Random Thoughts about Nature (Deer, etc.)

Here's a place for the posting of random thoughts (so as not to clutter up the birthday/deathday thread).

I saw a beautiful sunrise today.

Just what was needed (for me, anyway). Thank you, Anna. I mean, we have music, movies, and of course books. Why not nature?

Nature?! Nature?! I thought nature was man's implacable enemy. One durst not enjoy ones foe! That way lies treason.

i will be the *baddie* here regarding Deer...way too many in SE Ohio...and i allow folks to hunt 'em on my property (in exchange for property management and fresh venison)....too much nature can be a serious problem if you live where i do...packs of wild dogs...too many deer..rabid raccoons....yurk!

it all may look pretty..but the underbelly can carry disease and property damage

i leave now

Oy vey.

4: The problem with hunting as a method of population control for deer (or other prey species) is that it is an anti-evolutionary behavior, since it targets the strongest and biggest animals rather than the natural predator who would target the weak and sick and thereby strengthen the gene pool.

There is a lot of new research in wildlife management suggesting that a factor that can really help the overpopulation problem with both prey species and "mesopredators" like raccoons is to bring back "top predators" like wolves to an environment. Apparently this has worked well in Yellowstone where the elk had decimated the cottonwoods and other native trees and after the reintroduction of wolves, the elk started behaving differently, avoiding the areas where the cottonwoods grew and therefore giving them a chance to get past the shoot stage. Also, the population is weeded out in a good way by the top predators - and they keep the mesopredators under control too.

Speaking of the gene pool, anyone know how to get these ducks out of mine?

I had a neighbor who had cottonwoods in his yard. Trust me, those Elk were doing a good thing.

Oh dear. Or deer, I should say. We have a lot of them in our area and the hunting helps keep them down. I'd prefer that to someone introducing wolves to our woods. The coyotes are enough.

I think we should rename this thread "Rousseau-ean Thoughts About Nature," and create another thread called, maybe, "Nature: Is It a Good Thing?"

A NATURE NOTE

Four or five whippoorwills
Have come down from their native ledge
To open the country edge
To give us a piece of their bills.

Two in June were a pair -
You'd say sufficiently loud,
But this was a family crowd,
A full-fledged family affair.

All out of time pell-mell!
I wasn't in on the joke,
Unless it was coming to folk
To bid us a mock farewell.

I took note of when it occurred,
The twenty-third of September,
Their latest that I remember,
September the twenty-third.

Robert Frost
from A WITNESS TREE
1942

No deer sighted today, so we, and they, have dodged that bullet.

None cited? Good. They do have a way of causing trouble on the roads.

Remember The Deer Hunter?

Deniro's character, just back from Vietnam, goes deer hunting with his steel mill pals. They get deep in the wilderness, tracking a deer, until Deniro is finally able to get one, a big buck with handsome antlers, in his rifle sights. He squints, he's ready to squeeze the trigger, but he hesitates, you can tell his heart just isn't in to pulling that trigger, and in his hesitation, the buck seems to have caught wind of him, and bolts, and Deniro's ultra-stoic character, let's slip a subtle smile.

Before Deniro's character went to Vietnam, he was able to pull the trigger on that deer just fine, but after....I think the message was, "I've killed enough. And I don't want to do it anymore."

I'd post YouTube clips, but I'm at work, suffering for money, when I could be posting.

I was wondering if someone would mention The Deer Hunter....

in response to #6 anna......coyotes were released here in SE Ohio in the late 70s/early 80s...but folks shot them too...they got into farmers' fields...bothered/attacked livestock.....and there are some Numb-Nuts around here who just shoot at anything that moves.....deer, raccoons, possums,dogs,cats, wives, children...i love living here....
;-}

I'm in NE Ohio, jdthloue, and I haven't run into those trigger-happy gunners. However, I have run into deer, with my car. Or perhaps I should say they ran into me.

A few years ago there was a wolf out where my parents live, about a half-hour from PA. It came up on the porch and jumped on the screen door, scaring my mother almost senseless. I can't remember if it was that wolf or the coyotes that ate our pet rabbits.

>wisewoman

the only reason i mentioned trigger-happy gunners..i live outside of town on a "lane"..i'm the only one who lives on this road, year-round, so i hear the Poachers...given the economic situation..i know that some folks really do depend on the deer meat to feed their families..it's the "others" that anger/scare me....and wild dogs/coyotes are Scary..up close & personal.

Understandable. But how many of those trigger-happy gunners are there, really? And how frequently do they shoot people? I know a few hunters (bow hunters for the most part) and I get the impression that Ohio's very strict about the hunting season. At least in my corner of it!

16> Bambi butcherer!!!

Never experienced such a jarring incident in my life. That must be a rather jolting experience, eh? Driving along and....WHAM BAM... a deer just hit my car.

There's a scene in David Lynch's, The Straight Story, where a woman hits a deer out in the plains somewhere...for like the sixth time in six months, or some ridiculously high amount of times. And she just goes nuts.

Not too many deer in California, except in the mountains. Mule deer mostly. I've hiked probably over 2,000 miles total in the local So. Cal mountains and foothills, and seen deer not even a dozen times. Seen black bear twice, bighorn sheep half a dozen times, bobcat once, mountain lion, never.

19: Wow! I had no idea you had that few deer! In southern Oregon there are way too many black tailed deer, they're everywhere in the rural areas. Not like in Ohio where they come into the more populated areas though.

15, 16, 17 - I appreciate the scope of the Ohio problem as I have a sister who lives in a suburb of Cleveland and I have seen the problem first hand. They also have trouble with other prey animals like bunnies not to mention the mesopredators like raccoons. Even coyotes count as more like mesopredators - they don't have the fear factor that influences prey behavior in a good way like top predators such as wolves do.

It is hard to get top predators and humans to coexist, of course, we have a long several-hundred-year history of wolf fear and hate to overcome - not to mention actual livestock predation concerns though they are always blown out of proportion by the fear and hate (recent studies in the southwest, for example, show that in places where wolves were reintroduced, livestock loss to wolves is miniscule as compared to loss to disease or dogs or other causes). It's an issue that wildlife management people have been working on for decades and it is that much harder to combat because so much of it is psychological.

I don't know about deer and coyotes, but this Sunday I am going to commune with nature thru an 8 inch hole in the ice. A sunrise on an ice and snow covered lake is especially beautiful, if we are lucky enough to see the sun at all.

21> I've never been ice-fishing. That actually sounds fun! Do let us know if you catch anything, okay?

Okay, Amy, wisewoman, you have to watch the first 3:30 of this movie clip I'm about to post. I've just spent a ridiculously inordinate amount of time searching for it on YouTube. It's from The Straight Story the movie I mentioned earlier. Okay, are you ready?, here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lp7qRJcZ484&feature=related

Do you feel this woman's pain?

Fear is always psychological, I guess. But that doesn't mean that the reason can be dismissed as imaginary. When your mother has a wolf at the door trying to get in, jumping up so it's at eye level with her, anna, maybe you'll understand :)

*watches clip* LOL. Poor woman! I need to send that to my dad. He has hit/dodged more deer than any of us so far. One time a deer jumped over his truck, missing it by a few inches. He could see each hair on its back leg as it sailed over his windshield. Unreal.

We had a mother and fawn that lived near us this summer. It was amazing how unafraid they were. Sometimes they and a few others would be milling around the driveway when I'd get home from work, and only reluctantly moved to let me pass! Here are a few pics:







And because I know how much you love snakes, Enrique, here's a few of the four-foor rat snake we found in our woods. When he was all the way stretched out along those branches, I bravely touched his tail (is it a tail when it's a snake?). He turned around and regarded me coolly. It was a bit shivery of a moment.







Oh, and because they are adorable, here are the little nuthatch eggs in my herb garden pot this past summer. That pot was right up against the back of the house, outside the back door on the steps. I was just training the mother not to be afraid when I opened the sliding door, to stay in her nest because we wouldn't hurt her, when everything was overturned and eaten. It must have been a raccoon or something. I came downstairs one morning to find the pot on the ground upside-down, with a flattened nest and no eggs :(. But here they are before they were somebody's dinner:





Edited to make these smaller!

Great stories! Great pics WW. Why don't the authorities relocate some of these deer out to So. CA?

And thanks for that serpent! Yeaaaahhhh.

20> With all the wildfires we've had over the last twenty years, wildlife populations across the board have dramatically decreased. In fact, don't quote me on it, but I believe in the early to late 90s, deer hunting seasons were called off because there wasn't enough deer in the local mountains and the authorities were afraid they might go extinct there. Seeing a deer for me in the wild is a HUGE deal, so I'm chuckling big time that wisewoman has to wait for the deer to move out of her dang driveway when she gets home from work. That floors me.

This Sunday I'm going to cavort with nature with a fire in the fireplace, a glass of whiskey in one hand, a joint in the other, and the Cowboys and Vikings on the teevee. Now that's communing with nature!

No one mentioned skunks! There used to be an extended family of them that hung around our chicken coop at the old place. They'd follow my husband when he went out to feed & lock up the chickens. We've all had experiences with deer/car. In each encounter, the deer got away, but our neighbors share their venison.(Not a big reward for a totaled car. Even with the insurance) Winters are hard on them. That's when they come in yards, we used to leave out stuff for them tho some say that's not a good idea. but it's better than see them go hungry, especially since the developers have been chopping down the woods & building mcMansions. (from NW Ohio)

Just came back from a sojourn to the city to see that enough snow has melted in the forest to see the leaves I raked into it two months ago, which means I'll hear the deer crunch up their path to the ridge, when they aren't making a beeline for my compost heap.

>23 atimco:. Nice pix of Bambi, btw, wisewoman. You got any of bears?

>26 MarianV:
Oh, skunks! Back in December (19/20)....Extended Gun season for deer....someone must have disturbed a skunk's nest close by my place because the stink was overpowering for one whole night!!!i mean it brought tears to the eyes every time i went outside to get firewood...and my dad hit a deer with his car back in the 70s.....killed the deer and nearly totaled the Chevelle....not a pretty sight..

my friends haven't given me all of my share of their kill yet, but i look forward to yummy venison in the near future.....
;-}

Now that I'm finishing up my second book, I find myself jotting down snippets that might be in the next one, which will be situated in the so-called "country," where I've now lived for more than twenty years. It surprised (and pleased) me, for instance, that first year I was up here, to hear how the local folk spoke casually about the details of their lives:

I like that the woman in the hardware store told me about the tracks she’s seen in the snow, as she consulted a book to find out what animal might have made them. And that when I casually remarked that it was overcast, as if it were a problem, the service station owner remarked that a clear sky in winter meant cold weather, and an overcast one meant it wouldn't be as cold; which subsequently seemed an obvious fact.

