Snow on the Mountains

Friday, March 29, 2013, when I took these photos, the mountains still had snow on them before noon.

This is looking west and is the view from my office window.

Same scene but without the zoom on the camera.

This is looking east from my backyard, towards Bedford County.

I think (but am not 100 percent certain) that the largest mountain is the Peaks of Otter.

Welcome Spring

Happy Easter to you, however you celebrate. The day has dawned a bit rainy and foggy in my part of the world, but the air has changed. Winter, I hope, has finally said farewell.

I took these photos on Friday, March 29, 2013.

The Rabid Thursday Thirteen

1. Yesterday evening I ventured over to another piece of property I own. I parked the car and to my surprise a fox was standing maybe 25 yards away. The animal was limping and since it did not run from my vehicle I immediately thought of rabies. It hung around a long time and I was afraid to get out of the car. I called my brother, who lives just down the road, and asked him to come down with his gun to rescue me. But by the time he arrived, the fox had headed down the creek.

2. Rabies is a viral disease found in animals that can be passed to humans. Symptoms of rabies include malaise, headache, and fever, progressing to acute pain, violent movements, uncontrolled excitement, depression, and hydrophobia. Finally, the sufferer may have periods of mania and lethargy before falling into a coma.
Untreated, it is always fatal. Each year, rabies kills about 55,000 people worldwide. The majority of those deaths are in Asia and Africa.

3. There has already been one rabid skunk reported this year in Botetourt County, where I live. In 2012, the county had 7 reported cases - 5 raccoons, 1 groundhog, and 1 skunk.

4. In Virginia, raccoons are by far the major carriers of the disease. However, it can be found in all mammals, including dogs, cats, cows, bobcats, foxes, goats, horses, etc.

5. The state had a total of 560 reported rabies cases in 2012. That's about average.

6. Recently, the newspapers reported that in the USA transplant recipients had received organs from someone infected by rabies. Those still living were having to take rabies treatment.

7. A few years ago we had a local rabies outbreak in foxes. Two people in our county were attacked by rabid foxes while they were outside doing yard work. One of them lived not far from me. The foxes died; the people didn't. Both had to have treatment.

8. The only story I am aware of that deals directly with rabies is Old Yeller, which is the name of both a book and a movie.

9. While looking up information about rabies, I discovered that
Saint Walburga (or Walpurga) is the Patron Saint Against Coughs, Against Dog Bites, Against Famine, Against Hydrophobia, Against Mad Dogs, Against Plague, Against Rabies, Against Storms, and of Boatmen, Harvests, Mariners, Sailors, Watermen.

10. Then I discovered that Saint Walburga is female. I am not Catholic so I did not know anything about this woman. She was canonized in 870, which was a very long time ago indeed. She was an English missionary to the Frankish empire. She could read and write and is considered by some to be the first woman author in both England and Germany.

11. Her remains were transferred to Eichstatt, Germany, where her bones were placed in a rocky niche. There they allegedly began to exude a miraculously therapeutic oil, which drew pilgrims to her shrine. No word on whether or not the oil cured rabies.

12. Apparently she has at times been represented with grain. The grain attribute has been interpreted as an occasion where a Christian saint (Walpurga) came to represent the older pagan concept of the Grain Mother. Peasant farmers fashioned her replica in a corn dolly at harvest time and told tales to explain Saint Walpurga's presence in the grain sheaf (thank you Wikipedia).

13. There is a church in Preston, Lancashire, England, that is dedicated to St. Walburga.


*This is not at all what I had intended to write, but what a fascinating path this lead me down.*


Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here. I've been playing for a while and this is my 287th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.

Interconnected Life

The other day I was in the market, and I ran into a friend. She started talking about how people don't know where their food comes from. She is a librarian and she said young children in particular think that cows grow milk, food just appears in the stores, etc.

I grew up on a farm, so I know better. She grew up that way, too. But I can see how, if you grow up in a suburb with no garden, you might be clueless about foods and where they come from.

The conversation then took a different turn. If something happens so that the grocery stores are no longer stocked, people would starve, she said. They don't know how to take care of themselves.

She is right about that. Even I, farm girl that I am, am lulled by the convenience of the market, even if it is 10 miles down the road. If the trucks were to stop running so that the markets stood empty, I would be hard-pressed, especially in winter, to make do with what I could find out in the field. We would not starve, of course - I can eat a squirrel or a deer - but we might find hunger to be a fast friend. Our variety of diet would certainly decline.

Then in spring, things might be better - except we generally purchase seed every year. We do not recycle and harvest the seeds from generation to generation. I have a basic understanding of how to do it but I don't. It's so much easier to go to the feed supply store and buy seed.

That's what worries me about modified food sources. If their seeds don't regenerate, then one day we will all face a very hard winter. If I had to depend on what grew wild out of the compost pile, I'd be up a creek with nary a paddle. Maybe not even the canoe.

