The air is pregnant with their perfume, and it is making me go bonkers over nectar. I spent several evenings and early mornings last week working on my honeysuckle truffles for Donna and Heidi's wedding celebration, and today when I got to Jenna's she had the BRILLIANT idea that we make some honeysuckle wine. I was sold. We changed the idea to honeysuckle mead and were off. We spent the middle part of this warm day picking honeysuckle flowers from along my new Starling Gentry Road driveway. After gathering an ample stash of blossoms and collecting a gallon of good cold spring water, we headed back to Jenna's house to get the mead going. The blossoms soaked in the (cold or room temperature) spring water all afternoon and this evening we mixed the batch. Here's the recipe:

Honeysuckle* mead (to make one gallon):
ingredients- honeysuckle blossoms- as many as you can get
good water, preferably without chlorine because the yeast might not like that- one gallon
local honey- one quart
champagne yeast (can be purchased at Asheville Brewing Supply on
Merrimon)

Soak the blossoms in the cold water for 4-12 hours, then strain the water off of the blossoms with a strainer or cheesecloth. Use about a pint of water to heat with the honey to dissolve the honey (making a warm syrup). When the honey is completely dissolved, stir the honey water into the remaining honeysuckle water. You now have the delicious sweet syrupy base for your mead. (Jenna described the taste of this stuff as "righteous.") Warm or cool the base to a temperature that feels just warmer than lukewarm. (If it is bathtub temperature it is too hot.) When it feels just warmer than lukewarm, sprinkle a half packet of champagne yeast over the top of the liquid. Stir if you want, then watch for a few minutes while the yeast comes alive!
Transfer the liquid (with yeast) into a clean one- gallon sized apple juice jug and put a fermentation lock on the top- these can also be purchased at the Asheville Brewing Supply on Merrimon.
Store the jug in a warm place out of the way and watch it bubble and ferment for about the next month. When the bubbling slows down or stops and the liquid clears off, you can bottle it and/or drink it.
Enjoy your homebrew and stick it in The Man's face that you just made your own good damn drinkypoo and didn't pay any stupid taxes on it.

While we're at it, here goes the honeysuckle truffle recipe:

Honeysuckle* truffles:

ingredients:
1-2 large handfuls of fresh honeysuckle flowers
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
16 ounces of dark chocolate (70 percent cocoa content is ideal, but I find the dark
chocolate Ghiradelli chips work just fine)

Instructions:
A couple days in advance, gather the honeysuckle and soak them in the cream in the fridge overnight or for a few hours. Strain the honeysuckle off the cream. Heat 1 1/4 cups of the cream in a saucepan over low until just simmering. Remove from heat and cool to lukewarm. In the meantime, using a double boiler, melt 9 ounces of dark chocolate. When completely melted, stir the cream into the melted chocolate and stir thoroughly. Cover and put in the fridge to cool for at least 3 hours. This is your truffle base. When the base is cold and completely set, remove it from the fridge and roll the base into small balls. Set these on a cookie sheet on a piece of wax paper and put them back in the fridge to get good and cold and set (at least an hour.) Before removing them from the fridge, heat 7 ounces of the dark chocolate in the double boiler and melt completely. Remove the truffle base balls from the fridge. Take a large spoonful of melted chocolate from the double boiler and place it in the palm of your clean hand. Use the other hand to pick up one of the truffle base balls and roll it in the melted chocolate in your other hand, coating completely. Do this to all of the base balls. If you like, sprinkle a very light coat of cocoa powder (through a sieve) onto the top of the truffles. Put back into the fridge to set one last time. The coating will turn hard and a little crunchy, while the center will remain soft and smooth.
Keep the truffles refridgerated until you serve them. Enjoy the looks on the eaters faces when they bite in! Thanks to Rachel Brownlee for the truffle recipe.

*Note about honeysuckle: Because it's an oriental invasive plant, I will rip out honeysuckle vines from my land just as much as the next gardener or native plants enthusiast. However, it is so hardy and pervasive that, like many other non-native invasives, it is almost like fighting a losing battle. So while I am losing, I prefer to revel in the magnificence of all its heavenly glory and even sing its sweet praises. I know, it's a paradox, but when life gives you honeysuckles...

Today's Walk from My Garden to Susie's

2011-05-16T20:30:00.005-05:00

Gardeners are a funny lot. Real funny and real quirky. Passionate. Eccentric. Sometimes crazy. I am completely tickled to be one among such company. And I absolutely love hanging out in gardens- mine and those of fellow plant lovers. I have a small handful of people whose gardens really inspire me. Their gardens are like the most natural extention of themselves and just being there inspires soulful observation, meaningful conversation, and heightened sensitivity to the elemental beauty which is our world. Without a doubt, Susie M is one of my top most favorite and inspiring gardener friends, and I now have the incredible fortune of my new garden (and home) being a glorious 10 minute walk through field and forest to her garden. I jumped at the chance to walk down there today when she called me to invite me over for hot stew at lunch. This day being the cold, misty May day that it was, it was extra extra green and gorgeous and lush as a rainforest, so I grabbed my camara and made the commute to warmth, food and friends into a sight-seeing mosey of a thing. And oh- boy oh- boy oh- big big boy was that walk ever gorgeous. I was in my brand new garden when Susie called, and I just so happen to have photo-documentation of the walk, starting from my garden, down the fields and through the forest to her garden. I can't wait until my garden is years old and lived in like hers.
Pictures from my walk:

My bloody butcher corn patch- string tying technique suggested to me by some good ole- gardening neighbors for crow deterring action...:

My house in progress from the large garden (by the way, those little patches of tiny green in the garden are not weeds, but rather white clover I sowed between rows of crops):

Ancient Chinese ginko with modern Appalachian rain on it:

Verbascum blooms- I am utterly in love with these colors:

Cheapy $5 rose from Roses, but check out the sweetness of this yellow:

My little path down to the big spring- slippery elm on the left was given to me by my former neighbor:

Black raspberry from Ruth, another favorite gardener friend:

Path to Susie's through the Gebhart pasture:

Ruby, Susie's little orange friend, is very excited to walk down the path with me:

Final path through the woods to Susie's:

Choice images from Susie's many gardens...
City of York, a most elegant old rose:

Todd found these complimentary-colored bugs doin it on some elder:

Susie style:

Susie has a soft spot for succulents and cacti:

Susie's heavenly scented fuschia roses, which I now have some of and which we think were planted by Pat, a previous gardener at Susie and Todd's place:

Some allium:

Todd admiring a flame azalea (which was given by me and before that by Jean S, another gardener friend off Spillcorn):

Daily Grind

2011-05-15T07:04:00.003-05:00

The daily grind has got me thinking that I don't have much to write about. When I really get to thinking about it, I have to say to myself, 'self, that is hogwash.' The thing is, the ball is rolling. And if we are going to to go with that metaphor, I am hugging the ball and rolling with it, making it go clunk each time the ball (with me on it) makes another rotation. The daily grind. Get up early. Drink tea. Fix food for the day. Go somewhere- like work or the house or Jenna's. Focus on the work all day. Get tired. Try to come up with something hot and healthy to eat at about 8:30 when the light is too dim outside to keep going. Go upstairs and fall asleep trying to read, write on the blog or watch something on Hulu. Wake up at 5:30 and do it again. It's good. I'm honestly tired at the end of each day. I am maintaining my schedule, earning my pay, and getting things done. I spend nearly every day all day outside with good company. I have plenty, and I live in a beautiful place.

The thing is, a month can go by in the blink of an eye. The grind has got time flying and me scrambling to keep up with things that can't be rushed. Giving proper attention to the elemental beauty I live in. Allowing time for walking through my world to simply observe. Feeding the creative beast within which tends to get hungrier the busier I get with the daily grind. Stretching my muscles out and resting them. Stuff like this gets put off for another day, and then I realize a month has gone by and my head was up the ass of the ole Daily Grind the whole time.

I try to do things to keep it fresh: Honeysuckle breakfasts help put a sweet and wild twist on my daily grind. I've been infusing creamy milk with fresh honeysuckle blossoms and using it to flavor my french toast, morning tea, and making it into rich, floral smoothies straight-up with fresh strawberries. This weekend I made time to drive out to Leicester to retrieve a gorgeous rattlesnake skin from my friend JL who went backpacking down near Cashiers last week. As he walked along, he told himself (naturally), 'the next rattlesnake I see I'm eating.' Sure enough, 10 minutes later, there was one in his path. 'Damn,' he told himself,'now I have to eat it.' So he threw a large rock at the snake's head to stun it, then held its stunned head down with a stick while he promptly beheaded it with his pocket knife. Halfway through the process he questioned what the heck was he doing, but it was too late to go back. He put the beheaded snake in his backpack and hiked toward camp, while the thing continued to writhe and squiggle. It was still moving when he skinned it off for the pot. I love this story because I could easily see myself in that situation and it cracks me up.
I also participated in a hilarious round of cherades out in Grapevine, on a night where Susie demonstrated her goat riding abilities on a sweet horned one named Victor, and I boogied in a moon and firefly lit field to some really really loud Muddy Waters.
I also spent the day palling around with Jessie as her guest at a well known local festival. I did not wear a fanny pack. I did wear a straw hat and ride a shuttle bus into the festival...
Today I am back to the grind, although hanging out with Jenna on Sundays is never routine or monotonous, and is quite lovely.
Write me with ideas of how to keep keeping it fresh with a busy working and house building schedule.

On the day they threw Bin Laden's body to sea

2011-05-02T20:36:00.000-05:00

On the day they threw Bin Laden's body to sea:

a delightful and delicate breeze blew through the sunshine,
I burnt my back planting rows of Jarradales, Butternuts, Delicatas and Bloody
Butcher,
the green of May was markedly different from the green of April,
the electricity for my lovely house was meticulously mapped out by the electrician
and his curly haired gal,
I drank cold spring water all day long,
and carpenters hooted and hollered "America-woo!" while nailing the last bit of siding
to the east side of the house.

Big Times

2011-04-24T21:45:00.005-05:00

Big weekend.

Friday: Starling Gentry holler expedition club was formed and first expedition was executed. The Crib Club successfully navigated and ascended High Rock. More details to possibly come later.

Saturday: I had my Bottom plowed at the new homeplace. (This means I had a large piece of earth plowed with a tractor for agricultural purposes. It felt like a beginning of sorts.

Sunday: Godson's first Easter. We brought him in right with some Jesus Promise Seeds candy- "Spreading the Word one candy at a time." Do not worry- he didn't eat the candy- just chewed on the bag, thereby absorbing the scripture printed on each baggy of pastel colored candy corn...

Biophilia

2011-04-19T20:48:00.005-05:00

Some of you may know that I receive the Miriam-Webster Word of the Day every day on email. Depending on the word, some days I just delete it without reading the whole etomology or even definition, but usually my interest is peaked and I look at it. The other day the word of the day was "biophilia," meaning " a hypothetical human tendency to interact or be closely associated with other forms of life in nature."

HOW GREAT IS THAT?

I am all about that jazz. If fact, just yesterday I was sitting outside watching a family of elusive otters play in the creek, riding the rapids and swimming here and there, and all the while I was talking real pretty to them, telling them (quietly and from a distance) how precious and cute they are. The other evening I hiked up along one of the branches that feeds the French Broad just outside town, and I found myself talking nice and pretty to all manners of spring wildflowers I found growing along the banks and on the hills. I love me some other forms of life in nature, and I'll be damned if I'm not going to do my damnedest to have me some interactions with them, be it talking pretty to a flower, caring for a wounded bird, eating a wild mushroom or deer or worshipping the very river itself. How hypothetical is that, Miriam? Huh?