And this:

In years to come, on such a drive, I might notice the fluid shadow of a cloud sculpted into the folds of a mountainside, and the wavering line of higher peaks to the north, in ski country, dusted white with snow. And I might feast upon side and backyards, what with trees denuded; be surprised by a pond or brook, a fallow garden, sheepfold, treehouse, tepee, gazebo or greenhouse; a mammoth motorboat wrapped in tarpaulin; a mobile trailer or semi truck cab; a trampoline, sway-backed horse, chicken coop, rock garden, or field of scrap-metal sculpture. Winter’s reductive revelations.

27: Nope, no bears. There were rumors of a black bear from Pennsylvania wandering the county when we moved there, but we never saw it. I remember being terrified when a big black cat jumped out of the open cellar doors one day. Of course a cat is nowhere the size of a bear, but to an imaginative eight-year-old expecting a bear...

I've seen foxes a couple times, and of course there are the coyotes. We have a hawk that lives in our woods and once we saw him swoop down on a small squirrel. He missed.

There are patches of frozen ground where the snow melted in recent days, though most of the ground is covered with a frozen layer, and it's still below freezing. Yet I heard a few birds twittering this morning. Much too early, of course, to think about spring. That comes about in the mass delusion of St. Patrick's Day in mid-March, when every restaurant around here serves corned beef and cabbage and people jam in as if to celebrate the Second Coming.

Not in any sense random.

COME IN

As I came to the edge of the woods,
Thrush music - hark!
Now if it was dusk outside,
Inside it was dark.

Too dark in the woods for a bird
By sleight of wing
To better its perch for the night,
Though it could still sing.

The last of the light of the sun
That had died in the west
Still lived for one song more
In a thrush's breast.

Far in the pillared dark
Thrush music went -
Almost like a call to come in
To the dark and lament.

But no, I was out for stars:
I would not come in.
I meant not even if asked,
And I hadn't been.

Robert Frost
from A WITNESS TREE
1942

Some people here say--usually newcomers who haven't experienced their first full upstate winter, "It's getting warmer," when the temperature rises above freezing. I don't use that clause until I catch a breeze that has some actual warmth to it, usually late April or early May, when I finally consider getting on my bike again; when the wind chill I create when coasting down hills is bearable.

33> perfect poem Por.

You think it's cold upstate NY way do you Peter? It's hasn't been above sixty (60!) all week here in Southern California. Now that's cold! We've had tornadoes, waterspouts, mudslides, and more rain in one week than we usually get in one year, so much so, that firemen had to rescue a mutt out of the LA River, and the damn dog bit him!

Here's video of it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtIv8hR5f7E

Ah, jeez, Enrique, every time Por and I attempt to turn this thread in a nature-appreciative direction, someone steps in with death and disaster. (Not that D&D isn't natural too.)

I'm so very sorry, Peter. My bad. If you'll excuse me, I'm heading over to the Death and Disaster thread, since I'm obviously (why you hurt me so? I'm weepy) no longer welcome here.

>35 absurdeist: I would have bitten too with that chopper hovering overhead.

You listen here, Macumutt, if you'd a bit that swift-water rescuer, we'd of had no choice but to put you down...as in asleep! Wish I could be put to sleep right about now, but I'm wide awake.

you can sleep when you are old.

You call me Macumutt but have you read Makamut or Lost Face by Jack London ? Good story ! Loved it when I was 14, absolutely chocking at that "avant television" time !

Can't say that I have. Did you know, Mac, that Irving Stone wrote a fictional biography on Jack London? The exact title escapes me at the moment. Ah yes, edited to look it up: Jack London, Sailor on Horseback.

I know it but haven't read it.

Jack London was my hero when I was 14 - 15 and I tought he was the greatest writer in the world. It came to me like a - coming - of -age shock when I realized that in the pantheon of American literature, he was considered average. Altough he was the best paid writer of his generation, intellectually he didn't fit into the canon. Simplistic ideologies, racist theories and his non-education seeping through his comments really condemned him for the intellectuals.

I agreed reluctantly with the criticism, appreciating his books more for what they really are ( boys books ) and discarding his pseudo - intellectual writings.

But again some of his books, when he sticks to his topic are really great !

Speaking of nature, Enrique, when I was a mailman in the other California, in Oakland (and gathering a lot of stories, it turns out, for Digging Deeper), there was a three month rainy season. And though my adventures were less hyperbolic than Jack London's, Macumbeira, they were quite enough for me, slipping and sliding across lawns as I made my way from mailbox to mailbox, up and down hills, the pen-written addresses blurring on the letters, rendering them impossible to make out. I recall being soaked all the time. So, yes, the comparison between the cold but usually clear upstate winters gives you a competitive edge on discomfort.

Bukowski does a good job, btw, conveying that soaking wet feeling in Post Office.

>44 copyedit52: Was it Faulkner, who was a postman, stealing the newspapers from the people ?

He was a postmaster. Part of the illustrious crew that included, I think, Cezanne as a bank clerk.

No. It was Gauguin who worked in a bank, not Cezanne.

Joyce was a bank clerk.

*arriving late to the party* A kangaroo hit my car once. It was night, and I'd seen it, so I'd slowed down to 5kph. It hit the side of my car, ducked underneath, bashed around for a while, then finally backed out and hopped away.

Unsuccessful suicide, or mechanical ambitions?

A kangaroo. That sent me scurrying to your profile page, of course, to see where you're from. I've hit three deer in my time in upstate New York. They came out of nowhere. And none of them hopped away afterward.

It's pouring upstate, and no doubt elsewhere. And unseasonably warm, with vapor evanescing over the slowly melting snow. Times like this a brook appears between my backyard and the woods, flowing through the garden plot I unsuccessfully dug (in mucho rocky soil) the first year I was here, and which I abandoned after eating the awful, too acidic tomatoes, and seeing the deer eat everything else.

There's a smiling red Buddha in the backyard, his hands on his thighs, sitting firmly on a field of snow. And farther back, on the edge of the forest, an unpainted St. Francis, listing to one side, where the snow has melted, the soggy ground having undermined him.

Gentle snow falling, coating the pines, outlining the thick limbs and distending branches of oaks and maples. An anointment, it seems. A good day to stay inside and get some work done.

>54 copyedit52: I'm in northern New Jersey. Our snow has just stopped and everything looks beautiful again.

A cold winter night, wind chimes tinkling, a nearly full moon, the shadow of a bare-branched tree laced across the snow.

That would make a nice haiku!

Fired up the woodstove today
Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
It's cold out there

I have grown used to finding Peter's zen comment for the morning and feeling better able to face the workday.

Back to lurking now.

My gosh! I do some good! Thank you, Anna.

I appreciate your honesty and candor, Peter.
And for that the Northern Lights for you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiNSCKtfVos&feature=related

There are of course colder places on Earth. Here, four degrees this morning; cold enough for me.

My daughter called last night from Seattle. "Pretty chilly here," she said. "Forty-five degrees."

"Pretty chilly here too," I replied. And left it at that.

The northern lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was the night on the marge of Lake LeBarge
I (what was it? I did something...)

I cremated Sam McGee!

That ceramic red Buddha sitting indifferently on a bed of frozen snow: I should bring it inside before it cracks. And thank you, whoever bought a copy of my book on amazon yesterday: I was about to crack myself.

I've been walking in the woods lately. I've seen dozens of deer leaping through the uniform, 70-year old deciduous winter woods, in front of my oblivious Lab.

On calm nights in the 'hood, I've had the hooting of a Great Horned Owl.

But 2 nights ago on my street, in the midst of a strong NW wind, I heard the high-frequency short call of a duck-demon. My guess is it was a Red Fox.

"I went to the woods because I wanted to live deeply and suck out all the marrow of life..." Not sure if I quoted that right.

Peter, your 65 post is a perfect Zen-humor post. Love it.

The cold air carries the whoooooosh of a car into the still, frozen scene. In tune with advancing age, I might be appreciating winter more this year than before.

Then again, once upon a time, every day, I used to fire up the woodstove in the back room that has no heat otherwise. I now usually work elsewhere instead, rather than trek out to the wood pile, split the larger pieces, gather branches and twigs for kindling. What a pain in the ass.

Light snow falling. One of the plow guys in the bread store said two to four inches by the morning; he's hoping for more. And soon, he added, a monster nor'easter coming up the coast. A blizzard maybe? Get ready, theaelizabet. Anna: you've got nothing to worry about.

It's a sparkly sunny day here, but more rain is on the way. Blizzards, not so much. Stay warm! If you are out of kindling I hear that Ulysses works pretty well! (JK)

I hear we're going to get a couple of inches. I would take more. Snow is the one thing I really enjoy about winter.

A random thought 'bout nature: I'm glad that my current drive takes me past Johnson Space Center, as I get to see the deer grazing by the fence, even the ones with the tracking collars.

73> no more Space Shuttle? Say it isn't so?!

I don't think Anna is kidding, Peter. I for one think her idea of using Ulysses for home-heating purposes is fantastic.

>74 absurdeist:.

Don't get me started on the NASA SNAFU... We're the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, not National Observe Global Warming Administration. That's NOGWA, which you shouldn't (a) dip in water, or (b) feed after midnight.

Grumble.

Edit: It reminds me of a film I saw, once...

Jimmie: "When you came pullin' in here, did you notice a sign out front of my space center that said 'Low Earth Orbit Astronaut Storage'?
Jules: Jimmie, you know I ain't seen no –
Jimmie: Did you notice a sign out in front of my house that said "Low Earth Orbit Astronaut Storage"?!
Jules: No, I didn't.
Jimmie: You know why you didn't see that sign?
Jules: Why?
Jimmie: 'Cause it ain't there, 'cause storing astronauts in low earth orbit ain't my fucking business anymore, that's why!

I appreciate the concern for my warmth and welfare, but I must tell you that I do have wood. The last time I burned pages (I was actually rereading it today, while editing my book) was when I was a mailman. To whit (from the 20th chapter):

... the distinctive fund-raising appeals from Reverend Ike and his ilk: "Sleep with this piece of prayer shawl and cure hives, blisters, warts, and otherwise blemished skin." From Reverend Broom, Palace of the Swept Clean, Odessa, Texas; and Pastor Love, Oklahoma City Chapel of Hope; and Giddings Birdsong, Locator, Healer, Fortune Teller: "Place this piece of blessed cloth under your pillow, sleep on your faith, and your loved one will surely stop drinking, whoring, stealing … Bind this bracelet to your wrist and ward off arthritis, rheumatism, and impure thoughts … "

With well-planned precision, these inducements to God always arrived on the same day as the checks. "Don't waste that money on drugs and demon liquor; send it here!" And having purposely put those bundles aside, I would later sneak them into my car, take them home, and, no matter how hot it was, burn them in the fireplace, which otherwise went unused. It hardly made the job tolerable, but at least, once a month, I felt socially redeemed.

Hardly Ulysses.