This comes to mind with the news that DuPont and Monsanto have settled some issue they had about licensing. The deal involves billions of dollars.

And earlier this week, Congress approved something that basically places Monsanto above the law.

But where do you think the consumer is in all of this?

Nowhere, that's where.

More Snow Photos

I am fortunate to live in such a beautiful area. It is hard to take a bad photo anytime of the year, but when snow is on the ground, it's almost impossible. The snow that fell on March 24 has been a pretty one.

The view out the front door.

The view out of my office window.

A little to the right of the front door.

The silo that is almost two miles down the road from me, using the zoom on the camera from my front yard.

A different angle on the view near my office window.

The view from the garage.

Out the back door.

A little to the left of the front door.

View to the left of the back door.

Sun shine makes the snow glisten like diamonds on the tree branches.

Snow against brilliant blue sky!

Close-up of the pines out the front door.

Close-up of the tree out the front door.

March Snow Madness

This morning we have about 4.5 inches of snow on the ground, with an occasional flake still falling from a gray sky.

I stepped outside to shoot photos about 8:20 a.m. The birds were twittering and off in the distance I could hear crows cawing.

I love the stillness of the air during and immediately after a snow.

My garden gnome is in it up to his chin!

The wooden fence always offers me a scenic shot.

Check That Calendar Date!

Yesterday I was trying to take pictures of robins in green grass

Today I'm taking pictures of falling snow!

And more snow!

It's an all-day event!

Books: Behind the Beautiful Forevers

Behind the Beautiful Forevers
By Katherine Boo
Copyright 2012
290 pages


The Awesome but Humble Women's Book Club to which I belong read this for our March selection; I read it on my Nook. (See, I do do the electronic reading thing sometimes.)

The book is called narrative nonfiction though I think perhaps creative narrative nonfiction might be more appropriate. The author, Katherine Boo, is a journalist who once worked for The Washington Post and who now is a staff writer for The New Yorker.

She embedded herself for three years in a slum near the airport in Mumbai, India, and this book is the result.

The story has a loose plot that follows Abdul, a young man who has been accused of a crime he did not commit. Abdul makes his living by buying and sorting trash. Apparently picking up trash and selling and reselling it is big business in India.

Abdul and his family live in Annawadi, the slum area. The book follows Abdul and several others. Apparently the slum area operates a bit like a small town, complete with corruption and a political process. As in the United States, money and influence leads to power and corruption.

The story was difficult to read. I had a hard time with the author's style, for she jumped around a lot. I wasn't sure if that was the book or me trying to adjust to reading on the Nook, though.

My book club group had many questions about this story. For one, we wondered about the author, who reported on tragedies such as seeing a man run over by a car but left alone and ignored by others while he lay dying. We had to wonder if the author actually witnessed this, why did she not do something for this man? The same with the young fellow accused of a crime. If she was there, and witnessed the incident, how was it that she did not become involved enough to help him, especially when she reported that he was badly beaten at the police station.

As a newspaper reporter I understand that the job entails standing back and witnessing, but I have never hesitated to step in and intervene when I saw someone being hurt or wronged, even if it meant I could no longer write the story. The story is not more important than my morality, ever.

My book club group is generally a fairly progressive group, so most of us read the book as a denouncement of poverty, corruption, religion, etc., all of those things that hold society and people back. However, thanks to a comment I'd had via an email from a friend of mine in England, I asked if this type of story has a downside - in other words, did it allow us in the US to stand back and say "our poor aren't that bad off, so capitalism must be the grandest thing ever."

At first the majority dismissed that notion, but one of our number teaches life skills to poor people through her church, and also teaches middle-class people a course on poverty. She indicated that ultra-conservative groups do tend to look at stories like this as an example of the "goodness" of capitalism. Something along the lines of "our poor in the USA sleep in broken down VWs while India's poor sleep under boxes, hence capitalism must be great."

Which is like saying a rotten apple is better than a rotten peach; they both still stink.

Socio-economic practices all have their problems, capitalism included, and I do not think any one of the identified economic theories is the best. I think a blend of capitalism and socialism - sort of what we had after World War II until Reagan in the 1980s - worked well and was a fairer system than what is currently in place in the US. We need a social safety net so that people have a survivable standard of living. I do not particularly want to live in a world where the only thing that matters is how much is in your bank account. Life is more than that, and we have diminished ourselves as human beings by chasing after material wealth instead of choosing to better our selves in more ethereal ways.

Behind the Beautiful Forevers has its problems as a book - the story line is rather weak, and the author took liberties with thoughts and character that cross the line from journalism into creative thinking that makes the work less reputable than it might otherwise be. Her methodology might have been sound but I had concerns about the writing style.