Speaking of interacting with other life forms, what is about 6 ft 2, Belgium and not afraid to wear black leather pants, a vest with no shirt on underneath, and chant in a deep voice to an audience of mostly women, "Cold hard pimpin in my Jonathan Youngs...Scuffed honky kickers- tight as my guns..."? Yeah, that's right. My life is awesome. God and Daniel Boone bless our human tendency to get into more of it than just our own skin and bones.

This world is too much with me. I love it.

Mi Casa

2011-04-12T19:28:00.002-05:00

Check her out, she's partially sided!

Book Review: The Tiger by John Vaillant

2011-04-07T09:21:00.001-05:00

The Tiger by John Vaillant tells the true story of a horrific, yet fascinting, series of events that took place in December of 2007 in the far far east of Russia in a province called Primorski Krai in the Bikin River Valley. In a nutshell, a wounded Amur tiger defies the ancient mutual respect between tigers and humans in the desolate taiga and preys on two men, who we get to know well in the story. After these two skilled hunters and woodsmen are eaten, a team of government wildlife officials and local residents venture into the -40 degree taiga to hunt and exterminate this dangerous mankiller. Once they succeed, they determine that the tiger, an old large male, had been shot numerous times in its life, proving that the violation of human/tiger respect was certainly not one-sided. The 300 page story is extremely thorough, not only in its detail of the actual events that occurred in the winter of 1997 in one of the coldest and most remote areas of the world, but in its character development of numerous men and tigers, the tragic and complex depressed social and political challenges of post-Perestoika Far East Russia, the natural history of tigers and the taiga, and the cultural and spiritual beliefs of the native people who inhabit the area in regards to the Czar of the Forest- the tiger. Difficult topics such as the tension between human desperation and wildlife conservation, the devastation effects of Marxism on the natural environments of Russia and China, and the relationships between evolution, self preservation, and conservation are woven into the story with thought-provocing grace. I particularly enjoy the way the book, which is clearly meticulously researched and very intelligently written, taps into the primal animal realities of our human nature. Here's a quote from the epilogue:

"..This is precisely where the tension lies: Panthera tigris and Homo sapiens are actually very much alike, and we are drawn to many of the same things, if for slightly different reasons. Both of us demand large territories; both of us have prodigious appetites for meat; both of us require control over our living space and are prepared to defend it, and both of us have an enormous sense of entitlement to the resources around us. If a tiger can poach on another's territory, it probably will, and, so, of course, will we. A key difference, however, is that tigers take only what they need."

When I first watched the movie Being John Malcovich, I had this exciting sense that the movie was made just for me; it brilliantly combined all the elements I like in a film in a quirky and surprising way and just tickled me pink. I had a similar sense about this book. The way it combines killer story telling with detailed descriptions of the complex setting and tolerable doses of philosophizing really worked for me. By the end of the story, I was almost tired of the tedious narration of the events of the tiger hunt, but that was wrapped up before it really got to me. All in all, I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is fired up and intrigued by the wild and by the broad and disturbing spectrum of human nature.

On Wind and Wood

2011-04-05T11:54:00.005-05:00

Grab a hold of your hats, ladies and gentlemen. And while you're at it, you might want to tie some sand bags to your ankles. It's windy season. The past three days have presented some of the most dynamic weather that I can remember. Saturday was, as you fellow WNC residents know, windy as all get out. Sunday was hot and sunny. Monday started out as hot and sunny and by nightfall severe storms had blown in, bringing drastic temperature drops, driving rain, scary wind and intense lightening. This continued all night. Today is fluctuating between sun and things like rain and hail, and all the while the wind blows fiercely, blowing out the last dregs of winter and reminding us that we are but mere humans in this complex assortment of earthlings, subject to the whims of the Zephyr and other elemental powers. Last night, on my way home from my Nauni's, I saw a dead standing locust begin its falling descent from the hill by the road into my path of travel. I slammed the breaks, missing being smashed by this heavy beauty. Spooked the deez nuts out of me, and after enough cars had been stopped by the tree lying across the road, five other ladies and I hoisted it out of the way in the lightening and driving rain and wind so strong it seemed af it would blow the car door off when I opened it. (One lady in flip flops exclaimed, "This is awful- all uf women out here doing this work!") I got drenched and today am fighting something that resembles a cough (aka, classic case of what the Chinese would call a Wind Invasion).

Moving on from weather talk, I began the sizable task of treating my siding wood this past weekend. In spite of the dreadful wind, it delighted me to no end to get my hands into that gorgeous pile, pulling the boards out one by one and giving each one care. I selected a product called Eco Wood Treatment (formerly Lifetime Wood Treatment) to use instead of stain, paint or sealer. It is a mineral concoction that some hippies assemble in Canada, "secret recipe" kind of thing, and you mix it with water and apply to the wood. It ages and "patinas" the wood, and supposedly helps preserve it for a long time. Being non-toxic and neither a stain nor a sealer, the wood can breathe and do its thing, which I like. Turns out I have a special sentiment about this wood that we cut, milled and stacked right here, and which is now going to encase my house, and it feels good to treat it with something mild. The treatment process has been tedious and a bit time consuming, utilizing a combination of spraying with a garden pump sprayer and rubbing the stuff in with rags. The solution smells metallic, but hasn't irritated my skin, and it immediately changes the color of the wood. And it will continue to change over time, with different colors of the wood aging to different "patina-ed" hues. Some friends used it on their siding, and 3 years later it looks gorgeous. Hope I'm happy with it years down the line...

Super helpers Ren and Zoe helped on Saturday and Sunday, respectively, and it was great to have the help and be able to laugh and chit chat with friends while doing such meaningful work. We had multiple visitors throughout the weekend, including Moonie and her 2 horses, Marlene and Winter.

Even though I am feeling puny today with my annoying Wind Invasion, the weekend was pretty exciting, and my house is getting sided! Hee haw!

Carl Rice makes me want to blog

2011-03-30T10:24:00.005-05:00

I'm sure he hears that all the time. Sike. The man has neither a cell phone, nor an answering machine, nor a listed phone number. If you need to talk to him, you either need to catch him first thing in the morning or last thing in the evening, or you need to go find him, which is the best option. He tells a hilarious story about a lady who came to find him once when he was running his sawmill, as he frequently does, up on Spring Creek. The lady needed some logs milled, and she asked Carl for a business card. "Ain't got business cards," he told the her. She decided that was OK- she would just look up his number in the phone book. "I ain't listed in the phone book," he replied. The lady got all aggrevated and bothered by this. "How am I supposed to get in touch with you?" she demanded, to which Carl informed her that she had already managed to find him and was indeed standing there talking to him right there. The lady didn't like something about that and stormed off in a huff, never to return again. The man is, respectfully, old fashioned and probably not worrying himself with the lastest communication technologies, like blogging. And he tells the story about the lady with a special twinkle in his eye.

Lady luck smiled upon me yesterday evening when I arrived from Asheville hauling a trailer load of large black locust logs. Let me mention that I have never hauled a trailer load of anything before, let alone in a trailer loaned to me by a man I only met twice. But, thanks to the generosity of "BL" (one of our favorite landscaping clients) and Lee's Trees, I was hooked up with some awesome logs and a trailer to haul them on after Lee and his crew took down "BL's" tree. Lee's guys cut it and loaded it all up for me with their machine and Lee himself helped me hitch the trailer onto the rusty ball of Dad's truck*, and I was off (crossing my fingers and driving very slowly). (*There was some question for a few minutes as to whether the size of the ball matched the size of the hitch. A climber named Rick said to Lee at one point, "Her ball's too big!". Lee paused a moment, looking through his reflective sunglasses, and replied, "Sounds like a personal problem.")

Lady Luck escorted me to Sapling Mountain, where I was fortunate to find Carl and JD, who were standing by the barn like angels in the evening sun. I exhaled my tension from the drive, and settled into feeling comfortable and lucky and relieved. Carl and JD gave me an appropriate amount of teasing, whilst aptly unloading the logs and staging them for Carl to mill next week. I am thinking of 6x6s for deck posts, or something along those lines.

The afternoon sun graced the golden brown cows, which Carl said were "Limosines," as well as the hay barn and the church.

Later I went up to my place to unload the rest of the smaller locust poles, and I discovered a spider on the forehead of the blessed virgin. Wowzers!

Braillerman

2011-03-21T20:14:00.005-05:00

Spring has entered as a lion this year (maybe like that yellow mountain lion my neighbor saw walking through his yard a month ago). For me it started with the sudden and unexpected passing of my dear friend David "Stewball" Ackley, who I considered like a brother and who is missed terribly. My mom and I travelled to Des Moines, Iowa the last week of February for the memorial, leaving behind early spring-like weather here in NC to journey into the wrath of Midwestern late winter. We travelled through driving, blinding rain, snow and icy roads, wind, lightening, more rain, and the densest fog I have ever experienced in our 3 1/2 day trip to and from Iowa.

The reason for the expedition was very sad and tragic, but there was a bright moment in the whole thing, which was a firsthand visit and private tour of the workshop of the nation's best Braille writer repairman, who happens to be the father of my friend who passed.

Braillerman (aka Alan Ackley) is a special someone who knows his stuff. You can read all about him and his story (which I highly recommend that you do) by clicking the link attached to his name. Basically, in a nutshell, he began his career in 1974 in the accounting department for the Iowa Commission for the Blind. Part of his training was to learn Braille and to learn how to use Braillers. (Another part of his training was to become "blinded" with a blindfold and go through the day that way for several weeks- he even walked to work with his blindfold on!) He immediately took an interest in the mechanics of the Brailler, and took his loaner Brailler apart one night. The next day he returned it, but he had put it back together a little wonky, and the librarian noticed (and became a little aggrevated.) However, he was given that Brailler to learn on, and allowed another to do his assignments on, and thus began the lifelong career of Braillerman! Alan has been repairing Perkins Braillers from his home for over 35 years now, and he is the best there is.

The thing that touched me the most about Alan's (Braillerman's) operation was the passion and integrity he brings to his work. He has been servicing Braillers from all over the country and beyond for years and years, and I can tell he treats each one with equal care and respect. He is kind and generous with his clients and simply loves what he does. It is so very specialized almost seems random for a man who is neither blind nor has any blind family members, but knowing Alan, I know that he is one of the fortunate humans among us who has found his perfect niche in life. Being the nation's best Braillerman is a job that seems custom-designed for Alan, and he does it oh-so-well.

It is my wish for myself and for all those I love that we may be lucky enough in our lifetimes to find what it was that we were made to do. When I meet someone who is doing something perfectly fit for him or her, it gets me really pumped up and inspired.

Thanks many times over to Alan for opening his home and AWESOME Braillerman shop to me!

You'd think it would be simple

2011-03-11T06:23:00.005-05:00

For the sake of partnering natural light maximization with energy efficiency, I spent an arm and a leg on new windows for the house. For that reason, I find myself pig-headedly determined to preserve my so-called other arm and other leg by acquiring doors for the house at a discounted price. For the past two rain days, I have hit up salvage and overstock building materials places such as the Habitat thrift store, Blue Ridge Salvage (on Johnston in Asheville), and Home Discount Warehouse (discount, my ass...) Yesterday I fueled up the Lil' Nugget and drove her on over to Greenville, TN to pay a visit to locally renouned "Bargain Salvage."

I'll stop the story here for a little commentary. You'd think it would be simple. Just drive over to Greenville, enjoying the scenery along the way, march into the warehouse, look at the doors, see if any of them fit the description of what you are looking for, and buy them or not...