Jacob: I'm hesitant to ask, since deer have been a controversial topic on this thread, but curiosity overcomes me: What do the tracking collars track?

That's hysterical - though I wonder what the Federal Statute of Limitations are on doing what you did? Could there be lurking Federal Agents among us?

Did you hear, oh about a year ago, about the mailman who was arrested for having accumulated literally years worth of junk mail he was supposed to deliver in his backyard instead. I don't know what became of him.

And you said, "I do have wood."

At your age Peter, I'm really glad to hear that!

Did you hear, oh about a year ago, about the mailman who was arrested for having accumulated literally years worth of junk mail he was supposed to deliver in his backyard instead.

I know that guy!

Get out of town! Was that guy you?

No, no. I would never keep junk mail in the backyard. I burned it. Jeeesh.

Just a coating, it turned out, which at least spruced up the scenery a bit; I can no longer say "frozen" snow. Everyone's always looking (eagerly) for Armageddon up here. It has something to do with being cooped up, I think.

I assume migratory patterns within the center. I've never really asked. They do look goofy, though.

It reminds me of a highly praised study:

Scientists determined, after placing monitoring devices on cats, that cats spend most of their time trying to remove monitoring devices from themselves.

Wouldn't you?

>84 copyedit52:.

Only when they're not watching. I don't want them thinking I'm a paranoid schizophrenic. The only problem is figuring out when they're not watching, 'cause they're always watching.

Frozen snow again. But speaking of cats:

I've got two of them. One likes to stay in the house, and the other always wants to go out. He stands by the door to the (now cold) woodstove room, and I let him out, and he comes back in within minutes, no doubt annoyed. So he goes downstairs, to the room where I work on the computer, and stands at the sliding door there, expecting, it seems, that there might be spring outside that door, and is disappointed again. He's about twelve years old. You'd think he would have wised up by now.

Frozen snow is not a problem. But stay away from the yellow snow.

The yellow sno-cones are lemon — really!

86: In a cat story anthology I used to have there was a sports writer (not Gallico, it was somebody else) who wrote a very funny essay about "crazy cats" in which he described one of his nutty felines going from front door to front window to back window to back door hoping to find some place where the sun is shining. Once he's finished the circuit he trots back to the front door and the guy says "That's where I draw the line. Once around to a customer." This was a pretty old anthology collected by Brandt Aymar, I believe the story was 50's vintage.

I try to explain the facts of seasonal life to him, but he just won't listen.

87 >because some animal urinated on that spot ?

>89 anna_in_pdx:.

That reminded me: I used to rent a townhouse with a staircase with a skylight above it. I devised what I called a "catdial" in which, I could tell what time of day it was based on which step on which a cat was sleeping.

> 92 Love that ! : ) A cat dial !!!

After how many minutes did the cat hop up or down one stair ? Exactly sixty ?

>93 Macumbeira:.

It depended on too many variables to be scientifically feasible.

(a) which of my two cats it was (differing levels of catatonia)
(b) what the other cat was doing (if she was bored, she'd usually fight/play with the other one)
(c) the presence of food within a 3 mile radius

But, they averaged about 60, so I used it to keep track of the time from time to time. It also gave me an idea for my next invention:

The Catomic Clock.

splendid ( applauding frenetically ). I feel that we are on the brink of discovering a new way to count time.

Is that you loyd ?

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/a/lloyd-alexander/time-cat.htm

>95 Macumbeira:.

Sadly, cats have been used to count time since the 1930s. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Kit-Cat_Klock

It's not a new idea. :(

>94 aethercowboy:. Very cool:

Time Cat: The Remarkable Journeys of Jason And Gareth (1963)

A novel by Lloyd Alexander

Jason and his magic cat Gareth travel through time to visit countries all over the world during different periods of history.

Surely that cat could tell time, and not look for spring behind every door.

97: I just read that! It's on my son's bookshelf. I loved it and recommend it for kids 8 and up. I read other Lloyd A. books as a kid (The Book of Three, etc.) and liked his gentle humor.

97&98: Can't wait til mine are old enough! I loved Lloyd A. too. Probably the writer and series that most awakened the reading bug in me.

>97 copyedit52: My daughter and I read Time Cat together when she was young, then as she got older she read it again by herself. It was one of her favorites!

An early encounter with unadulterated nature. From "Digging Deeper," which I'm editing (hopefully) for the final time; the 25th chapter, "Up in Mendocino":

... We sat on a blanket spread unevenly over tall grass, in sight of the splintered wooden house where we’d put our things. We’d lolled on the hilltop clearing for half an hour, maybe less, and already the noises and silences and the vertiginous sense of dimension were overwhelming, freaking me out.

To counter my loss of self, I’d begun to work on the scene, reducing it to its components—to manage it—noting the trees marking the end of the clearing, jagged spires set against the pale sky; and over there, the weather-beaten house, with the woodpile to one side; and behind me, a fallen tree, its bramble of branches and leaves rising above the chaotic strokes of yellow grass.

And having somewhat tamed the landscape by cataloguing it, I began to transform it, to further alter it, giving the house a new door and a bay window, imagining a supply of running water from the ravine, pumped up from a flowing creek, though the one we’d crossed to climb to the hilltop house was drought dry. I knew nothing about water tables or underground streams, and so went with a simpler, more godly solution to replenish the creek: falling rain. And since a full creek would be an obstacle to crossing it, I constructed an aerial tram, suspended over creek and steep forest slope, to convey us up without ever touching ground, from the dirt road where I’d left the car almost to the front door of the now renovated house.

The snow plow guys who hang out in the bread and soup store (Message #70) are a prescient lot. Today's weather report:

A severe snowstorm is expected to slam the Mid-Atlantic region this weekend, dumping anywhere from 16 to 24 inches of snow on an area extending from Baltimore to West Virginia. "Not just major but most likely historic snow is approaching."

--Washington Post

What this means for me and theaelizabet and sixty million or so other northeastern people is still unclear.

Current forecast for northern Jersey: 3 to 5 in. of snow. My cousin in Baltimore, however, is pulling out her shovel in preparation for a possible two feet.

>99 slickdpdx:, I read your post, and just had a sappy thought, and don't know their ages, but how about Owl Moon?

"Sometimes there's an owl..."

A cold damp wind from the south, but not a trace of snow up here. I feel left out.

Ha! You're out of the weather-loop! But down south of you is no laughing matter! Even us here in sunny So Cal are getting dumped on at the moment. Snow elevation down to 3,500 feet. Which means tomorrow there will be lovely traffic jams on all the local mountain roads as Los Angelenos look northeast and see all that white stuff awaiting them.

>105 copyedit52: I know how you feel!

Lit up a fire tonight. Did some writing by the open woodstove doors, the flames licking about, the room toasty warm. Held the cold night in abeyance; eleven degrees.

You miss out on some things when you live in California.

Miss?

The New Yawker is dissin' us Por-Man!! What are we ah goin' to do?

Porius did occur to me, but he's from De Troit, no? You, on the the other hand, Chico, are another story all-to-geddah.

Chino! Not Chico!

Sorry. I am abashed.

For me, warmer is better.

California weather. The coldest day on reckid.

And this reckid is, what? In San Diego? Fifty degrees? Then again, it's probably not much more than that in San Francisco in August, but with a damp chill I dislike far more than a fifteen degree day here in these Catskill Mountains. Started the Bric-a-Brac man, btw; nearly forgot how much fun and what an excellent writer Greenan is.

He's one of the better American Novelists. Wickedly pfunny. Rarely wastes a word.

I don't want to be merely a weather man, of course, but it would be remiss of me not to pass on the info I picked up on the Weather Channel: that on Wednesday, after the Midwest gets blasted, we nor'easterners will apparently get our turn as well. For some reason, this means I have to go out and buy a lot of milk.

>118 copyedit52: And flour and sugar. Don't forget the flour and sugar.

Joseph Heller is right there with Greenan.

You know, I was thinking this morning: Thomas Berger.

His treatment of the Matter of Britain was splendididious.

Oh fuck, Porius. Another book I'll have to get. I can hardly keep up with your recommendations.

Tried to fill the bird feeder again. Snow over my boot tops & drifted halfway up the pole. Looked like cat prints around it. Havaen't seen many birds lately. Maybe they got smart & all went south. I would if I had wings.

Marian: Good to hear from someone in the combat zone (I presume). Those of us who missed out on the storm have been romanticizing it. Word on the street (the bread and soup store in town, actually), is that you're gonna get socked again, on Tuesday night maybe, and that we'll be sharing this one with you on Wednesday.

It's always weird when I see deer in San Diego proper. It just is.

Porius? You seen deer there in paradise? You been holding out on me?

It's a max of 27 celcius (80.6 degrees F) here today and the sky is blue, though gathering rainclouds. I mowed my lawn yesterday evening, and the beans and tomatoes in the garden are ripe.

I only ever feel exotic on the internet.

But seriously, I can't imagine what it's like for you snow-attacked people. I hope it's not dangerous or scary or too depressing.

We had bad thunderstorms here last week - trees down and houses damaged, though it was only that serious on the other side of Sydney; just heavy rain and wind right here where I am. Rather like the Pasternak poem Murr quoted in Belva's thread in Club Read - gorgeous.

You do get used to the snow, ChocolateMuse, and some people (like myself, and apparently theaelizabet in New Jersey) actually become fond of it, especially if you don't have to drive on or through it, or shovel it ... or, like MarianV in #124 have to negotiate it to feed the birds. And schoolchildren everywhere in the snow zone eagerly await it and hope for lots of it, so school will close for the day.

I have to share this, and don't know what fershluginer thread to do it on, so here I am, among the nature lovers: I just finished rewriting the third or fourth chapter from the end of the (absolute) final draft of Digging Deeper, A Memoir of the Seventies, and it went so well, it--whatever it is that animates writing--blew my mind. I don't think I've ever written anything better. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

A few dears caught in the headlights, Peter, but, alas, noh deer. It's ARTHUR REX by Berger, I believe. I've got plenty of recommendations for you, all right.

Ha ha! I read it already!

130: Glad to hear it is going well! If its the seventies then 10cc says big boys don't cry.

Really looking forward to "Digging Deeper" any estimates on the publication date at this point?

Publication date would be premature, since I have to do some research to see who might actually publish it and rip me off the least for the pleasure. I mean, I expect I'll be getting some outfit to print the book, as before, and guarantee that it will be available on the Internet, but I don't know which one yet.

Presently, I'm working on the 27th or 28th chapter, out of 32 or 33; I don't know for sure since yesterday, in rewriting and editing a chapter, it grew long enough to divide into two chapters. But I appreciate you asking, Paul, and since I'm so into it, and I do like to share, here's the first three paragraphs of the chapter I'm working on now, called "Great Escape" (an ironic title), from "Digging Deeper," A Memoir of the Seventies, a work still in progress:

Out the window, picture perfect steeples rose above snow-covered rooftops beneath a dour gray sky. A wintry scene in old Europe, a museum landscape to admire. A hotel room in Basel, where the scenery was the stuff I fell back upon to keep my spirits up and to stoke Noreen’s flagging morale.