Even so, it's an important story, one that likely wouldn't have been told otherwise. Americans on the whole do not travel, nor do they explore other cultures, and I think any endeavor, however ultimately misused, that opens minds and creates discussion has value.

Thursday Thirteen

On Monday, I had one of the best days I have had in quite some time. I had lunch with my former high school math teacher, Tina Weiner. We met at Hollywood's, a local restaurant near Hollins University, and we had a blast talking and catching up. While we were eating, one of my Hollins professors, Jeanne Larsen, came in, and she invited me to stop by her office after lunch for a chat, which I did. Since I am a new adjunct instructor at the local community college, I had a new common interest I could discuss with both of these friends that we'd not really talked about before. Along with a zillion other things, of course.

So here are 13 things that I discussed with these two wonderful people.

1. The state of teaching today, including lack of funding, lack of respect, and the changing attitudes of the student body. How do you teach in the age of cellphones?

2. Books, books, books. What to read, what not to read. How do I read some of the things I do, and what books do we have in common?

3. Publishing, particularly self-publishing versus traditional publishing. Where is the industry going? What does it to do to your reputation if you self-publish? Will traditional publishers snub you for that action? Where do e-books fit in?

4. Algebra I, Algebra II, and Trig. Thankfully Tina and I only briefly touched on these subjects and more in the way of remembering I had Tina for those classes. I can't remember much of any of that kind of math, X+Y= 2+(Z-17). Yikes. That looks scary just to make up. And I can't solve it even though I just made it up!

5. Trying to find an agent. What is a girl to do when the agents won't write back? Do you send out a query to 10 agents at a time? What if some agent wants an exclusive "review"? How long do you give her before you decide she doesn't want you? It's a tough world out there in the publishing biz.

6. What to write. What does a writer write when the writer can't write the words. (How much wood does a woodchuck chuck ...) The struggle to find a topic, theme, genre. The process of writing, how to go about it.

7. Friends. Old friends and new friends, good friends who stick by you.

8. Performance Art. As in, the effort it takes to stand up in front of a room of people and be the object of their eyes, also called the instructor. It takes a lot of effort! Teachers are way underpaid. Go be one for a semester if you don't believe me.

9. Turning 50. Yikes. This is my big birthday year. It is bothering the hell out of me. I don't want to be that old. I don't like the zero at the end. I haven't done everything yet. I can't be AARP eligible! I'm not ready to be an old crone. How to celebrate that feat (the age, not the crone thing). Tina told me to throw myself a party.

10. Writing to art. Jeanne's last book of poetry, Why We Make Gardens, was written partly in response to the artwork of Hollins artist Jan Knipe, and partly in response to walks through the gardens of famous writers.

11. Vitamin D and how necessary it is to the body. Not only does it build bones, but it helps mood, too! Core exercises, how important it is to stay healthy in order to be creative. Not to mention hit that big 5-0 number.

12. Journaling as a creative exercise, using journaling to unblock yourself, using journaling for self-expression and life building. That's part of the course I am teaching at the college. How to incorporate it as a daily routine.

13. The weather. Of course we talked about the weather, that's the ice breaker. It's been cold, it's been warm, we're so glad it's spring! Whatever would we talk about if we didn't get to start with the weather?


Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here. I've been playing for a while and this is my 286th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.   

Happy Birthday, Grandma!

Today my paternal grandmother turns 93. I can't imagine being that old myself and don't expect to make it to that age. I guess you never know.

My grandmother lives in California and I haven't seen her in 25 years. That is my fault for not traveling across the country. She has always lived on the other shore and thus our relationship has been a long distance one.

She was born in West Virginia. She and my grandfather lived in Salem for a while - that's when my parents met. Then the year I was born they loaded up the truck and they moved to Beverly ... well, not really. They actually ended up in I think San Hose first and then Chico, which is in the northern part of the state. My grandfather was an insurance claims adjuster and my grandmother was a homemaker.

She lives in a nursing home now and has for about the last four years.  She did well to live alone for so long.

I hope she has a special day. Happy Birthday, Grandma!

Welcome Spring 2013!

Spring 2007

Daffys 2008

Forsythia 2008

Spring 2009

Forsythia 2009

Sky Watching

Here are some photos of the sky I've taken in the last 10 days, mostly while looking for Comet Pann Starrs.

The hole in the sky.

Is the mothership readying her fall from space?

Red sky in the evening.

Setting sun reflecting on clouds after a snow. Can you find the deer in the photo?

The No Shows

I had hoped this morning I would be posting photos of my beautiful niece, Zoe, dancing at a competition at the Jefferson Center in Roanoke yesterday.

Zoe' dancing at an event last summer.

Alas, I didn't make the event. She was scheduled to dance at 5 p.m. so I arrived an hour early, only to find there was no nearby parking. All of the lots were full, and cars were lined along the streets.