Well, the drive over was pretty simple. I enjoyed the scenery, cruising alongside the rushing and muddy Little Laurel River on 208. I saw an otter standing on a tiny section of rock sticking out of the rushing river. It braced itself with its head down and then dove into the rapid. Bottom fields lay dormant along the road, but not for long as the weeping willows have already leafed out and everything else is budding strong. I stopped and marvelled at raging chocolatey water rushing over a dam as I entered Greenville; mist hovered over the powerful whirlpool below, and the whole thing was scary and lovely. I detoured through downtown Greenville, enjoying the rain and the weird little aspects of the small east Tennessee city.

I found my way to Bargain Salvage and purused the ample door selection, taking note of the sizes and whether they were left or right handed. I realized I didn't quite have quite the mental grasp I wished I did of what right or left handed doors meant, so I had to stand there for a long time walking and talking myself through the mechanics of it all, while trying to visualize the house and its doorways. I mean, I did that for kind of a long time. I got myself good and hungry and anxious and all turned around. I mean, after all, what do I know about doors and which ones to buy? Somehow, the whole thing didn't seem very simple at all anymore. I decided to go sit in the truck and eat my bag lunch and study on the whole thing for a while.

I sat in the truck for a good long while, ate the food and thought on the doors. Even after infusing my blood with good sugars from my cold spaghetti, and making a couple of cell phone calls to consult with trusted North Carolinians, I still didn't know which way was up when it came to those darned doors. It's funny, both "ha ha" and "peculiar," how a little hunger coupled with some old fashioned decision making can turn a simple situation into something downright complicated and confusing. All kinds of questions swirled themselves into tense, stressful knots in my head, causing a head ache and a bad mood to ensue. I sat in the car asking god: What is a crappy door? What is a good door? What is a steel door? What is in there? Will the window in that door suck? Where was the door made? Can you paint a door? Does a painted door look stupid? Can the door be trusted? Will the windows in the doors break on the way home if I buy them? Will the doors be open a lot in the summer? Where will the people be sitting when the doors are opened? Who will the people be?

This is the point where it is wise to step away. Just pack up the spaghetti stained tupperware and call it a day. When the questions start swirling around like that, and a lot of them are irrelevant to the situation, and the others can't be answered on site, it is best to leave it alone. Luckily, the Bargain Salvage employee man, although he couldn't give me a brand name or a source of the doors in question ("I don't know ma'am- our framer guy just gits 'em and frames 'em up for us"), allowed me to place a hold on the items for a few days. That way, if I so choose, I can return soon, with a clear mind and padded blankets, to purchase the steel doors of mysterious origin, which CAN be painted and WILL NOT look stupid.

My neighbor Greg, who recently moved into the house he has been building for years, is fond of informing me of some average number number of decisions a person makes when building a house. It is in the tens of thousands. God help me Daniel Boone, I'm chipping away at them one by excrutiating one.

Because you asked so nicely

2011-03-09T10:22:00.004-05:00

I started this blog to practice using my words, not my camera, but here I go today, relying on the beast which is digital technology to relay to you, my fine readers, the latest on the home front. The windows are in, and the upstairs lofty bedroom/office/awesome hang out room kicks arse! I will write again. I repeat, I will write again. But I leave you, for now, four pictures:

Jack, the Baron, and some liquid gold

2011-03-03T06:16:00.002-05:00

You know, I'm partial to a little hot toddy anyways this time of year, but yesterday, when one of our landscaping clients gave us some of the honey from their well loved and tended bees, I couldn't help make an evening of it. I was tickled pink to be able to formulate a special tonic from the pre-digested and potentized amber gold, the product of the combined labors of the honeybees and their human accomplices, the flowers, the Dirty Hoe, and Mother Nature herself. It was very gratifying to eat the honey from the flowers that we planted and tend. So, while I was at it, I went whole hog- cooked me up a 4 cheeser from the Red Baron, which I know isn't the finest quality frozen pizza, but I have what you might call a "thing" for them. My definition of a tonic is broad- something that promotes health of body and spirit. Sometimes just settling in and eating dinner the easy way (aka a gross but enjoyable frozen pizza) is more relaxing and restful and just what Doctor D ordered. And topping it off with a local honey toddy with a squirt of lemon and 2 jiggers of Jack- now that's what I was talking about last night. Bona fide tonified.

Pretty Exciting

2011-03-01T21:18:00.005-05:00

I'm too tired to write, although I have plenty to say. For now, I will leave you with a picture of the house at it's beginning of spring stage.

Also, I never tire of gazing upon this fine lumber that Carl cut for me...

Before too long this siding will go up on the house. Imagine that!

Tea Party

2011-02-20T07:43:00.006-05:00

Despite what some of our fellow humans may have done to tarnish the name (bless their hearts), there are some of us out here still celebrating the sacrement which is good old fashioned tea time. Speaking of tarnish, there was none of that yesterday at the lovely, quaint afternoon tea at Rachel's. She had perfectly polished and cleaned all the family silver and the crystal so that it quite delightfully caught the angled late winter sun through the southern window.

Rachel, ever thoughtful and right on time, posed the idea to a few of us gardeners and self-proclaimed lovers of old-fashioned beauty that we gather and share a moment in honor of "the last hush of winter", before we all become beside ourselves with our gardens and lives in the hustle-bustle of spring.
The timing of such a moment couldn't have been better, as this weekend has welcomed so many harbingers of spring- the old trusty pair of wood ducks visited Susie and Todd's pond for a few hours Friday morning on their way to their spring breeding grounds, the first peepers (spring frogs) were heard in the holler Friday night, comfortable temperatures have the snow melted even in the dark cold mountain coves, mineral rich nettles are poking their tender little heads up through the dark soil, maples are blooming, and the late February air smells fresh and of spring.

The tea was simple and wonderful. Rachel brewed an English breakfast, for those of us who like the black, and a rooibos chai (no caffeine). Sugar, honey and cream were available in beautiful silver, amidst the menagerie of her grandmother's colorful variety of china tea cups and saucers. It was such a stunning spread. She had also dipped dried bananas, mangos, pineapples and ginger in dark chocolate and made a plate of gluten free cheese and crackers. Sweet and salty popcorn, drizzled in dark chocolate, was also a favorite.

The afternoon was sweet, sitting in Rachel's living room, sipping tea and visiting with friends. A simple yet very important ritual in this day and age of so much being virtual and high speed. Sipping tea and chatting face to face in real time- no phones, no computers, no political agendas- is something we as a species need to remember how to do. Seriously. And while we're at it, why not make it gorgeous?

At the end of the tea, a small few of us lingered around the table and swapped seeds for this year's flower gardening. This is one of my favorite all time activities ever. Too bad I forgot my seeds to give away. Rachel and Laura graciously shared with me anyways.

Here's to the end of winter and to lovely tea-time moments!

Stairway to Heaven

2011-02-15T21:37:00.006-05:00

I grew up listening to John Boy and Billy in Charlotte, back before they were all national and shit. They are still ruling the cheesy classic rock radio scene, and spinning two-fer Tuesday tunes like never before (or like always before, as it were...) Imagine my delight when I was able to spend the spring-like day up at my house that is rising from the hillside, jamming to two-fers from Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, Jon Bon Jovi, Jimmi Hendrix, Queen, the Eagles, you name it. I danced on the the second floor, which is sturdy and prepared to receive walls later this week, and I grooved out on the new stairs, which rock harder than John Boy and Billy ever will (sorry, JB and B...) Todd, Marc and Greg were like studs from the Galaxy of Stud, building and figuring and such. I wore a tiger doo-rag, backward and Tupac style, in honor of the lovely day. This special doo-rag was a valentine's gift from the one and only Meg (Flemming) Renwick of the ATX.

Marc and his "whacker"

The "commanding view of the garden" (-M.A.) from the front wall of the bedroom

The House Rises from the Hillside

2011-02-14T20:35:00.006-05:00

The house rises from the hillside, practically as we speak. Tomorrow I will be helping get lumber from the ground up to the the second floor so the fellers can put a floor on and start to get going on framing up there. It is pretty f-ing cool to witness the transformation of my pencil drawings on graph paper to a building that is actually 3 dimensional, and solid, and that will house me and my loved ones.

Jenna sits in front of the bathroom

My future workshop, framed

The living room area

Kitchen

View from kitchen sink

View from above kitchen stove and counter top

Looking out the windows from the living room area to mountains to the north

Jenna and I are too cool for skool.

Brain Tanning Under the Sun

2011-02-13T21:12:00.006-05:00

I didn't smell the brain scent that had impregnated my skin (and hair) until tonight when the hot shower released the stench and washed it down the drain, along with the sandalwood soap and the residual wood ash from the fire and a little sand from the creek bank. I was too jazzed up and working too hard to notice. In case you are wondering, I brain tanned* a deer hide today by a fire on the banks of Spring Creek. I worked alongside a motley posse of friends, stretching and working the hide with hands, stones, and a pumice stone as it transformed from a wet, slimy brainy mass of skin, to a soft, white, piece of leather. The work on one of these projects is unthinkably sizable, but somehow it keeps me coming back again. Tonight my knuckles are raw, my muscles are sore, and I still smell faintly of wet hide and brains, but that's the price to pay for attempting to learn a pre-industrial revolution skill in this modern world. The hide is dry, not as soft as I would like it, and I'm sure I will be sore in the morning, but I have decided, after some Rebel Yell whiskey and hot carrot soup, that it was worth it. I had a blast with Rachel, Jason, Jeff and Josh (with Mom and Jenna as the on-lookers), and I got to spend the day outside by the creek, laughing and working on something I consider meaningful. I am going to take the partially soft/ partially stiff hide down to some local primitive tanning experts and see where they would suggest to go from here. Enjoy pictures from the process:

Stretching the hide

Wringing the hide

Lots of group stretching of the hide (and laughing) occurred

Sometimes you got to bleed into it a little, for good measure...

Git it, Jeff!

Rub the pumice on it, JL!

Alternate pulling of the hide on a nylon dog leash looped around a T-post for abrasion purposes

* Brain tanning a deerhide is a primitive technique of using the brains of the animal to condition and soften the hide, in combination with a sequence of other steps, to yield a soft, suede-like buckskin leather, suitable for clothing, bags, shoes, or other crafty and useful items.

mecca

2011-02-06T07:30:00.003-05:00

The glorious, post groundhog's day sun was fixing to set over back of a very special mountain, one whose skirts have been inhabited by mountain folk for centuries and whose coves are visited by bear hunters, but who still harbors bits of precious wildness. The sun cascaded fingers of light over this sweet valley of hot springs and over the constant yet ever changing river, and the trees in the valley complimented the sun's effort with a perfect paradox of long, fingery shadows which graced the shining river. The mountain sat, as it always does, offering itself as a canvas for displays of both light and shadow in the sinking sun. River valley mountain. A perfect balance.

3 Walls

2011-02-04T20:46:00.007-05:00

Warning: this post contains mostly unadulterated stream of consciousness writing...

If I had 3 extra of me, I would delegate the super-entities as follows: Extra Dana #1 would assist the regular Dana, doing all the things I don't have time to do, like work full time out at this awesome place where there are 3 new walls, and do extra-curricular activites like direct and produce the Cold Hard Pimpin in my Jonathan Youngs video, engage in subversive and awesome art collaborations with Kathryn Temple, and study botany. Extra Dana #2 would attain a specialized and academic career, likely one of a medical doctor. Extra Dana #3 would actually do all the risky and out of the box things the regular Dana thinks about, but chooses not to do. (Examples will not be provided.)

In essence, what I am getting at here is simply marvelling at the plethora of possibilities one can perceive in one's life. And here I am with 3 kick ass walls sitting on a foundation on the side of a lovely and gentle hill above a clear and healthy spring. This house will house all the selves I am and the selves I am not, and the selves I may become. Because here we all are.