Having run out of film back in Amsterdam, she’d nearly filled her sketch pad with poses of me standing by the window, or reading, or sleeping. I’d finished the last book I brought from America, Don Quixote, an ironic comment on our trip: me chasing windmills, Noreen an improbable Sancho Panza, trudging alongside. The predicament of an errant knight motivated by youthful enthusiasm, which now found us prisoners in a hotel room while waiting for money to be wired from home.

The innkeeper had begun to regard us suspiciously as our stay approached a week and we’d yet to pay our bill. Like thieves, we darted back to the room after breakfast, dining room rolls secreted in our pockets, hoping he wouldn’t spot us; snuck out again in the afternoon, for our daily trip to the American Express office; ducked back inside in the evening, when the coast seemed clear. Half starved, the gnawing in my stomach reminded me of another influential book I’d read, Hunger, and its crazed protagonist. But where delirium had propelled him through the streets of Oslo, I was motivated by uncertainty.

Two measly inches up here, theaelizabet. How'd you do?

>136 copyedit52: Peter, we're pushing a foot here and the worst of the storm hasn't even arrived. We're just starting to experience some gusts and the weather service is now saying we're expecting 15 to 20 in. of snow. None of us has to be outside today, so the fire is in the fireplace and we all have our books out. Not bad.

My wife says we are expecting snow for the third time this winter. I don't recall any other winter since we came here in '89 in which we got three measurable snows.

Of course it won't be anything like what youse guyz are getting. Damnit!

Like I said, not much snow up here. Maybe an inch and a half. My plow guy, whom I met in the bread and soup bistro the day before yesterday, held up thumb and finger four inches apart, telling me that's what he was hoping for. The so-called weekenders who own second homes here can be raked for a plow at an inch, since they don't know any better, but the rest of us rebel if it's not at least four inches. So I imagine, when I go to town for today's bowl of soup, my plow guy will be pissed off.

SNOW STORM

What do my cancer and a snow storm have in common?
I look out my window,.and the air is calm, the trees are brown and leafless.
There are no surprises in the air.
They were wrong, I think.
The day will proceed as usual.
I will go out, have lunch with a friend, do my shopping,
Drive the country roads, listening to the radio.
There are no surprises in the air.
I make my breakfast, straighten the house.
I look out the window. How has this happened?
Already, the air is filled with steady white flakes.
There is a thin coating on the branches of the trees.
It will not stop now. What they said was true.
The snow will persist throughout the day.
The sky will turn black, and I will turn on the outside light
So I can watch it sparkle in the darkness.
I will not go out in my car.
It is too icy and dangerous for my precarious driving skills.
Everything is different now.
It is slower - warm and safe inside, but separated from the outside world,
A country snowstorm, where everyone burrows into themselves,
And the day to day world is farther and farther away.

140: That's really beautiful. Who wrote it?

My friend Clarabel, who's not yet ready to reveal her actual name.

Ah-ha! I love this (and the poem). One never knows whom one may be talking to around here....

I get your drift, Enrique, and it ain't true. Clarabel is her own person.

I just have to say, getting Rique's drift... pun intended?

Lovely poem, Clarabel.

A still cold night, our world embraced in snow
4:00am, icy reflections of moonlight
I peek thru the blinds and there
beneath my window
A young deer, rough-coated, 2 nubby
stubs of antlers
quietly nosing through the ruins of the garden.
Which are mostly covered by the snow
Smaller than our dog, I think before I
realize
He is standing in the snow above his
knees.
No swift flight for him, he moves
slowly, carefully lifting each leg from the snow, then setting it down again.

Where do the wild creatures go when
their world is buried?
How beautiful the night, the crusted
snow glittering in the moonlight -
But the sparrow still seeks a home and the deer and foxes starving.

Bravo, Marian. This might become a poetry thread yet.

The sun is farther north this morning than it was last week, as seen through bare-branched trees, casting their long shadows across the (still) snow-covered backyard. But it's still, of course, cold.

Thanks for the appreciation, Anna and Chocolate Muse. Being a fairly closeted poet, it was nice to venture out, place my footprint in the snow, watch it grow, see a new and different snowprint next to mine. Thanks Marian, for a different picture.

We here in north Texas, Dallas and northern environs, got nearly a foot, yes, you read that correctly, nearly a foot of snow yesterday. It is our third measurable snowfall of the winter, an event that has not occurred in the previous 21 years since we moved here. It set a record for the most snow in a single 24 hour period. It also drove the total snowfall so far this winter to a new record. We are expecting more early next week. It's been a lot colder at times, but snow is very, very unusual. We've gone years, near decades, without so much as a flurry. Now this. Oh, dear.

I know this is trivial to you northerners and mid-westerners, but this is a big deal for Dallas.

I'm sure we could ship Vancouver all the snow they will need.

>149 geneg:.

I heard about that! Only sleet and cold rain here in Houston. Of course, here in Houston, it's snowed once a year for the past two years. Crazy!

>149 geneg: I know this is trivial to you northerners and mid-westerners ...

Not at all. Here in upstate New York we got nada during last week's storm, and an inch and a half, tops, this last time. If not for the lack of true cold, you could be us in a normal year, and we you.

The squeamish Don Fanucci cannot stomach Nature.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y84LTsolFX0&feature=related

Terrific scene, but quite a stretch to fit it on this thread, no?

Thirteen degrees and quiet this morning, except for a squirrel rooting amidst the leaves that lead up to the ridge, and the occasional rapping of a woodpecker on a distant tree.

Your wildlife sounds much nicer than mine. I've got one squirrel who just chirps at the cat downstairs in the courtyard. And one bluejay who sits right outside my door and yells at me.

A nature lover--or glimpser, at any rate-- living in New York City. Welcome to our quiet corner of the salon, Jane. Your squirrel and bluejay bring back memories of ginkgo trees sprouting from pavement, old ladies feeding pigeons, and, to be fair, hidden glades in Prospect Park.

Squirrels...and cats?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_onrMQCD64&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MepWPMjHO3U&feature=related

I've been too hard on you recently, Enrique. A superlative addition to our menagerie!

Why I miss Calvin and Hobbes:

http://www.angelfire.com/wa/zzaran/calvin.html

A comment on Nature was all, P. Don Fanucci is like a character out of Wilde in a sense. Doesn't much like Nature - like Bobby Bittman in retirement.

There's a full container and a bulging trash bag of vegetable peelings, black bananas, mealy potatoes, eggshells, decomposing spaghetti, moldy and stale bread, and other unedible whatnot (but no meat) in the kitchen, awaiting a trip to the compost heap on the edge of the forest. I've put that trip off now for nearly a week, but today, I promise myself, I'll crunch across the frozen backyard snow, over the cat and deer tracks, and dump that stuff.

Quiet out back this morning, except for some bird in the distance that sounds like the cousin to a crow. The same sheet of frozen snow (I still haven't trekked across it to the compost pile), but with some new cat tracks. I threw one of my two outside yesterday, he was being such a pain in the ass, and I can see the distinctive six digits of one paw as he headed for the woods, no doubt in a snit.

Light snow, couple of inches and still coming down. Cleaned up the landscape. I got caught out on the road in blizzards, twice. Once, coming back from a college basketball game; another time, coming back from a circus. This gentle visitation is preferable.

My plow guy got his four-plus inches yesterday, so his sidekick--a friend of mine, a potter, teaches a ceramics course for the local art colony--showed up with his bright lights last night. Sometimes, if it's not too late, he brings his four-year-old daughter with him in the pickup. She likes to see the snow pushed this way and that.

Just stepped outside (not as cold today) to gaze at the new coat of snow in back, and heard the annoying whine in the distance created by my snow-blowing neighbors, cleaning off their driveways.

A melting day. Receding snow, pocked with crater puddles. A stiff, cold breeze from the south.

No early morning post today. Are you okay, Peter?

Funny you should ask. Or maybe apt. I had a Porius moment this morning: you might recall, when Peter mused earlier in the year that perhaps he'd stop posting birthdays and deaths ... a moment of doubt, it seemed to me, in his own meaningful existence.

Well, I had that moment too, or perhaps it was altogether mine. I like this thread, a lot (thank you again, Anna, for creating it), enjoy the contributors and what they contribute, but stood looking out at the woods in back this morning and couldn't see the forest for the trees, or the trees for the forest. And decided not to make any more entries until some other virtual person did first ... a resolution I ignored by making an entry this afternoon, but still, you get the point.

And then you came on to ask me how I was, you sweet man. And don't give me any of that masculine camaraderie you throw around and come back to tell me you find me sweet too, in a beer commercial way. You are a sweet man. Thanks for asking.

EF is da Best.

Speaking of trees; from "Back in Brooklyn," the sixth chapter of "Digging Deeper," now two chapters from completion (the Ainsworths were my inlaws at the time):

The Ainsworths had a ten or so room house on a few acres, one among the rich family of homes separated by lawns, trees, fences, and stone walls.

The trees … there were hundreds per family, compared to thousands in Prospect Park, for hundreds of thousands of people—a tree for every thousand.

Coming home to Brooklyn, emerging from the subway at Grand Army Plaza, with its Arc de Triomphe doppelgänger, a splash of green marked the democratic park, its trees meant for everyone, which brought a lump to my throat … for the long-lost Dodgers of the common man and woman; for Coney Island, a ghost town now; for the gothic bridge that was our Notre Dame; and then the stone porches and brown facades of the block we turned down, indifferent matrons welcoming us back.

More on trees and nature, sort of; from the 32nd chapter of the same work-in-progress, "Clark Kent in Limbo," rewritten and edited for the last time two days ago, from a description of Eleanor "Binky" Ainsworth:

... A child of the Old West, she liked to think herself, descended as she was from the Northwest timber baron whose trust fund provided a perpetual endowment for succeeding generations. For her comfort, her grandfather’s company had denuded chunks of Montana and the Idaho panhandle.

On our way to California, Noreen and I detoured there and stayed in the family cabin on Priest Lake, built by her grandfather’s lumbermen. As a young woman, her mother had come East, to Smith College. I had no idea what she studied, only that she was groomed to become the wife of a successful man; John Ainsworth, it turned out, sojourning in Yale then, by way of Omaha, Nebraska.

#170
Your post reminds me of the book A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. Written a long time ago, when city streets were bordered by trees and each home had its own little square of yard.

You'd think, being a Brooklyn boy, that I woulda, shoulda read that. I did read Last Exit to Brooklyn, but that's something else entirely.

I'm visiting my folks in Texas right now. They've retired to a small town out in the middle of nowhere. A grove of post oak trees sits just outside the picture window of their breakfast nook. My Dad has created a haven for birds (and squirrels, of course) with the addition of several feeders and birdbaths. Throughout the day we sit and watch the birds (and squirrels, of course) that come and go.