The only place I could find to park was blocks away in an unfamiliar neighborhood that my husband had told me I should avoid. Since I was alone and I was having a terrible time walking any distance because of the arthritis in my feet, I was concerned about parking there.

I called my brother on his cellphone, and he told me, to my consternation, that my niece's dance program had just started! I was missing it. He said it had been moved up a full hour.

I drove around a bit more hoping a space would open, but none did, and I finally gave up. I was disappointed that I did not get to see her perform.

After I arrived home, I looked out at sunset and then later and later, hoping to find Comet Pann Starrs somewhere to the left of the crescent moon. I could not locate it, at least not with my naked eye. What a disappointment that heavenly event has turned out to be, at least from my hilltop.

No comet here. Just an overexposed moon and some stars.

Not Quite Spring

Yesterday I changed my header on both my blog and my Facebook page. I went with Spring - which isn't here yet.

This is what it looks like around my house today.

The irises are just barely above the ground.

The daffodils have not yet bloomed.

But the robins are in the yard!

My grandma always said robins mean spring.

This stuff is in the flower bed, again. I think it's some kind of dry land cress.

With the birds singing, can Spring be far behind?

The forsythia is budding.

But it has not yet bloomed. No yellow blossoms yet!

The grass is still pretty brown, too.

But next week it will be Spring! Only five more days.

Thursday Thirteen #285

Do you write in a journal? I have kept one forever - I have boxes full of notebooks in the closet, and oodles of files on my computer (some dating as far back as 1993). I write with and without prompts. Prompts are useful for those days when you want to write but don't have a clue where to go.

So I thought I'd offer up 13 journal prompts for those of you who keep a journal.

1. Complete the following sentence: If I could be another person, I would be ___________. Then write for at least ten minutes about why you would want to be that person. What would be the benefits? What would be the drawbacks? What characteristics does that person have that you would like to have? How might you cultivate those characteristics in yourself? And why would it matter?

2. What would you say is your greatest passion? What about ten years ago, twenty, or thirty? Write about the changes in your interests and passions and what has influenced you as you have grown and changed.

3. What is your favorite . . . book/movie/TV show/song? Why? What is it about this particular piece of work that moves you? Does it offer a lesson that you can incorporate into your life? Does it simply bring you pleasure? Explain why this is your favored piece.

4. Write about something you fear. How do you face it, and then move past it? What is stopping you from taking action?

5. Watch TV or read a magazine, newspaper, or Internet article. Write about a story that: frightens you ... touches you ... angers you ... amazes you. What is it about these stories that make you feel something? How does each story resonate in your own life, if at all? Are your feelings about this story rational? Are there changes in your life you can make to accommodate your feelings?

6. Write about the best day ever in your life. What made it so special? Are there components of that day that you would like to incorporate into your life right now? If so, what is stopping you?

7. How has your day been? Write down the things that bothered you today. Now skip a line and write down the things that were good and positive about the day. Read back over the good and positive things about your day. Now how do you feel about your day?

8. Recall the day you turned 16. Write about that day. What did that 16-year-old want out of life? What were that young person's hopes and dreams? Would you like some of that enthusiasm and youthfulness back into your life? Why or why not?  Do you still have the same hopes and dreams? Why or why not? If you still have the same or similar hopes and dreams, what can you do to bring them to fulfillment?

9. When someone asks, "What do you do?" what do you say? Do you begin with, "I am . .." or "I work . . ." or some other verb? In what ways do you identify yourself with the work or the things you do on a daily basis? In what ways do you separate who you are from what you do? Do your answers differ depending on who is asking (for instance, professional versus social setting). Why or why not?

10. What would you prefer that no one know about you, and why? What do you do to keep your secret?

11. If you could be truly vulnerable, let down your guard, and tell your true story to someone you've just met, without fear of judgment, what would you say?

12. How do you define your life? Is your story one of pain, or of happiness? Do you see your life as easy or difficult? What would your life look like if it were viewed from someone else's perspective? For example, if you see your life as difficult, how would your life look to someone who is in a situation you consider worse than your own (extreme poverty, war, etc.). If you think your life is easy, what kind of person might consider your life difficult? Does viewing your life from a different perspective alter the way you see it? Does it change the way you tell your story?

13. If you could learn anything new right now, what would it be? Is there anything holding you back? What is it, and what would you need to do to start learning about this topic or skill?

 

 

Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here. I've been playing for a while and this is my 285th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.

Caught the Comet, Sort of

Last night (Tuesday 3/12/2013) we went comet watching again.

We didn't think we saw it.

But when I downloaded my photos, and blew them up, I found it!

It is in the middle of the red circle below. Hopefully you can see it if you click on the photo to make it bigger.

I will keep looking and trying to obtain a better photo of it. This might be as good as it gets, though.