House from uphill facing mountains to the distance in the north

House from uphill future big garden to the southwest

House from the back of the future garden

Last night I woke up several times doing math equations in my head. I took a number, say 5, and squared it. 5 squared is 25. Then I went one number up from 5 and multiplied it by one number down from 5. This equals 24. Strange, a difference of 1. I did this with all sorts of numbers, and the difference was always 1. (ex, 8 squared is 64, and 7 times 9 is 63- a difference of 1). When I woke up this morning, I got out the calculator and did an experiment. I tried starting at a number, let's go back to 5. First I squared it, getting 25. I went one up and one down from 5 (4 and 6) and multiplied those, getting 24 (a difference of 1 from my starting place squared). Then I went two up and two down from 5 (3 and 7) and multiplied those getting 21, which was a difference of 4 from the starting place squared. Then I went three up and three down from 5 (2 and 8) and multiplied them, getting 16, which was a difference of 9 from the starting place squared. Then I went four up and four down from 5 (1 and 9) and multiplied them, getting 9, which is a difference of 16 from the starting place. I learned that there is this pattern: however many I go up and down from the original number I am making the square of, the number those multiply to will produce a relative exponential difference from the square of the original starting number.

I tried transferring this pattern to my ponderings of self. Perhaps from the starting place of self, the further out from original self that one expands, the greater the return. Does this make any sense? It might not.

What I really wanted to do on this post was show the 3 walls. It just led me to think about what is a house and who will I be in this one.

House from below the spring (flowing out of that pipe)

Birthday Big Up!

2011-02-03T07:23:00.006-05:00

Happy first birthday, Funky Mr. Forest of the Hill People and Sweet Lily of the Valley! You're the best! Speaking of the best, when you are old enough to appreciate it, we will watch this together...YOU'RE THE BEST

Anyways, that sort of awesomeness will come in time. For now, I am marvelling at how this first year of your lives has flown by. Not too long ago you were teeny tiny fragile little precious bundles. Check out your funny daddy holding you both just a couple days after you were born.

You were so tiny! Your sweet little skin was almost transparent, and you both looked like sweet little baby animals.

Now you are eating, standing, talking, moving all around. Your mom tells me that Lily, you are all the time yelling what sounds like "Dang!" and Forest, you say, "Yeah yeah yeah." I sure wish our families lived closer to each other because I would like to have you both in my day to day life. Perhaps that will happen in the future, but for now, I relish in my short visits with you and from reports from your mom and dad and pictures I get to see of you.

I love you both so much, and I am so happy that you are happy and healthy. May you have many many more birthdays and joyful times in between.

Love, your Auntie D

Watch me get dirty

2011-01-30T22:28:00.006-05:00

Welcome Ms Jessie L to the House of Dana! This past year I have been so lucky to have received the most generous help and assistance from a plethora of family and friend-folk as I have started preparing this place to house myself and my quirky lil' life. Each person who comes to help brings different skills, personalities, styles of work and fun and leaves me with a new story to tell. I have such a blast having people over and working with them and I am very grateful for it all.

This past weekend my ole buddy Jessie asked me if I wanted to hang out. Well, I was planning a big day of productivity for myself out at the land, since it was the first sunny nice spell in soooo long, so I left Jessie a message saying if she felt like watching me get dirty, she should come on out. She in turn left me a giggly message saying that sounded good. I couldn't tell if she was serious or not, so I was delighted when she did indeed come on over Saturday afternoon. Even more delighted I was to learn that she not only wanted to witness me get dirty, but she wanted to help with a project. Well, hee haw. There was some serious measuring to be done.

For the past year I have wanted to measure the following: the specific drop in elevation from the spring to the potential spot that a ram pump will go, the specific rise in elevation from the potential site of the pump to the ridge above the house where a water storage tank will sit, and the specific drop in elevation from the storage tank to the house. I am talking about vertical elevation measurements, and I do not have a gps system, so I have often thought about what would be the simplest way to take these measurements. About a month or 2 ago I journeyed down to the old county tax office and got a topographic map of the property that contains contour lines every 10 feet, so I was able to infer approximate elevations of the various points, but I wanted more specific measurements to plug into a formula (along with gallons per minute of spring water flow) to figure the practicality and appropriate size of a (non-electric) ram pump.

As it turned out, it was a good thing I waited so long to go ahead and take these measurements because Jessie was the perfect person to complete this project with. You see, we have a habit of laughing a lot. About most things. And it turns out that measuring vertical elevation differences was no exception. Our method was simple: I measured and marked one foot increments on a 10 foot long straight pole. She held the pole at the starting elevation and I went uphill a ways to a point on the ground and shot a red laser light from a laser level loaned to me by this friend. I shot the laser onto the measuring pole and recorded the vertical rise in feet from her point to my point on a piece of paper. Then she would move up to my point and I would go uphill a ways, and we would repeat the process. We did this all the way up to ridge, Jessie with a beer in one hand and the pole in the other. Me every time struggling to see the red laser light among the bright glare of afternoon sun reflecting off of snow. We giggled our way up the mountain, and had a real hoot when Jessie made the analogy that helping me with this task was like shopping with her mother. You walk a few feet and then stand there for a while, then walk a few more feet then stand there for a while while the other person does something.

I was quite satisfied (and a bit dirty) by the time we finalized the measurements. (For nerds who are interested, it is a 20 foot drop from the spring to the pump site, a 95 foot rise from the pump site to the most likely cistern site, and then a 45 foot drop from the cistern to the house. There is potential to go a bit higher if need be for better water pressure in the house.) The temperature started cooling as the day came to a close, and Jessie decided to build a fire. Most wood was still wet from the snow, so it started off as an itty bitty fire, and it slowly grew to a bitchin warm campfire that lasted well into the night. Good ole SM walked up, and the three of us sat around that fire for hours, shooting the shit, drinking a little sippy, and eating some little snackies. We told stories and reminisced, and I laughed so hard my smile muscles that extend way up into my scalp were aching. The late night walk down and back up the half mile or so driveway (which is still solid ice) turned out to be the real icing on the funny cake, as SM slipped into a frozen puddle and busted it with her hip and the side of her person (just as Jessie was commenting that it wasn't really all that slick), while Jessie caught all manners of things that were about to fly out of her basket backback, and the laser light reflecting off the snow and ice somehow cracked our shit right up over and over. At one point, Jessie gave me a hand to step across a big slick patch of ice, and in the process some sunglasses that I had forgotten about slipped off the top of my head, and a lens popped out and slid down the mountain on the ice. Imagine three old buddies in the dark coming down a mountain on solid ice just laughing and laughing and laughing. That was us.
Welcome to the project Jessie!

Getting Our Bearings

2011-01-21T21:40:00.005-05:00

Looking toward Hot Springs with Bluff Mountain in the way distance (left side of photo)

In the pines, in the pines

June with long human shadows

A future destination- that mountain above the double wide

I am delighted to have found a partner in foot exploration. Those who know me personally will probably be quick to agree that I am terrible with directions. When I got my license at age 16, the first place I wanted to drive by myself was to my best friend's house. I had been going there since first grade. I got in the car to leave, but then I had to go back into the house and ask my parents for directions on how to get there. They thought I was kidding. I was not kidding. Even now at my job working landscaping, it is not uncommon for me to need to ask directions to a client's house that I have been to many times. I am not dumb or really all that slow-witted. It is something about not being able to easily recall spacial relationships of different things- rooms in a house, roads, landmarks. I can remember them, but the way they are oriented in relation to each other gets all muddled up in my brain. Always has been that way. Living in these here mountains can get really confusing, even for the most directionally apt person. You walk around a ridge and down a holler, and you get all turned around as to which way is which. It really helps me understand where I am and where other things are if I can walk the terrain and go to various view points, especially in the winter, and see where everything is.

Being on foot and walking the land is the crucial factor here. I love travelling and exploring places on foot. Always have. Usually it has been a solo endeavor, but the times I have found a suitable foot travel companion, it is very fun and exciting- pretty much one of my top favorite ways to spend time with someone.
I am most happy to have discovered my dear friend and neighbor Moonie to be a most compatible walking companion. She shares the love of getting one's bearings by walking all around, and she has lots of places that she would love to walk to- just because. I am all about it. Today, being the clear, cold and sunny winter day that it was, was a perfect time to set out with a few provisions and see where we could go in an afternoon.
Our loosely discussed mission was to walk to the old childhood homeplace of Shorty, the queen of the hollerhood, who has passed on, but whose legacy is very much alive and kicking. I was wandering around a couple years ago and came upon the sweetest, most lovely, quiet, uninhabited meadowy farmstead, that I later found out was Shorty's childhood homeplace. I couldn't exactly remember how I got there, but we figured we'd try. We had a limited amount of time, because Moonie had dinner plans, and we didn't find it today, but the walk was most magnificent nontheless. Stunning views, dark cold piney hollers, old lonesome homeplaces tucked way back where the sun don't shine, brilliant sun glowing off of a fresh layer of snow, a late afternoon sun dog. And now we have an excuse to get together again real soon to try again. I am hoping that these walking adventures become a somewhat regular occurence.

Adventures in Technical Difficulties

2011-01-17T09:44:00.005-05:00

I started my essay about technology choices the other day on a common word processing program that I had on the laptop. I wrote about 2 pages of an introduction, and then I decided to do a google search to find a transcription of a report I heard on NPR last year about techonology and human attention span. Somewhere in the process of doing the google search, the computer acquired a virus and ceased to function properly. Oh well.

Since the road was too icy for me to even back out of the driveway, and my little computer project was on hold (not that I can't write on paper or anything, but my draft was on the messed up computer), I walked down to the local library in an attempt to research a little something about the Industrial Revolution and the Luddite movement. Nothing. Oh well.

Well, the day was sunny and the snow was gorgeous with light cast upon it, so I loaded my little day pack and set off along the railroad tracks by the river and headed downstream. My mission was to conduct an old fashioned visit to my friend Ruth at her farm- in person and on foot. It was a lovely walk, and I took pictures to prove it. Ruth and I visited with hot chocolate for an hour or so, and then it was time for me to head back so I could make it back to town by dark.

The next day was sunny again, and I dared to fire up the ole gal (pickup truck) and venture out for some errands. I backed out of the driveway onto the road and promptly slid on what was probably the only remaining patch of road ice left in town. I slid off to the side so that I needed to call 2 large men to come push me onto the dry road. Oh well.

First stop was to take the computer to the repairman in Marshall. He wasn't in so I trustingly left the computer with the gal behind the bar who said she would pass it to him when he got in. Oh well.

I did some errands in Asheville for the afternoon, and the last stop was Beaverdam Ingles to pick up some stuff for my mom. I got out of the store at dusk and was stepping into my truck to leave, when the guy parked next to me informed me I had a flat tire. "You're not going to want to drive on that," he informed me before he drove away. Oh well. It was my first flat tire, and frankly, while I was familiar with the concept of how to remove the tire and jack the vehicle up and change it and all that, I had no first hand experience with the tools and the process. So after a while of trying to help myself and failing (while all manners of people who probably call themselves men passed me by and stared) I called for some back up. Michael T came and helped me, and then sweet neighbor friends from Shelton Laurel Leonard and Deanna showed up out of nowhere and jumped in. The tire was frozen/ rusted on and very difficult to get off, but with the dream team it was accomplished, and I was on my way.

The next day was warmish and I drove out to the holler in the afternoon for a visit to the land and home site. The driveway was still covered in snow, so I parked up the road at the base of the church driveway and walked in. It was a most lovely walk-fresh mild air and snow still all around, wonderful neighbor friends out and about, I could almost believe that winter would end someday. I walked up to the house site and enjoyed a drink of cool spring water, adjusted the metal over a couple of the stacks of lumber and headed down just before dusk. When I arrived at my truck to leave, I realized my keys had fallen out of my pocket somewhere along the way into the snow. I retraced my steps, searching every little possible pocket in the snow along my path until dark, and I didn't find my keys. My truck was conspicuously situated so that all the Sunday morning church goers would have to weasel around it to get up to church. I left a note on the window stating. CAR KEYS LOST IN SNOW. "I AM VERY SORRY!" followed by my name, phone number and location. Oh well.