>174 theaelizabet:.

Aside:

Watch out for Space Zombies!

(also, sorry for the shameless self-promotion!)

Damn. Copyedit you reminded me. I picked up a replacement copy of Last Exit to Brooklyn to complement my reading of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and then forgot about it. Any idea of what pile it might be in?

Robert

Perhaps it's in the pile of authors who wrote only one memorable book (though you might certainly disagree with the following short list):

The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Hunger by Knut Hamsun
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein
Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph by T.E. Lawrence
Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville

Hamsun wrote more than one good book.
It's raining hard in the wee hours of the morning in So. Cal. The drops are dripping fast and faster off the Birds-of-Paradise as I am thankfully out of the city for a few hours after a long week of practice, games, and weaselly officials. I am only a couple hours away from a Julian rhubarb pie, some vanilla ice cream and some good coffee. It'll be oh so nice to see, instead of middle school and high school students (and yes administrators too), chicken hawks, mammoth blackbirds, and any other creature prowling around the vicinity.

The snow out back is pockmarked with quarter-size meltings and spreading craters of bare ground this morning. A woodpecker, not far away, is rapping on what sounds like a hollow tree. And the sun ... it's the brightest thing I've ever seen, blazing above the bare-branched trees to the east. Just a week ago (#166) it was casting long shadows. You'd think I would exult, but I get contrary at this time of year, mourn the passage of time.

You made me think of this one:

Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter
Robert Bly

It is a cold and snowy night. The main street is deserted.
The only things moving are swirls of snow.
As I lift the mailbox door, I feel its cold iron.
There is a privacy I love in this snowy night.
Driving around, I will waste more time.

Imbolc and Ground-hog day have passed. We are on our way to the Equinox.

Someone recently reported a diminutive (beer-can sized), road-killed, Saw-whet Owl. No one has the time in winter to check every cedar or white pine, so this guy is rarely seen. They'll have totally cleared out of southern Connecticut by St. Paddy's Day.

The blackbirds have been flying north. The Cardinals and Bluebirds are singing today. Skunk cabbage is poking through the snow.

I have friends who claim to have S.A.D. That's pretty foreign to me. If you focus on the natural calendar and get outside frequently, regardless of weather, you shouldn't ever feel blue over a trivial shortage of visible light.

"My calendar" is a bit skewed. Spring started on or about today, peaks when the amphibians come out on an icy rain (and also get squashed by cars) and is well over by when the Spicebush blooms. Summer ends around July 1st after the St. Johnswort blooms and when the male shorebirds arrive on our coast from the Arctic.

I've gotta go, pull on my boots, and take the other dog for a walk in the snow. Happy Spring!

I used to live in southern Connecticut too, Sandy--in Fairfield County, in the well-heeled town of Westport, right on the shore of the sound. I planted a garden, as part of the rent I paid my former inlaws, to live in the gardener's college with Noreen (I mention her in #171, and she's with me in #170 too).

I remember cardinals at the bird feeder, and bluejays, and red wing blackbirds. As a putative gardener, I knew the names of vegetables, but I didn't know the names of hardly anything else that grew or flew around me, and still don't, after more than twenty years in upstate New York. I should get a few books(!) and make up for this deficiency, and in the meantime can only appreciate your own knowledge of the Saw-whet owl and Saint-John's-wort.

Were your cardinals the gray ones or the red ones? I saw plenty of the gray ones in Western Massachusetts as a boy, but I may not have seen a live red one until I saw one in Hawaii many years later.

Robert

No doubt Sandydog1 would be more authoritative on this than I, but I think male cardinals are red and females gray. If so, you'll have to reassess your boyhood and later years, Robert.

I liked it that the cardinals repelled the bluejays, which were annoying. As they annoyed janepriceestrada in New York City (#155):

... And one bluejay who sits right outside my door and yells at me.

It's amazing how many birds are named after some clergyman's style of dress. There are all kinds of Cardinals, Bishops, Jacobins and others, I'm sure.

But I don't know of any all-white birds called Popes.

178> How was Julian today Por-Man? Much snow up there? You ever make the drive up Palomar Mtn. to the observatory? I used to camp a lot in Cuaymaca Rancho State Park, before that idiot hunter decided to light a flare in the middle of summer a few years back ("because he was lost!") and with that decision, in effect decimated the entire back country area with the worst wildfire in San Diego County's history...but I'm not bitter about it, oh no, not in the least.

Rain. Very nice. Coldish, but not for a Detroit boy. Been to Palomar Mtn. We've traipsed all over So. Cal. Every back road and highway you can think of. Might take a job coaching professional bball in Mexicali. A 2 month gig that pays reasonably well. It's the 'shady' venues that concern me. Much of Mexico seems lawless to me. We'll see.

Hey, guys. Nice to see you here. I have to put nature on hold today in favor of the Thruway and, eventually, JFK. Lotta music to listen to, between here and there, and the same old scenery to see. I'm conveying two young people to the airport so they can fly back to Seattle, and I can already hear myself pointing out the apple orchards in what's known as the Mid-Hudson Valley--Catskill to Peekskill, if that means anything to you--and picking a playful fight over which state has better apples, New York or Washington ... though I don't eat apples myself, unless they're in pies.

Just went outside, to fortify myself before getting into the metal and glass bubble, heard a fair number of birds, twittering and chirping.

You know, Freeque, the Native Americans didn't like Southern California. They believed it was the home of malevolent spirits. Every time I hear of another earthquake, mudslide, landslide, brush fire, and water shortage, I think to myself, "Maybe those Indians knew what they were talking about".

As wonderful as it is, I don't think Southern California was meant to be inhabited.

189: I would say that about the entire SW desert. Cadillac Desert made a huge impression on me.

And it would never have become as inhabited as it became were it not for the treachery and lies (pardon me, I meant "vision" and "courage" as local politicians would've called it) of a single man: William Mulholland, and his Los Angeles Aqueduct, which transformed an Owens Valley/Eastern High Sierra oasis of fertile farmland and grazeland into a desert almost overnight, and, when the wind blows just right, a dustbowl straight out of The Grapes of Wrath.

Go see Chinatown, or read the book of all the epic legal battles over water rights between L.A. and the Owens Valley, in Water and Power today.

184 - I just think my blue jay should be nicer. I let him eat all the seeds I planted the first year with merely a chuckle.

Beautiful day today, sun shining. We had a very cute birdy hopping around our terrace this morning.

Yeah, that water stuff: it's no doubt necessary to understand it when studying the political past and ecological present reality of the Southwest and the L.A. basin. Subsidizing rice growers in California, with all the water that requires, when rice is plentiful elsewhere, cheap, and grown by people who need the bread.

It was immediately apparent to me in New Mexico--where what people call rivers we here in the Northeast would call creeks or even streams--that too many people live there. I sat next to a trickle in Sante Fe that was apparently the Rio Grande. No kidding.

>192 janemarieprice: Jane: Stop feeding the bluejay! And don't feed any pigeons either.

193 - I'm not intentionally. I planted some nice flower seeds in a pot and he dug them all up and ate them - cheeky thing. I just can't plant anything from seeds.

I tried a garden up here my first year, after moving from Brooklyn. The deer ate everything. Talk about cheek!

>192 janemarieprice:,193,194 Bluejays are the bully boys of the bird world.

>180 jnwelch: jnwelch: It's not snowing now; in fact it's melting. But that doesn't mean you can't grace us with another Bly poem, Joe, or something else of a natural bent from your library. Or maybe some Chicago-type thing, poetry or not. This thread is short on midwesterners.

I like this guys poetry for just the things people who know poetry dislike. His themes are big, broad, and incredibly romantic, his language is often stilted, or artificial with the need to fulfill the terms of his chosen style. But, you know what -- I like Robert W. Service.

Here's one featuring nature. He really was astounded by the Arctic.

That gave me chills, Gene. Nature indeed!

A poem by a friend that I received today:

The harder the winter
the better for the wolves
Eagles & ravens also clean up
While many animals are struggling
just to survive
the wolf pack is sleek & operating
in tiptop condition
with energy enough for play

Swinging their massive shaggy heads
from side to side
the steaming buffalo sweep
deeply into the drifting snow
to feed on the grass below
Their calves are cute with big eyes
but they also make
mighty inviting targets

The wolves have taken down
a mule deer but a grizzly
appears out of hibernation
& forcefully claims the prize
The wolves howl for reinforcements
but not receiving enough replies
to challenge a bear this size
they turn their backs & trot away

Author! Author! C'mon, Anna, you know that no one on this thread bites.

His name is Steve Toth and he lives in Klamath, CA (near the Redwoods).

Correction to post #197:

MarianV is from Ohio. That's the Midwest, isn't it?

I dunno I'll have to gouptotawn an ask.

Ah, Porius. I was just about to expand my correction into corrections:

And jdthloue, back in message #4 or #5 (we haven't seen him here since we outlawed deer hunting on these premises), is from southeast Ohio, which might be the Midwest too.

And Porius, though he now appears to sojourn in San Diego, is constantly citing Detroit, so he might as well be living there.

And someone else, back in prehistoric thread times, says on her profile that she goes to the Aurora library. There's an Aurora in Ohio, or did she mean Georgia?

Which reminds me: Don't they have nature in the South? (I don't count Texas, nor Jane, who lives in New York City now.) Where are our southern correspondants?

They don't have nature in the south; they have palmetto.

Robert

205: The Appalachian mountains certainly constitute "nature". I believe Bob M. lives in the beautiful state of North Carolina. The Blue Ridge mountains are pretty gorgeous too. For us West Coasters they are more like hills than mountains - but their Fall is much more spectacular than ours, what with all those hardwood trees.

More corrections, concerning the many people I missed or mucked up:

wisewoman (#16) is from NE Ohio
nee-nee (#21) is from Southfield, Michigan
And HippyPaul (#134), from Arkansas, is our only geographic southerner, since I can't find Bob M. anywhere on this thread, Anna. He's not one of those sock characters, is he?

Hm, Bob McConnaughey may be on Lit Snobs and not the Salon. Never mind...

My sister lives in Cleveland, does that count?

She only counts if you're her sock puppet.

If I seem somewhat overexuberant today, or just plumb loco, it's because I just finished the final chapter, the epilogue, of Digging Deeper, A Memoir of the Seventies; 300 or so book pages, whenever it comes out in that form. Tomorrow morning, in celebration, I'll open this thread with an extended excerpt from the sixth or seventh chapter, called "Young Man Goes West," which plays out against the background of nature north of the Bay area. If you want to avoid that, stay away until Wednesday.

Congratulations Peter! I've said it once and will undoubtedly say it again: Can't wait to read it!

205 - I really must protest. I may not live in the south currently, but I'm most certainly Southern (can you not hear my accented typing?). Besides, my mother provides me with frequent updates on both weather and wildlife back home - it has been very rainy for some time, the dock is under water, almost time to start the garden, and our golden retriever has not caught anything today.

ETA: Congrats! Indeed cause for celebration.

I had a feeling, Jane, that you would be the one to call me on this geography stuff. I knew I could get away with the inverse when I told Porius that since he thinks so much about Detroit we might as well locate him there. (I'm still trying to figure out how much of where he lives is virtual and how much real.) But you're clearly a different story. As they say, "You can take the girl out of the South, but not the South out of the girl." Or something like that. The actual expression, of course, is: "You can take the boy out of Brooklyn, but not Brooklyn out of the boy."

Real?

No, not. I was particularly full of myself yesterday, Porius. When you talk too much, you begin to say anything that pops into your head, and what you come out with becomes less and less real. The writing, the threading--I was working up a cyclone. I'm okay now. Apologies all around, where warranted.

Snowing again, fattish flakes. Not much, they say, but enough to remind us it's still winter. Though it might be raining down your way in Jersey, theaelizabet, if you're home and not still in Texas.

Nature-type excerpt from Digging Deeper to come shortly, as promised. And with mention of a book, no less!

>216 copyedit52: Back home with gray skies and rain. Gonna be a mess tonight.

As for Southerners here, last I paid attention to such as that, Texans were considered Southerners. But if that's not south enough, we'll be moving to the Atlanta area in a couple of weeks (Woodstock) which is unambiguously South.

I realized this morning that I'll have to put in a bit more work on the epilogue, but I'm done enough with Digging Deeper to present an excerpt and kvell. (Enrique had trouble with Yiddish a while ago, when I called him a mensch, and now he'll have kvell to bother him.)

Like I Think, Therefore Who Am I?, this book is what I like to think of as a cubist memoir, with its discrete stand-alone chapters melding into the longer plot line and story (about 300 book-length pages). Digging Deeper covers seven years, in 34 chapters plus an epilogue. The following nature-oriented excerpt comes from the 26th chapter, "Up in Mendocino," which I also excerpted, back in message #101:

... I went back to the broken footlocker I’d been examining. It contained decaying copies of Life magazine, hardcover books that smelled of mold, and a smattering of paperbacks. I’d both hoped and expected to come across something valuable. Old, out-of-the-way stuff, ordained by my curiosity to be something special. When I did find what I’d been looking for, however, I didn’t know it: a paperback book with a lurid cover; Lady in the Lake, by Raymond Chandler. I’d never heard of him, but took it back to the hilltop house, where I spent the rest of the day reading.

We'd bought produce at a roadside stand on the trip up, and in late afternoon began to prepare dinner. It took a while, in the rudimentary kitchen, with a propane stove and no electricity, but that seemed right. What else was there to do? The insects were subdued now, the sky and trees out the window a still life portrait.

Eventually we ate, and though that should have transpired slowly too, since there was no reason to hurry, habit took over as we sat at the table, compelling us to get the eating over with in order to move on to the next thing … which was twilight.

Outside, bats fluttered out of the woods in erratic flight. The sky, curiously brighter than the clearing rimmed by trees, brought Magritte to mind; supposedly surreal paintings that realistically conveyed the earthly mysteriousness of dusk.

And then, abruptly, it was dark, and after a moment of absolute silence, the insects started up again; another type, or maybe the same ones sounding different. Noreen curled up in a quilt to go to sleep and I lit the oil lamp and picked up Lady in the Lake where I’d left off, as moths fluttered around me.

The rhythm of a place is irresistible; it seeps into you. But I was surprised how quickly it happened. Drinking coffee in the morning, my thoughts drifted out the window to the clearing and the insect symphony building from nothing to a shrill conclusion. The urge to read a newspaper, to see what was happening in the world, pushed at me like an addiction. And I wondered: Could I be in this place without falling back on abstraction? Look out the window without feeling the need to explain what I saw?

The morning sky was more white than blue; later, in the afternoon, an eggshell blue; and as evening approached the great dome seemed to recede, nearer things taking precedence, the air shifting from blue-gray to smoky dusk in subtle gradations. A bird heralded the darkness, and then silence, as on the day before, with not even the distant whoosh of a car to contrast and accentuate it, only a high-pitched whisper in my ears, pulsing to the beat of my heart.

And then full night, the sky prominent again, a pitch-black field for those twinkling stars the Egyptians believed hinted at an illuminated world beyond, peaking through the holes in a dark canopy. Catching myself trying to locate the Big Dipper, I wondered: Could I take in the nighttime sky without looking for constellations?

The post office had suspended me for a week, for what was called insubordination. It was intended as a punishment, but I welcomed it. When I woke up at four-thirty in the morning, before realizing where I was, my body told me to crawl out of bed and put on a uniform. Realizing, not for the first time, that my life didn’t have to be determined by those working habits, I rolled over and went back to sleep.

Could I take in the nighttime sky without looking for constellations?

Good question.

Very good as I had expected. I am looking forward to the chance to read your second book having enjoyed the first hugely. Like the other authors I enjoy you are just not turning out product fast enough.

As you noted above I am from Arkansas and a rather rural part of that state at that. I see deer most every day and hear coyotes every night. A stretch in the military ruined me on fun in the woods with firearms so I do not hunt. However, we have to work to keep deer out of the garden and I have had one dog killed by coyotes. So they are somewhat of a mixed blessing.

These days country living as a whole is a mixed sort of experience. I wonder what the few paragraphs you quote above would have read like had you had internet access during your involuntary week off.

No apologies necessary P. I look forward to the talk, to the discussions, and to the rants - I blather on, what else is this LT thing for. To show how many copies of LAVENGRO one owns?

It's 60 degrees in the L.A. Basin. More rain and mudslides coming tonight. Along the beautiful freeway this morning, I saw a dead canine, but unfortunately, encountered no wildlife that was actually alive.

Did I do that right?

Peter, your absence is a gaping void in our daily life. Are you okay? Ill? On vacation?

After a week of very nice and on and off sunny, though cold, weather we are having settled rain this a.m. which is a very good thing. For the amount of rain we are supposed to get in the NW we have been having more and more sunny weather. While I love the sun I also love having non-brown summers and the snow staying on Mt. Hood through the summer, and that doesn't happen when we have a dry spring. So let it rain.

I have to think we're up to a foot and a half or so of snow in northern NJ and it's still coming down. Initially, the snow was wet and heavy and coated the power lines and wind gusts last night caused some power outages. The snow is lighter now (I know, having shoveled both kinds of snow over the last 24 hours) and there's no wind, but our lights blinked twice this morning.

Peter, are you snowed in? Or out?

The world is ending! At least that's what the TV told me. Seriously though, lots of snow today. I hate it. Spring! Come here you.

Southern Report from Jane's Mom: 29°35′15″N 90°42′58″W: Unseasonably cold (which means 40s). Time for all this foolishness to end. It's February for God's sakes.

The electric (as the locals call it) just came back on ... which was why I was gone: no heat (the furnace is triggered by the "electric"), no faucet or flush water (the pump needs electricity), no computer or cable, no nothin' except my woodstove the last three days and nights. And not just me, of course: 130,000 of us in mainly Ulster and Dutchess (they spell it with the t) Counties.

Do you know how cold a 40 degree room feels? Don't ask.

On Feb. 23, message #217 I wrote:

Snowing again, fattish flakes. Not much, they say, but enough it remind us it's still winter.

Only six inches of snow brought this about, but the wettest, fattest snow you can imagine: knocked down limbs and powerlines.

I'll have another entry on this later, since all I could do was read and write, by flashlight. And what could be more nature-al than being reduced to the basics by the weather?

I hope you were reding Edward Abbey or Henry Thoreau!

No. I was reading Brotherly Love by Pete Dexter. But I might have felt like Thoreau in some of his drearier, unrecorded moments.

My wife decided to celebrate her first year of retirement by taking a three week cruise from Buenos Aires to Santiago, Chile. Not for me, I told her, but I think it's a good idea, and drive her down to JFK the day the electricity goes out at two in the morning. So, after twenty-plus years of sharing upstate winters together--through thick and thin, as they say--she's gone during the thickest three days of all, and I'm here alone.

With the electricity off, the furnace doesn't work, nor the water pump (you can't use the faucet or flush, or it will bring up silt and muck before the pump stops working), nor the oven and stove, refrigerator, and computer. The house gets colder as the residual heat dissipates, then holds steady at 40 degrees--which feels a lot colder inside than out. So I build a fire in the woodstove room, eat there, sleep there, get up now and then to throw another piece of wood in and latch the flap doors.

Nothing to do but read and write and think. And what comes to mind first is the computer, which is where I go to talk and listen. To me, the notion of virtual people is unnerving. It's why I'm always asking people where they live, how's the weather, and offer those details about myself. Some might feel it's an imposition. Too bad, I yam what I yam. And now, alone with the woodstove, I miss being able to contact my computer friends and acquaintances.

Sleeping fitfully, I go to town earlier than usual, about 7:30, to the bread and soup bistro where I'm known as the Baguette Man--for a cup of coffee, since I can't make that at home. Usually I don't go till about noon, so there's a different crew there now. But it doesn't matter. Everyone is glad to see everyone else; grungy from lack of soap and water, the men unshaven, stubble-faced. Acquaintances and familiar faces are suddenly friends, strangers become acquaintances, and everyone is quick to talk, to exchange information, meanwhile listening to similar snippets around the room:

"No electric from Ohayo Mountain Road out to Wittenberg ..."

"They got some real problems over in Dutchess ... "

"Good thing it isn't cold or the pipes'd freeze. That's a blessing ..."

"My computer works but the cable is down. Never realized how dependent I'd become ... "

Usually, I just live here, like I live on the Internet nowadays. But there are times I know I'd miss it if I--or it--were gone. Like when the lights go out.

I think I read a Pete Dexter many years ago but all I can dredge up right now is that a floor somewhere is getting refinished in it.

I get very seasick. No cruises for me!

I like being isolated now and again, but the fun wears off after a couple of days.

>232 slickdpdx:. It took me a while to get into the book (I mean other than trying to hold the flashlight steady) because the implied point of view narration of the third person characters is so omnipotent--to every nuance of the characters' inner reactions--that it threw me, in a way that the same narration in first person wouldn't have. But after a while I appreciated the thoroughness of the little universe Dexter was presenting: the kind of thing I used to like (when I was less demanding) with the Hardy Boys. You old enough to remember them, slick?

>226 theaelizabet:, 227. Just watched the news. I was so wrapped up in my own three day ordeal (and had no TV to watch, of course) that I didn't realize what was going on down there. You two got hammered, it seems. The Tenafly Gourmet Barn or Farm: the roof caved in. You know that place, theaelizabet?