Today I will continue searching for my spare key, walk and look again for my lost key in the snow, check on the status of the infected computer, and possiblly take the flat tire to get repaired. It's just an adventure in a few technical difficulties. Oh well.

Call for Input

2011-01-11T20:15:00.002-05:00

I am thinking of doing an essay/article about technology choices. This is something that I think about everyday, and I think would be a meaningful and challenging thing to write about. I started with the philosophical question to myself: Is it worth it to be selective about what technologies I choose to use in my life? My answer to this is yes. I think how I spend my time and mental energy will dictate how I am as a person, and that is important to me. Technologies, to the best of my understanding, are developed to assist us in getting things done. How I choose to get various things done will determine what skills I do and do not develop, how my brain will work, how much real contact I have with others and how much real contact I have with the world around me. How I choose to get things done will determine what skill sets I build and what I am prepared for.

I am thinking of structuring my essay/article with a philosophical introduction (a more eloquent and extended version of what I just said) and then break it down to a limited selection of hot, modern technologies and my thoughts on those- and why I choose or do not choose to use them in my daily life.

I would love any thoughts about this from you, dear readers. If you have any to share with me for my preparation of this supposed "essay/article, " feel free to contact me via the following technologies: Comment section on this blog, telephone, or person to person visit (spontaneous or arranged by telephone).

Upon further observation

2011-01-08T21:33:00.006-05:00

Upon further observation, there are many, many robins foraging in the Hot Springs vicinity. This may not seem like a mentionable observation from my life in Western North Carolina, but let me tell you, people are talking about it. No one I have talked to remembers seeing this many in the winter before. Granted, I am snowed in, so I am not talking with hoards of people these days, but several have spoken of the phenomenon. The repetitive conversations and observations of the grand quantities of these fine feathered friends prompted me to do a little "googling" of the matter. Apparently, the vast majority of robins migrate south for the winter, but some roosts are inclined to stick it out where they are at and chance finding enough winter berries (their food of choice when the ground is too cold to hunt earthworms). These flocks remain in the vicinity of their breeding grounds, but do a bit of moving around in order to procure the ample fruit snacks they need in order to meet their heavy dietary needs. Apparently, more and more groups of robins are trying to overwinter in their breeding grounds due to the increasing amounts of invasive honeysuckle vines. The honeysuckle berries seem enticing, but apparently they aren't as nutritious as native berries (according to an article I read that I can't figure out how to post a link to here...)
To the best of my observations, the robins around here are focusing on the abundant hackberries we have in this area. There were flocks of them on the road above the French Broad this afternoon as I walked to my grandmother's to cut her hair (and get out of the house!) The river was gorgeous as usual and the lovely grey-green color that it assumes when the water is butt cold. I imagined being in that water, and I shivered to myself. I love that river.
Back to robins for a little minute, did you know that when robins do migrate, they fly at 37 degree (F) isotherms? To the best of my understanding, this means they will ride a weather front, staying in the 37 degrees zone.

Epiphany

2011-01-07T10:26:00.003-05:00

Epiphany: 1.an appearance or manifestation, esp. of a deity, 2.(cap.) a Christian festival, observed on Jan. 6, commemorating the manifestation of Christ to the gentiles in the persons of the Magi; Twelfth Day. 3.a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or the essential meaning of something, often initiated by some simple, commonplace occurence. 4. a literary work or section of work presenting such a moment of revelation or insight. (Random House Webster's College Dictionary; 1991; Random House)

While no deity or Christ appeared to me yesterday, and neither am I a Magi or wise man, nor is this blog anything remotely resembling a literary ephiphany, I was moved yesterday on highway 25/70 by the simple, commonplace occurence of mid-winter morning sunlight softly but boldly sliding in sideways through low, thick snow clouds over the mountains. Baby blues and the faintest pink highlighted the bright white sky and ground. The deep wintry green of the mountainside conifers offered pleasing depth to what very well might be the closest I come to an epiphany this winter.

The everyday happenings of life on this planet seem to offer endless commonplace revelatory moments of intense beauty and realness. Life itself, with the inevitability of its Death (and rebirth)- the whole package deal- is the closest thing to a deity I can come up with this Epiphany.

On a related tangent: The recent appearance of a large flock of highly active and busy robins in the neighborhood has myself and several neighbors confounded and most interested. I suppose they are a nearby resident roost which is searching for winter berries and food to snack on. Their fluttery and chatty kinetic presence seems odd against the backdrop of a very still and quiet snowy terrain.

Road Trip Booty

2011-01-03T22:08:00.007-05:00

Pregnant April wearing Aries vanity tee shirt while crafting a cheese omlet

Acquired booty from the road trip. Aww yeah...

Detail of booty part 1: Edible blue rose cake decor

Detail of booty part 2: Sir "I" and his boyz

Detail of booty part 3: lovely basket from April with unicorn stationary also from April

I took myself on a little road trip this New Years up to West by god Virginia, or Wild Wonderful West Virginia as some people call it. First stop was the home of dear friends April, Mike and Nathaniel Vincent, who relocated from Asheville this past spring. I was treated to some good solid relaxing hospitality which included my own room which had been meticulously rid of any cat body residue (hair, dander, etc.) for my breathing comfort, homecooked meals (including from scratch peroggis from her Polish great grandmother's recipe) that would have satisfied even the most starving confederate soldier, and very fun and funny playtime with 2 1/2 year old Nathaniel, whose birth came so quickly I missed it by five minutes due to the 45 minute commute from Hot Springs... I rocked out with him to his favorite songs: 5 Little Pumpkins, On the Road Again, and Me Lost me Cookie in the Disco. I did this many times. I was reminded of the naturally sweet and rexaled generosity of my friend April, who is expecting her second child and who is a wonderful mother. She is one of my hospitality role models. Mike is a dear soul who surprised me with his occasion outburst of song in a deep deep baritone voice that I didn't know about.

Second stop was the homestead in progress of JDH4th. He bought 5 acres and a 100 year old farm house (that comes with about 6 large outbuildings.) We toodled around in the the wet snow checking out his estate, and purusing the outbuildings, which were quirky and multipurpose- a sheep house that doubles as a pump house and very very large rainwater cistern and purification station. An old turkey house that doubles as an indoor mini basketball court and loft storage/potential studio space. A groovy root cellar only steps away from the kitchen door. And the list goes on. In one of the outbuildings we decided to casually glance into a couple of old dusty boxes that were left behind. Little did we know there was a treasure to behold- 2 boxes of late '80s and early '90s promotional paraphanalia for Sir "I", of the "Take the Time to be a Friend" musical campaign (that is sweeping the nation). JDH4th and I went nutz over that stuff. 8x10 glossy photos, demo tapes, "Take the Time to be a Friend" reminder cards. It was good. Real good. Turns out, Mike (April's husband), who is a school counselor, met Sir Isaac just a few weeks prior at his school. Turns out Sir "I" did an antibullying concert at the school. Turns out the "Take the Time to Be a Friend" Campaign is alive and kickin.

Third stop: Galax, VA. I stopped to visit old friend Sara Fennell and her posse on the way home. I had a KICK ASS spinach calzone that she made from scratch and some KICK ASS home made heart shaped oreo cookies. We took a power walk around a funny little elementary school track while her husband Willie Nelson, I mean Greg Korbler, and kids played a mean game of catch. I love that gang. Sara hooked me up with some BLUE ROSE EDIBLE CAKE DECORATIONS from Galax's very own Bake Shoppe (which doubles as a banjo and other stringed instrument rental and purchase shop...) You just wait, people. There is a cake in the works that is gonna knock your socks off your big stinky feet. You just wait.

Perchten

2010-12-27T20:54:00.006-05:00

God bless the Austrians! Speaking of yule goats and yulicorns and horned beasts of all manners this holiday season, I want to write one time about Perchten. My friend Heidi, who was brought up a halfling in Austria and America just returned from a winter visit to the motherland. She returned with pictures and videos and stories from a magical and lovely sounding snowy terrain, which has quickly and surprisingly become my next dream destination (sorry, Chile and Panama, you will have to take 2nd and 3rd chairs...) We sat down after work Thursday and sipped some Austrian Schnaps*, and then later some very strong Romanian grappa, and Heidi answered all of my tedious questions about Krampus and Perchten, two Austrian traditions that I wanted a little more 411 on.

Here's the breakdown:
Krampus is a devily dude (scary horned beast) who rolls with Saint Nikolas in early December. Whatever children have been good get goodies from St. Nick, and whoever was bad gets coal and crappy stuff from Krampus. He is frightening and gross, and is probably a Christian version of the pagan Perchten.
Perchten comes closer to Christmas at around the time of winter solstice. It is a scary horned beast that goes through the streets with switches (made of horse hair I believe). He whips teenage boys who taunt him and romps through the streets cleansing the evil from the dark time of year. Heidi showed us some vide footage from the town her mom lives in. First, men from the countryside paraded through the streets rhythmically banging cowbells. Following them were the Perchten, scary horned beasts, who would periodically push or shove someone or whip a teenager. Absolutely fascinating. Apparently, there is quite a debate going on in Austria about which region can claim to be the first to come up with the Perchten tradition. Whoever it was, good job. I like it. A lot.

Speaking of liking a lot, check out Heidi's engaging story telling expressions:

*Schnaps is the Austrian spelling and indicates the real stuff, which is good. Schnapps is the crappy American version of Schnaps. Just saying...

Snow falls upon a small quiet mountain town

2010-12-26T21:47:00.006-05:00

When I was a kid I liked snow. In fact, you could say maybe I even loved snow. As a young adult I was loving snow too. I lived my most potent year of young adulthood in my aunt and uncle's cabin alone in central Virginia. It snowed a lot that winter, and I was alway out in it- walking and walking and walking. Tracking animals, visiting neighbors, walking to keep my 19 year old self company. Walking in the snow to make sure I was tired enough at the end of the day. It took a lot of snow walking to get me tired enough back then. But that might have been my last year of loving snow. For approximately the last 15 or so years I have not loved the snow. It is messy, uncomfortable, dangerous and gets on my nerves. You could say Dana + Snow = Frowny Face. People know this about me. If you know me, you might be inclined to call me up when it is snowing and say something like, "Hey Dana- I bet you're having a hay day in this snow!" This is a sarcastic comment, and you are a hilarious joker.
This is background information for my current weather report from the quiet town of Hot Springs, NC. It is snowing a good one. 6 or 8 inches of glorious quiet light white stuff that is just gorgeous. It snowed all day Christmas and today, a soft gentle, steady, but relentless snow that has melted my icy heart and remembered me about what I used to love. This snow is the stuff dreams are made of- fluffy and so light it practically offers no resistence when shuffled through. I was with Jenna today, but I made it out for 3 little short walks to get my thick sugary holiday blood moving and fill the ole lungs with some fresh winter. Walking home tonight the effortless movement of delicate snowflakes through the clean air and the reflection of Christmas lights off the crystalline terrain was an experience to be revered and remembered. This must be what the white Christmas hype is about.