Not only do I remember Frank and Joe, I knew them as books not Sean Cassidy vehicles, though I never really got into them. Going just a bit further back, I did read a couple of my Mom's Bobsey Twins books!

>233 copyedit52: I do know Tenafly Gourmet Farm quite well. It's a locally-owned market. I had no idea that the roof caved in. We've been shut in the house all day with no TV. I hope no one was hurt. Guess I'll find out tomorrow.

Slept in my bed last night, where I could stretch out instead of curl up in an el shape on the floor before the woodstove. Didn't have to get up to throw another piece of wood on the fire. Got up this morning and made my familiar gigantic cup of cappuccino. Felt like I was living in a luxury hotel.

How sweet it is.

Yes. Most definitely. But you know, Peter, I felt like a young man again, the guy who slept in crash pads and in Golden Gate Park (and on a bench in Grand Circus Square), who dealt with vicissitude and was astonished at what he was capable of accepting and, in a certain corner of his mind, actually digging, since he could after all do it, whatever it was.

#231, "My computer works but the cable is down. Never realized how dependent I'd become ... "

This is something weighing on our hearts right now. We are moving to Atlanta a week from Tuesday and are going to experience a real downgrade in internet service. At present we are on Verizon FIOS (fiber optic), something not available to us in our new home in Georgia. The best we'll be able to do there will be DSL. (What about Comcast Cable, you say. I will die before I give those assholes another cent. That's what about Comcast.) Our download speeds will be cut by 75%. Our FIOS regularly delivers in the 25 megabit range. Pages are downloaded nearly as fast as if they were read from the local hard-drive. The DSL provider does six when the sun shines but you've got to hold your tongue just right, and that takes practice. That's going to be an adjustment.

Two things about this move that will be negative adjustments: no more FIOS, at least for the foreseeable future, and Eastern Time. All teevee programs in the CST are an hour earlier in the day. Prime time starts at seven and runs until ten rather than starting at eight and running until eleven. Of course we time shift most of our evening teevee anyway. But nonetheless, CST has it all over EST. I think it's that extra hour of burn-in the sun gets.

It's not really up to the job in the East. It doesn't get really lit well until it hits the Central Time Zone. It fine tunes itself across the mountain west, usually being just a tad too warm, but by the time it hits the Western Time Zone it's just right, hence the Mediterranean climate in California.

Jeez, it's snowing again. And coming down pretty hard too.

Meanwhile I'm wondering about my wife's three week cruise from Buenos Aires (where she is now) to Santiago, Chile. What is the cruise company going to do now?

sheesh!

Musick to mine ears:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9lmepH9STs&feature=related

Courtesy of Porius:

COME IN

As I came to the edge of the woods,
Thrush music - hark!
Now if it was dusk outside,
Inside it was dark.

Too dark in the woods for a bird
By sleight of wing
To better its perch for the night,
Though it could still sing.

The last of the light of the sun
That had died in the west
Still lived for one song more
In a thrush's breast.

Far in the pillared dark
Thrush music went -
Almost like a call to come in
To the dark and lament.

But no, I was out for stars:
I would not come in.
I meant not even if asked.
And I hadn't been.

Robert Frost
A WITNESS TREE 1942

And here's something Enrique wrote way back on December 12, 2009 (on another thread) that has a nice feel to it, I think:

It's raining here in sunny Southern California. Gloomy and doomy, which I actually kind of like. A day to drink hot cocoa and coffee, play SORRY w/the kids, watch an old movie or two, and hopefully do a lot of reading.

241

Mine too. Wonderful!

I took Sandy out today and she barked at, and chased, a half a dozen deer for oh, about 2 seconds.

Still, as I watched those scrawny little CT white-tails running (quite different from those huge PA or ME deer), I couldn't help think about their winter metabolic challenges. It reminded me of my readings of Bernd Heinrich.

243> Gracias for pimpin' my post, Pierre!

Could've said the same thing about yesterday, but today it's sunny bright, the sun so bright, as DFW said through the character Orin in Infinite Jest (I paraphrase) the sun's so bright coming through the window it's like oncoming headlights.

I'm always on the lookout for new talent, Henri. Or old talent making a comeback. Or new talent found in old receptacles. But that headlight metaphor for the sun--I would have left that alone.

Ha! I'm sure I jacked DFWs metaphor up big time! Read the original. I'll go find it today and quote it verbatim here.

Oy! I try to avoid encyclopedic writers, as I gather (through hearsay) that DFW is. But if you must, you must.

A crisp, cold night (but not unbearably so) with the snow just out there on the ground, not falling from the sky. I like it.

Another poem courtesy of Porius:

GOOD HOURS

I had for my winter evening walk -
No one at all with whom to talk,
But I had the cottages in a row
Up to their shining eyes in snow.

And I thought I had the folk within:
I had the sound of a violin;
I had a glimpse through curtain laces
Of youthful forms and youthful faces.

I had such company outward bound.
I went till there were no cottages found.
I turned and repented, but coming back
I saw no window but that was black.

Over the snow my creaking feet
Disturbed the slumbering village street
Like profanations, by your leave,
At ten o'clock of a winter eve.

from NORTH OF BOSTON 1914

Just talked to my wife, who's in Montevideo (Uruguay), where they're crowning a new president today. The streets are festively cordoned off (!), and Clinton and other bigshot muckety-mucks are all there. And dig this: it's eighty degrees!

It's a rainy day here in Houston.

When it rains, it reminds me of a presentation I saw once at a Tech conference hosted by my school, in which a mathematician showed that if the wind's blowing the rain, the average person need only move as fast as the wind in the direction of the wind to get the least amount wet (assuming no umbrella). Otherwise, if no wind, or wind counter to your desired route, walking or running will get you equally wet.

Because of this, I always walk in the rain. People look at me oddly, but they're the ones who end up slipping when they're distracted by somebody walking in the rain.

I like it that you have your own personal school of environmental studies, Jacob. When it finally gets hot around here--sometime in the distant future--I'd like some tips on dealing with the heat.

>253 copyedit52:.

If you must put up sunshades, put them on the outside. When light travels through glass, it slows down, and thus causes something called "passive solar heat."

If you block the light on the inside of the window, it accumulates between the glass and the shade, and you still get heat coming in. If you block it on the outside, much less heat.

Also, an AC unit does marvels.

254: That's really interesting! Thanks!

We stayed in Corvallis--my wife, my daughter, and I--for a month one summer (I almost learned how to correctly say the word "Oregon") when it was brutally hot; 90 or more degrees every day. We got in the car and took a trip to the ocean--Newport, I think the town was--riding through a ridge of modest mountains, which nevertheless created two different weather realities. It was 30 degrees cooler on the coast!

256: When my sister was here a couple of years ago we did that (went to the coast). Portland - nearly in the 100s. Lincoln City - 65 degrees (brrr).

Oregon is not that hard to say. "Ory-Gun". That's it. Wrong way: Like Al Pacino says it in "Scent of a Woman". "Ah-ree-gone."

My daughter jumps all over me when I saw "Orgone."

In the past we've had summers in North Texas when we've gone as much as a month with the temp going over 100F every day, with weeks at or above 110F (not always, but it happens) and the nighttime temp never falls below 90F. The A/C really struggles. That's one of the reasons I so look forward to leaving Texas. Summer temps never fail to crack 90F with nights seldom dropping lower than the mid-80's. What's worse is the effect all the reservoirs have. Not only is it hot, but it's humid as well. A terrible combination.

Orgone sounds and looks a little like the Wilhelm Reich thing?

Long day, Peter? I was making a Reichian joke.

I've always pronounced Oregon "Or-ah-gun". Don't tell me that's not right.

How'd ya'll pronounce Arkansas? I pronounce it "Ar-Can-Zus". Don't tell me that's incorrect too. If Kansas is pronounced "Can-Zus" then so should Arkansas too, imo.

Yes. That's what my daughter always shouts at me after I get it wrong: "OR-ah-gun, Papa! OR-ah-gun!" My Brooklyn mouth has trouble fashioning that sound.

As Roberto deVincenzo once said after losing the Masters by signing the wrong score: I Such a Stoopid. 'Twas a lawng dae though.

Peter: D'ja catch 'Cuse (our upstate team) demolish Nova over the weekend? Or maybe it was just on local TV.

I hate watching Bay-Himes fucking zone defense. I'm born and bread Big Ten. Would Knight or Gene Keady play a FUCKING zone? the answer is NO. But I do like the city, a toughness like Buffalo - not a glass of white wine found anywhen.

Snow still covers the backyard, up to the red buddha's belly. But there's visible ground around the base of trees, and a snowmelt rivulet winding through the forest and long since failed vegetable garden. And, yes, there are more birds out there, including a goose or gander--or something--I heard earlier, honking as if in agony.

>262 absurdeist: That would be Ark-an-saw. I know, makes no sense whatsoever. Especially since people from here refer to themselves as Ar-Cans-Uns. But I have lived here on and off for 52 years and I swear it is true.

Ark-an-saw
Ark-en-saw
Ark-in-saw
Ark-on-saw
Ark-un-saw

Say these words, one after the other, using short vowels, and the accent on the last syllable. To my ear, while they read differently, they sound identical: Arkansas.

How about that Ar-Kansas river?

From Webster's 11th:

Main Entry: Or-e-gon
Pronunciation: ór-i-gən, är-, chiefly by outsiders -gän
–Or-e-go-nian \ór-i-gō-nē-ən, adjective or noun

Main Entry: Ar-kan-sas
Pronunciation: är-kən-só; also är-kan-zəs
–Ar-kan-san \är-kan-zən, adjective or noun

Another melting day. No birds outside, only the sound of dripping and the wet tires of a car passing on the road. But snow still covers the ground, though it's lower than buddha's pupik now. (Try that Yiddishism on for size, Enrique.)

There is an entire cottage industry on how to pronounce the name of the state. It is regularly followed by the one remaining statewide paper. Consult back issues of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for more details. This concludes my remarks on the subject. It is a lovely state with wonderful people however.

I don't want to drag you back to the subject of Ark-an-saw, Paul, but fifty-two years: that's a long time. And I am curious where you were for the ten or so preceding years, and how you got from there to where you are now.

When my father retired from the Navy in 1959 we looked at two places to settle: Mountain Home, Arkansas and Oriental, North Carolina. Both with good access to water and fishing, the thing my dad loved more than anything else. We settled in Oriental.

"The Sailing Capital of North Carolina," according to one Google entry. I've been in Ocracoke, Gene, and spent a night in a motel in Atlantic Beach. It was summer. It was hot.