My holographic altnernative option

2010-12-21T15:41:00.004-05:00

A few weeks ago my friends and bosses at work, Donna and Heidi, travelled to D.C. for a long weekend of modern art museum visiting. They returned with volumes of photographs of "installations," books of modern "works" and all sort of excited feelings and inspirations about their own artistic endeavors. The morning of the first day of work after their trip, Donna, Heidi, Rachel and I gathered in Donna and Heidi's kitchen. Donna was quite excited to share her photographs of the art with Rachel and I while Heidi was doing some dishes. I tried to engage myself in the excitement and explanations Donna was dishing out, but after a couple minutes I discovered myself more engaged and interested in Heidi's plastic ziplock bag washing technique over in the sink than the art. I was busted of course and laughed at of course, and I just said, "I don't understand a lot of art. I just don't get it." And that is the truth. It's like poetry- most of the time I don't really understand what is going on. With a lot of art I can't understand why someone would spend so much time doing that because what the heck is the purpose?

Later that week, Rachel and I were waiting at the mulch yard to get loaded up (with mulch in the truck that is), and I decided to duck into Gail's Variety and Mattress Shop, which is directly next door to the mulch yard's office. I had always wanted to go into that place. I told Rachel, "I'm just gonna peek in there- I'll be out in 2 minutes." The minute I stepped in the door I felt like a kid walking into a candy shop. There were ugly trinkets, redneck pride tee shirts and little weird shit items everywhere. A paited resin cross-eyed fairy riding a unicorn, a box of tiny plastic pegasuses for $1 each, a tee shirt that reads "Body Piercing Saved my Life" with a picture of Christ's bloody hands nailed to the cross, baskets of plastic flower arrangements. Half of the store was a weird low-tech showroom of mattresses with hand made signs writted in magic marker ink. There was a lady behind the counter who semi-jovially answered the phone, "Good morning. Gail's Variety and Mattress Shop. Can I help you?" I guessed that most likely about 99% of the people who called were all family. 20 minutes later Rachel came in the store to gently tell me it was time to leave, and I realized I was really jacked up. I wanted to show her this and that and then some more this and more that. I had tagged about 10 tee-shirts to show her and of course the fairy and pegasus what-nots. I seriously almost bought multiple items in there, but I stopped myself at the last moment telling myself to think about it and if I still wanted the stuff tomorrow, I would probably be back at the mulch yard and could make the purchase then.
On the way back to the truck, Rachel looked at me and giggled. "What's so funny?" I demanded. Rachel chuckled and said, "That Variety and Mattress shop- That's your art gallery." It was true- that weird little hole in time and space jazzed me up enough to rival Donna's enthusiam for what I call confusing "modern art."

But wait a minute. Surely that's not it. Pointless Chinese-made crap strangely displayed in a failing American small business surely can't be all that lights my creative fire (although when I was in China a year ago I did fore-go shop after shop of beautiful bone and wood and jade carved antiques and go crazy about a booth of gaudy vinyl holographic portraits of Chinese nature and deities to the shock and confusion of my mother and friend who had been happily purchasing items of real value all day...)

I was able to blissfully identify another source of creative inspiration last weekend, when I was invited to a live Nativity Christmas party in which the guests were to dress as characters from the nativity story. At first I thought, 'That sounds good,' and I reckoned I could be the donkey or mother Mary. But on the day of the party, I realized that I had a much more appropriate option. I went to the party as Els Unicornilius, who is a unicorn. I vamped out my unicorn helmet in plastic poinsettias, wore all white with blue rain boots, and used a blue green sparkly scarf as a tail. It felt so good to be wearing the unicorn helmet again, and it got me in the spirit to have great conversations with other party goers about god and meaningful seasonal tradition (and our American lack there-of), the transient nature of our culture and all that is lost, the value of repetition in spirituality, and such. A few people asked me to remind them of the unicorn in the nativity story, to which I replied, "The unicorn is the unmentioned beast of the Nativity." A few days later when I was relaying the details of the party to Donna the art appreciator, she was laughing and laughing. She said it was performance art. I told her that the traditional Nativity story with all its traditional characters and portrayals is only one view of a holographic image. If you tilt the picture ever so slighty to catch the light a different way, you will see a completely different scenario all together. This is where you will find the unicorn. Donna laughed and laughed.

I suppose I have always loved holographic images and all things with a hidden option. Those cheap vinyl landscape set me on fire in China. As a kid I used to love those dolls that you could flip upside down and it would become a completely different doll. Little Red Riding Hood flipped upside down became the bid bad wolf. I am fascinated with the contrary meanings of Tarot cards you get when you pull a card upside down.

Tonight I get to go to a Solstice Yule Goat party, which celebrates some historical tradition of some Yule Goat. Anyone who comes to the party as a yule goat gets a prize. Guess who will be arriving as a Yul-icorn? I hope my prize is as subversive as my appreciation for art.

This Week's Projects

2010-12-16T22:28:00.004-05:00

This week is the terrible weather marathon. From snow to wind to freezing rain to ice to very cold temperatures, we have had it all. The Dirty Hoe went ahead and called the week early on because the it is just pretty much unworkable. I have been indoors more this week than I probably have in all the time combined (excluding sleeping time) since about March. I've been passing the days with moderate levels of industriousness, and it's been moderately fun to engage in these winter activites... Enjoy the show and tell:

#1 "Swedish Jam Shortbread": Jenna and I made 3 batches to share- it is insanely delicious and addictive and keeps for quite a while.

"Swedish Jam Shortbread" Recipe:
Mix together: 1 Butter recipe cake mix
1 egg
1/2 cups chopped pecans or walnuts
1/3 cup soft butter
Press that mixture into a greased and floured 9x13 pan
Spread jam of your choice over the mixture- my favorites are apricot and strawberry.
Bake at 350 for 25-35 minutes.
Cool and then glaze with:
1/2 cup 10x powdered sugar
2 1/2 tsp milk
1/2 tsp almond extract

Let set. Cut into small squares and serve with holiday breakfast or as a sweet snack.

#2 Multi media Christmas cards: I did the background watercolor and Jenna did the collaging on the foreground. I thought they turned out great...

# 3 Rag rug, pound cakes and linden blossom mead: The rag rug is an ongoing winter project. I plan to keep expanding it as long as I can keep coming up with fabric that loosely coordinates with my projected color scheme of my future house interior, which is the colors of the luna moth (put that in your pipe and smoke it.)
The pound cakes are some Christmas baking.
The linden mead is something Sally and I made this past summer. Check out the most bodacious labels made for me by Heidi in Deutsch. Bottling the mead was a somewhat involved process. First I had to soak the collected wine bottles in hot water and soap so that I could then scrub off their original labels. Then I ran the bottles through the commercial dishwasher at the Mountain Magnolia to sterilize them. Next I siphoned the mead from the fermentation vessels into each bottle. I learned years ago that you cannot bottle wine and then go to work- siphoning the wine by sucking the tube (which is my technique) inevitably involves swallowing substantial amounts of wine in the process. Once at the garage apartment I got up early in the morning and starting working on my Things to Do list before leaving for work. First on the list was to bottle some homemade wine. I started sucking the siphon and bottling several kinds of wine. Before I knew it I was stumbling drunk and it was about 7:30 in the morning. I had to sober up before I could go to work at about 11:00! At least my schedule was flexible that day.
Anyways, after I bottled the mead I went down to Kinkos and made some labels (via color copies and laminate label paper). It was an ordeal, but I am tickled pink with the way the labels turned out. Thank you Heidi!

Maybe tomorrow I can get out for a walk or something.

Spring Creek Polar Bear Club

2010-12-14T20:29:00.002-05:00

It has one member that I know of. If there are others out there, show your faces. Yep, I did it this morning. I got out of a warm bath and thought to myself, "Geez I'm hot." There was only one thing to do. I grabbed my bathrobe and my towel and headed out the back door and down the snowy path to the bank of Spring Creek. I had to bust a layer of ice with my bare foot in order to wade in and lie down in the shallow water up to my neck. I was quickly up and gasping and hollering and grunting from deep in my primal gut. You see, in case you don't live around here, it was ungodly cold today. The kind of cold you just don't even want to be in. And I loved my polar bear dip- every one second of it. It was my winter tonic*- to invigorate the spirit and get the blood flowing, wake up the dulled over cabin fevery senses and break the monotony of the days like busted ice. I hurried inside and bundled up and drank hot ginger tea to keep the circulation going. It was good. Real good.

* Note- I would never dip in the frozen water on a crazy cold day like this if I felt physically compromised in the least. I knew it was a good tonic for me because I was feeling robust, but craved a little invigoration.

On writing

2010-12-13T08:08:00.004-05:00

Over five years ago I decided I wanted to write more. You see, I love stories, and I love telling stories and hearing them and then relaying what I have heard-you get the picture. Some people had been telling me I should start writing some of my stories down. I decided I wanted to do that, but I wasn't doing it. My dear friend Meg, who lives in Texas, sent me a brand new composition notebook and a large bag of M&Ms for writing inspiration. I sat down in the floor in front of the heater one night in the garage apartment and wrote about half a story about Hopey (the plott hound under the Christmas tree for those of you who don't know). I wrote until my hand was stiff and I needed to go to sleep. The next morning I got up and looked at what I had written, and it seemed dumb. I ate up all the M&Ms in a couple of days and never wrote another thing in that notebook.

Maybe it was that same winter or maybe it was the next, my friend Rosemoon told me I should start a blog. I thought the word blog was downright dumb, and after all the whole thing sounded pretty complicated. I told her I couldn't do that because I didn't know how to do that kind of thing. She kept telling me to start a blog and finally when she showed me how to do it, I said OK.

I have been keeping a regular blog ever since. Being practically a neo-Luddite my own self, I don't know why this format works so well for me. I really don't. I am a fan of all things that are going out of practice. Longhand cursive, face to face conversations, cake walks, letters, library research, tea and talking, made in USA, # 2 pencils, what have you.

I have a drawer full of #2 pencils, and I have been wanting to use them bad lately. I have just been craving that feel of a sharp graphite point on a tangible piece of paper. What? I messed up? No sweat- I will just erase that part with the handy rubber eraser and move on. It is wonderful. The wood, the mineral, the rubber- a trinity of underappreciated usefulness.

My problem has been, I have had all these brand spanking new #2 pencils sitting around (most of them have a Halloween theme- thanks Mom), but I have had no pencil sharpener and a kitchen knife just wasn't "cutting" it. I kept meaning to pick up a handy little pencil sharpenerwhen I was out and about, but then I would always forget until I was home and wanting to use a pencil. I guess it's just the type of thing that's fairly easy to go around forgetting.

Well, my pencil troubles were all unexpectedly resolved yesterday during a snowy visit to my grandmother's house I made with my sister (another dying trend- visiting with family for no good reason.) We were taking her some sweets we had baked- a little something to make the snow storm a little more palatable. She started asking us what we wanted in our stockings this Christmas, and I couldn't think of a damned thing. I wanted to say "no stinky bath products please," but finally I thought of one silly little thing. "I would like a pencil sharpener for Christmas." She chuckled the chuckle of someone who is humoring someone who just said something dumb, but then I saw her lovely hazel eyes light up with a revelation.

"You want a pencil sharpener? I have an extra one. I just bought several the other day because they were on a fantastic special!" She disappeared into the other room and re-emerged after a few moments with this beauty.

Perfect. The Duel Hole Sharpener. Love the Chinese. Love the grandmother who buys extra Duel Hole Sharpeners because they are on a fantastic special. Love the #2 pencils. If the internet crashes, perhaps I will pull out my old composition notebook, wipe the dust off, and finish that story about the dog. If I re-read it and something sounds dumb, I will erase it and try again. When I am finished, maybe I will brew some tea, invite a few people over, turn off the cell phones, and read the story right off the page. Wouldn't that be lovely...