Where the Neuse river empties into Pamlico Sound. When we moved there in 1959 it was a small fishing village surrounded by tobacco farms. We were the second family of retirees to move there. Now, the way I understand it, the natives are few and far between. I loved living there. BTW, I don't know if anyone here watched, or would own up to watching Dawson's Creek, the creek runs from the River down around Janeiro, where we went swimming in the mouth of the creek, up through the county toward Arapahoe. I didn't know this when the show was on, so I never watched it, but I saw the opening credits once and the first thing that came to mind was, "I know that place, it could pass for Pamlico county." Of course not for a moment thinking anything like that would happen, I had no idea the Dawson's Creek of the title was the self-same Dawson's Creek of my youth. The fellow responsible for the show graduated from my high school several years after I did.

When we went to "the beach" for social activities there was a skating rink that doubled as a live music performance venue at Minnesott Beach. When we went to the ocean, we went to Atlantic Beach.

I am one of three LT'ers to own Ocracoke, a look at life on the island in the twenties and thirties when the only means of getting there was by row-boat, or, if you were really uptown, in one of those fancy "motor" boats. No ferry, no inter-island highway, just a boat. I once considered retiring to the Outer Banks.

It's a very interesting book. I enjoy travel writing immensely.

ETA: if you look on the map of Pamlico County and move it in for detail, Mamie's was on the road between Bayboro and Maribel. When I lived there the entire population of the county was fewer than 10,000. Lots of loooooong dirt roads.

Thank you, man. I love hearing stuff like that. In the brief time I was at Atlantic Beach, a dead shark was washed ashore, so nobody went in that day.

275> Don't you mean Asian, North Carolina? Oriental is an offensive, pejorative, oft-demeaning euphemism these days.

If the washed up hulk for which the village was named were the "Asian", yes, it would have been Asian, North Carolina, but, alas, such was not the case. Oriental was the name: Oriental it still is.

You can call me lots of things. But "occidental?" Don't go there!

Porius got inside my head with this offering:

DESERT PLACES

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it - it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.

And lonely as it is, that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less -
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars - on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

from A FURTHER RANGE 1936
Robert Frost

What a pleasure, this most ordinary of days, neither sunny or cloudy, cold or warm; in no way notable. No doubt something significant will occur before it's over.

I stood out on the upstairs deck in back at night with a glass of red wine--all I need to get inebriated nowadays--listening to the few persistent leaves on the trees rustle in the breeze, looking at bare branches outlined against a nondescript sky. It's not that cold, but cold enough to tell me where I live.

To fickle nature lovers everywhere: Clearly, now that the conflagrations have passed, this thread is getting less and less entries about nature. I recall when, once upon a time, I lived in cities and other urban areas and nature was something I did, as in "the call of nature," or noticed when I had to put on a coat or strip down to shorts and a T-shirt. Recently, there's been more discussion on pronunciation, basketball, and the geography (which is, I admit, natural) that underlies this cyberworld than deer sightings, boids, and snow- and rainstorms, except from that gadabout, Henri le Freeque, and Porius, who has graced us with his Robert Frost offerings.

So, in the spirit of the new sensibility, before we perhaps go under as a nature thread (like an old geezer whose time is past), I present this census of putative LT nature lovers since this thread's inception:

Twenty of you (and me) in all, contributing from:

Ohio (three people)
California (three)
Oregon (two)
Texas (two)
New York (two)
Unknown (two; one of whom was recently in upstate NY)
Michigan, Illinois, Arkansaw, Connecticut (one each)
And one each from somewhere in Europe and from Sydney, Australia

And don't forget New Jersey!

Yes, yes, I'm sorry, theaelizabet. And New Joizey.

That's okay, but one should never forget Joizy.

My forebears settled and met in Joizy, as their first stop in America, around the first world war ... in proximity to the (then) millinery factories in Linden and Elizabeth. Some of them are still around, somewhere (see reference to old geezers, message #286), while the rest emigrated east (!), to Brooklyn.

The lake is mostly still frozen over, but patches of open water are appearing her & there, A wide stream of steel-blue water now divides Marblehead from Kelleys Island. The ferryboat owner is getting ready. So are all the fishermen.

I've been in Joizy too.

And I, myself, thealizabet, have been to Cape May, Atlantic City (before there were casinos, when the place was just a Monopoly board), Asbury Park (I love that scene in the Sopranos where the reprobates gather to talk about dead fish), and Monmouth (where there's a lovely racetrack, and I actually won some money, and at good odds, what with the benighted tourists betting on the wrong horses). Also, Asbury Park, and the town that elbows it to the south, where the Methodists gather in tents once a year.

>291 MarianV:. I Googled your locale the other day, Marian, saw you were hard by that great lake.

Peter, there's a very good program on CNN's Book Channell with Robert Pinsky (a fine poet) on Frost and WCW.It's in the catalogue somewhere. I had it but my harddrive snuffed it and the program of course went poof. I'll try to find it and send it along if you don't get it first.

Great! I heard Pinsky a few months ago, at the local community college. Not only a fine poet but a mensch. (You don't have Enrique's problem recognizing Yiddish when you read it, do you?)

On another note: I'm DONE! At last! After two or so years. Thirty-five chapters, including the epilogue. About 110,000 words, or 300 book pages, when it reaches that form (a bit longer than the last book). I spent the afternoon writing e-mails to prospective publishing sources.

Very good on the book front. Done! I am usually in the ballpark when the yiddishisms are flying. Pinsky is certainly a mensch. A man it seems to me of great wisdom. The thing on Frost and Williams is some of the best stuff there is on poetry.

In my time, Peter, I've met and known a few poets. One of them is a major character in the book I just finished: a former junkie who was pals with Ray Bremser (not a household name, I know, but perhaps you've heard of him), a guy who knew Burroughs, Ginsberg, Herbert Huncke, fer chrissakes!

I've long had problems on a personal level with poets, and with this guy who is now a character in my book. With egotism, to put it frankly. There's a guy lives up here, a real self-promoter, Ed Sanders (calls himself Uncle Ed), and I don't like his poetry either. But you get the idea ...

There are a few who don't strike me that way. Sharon Olds comes to mind. And William Carlos Williams had to be a sweetheart, judging from The Doctors Stories. And our own threadish poets: Marian, Clarabel, Steve Toth.

Still, when I went to hear Pinsky, I brought my wariness with me. But he was such a soft-spoken guy, so self-effacing, and with his Eastern European accent and his ability to gently poke fun at himself ... it's good for an opinionated guy like me to have his preconceptions punctured.

Nighttime on the deck overlooking the backyard, during halftime of a basketball game, I hear what sounds like a human bean crunching on the snow (I couldn't see a thing). Have a primal reaction, then realize it has to be a deer. Seconds later another two or three of them, in proximity to the compost heap. Of course. I dumped another load there a few hours ago. I eat an awful lot of vegetables, and leave a lot of it over.

Hey copy, I'm an honorary mensch and I live in Connecticut.

It's really mild up here but I'm still putting a bit of dog food out at night, for our backyard possum.

Living in a city full time for the past few months. #1 most missed thing: petrichor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrichor

300: I smell that here in my city!

As I was riding home on the bus tonight it was very clear and I saw beautiful profiles of both Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens and as usual, I felt lucky for living here.

Well I envy you. New York in winter smells like asphalt and garbage.

Rub it in how great a city Portland is, why don't'cha Anna, w/those fantastic mountain views!

Okay, while I can't compete with Portland and my L.A. hourly commute, with such a wet year this year, the view on the way home I get at sunset really isn't that bad.



That's snowcapped Mt. Baldy (elev. 10,064). Been to the top five (5!!!!!) times. Not an easy hike.

Here's a wonderful 30 minutes with a poet who could certainly be called mensche, Peter.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeH0BGdbpf8

Petrichor (from Greek petros "stone" + ichor the fluid that flows in the veins of the gods in Greek mythology) is the name of the scent of rain on dry earth.

The term was coined in 1964 by two Australian researchers, Bear and Thomas, for an article in the journal Nature The authors describe how the smell derives from an oil exuded by certain plants during dry periods, whereupon it is absorbed by clay-based soils and rocks. During rain, the oil is released into the air along with another compound, geosmin, producing the distinctive scent. In a follow-up paper, Bear and Thomas (1965) showed that the oil retards seed germination and early plant growth.

Good, natural stuff: an honorary mensch, presumably because he feeds dog food to wild animals; a city dweller (welcome to the thread, btw) who misses a distinctive oily odor ("So, whaddayou got against garbage, anyway, Charlie?"); an L.A. guy who actually sees the mountains through the smog, and a Portlander who sees Mounts Hood and St. Helens without much trouble (what are the chances of two mountain sightings in one thread?); and of course a poetic offering from Porius, the subtext of which (intended for me) is that there are more mensch poets than I give that breed credit for.

Holy crap! There's some warmth in the blazing sun this morning! No kidding! Didja feel it, sandydog?

From our South American nature correspondent:

Spent yesterday in the Falklands Islands--definitely felt like another world. No trees on the island, and huge tracts of land blocked off because of land mines from the 1982 war. Road through bogs in 4x4s to a beautiful beach and penguin reserve, which was wonderful. Today we round Cape Horn and have a little ceremony to celebrate, and will see our first glaciers. Tomorrow we're in Ushaia.

>306 copyedit52:

Oh I'm feeling it, like the warmth inside the spathe of a late winter-blooming skunk cabbage...

Sat outside this morning with my coffee and the last chapter of Death in Venice. Quite a beautiful day.

Yes, a beautiful day to read about diseased pedophiles.

'Still just kidding around. 'Great book. I particularly enjoyed some of Mann's other quirky short stories.

Great day for sitting outside I'd say! sans the...is that what Death in Venice is about?!

Hurry up with a review of that will ya Jane? ;-)

Been sitting on the patio in the overcast with the kids, shooting hoops and trying to write a review of A Good and Happy Child. Gloomy day: perfect for this spooky novel.

My aged computer is having trouble loading this aged and now heavy thread. I've got a new thread in mind, also quite natural-like, where nothing will change except we'll start over with message #1. So, if there are no objections, I will create and christen the new baby at sundown. (!!!)

Seriously, anyone object?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtMV44yoXZ0

(well actually, not a'tall...)

I ask you: How can that guy from Georgia be so nasty to the gentle woman from California? Groucho's a different story altogether. I'm inclined to go along with him, what with his distinguished mustache and academic hat. Good thing you added that disclaimer, sandydog.

The vote so far is 3-0. Be back in a while. Sundown here is in about an hour. Don't forget to vote, kids!

Well, the votes have all been counted. The results:

To open a new thread dedicated to all the things this thread holds dear (whatever those are): 3 yes votes

Those against the above resolution: zero

Abstentions: 18

The yesses have it. So if you've got anything to say, about the vote or anything else, say it on Nature: the Sequel.

Here's the link:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/86448

My apologies. I hadn't created a new thread before and it seems I broke LibraryThing. All the editing tools and the deletion X disappeared. You think they'll come after me? I'm going to hide on the new thread. Maybe they won't find me there.

310/311 - Yeah, probably not the best subject matter for a beautiful day, but enjoyable none the less. Review up tomorrow probably. Now on to the new thread.