D&J's Day Together

2010-12-07T17:52:00.005-05:00

aka: Candy Roastarama

Let's see... Today it snowed in Hot Springs- pretty much all day long. We were going to go to Asheville, but we nixed that plan and stayed in. Our mom gave us a killer candy roaster* to bake, and unfortunately I did not take a picture of it before we started. It was a real beauty. We cleaned that bad boy out, cut it into sections, and baked it with a little water. Then it was almost lunch time, so I went ahead and whipped up a little coconut squash soup.

My recipe:
1) Sautee some celery, chopped onion and garlic in a soup pot for 10 minutes in coconut oil.
2)Scrape about 4-5 cups of winter squash meat out of a pre-cooked squash and add to soup pot.
3) Add a can of coconut milk, 2-3 tsp coriander, 2-3 tsp tumeric and whatever other spices you like. Fresh grated ginger would be good.
4) Puree with an emersion blender or even a regular mixer.
5) Add salt and pepper to taste.

After lunch we commenced making whoopie pies with some of the remaining candy roaster meat. I found a Martha Stewart recipe that tasted good, but the little half pies spread out and got too thin for my taste in the oven. I added ground up chocolate chips to the batter for shits and giggles. We made a cream cheese frosting for the middles of the pies and assembled them late this afternoon. Check them out.

The fun wasn't over yet, and we did a little laundry then headed out to the closed in front porch sun room to decorate Jenna's Christmas tree. We realized this was the first time we had decorated a Christmas tree without our mother's participation, and we are hoping she likes the job we did. If not, oh well...

We did a good job today, if we do say so ourselves.
Adios!
Love, Dana and Jenna

* Did you know? It is believed that candy roaster squashes originated in our fair state of North Carolina.

Forest and Lily, 10 months

2010-12-06T20:20:00.005-05:00

One of the sweetest things I think I have ever seen in my entire life was the sight of Forest and Lily holding hands while simultaneously nursing my dear friend Julie. The twins are healthy and happy. So are the parents.

Julie and Jeremy have taken to parenthood like natural champs. Forest and Lily are well adjusted delightful little chips off the old block. They have a daily schedule, and they eat, nurse, nap, bathe and go to bed at the same time. It works like a charm. The babies are smiley and I think I heard each one cry one time in three days. It is very exciting to see the personalities begin to emerge from each one, Lily the laugher- always ready for a joke and pretty wild about slapstick humor, and Forest, watchful and mellow, yet determined. They are seeming quite different from each other, and the household is full of good times.

Last Day (of the season)

2010-11-29T21:01:00.004-05:00

SG and I finished our season of work today as groundskeepers of the Mountain Magnolia Inn, my parents' business. To the best of my calculations, I have been tending those 2 1/4 acres of grounds there for 12 years now. Every year I tell myself and others that it is my last year, and then early the next spring I go back and work the grounds for another year. There are several truths of the matter. One, I love the place. Two, it's a killer work gig for Hot Springs, land of very few job opportunities. Three, each season that I work the grounds there, my awareness becomes more finely tuned to the sense of place and the subtleties that can only be perceived about a place slowly over time. I love how I can smell the first breeze of spring there in about mid February, and how the flowers of April and May always shock me with their beauty and intoxicating aromas. I love to drink wine from the enormous petals of the magnolia tree, and how its perfume transports me back to my childhood and sometimes it seems even to a time before I was born. I love the summer cicadas, and how the very first wind of fall blasts me with sadness in August and sends walnut leaves swirling all around the place- I always have to stop in my tracks and watch that happen. And then the third week of August rolls around and like clockwork, the spider lilies pop up out of the lawn with no leaves and bloom like crazy. In September the zinnias get really moldy, but the garden asters go hog wild. October brings leaves to rake, and there is always lots of comradarie to be had with fellow rakers. On a chilly damp day we burn all the brush and branches pruned and gathered throughout the year, and usually someone from the fire department comes to see that everything is OK. In November the light is scarce afternoons as we prepare our hearts for the dark of the year and tuck in all the gardens for the winter. The end of the end is cutting off the well pump and draining the irrigation. That happened today.

Tending the gardens there year after year satisfies some deep need of mine- a need to stay put and be a part of something. I lament the fact that I did not get to spend my childhood on that piece of earth, with those trees to climb and the river just across the railroad tracks. I wish I had known this place my whole life, and that all my people were here and that there were not missing links or fragments of life and memories. Really, I have this opinion that us humans are not hard-wired to live the way we live in this day and age, to see so many places but not really know them, to take in so much information and try to keep tabs on the whole wide world.

But alas, we are an adaptable species, and I will continue patronizing the world wide web, and listening to the news on NPR as I drive to a whole other city and county to work most mornings. I will continue to watch foreign movies and travel to other places and talk to all sorts of people just to hear their stories. The thing is though, I bet come next spring, about the middle of February, you can find me pruning hemlock trees and sowing larkspur seeds at the Mountain Magnolia in Hot Springs- even if I may have sworn up and down I wasn't going to be doing that again.

Book Review: Stones from the River

2010-11-28T08:07:00.004-05:00

Stones from the River, a novel by Ursula Hegi

I just finished reading this book, and people, let me go ahead and recommend it for a beautiful winter read. The book follows the life of a woman, Trudi Montag from her birth in 1915 through the second World War to 1952. The setting is Burgdorf, Germany, a town through which the Rhein river flows. The story chronicles the life events of Trudi, a dwarf woman, and her journey to find herself at home in a body that is taboo, a time that is full of war and suffering, and a town that has a deeply rooted tradition of hiding its secrets. The story successfully weaves the lives of the people in Trudi's community, giving us readers access to the layers of stories and secrets that the townspeople bring to Trudi, who has an unspoken role as the town story keeper. We learn not only of the dark secrets of the town- affairs, obsessions, violence, incest, bigotry and betrayal, but of the subtle undercurrents of love and kinship in the town- the workings of the unknown benefactor, love and loyalty between neighbors, secret underground hiding places created by townspeople to hide and protect Jews from the Gestapo, private redemptions of individuals in an impossibly conflicted time period.

What I love about this book is that it is thick and complex. There are many characters, and throughout the book we learn the humanity of each one- the inner struggles, the play of the light and the dark, the complexity of each life story. The book spans a fairly long time period, and Ursula Hegi takes her time weaving the stories of the townspeople together through Trudi's life and work in her family's pay library. She navigates us through the painful years of World War II, slowly guiding us into the darkness and terror which was the Nazi regime and the genocide of the Jewish Germans. And then she holds us there in the darkness with Trudi and her father, other neighbors who hide the Jews, and the friends who are hiding. And while we get a good long painful glimpse of the dark side of humanity, she never abandons us there without something beautiful to be aware of. And when the war is over, she reveals to us the deep wounds and scars that are left on the town, the community, and the individuals whom we have gotten to know quite intimately. We are also allowed to see the resilience of the human spirit, but not without the signs of brokeness. She addresses a topic most people wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole, and she does it boldly, justly, sadly and beautifully.

One of my favorite aspects of this book is the continuous presence of the river in all of the stories within stories. I realized when I finished the book that the river was a main character, and it was the crucial character that tied together so many of the stories, the witness and the active participant of the town's collective story through time and space. And Ursula's storytelling is very waterlike- fluid and constant, with emotion swelling and flooding like the river, then retreating and finding stillness like an eddie beneath a large rock. She makes us realize that our lives can be understood better in the context of our environment. I like the fact that the river ties it all together.

If you are looking for something deep and meaningful for the dark time of the year, read Stones from the River. Then call me because it would be nice to talk about it.

The Shadows are Long, my Breath is Short

2010-11-19T18:51:00.005-05:00

November 19 and I have succumbed to a wind invasion. This is a Chinese Medicine term for a cold. Well, based upon my limited understanding of the complex medicine, it can be a condition of disharmony in the body caused by actual wind (air moving quickly through space) or by airborn pathogens. It's funny how language informs experience. Ever since my introduction to the phrase "wind invasion," I find myself more edgy and aware of my suseptibility when the cold wind is blowing. Anyone who spends any amount of time with me can tell you that I am quite vigilant about covering my neck at all times when the wind is blowing- because this protects from the invasions that are carried by this element (which, in my opinion, can also be cleansing and uplifting and definitely has its place in the scheme of things- moving weather systems in and out and such). Of course, the wind and the pathogens it carries usually won't get me unless I am run down, which I must say, after 11 months of busting ass at 2 jobs and working the land on weekends, I might be a little. Temporarily. It is all temporary. So for the time being (like today and likely tomorrow), I am resting in the warmth of my mother's house, out of the wind, drinking hot and spicy ginger tea and sleeping whenever I feel sleepy. It's not too bad.

I did venture out of the house in the warm part of the day to go out to the land and see about the progress of the house building. Part of the first floor was there. Check it out.

The shadows were long, of course, what with the days being short and all. I stood on the partial floor and imaginged how the light will come in the windows. Please god help me Daniel Boone, I hope this all comes together- floors, walls, windows, roof, budget and all. Heck, I'll even toss sanity into that list.

With the shadows being long and dusk falling soon these days, the nights are colder and the wind more dangerous. Last weekend, Michael T came out and helped me by cutting down the old tall pear tree. Poor pear tree. It kicked out some sweet juicy pears in its day and grew tall, very tall. I bought 20 pear root stocks this spring so that I could graft the old boy, but turns out there was no proper scion wood. I even pruned off a large branch hoping for some new shoots of growth for a late summer graft job, but no luck. The tree was rotten inside and dangerous standing there in the middle of the comings and goings of the place that was not trafficked much by humans at all for years and years and is now seeing all sorts of folks rolling up in there. I had a moment with the old boy, then Michael did the deed. It took a minute though, because we had to secure a rope for me to pull with all my might at the right moment, and Michael had to do some skillful chainsaw manuevers. When the tree finally fell safely and not on any person or Airstream, we stood there for a moment looking at it. Then Michael commenced cutting it into pieces that could be roped to the truck and hauled down the driveway. When he cut the first log, out popped a bat. The little feller was most disturbed and I believe frightened. (S)he was probably hibernating in her/his trusty ole undisturbed hollered out pear trunk. What a problem! I poked at it with a stick because I couldn't help it, and it got awful mad. It showed me its teeth and hissed and clicked. Then it climbed up on the stick and I hollered to Michael, who was standing right there, "Look, it's on the stick! It's on the stick!" I was real worked up. Then it flew into the woods. I couldn't stop recapping it to Michael over and over. "That bat just popped out! That bat was so mad! That bat got on the stick! That bat just flew off into the woods!" He just let me repeat myself over and over and over. I guess I was pretty excited with that little run in with a dark mysterious creature.
The next evening, after I had been foraging in the woods for lovely native plants to transplant to the spring area, I was standing in the clearing, and wouldn't you know it, that bat came back at dusk and flew 3 circles around where its pear tree had been. It was sad. Then it flew off back into the woods, where hopefully it found an equally suitable place to spend this season of long shadows and short days.

I love Hot Springs because

2010-11-16T21:10:00.002-05:00

Some people refer to Hot Springs, NC as the banana belt of Western North Carolina. While this is a "figure of speech," and we do not indeed grow bananas here, we are nestled into a protected valley which allows for hotter summers and more temperate winters than the surrounding areas. Many people seem to expect Hot Springs to be a colder place than nearby towns and cities. Perhaps this is due to the windy mountain roads that bring you here, but our elevation is low, and the weather is warm. For example, one year it was so warm on Christmas that Jenna and I decided to do some post-stocking canoeing. Luckily we wore life jackets because the river was up and just past the "Sand Bar" we wiped the F out. We saw some waves ahead of us whose crests were about at eye level, and I knew that our little patched up lake canoe would not stay upright. No way no how. The French Broad flows north from Asheville through Marsall and then Hot Springs to Newport. That friggin water from Asheville was very very cold, and when we wiped out, the temperature of the forceful water knocked the breath right out of us. We had to swim that long rapid until the water was still again and we could get to shore. We heaved ourselves out of the water at the base of a cliff and found a deer skull with antlers. After climbing the cliff up to the road, we walked home in soaking clothes and life jackets. The canoe was lost, but later found, and that's another story. I meant to tell you that it can be pretty warm around here even in the winter.
Like yesterday, I was at work at the Mountain Magnolia Inn, where I have been tending the grounds for 12 years now. It warmed my heart to find an "Apricot Nectar" rosebush in bloom and kickin out hella new buds to boot. There was also a little Teddy Bear sunflower by the lamppost fall display holding its own against the wintry looking mountains in the background.
I love the gardens there, which boast a hearty hedge of large rosemary bushes and pineapple sage that overwinters (or at least did once.) I think we are even in a different growing zone than surrounding areas. It can be really nice this time of year.

The Keds

2010-11-12T06:15:00.004-05:00

The year was 1993. The setting was suburban south Charlotte. Julie and I were about 17 and connected at the hip "blood sisters." We were about one half straight edge, one half granola, and one half pure wacko. High school mostly sucked and in all of our free time we journeyed out into the world of Charlotte and its surrounding chaos, seeking meaning and beauty-- and finding ourselves laughing a lot in the process. Funds were sparce- our jobs as hostesses at the Old Spaghetti Factory only afforded us gas money to power my 1979 doo doo brown Pontiac Catalina, "The Brown Rocket," which could comfortably seat 3 in the front and 4 in the back. We would get up real early in the morning sometimes and drive it out of the city 45 minutes to the nearest mountain, Crowders, and climb up for daybreak, breathing in something we considered purer nature than the trail that ran through our adjoining neighborhoods (something we walked everyday eating honeysuckles and keeping tabs on the pair of red tailed hawks that nested there.) We would hurry down the mountain and load back up in the Rocket and still make it to school on time. I guess with any money we had left, we would buy cassettes and records at the local neighborhood record shop. Once I bought Julie a cd- that was a new thing back then. It was Dead Can Dance "Into the Labryinth." That was the only cd I bought.

Daytime fun for us was easy and covered- go outside and study nature. Night life was a challenge. Of course we weren't tired, even after all our tromping around, because we were teenagers. We probably would have been content to walk around at night too, listening for owls and watching cockroaches climb out of the sewer and sneak around the asphalt toward the houses. But our moms would not let us wander around at night for fear of our lives and well being. So we had to get creative.

Once we went to a Krispy Kreme late night and took pictures of people coming out of the restroom. We got a good one of a man with an embarrassed look on his face coming out of the women's. A lot of nights we would talk for hours on end to our friend BTW who lived in Davidson, wore only black, was a bona fide genius and chess champion, loved the night sky and didn't like very many people other than us. Sometimes we would go out to a coffee shop called something like the Penny Cafe, where the lighting was low and there was mellow jazz music playing and people were quietly enjoying books or a game of chess. This was real good. We would buy one cup of peppermint tea and stay for hours. But one of the owners supposedly overdosed, and they quit letting people under 18 in there.

There were a lot of nights when, desperate for some stimulation of any kind, we would go down to the 24 hour Harris Teeter mega grocery store and wander around (always ending up on aisle 14 to pay comical homage to this weird chocolate spread product called Crumpy). Then we would go next door to Borders Books and people watch while sampling music and looking at the books we couldn't afford to buy. The particular event I want to relay to you now occurred one of those nights at Borders.

Julie and I had gone in to Borders yet again, just for something to do. I think they closed at 10:00, and it must have been sometime after 9:00 that we were in there. We were particularly restless that night, at least I was, and I couldn't seem to focus on anything. I was wandering around the store wishing Charlotte didn't suck. Nature called and I told Julie I was going into the bathroom. She said she would come too (you know, girls always go to the bathroom in pairs...) There were 3 stalls in the bathroom, and the middle stall was occupied by someone wearing a pair of dayglow white spotless Keds, about size 6. The person was still and quiet. I took one outside stall, and Julie took the other.

I don't remember whether I sat down on the commode or if I just squatted over it. All I know is that out of nowhere, I mean I really didn't know it was coming AT ALL, blasted what is likely the loudest most forceful fart of all time of humanity. It was so loud it sounded like a cannon. It was epic, the stuff legends are made of, like a catacalysmic explosive from the Otherworld. Something perhaps channelled from Thor, the thunder god. What followed is something that I will ponder for the rest of my life.

After a brief moment where I was stunned in space and time, I began laughing. The laughter erupted from deep deep within, like water that had been dammed for a long long time. I laughed in convuslive waves that felt almost like vomit. I laughed and laughed until I almost fell down in the stall. It was a painful laughter, something totally and completely out of my control. It was an epic laughter- a laughter of a degree that may never be experienced by me again in my life. And it went on and on for about 10 minutes. I could hear Julie over there, laughing and laughing like a muppet in the other stall. I don't know if the laughter hurt for her as well, but I suspect it did. And all the while, the Keds in the middle stalled, the brand new dayglow white size 6's, NEVER BUDGED, NOT AN INCH OR EVEN A CENTIMETER. Not a single peep or movement came out of the center stall. NOT FOR THE ENTIRE DURATION OF THE WHOLE EVENT.

And that is something I will ponder for the rest of my life.

Sometimes Julie and I still talk about the Keds. What in the name of God and everything holy on this planet was that woman doing in there? Was she OK? Perhaps she went to some safe place in her psyche, curled up in a fetal position and rode it out that way. Perhaps she came face to face with her Maker. Did she look Thor in the eye and reckon with him, with very still feet? Whenever I think about the whole thing I get a feeling deep within, a reminder of the illusion of control. It is like a renewed awareness of the pressure of the dam, holding back the pool of laughter and farts.

This story is for you, Julie.

Halloween Weekend: A photo diary

2010-11-01T21:05:00.005-05:00

Jenna and Nauni kick off the festivities Saturday afternoon:

Food was abundant- this dessert display was only the beginning; other feast items included beef stew, barbequed bison with homemade cole slaw from Girl in an Apron, vegetarian chili, cornbread from Jenna, fresh tomatillo salsa, winter squash, apple crisp, Iliana's no-bake cookies... What am I forgetting?

Rachel takes a good long whiff of Laura's persimmons butter:

Jason enjoys a crucial walk in the woods:

Fall color is kickin:

This looks like trouble...

So does this...

Sunday morning stoking up the fire in my pink bathrobe:

Laura follows Zoe's lead and cooks a croisant over the fire by inserting a stick into it and performing a slow roast:

Laura does a little dance as she prepares to do some Sunday afternoon drawing:

Hair of the dog:

Jenna busts out some moves to a little Michael Jackson...

Admiring Angelo:

M.H. and Walker hanging out by the fire:

Starling Gentry Road

2010-10-24T19:48:00.004-05:00

The name of the road is Starling Gentry. Starling Gentry was a real man. He was named Starling, like the bird. He lived on the road with his wife, Eleanor (Shorty)Gentry (King), and they lived the best 40 years of their lives in a little house tucked away down in the holler. They have both passed on, but are remembered fondly by those who knew them. Once I get my facts straight about some chronology and such, perhaps I will write more about Shorty and Starling here sometime. For now, here are some 2010 images from Starling Gentry, the Road. This is where I am setting up shop in the world.

Peak of the Week

2010-10-20T18:07:00.002-05:00

I came back to the Mecho farm this evening to a most stunning and picturesque display of autumnal Appalachia. I took a couple of pictures, but then I realized I do not have the gear I need to put the pictures on the Mechos' computer. So I'm going to tell you about it. The farm is on a hill, which allows remarkable visibility of the sky and the mountains that border and penetrate Tennessee. (Ooh, I just said "penetrate Tennessee", cringe.) On the top of the hill is the church (see a few posts back for pictures of that). On the hill between the house and the church is a pen with one cow and about 5 or 6 sheep of different colors. When I came home, the pen was in evening shadow, and the top of the church was catching a remarkable a final stream of angled fall light. The mountains yonder beyond the church glowed a stout and bright rusty orange color, which happens to be what I consider to be a perfect color for a sweater. Above it all, the waxing moon was holding its own in a perfectly tinted Carolina blue sky. The only cloud to speak of was a faintly glowing pink wisp that floated close to the horizon. The air held stillness and peace, also hints of memories of the old mountains, season after season. A hefty collection of heavenly blue morning glories bloomed on the garden fence, a perfect contrast to the rusty mountains. The passing of time. The end of the light half of the year.
As night falls very quickly, I sit here in the house warming to a fire in the wood cook stove, sipping Rebel Yell and thinking about it all.

Mama gets her milk on

2010-10-18T16:47:00.002-05:00

For about 1 week out of the year (or 8 days as it were) I play animal farmer. It is the perfect amount of time for me to enjoy the company of hooved beasts- their personalities, the warm smell of large vegetarian mammals (except the pigs), and the chaos of a specialized high calorie per unit noah's ark of sorts. After one week, I am satisfied and pretty much good for about another 358 days or so, give or take a few. I began my farmsitting duties Sunday morning, and all has been well so far. The only SNAFU has been a sheep getting her head stuck dramatically in 2 layers of differently gaged fencing. Somehow. This morning Mom decided she wanted to come with me and learn how to milk a cow.

It was great fun, and only a tiny bit weird talking my mother how exactly to squeeze a teat just right. I mean, she is, after all, the Mother of mothers- if anyone knows about milk it would be her. With my sister, who was over 10 pounds at birth and was a lot of baby to feed, she still had so much milk she pumped it to donate to La Leche League.

Mom did great. Her form was stellar, and she wasn't the slightest bit jumpy when the cow shifted or moved her leg. Most people are pretty jumpy at first- a 1000 pound animal is a big thing when you are under its back legs... Mom and I shared the milk chores and she was happy to take home her hand milked goods!

We love Angelo

2010-10-16T20:47:00.005-05:00

I am proud to annouce the birth of my new godson, Angelo Sacret Talbot! He is the son of dear friends Sally Robinson and Michael Talbot and was born Monday September 27, weighing 8 pounds 4 ounces. He is a precious love bundle who is heartily eating and growing and doing his job well. He is well loved already!

My mom (who is also a godmother) predicted Angelo's birth date, his weight, his length, and she was off of the time of birth by a mere 5 minutes...Uncanny. Real uncanny. And it was her birthday too.

Sepulture Part Three (sorry Eddie)

2010-10-11T20:32:00.002-05:00

Eddie specifically asked me to not write a third part to "Sepulture." I just can't help it. Yesterday LC and JC dug out and piped the spring. I was real nervous it would get messed up or move or get mad. Something. I talked to it and asked mother Mary to watch over it. You see, the water makes the place. LC tells me that over and over and I believe it. He claims that he has drunk a total of a gallon of water in his life- just can't stand to drink it, but he loves water. He said the 3 1/2 gallons per minute that spring is flowing is more valuable than the whole rest of the place. I pretty much agree- that and the kick ass soil!
Anyhoo, they dug back in the spring until it was pretty clear where it was coming up from the ground. There was a rock bed behind it. A thin layer of gravel was laid, and over that was laid a 4 inch closed of pipe with slits in it. That was attached to an open 4 inch pipe and then 3 or more deep feet of gravel were laid on top. The whole ordeal was buried (sepultured) in soil so that the final result is a pipe coming out of the hill with pure water streaming from it at all times. This is the beginning of the branch that flows all the way down to Susie and Todd's and meets up with Gentry Branch, which flows to the Shelton Laurel, which empties into the Laurel, which ends up in the French Broad at Stackhouse. In case you were wondering. God help me Daniel Boone to take good care of that water as best I can.