QUIET SUNDAY ON THE MOUNTAIN

flowering goat's beard

It's Sunday and I want to have the day at home. Will skip the race today. Some people have parked across the road and went over or under the No Trespassing sign attached to the chain. Thought about putting a note under the wiper blade, "Not a parking lot." Laughed at self for being so serious. I don't care if they want to go to the waterfall. I reminded self the sign's primary purpose is to avoid liability in court if somebody does something stupid on my land and encounters a bear or a wolf. They went under or over a chain with a no trespassing sign attached, without permission. The people parked here now will not be bear attacked or anything untoward. If they'd come to the door and asked permission, I'd have said yes. I'm glad they didn't come to the door. Sure, it's kinda brassy, but we're in a brassy time. The sign will keep the hordes down, and some will always ignore it. That's ok. I dislike that our society has become one of zero tolerance. I will not take that rule to myself. I actually do not like cutting off access to the waterfalls, but dislike the consequences even more of letting the general television watching audience run me over. One or two a weekend isn't bad. It's when half a dozen or more SUVs and minivans line the road, dogs, kids, shorts and sandals. Bare legs and feet make the best tick magnets.

goat's beard flower

The goats beards are if full bloom today. At least thirty-five years ago I dug several plants from the side of the gravel road and replanted them at home. All have lived and several have multiplied. New ones come up every year. They don't do so well where deer can eat their leaves. Close to the house, they are safe from the deer. One has volunteered in Carpenter's flower garden of perennials I've transplanted from my own beds. The volunteer goat's beard came up in a place the deer roam. It grew to about two feet tall and a deer found it. I doubt it will grow there big enough to bloom. It came up in a cluster of day lilies. Maybe as the day lilies spread, the deer may not find the goat's beard. They're hardy, so I imagine it will return year after year. Wildflowers galore in the donkey meadows. An area about a third the size of the home donkey meadow is covered in flowering white daisies. I remembered when I saw them that Jenny's name before she became Jack's bride was Daisy. This period right now when the mountain laurel are in flower is my favorite time of year. It feels so great to see leaves everywhere, no more bare trees and cold. I like not putting on a coat to go outside. 

caterpillar in a favorite place

Tree frogs and katydids sing day and night. I hear bird calls frequently, thanks to the feeders that have gathered a community of birds. The female cardinal no longer flies when I appear. Several of the birds watch me go by. The squirrels run up a tree out of reach and watch. They've learned I take the seeds out in the morning. Several will perch in the rhododendron and watch, chirping and making anxious squeaks. The towhees say "sweet." I have whistled back and forth with a towhee a few times walking from house to car. Had a cawing session with a crow one morning last week. I did not know any crows were around when I threw the seed. I call twice to the crows. They know it's not a crow. They know who it is. It's the call to fresh sunflower seeds. A crow called back to me, two caws. I cawed back two. The crow sang two. We echoed back and forth several times. I was attempting fair likeness, though not concerned. To the crows, it's my voice, even if I might one time have sounded like a crow. They know each other's voices. They surely know a human's poor mimicry. This crow echoing my call to the crows told me this crow and the others know me from watching the human throw out the seeds in the morning and call twice. That's good enough. I like my wildlife neighbors to know I'm a friendly. Word goes around among them.

goat's beard flower

The waterfall trespassers have gone. Instead of turning around and going back the way they came, they took the old road down the mountain, likely to look for other ways into the waterfall area. Several places it's easy to park and access the falls by way of a beautiful walk in the woods. I think of places I'd like to revisit in and around the creek running from top to bottom of the mountain, but I've been there, done that. I don't feel safe anywhere in the woods anymore. I've seen too many photographs and signs, heard talk from hunters, who won't enter the woods without "stopping power." That's a .45. I don't want to walk in the woods with a gun. Anything more than a walking stick, I don't want. Don't even want one of them, but they're handy with age. Years ago walking in the woods not far from the house I saw a pit bull I'd never seen before, and it saw me. It came running and barking. Knowing dogs, I just stood still. It stopped about ten feet away. I talked to it. It came to me, I petted it and it walked with me. It lived with a new neighbor who'd just moved in. Dog was out exploring its new territory. The dog knew me after this encounter and we were friends thereafter. The dog took to rambling with another dog and they made a house dog of it.    

selfie with butterfly on shoulder

*

DIRECTING WATER FLOW

Went out today with shovel and five-gallon bucket to work with water flow. The recent torrential rains showed me the channels the rainwater flows through. It flows down the tire tracks of the uphill driveway to the Caudill cemetery. In a big rain, the tracks become a river. I discovered a flow line I had not known or anticipated that runs down the walkway to the steps to the deck, flows under the steps and along a channel beside the house's foundation wall and empties in a big delta on the lower deck. Also, a thing that I suppose the "landscaper" took for a bridge. It's a dam. It directs the torrent coming down from the roof directly onto the lower deck, making a kind of delta of silt on the lower deck. I took shovel to the dam, dug out a bucketful of leaves, then dug some rocks in a place that needed to be deeper for water flow to run under the bridge/dam, tossed the rocks up the hill toward the place I aim to reinforce with rocks where small canyons have opened in the place where the water running down the hill from the flooded parking area is concentrated and eats away the dirt. I'll fill in the ruts with rocks. I'll use them to direct water flow as well as fill in the canyons. 

The rains washed out some small canyons in the driveway where it enters the road. Another place where the water runs down the tire tracks on gravel. A bit of a sharper slope increases the rate of water flow and it becomes a torrent in the last thirty feet or so. Over years I have kept the ruts filled with rock. It's fairly firm by now, though this last rain opened some new places. I'll fill them with rocks. Sediment that washes over the rock fills in the spaces between and locks them in place like cement. It is an ongoing concern in that part of the driveway. The rain washed some gravel into the road. I'll take the snow shovel and put them in the bucket. I'll lay them in the driveway in the region where the water doesn't flow so fast. The builders wanted to put gravel on it, when the driveway is excellent without gravel. The gravel washes into the road and eventually needs more gravel. Filling the ruts with rocks works. It doesn't cost anything and it solves the problem. To pave it would make a ditch along the side of the paved driveway. I don't want more gravel put in the driveway. It just washes away, no more than a temporary fix, an expensive temporary fix. Pave it and there comes a time it needs repaving. A paved driveway tells thieves that people with money live there. 

I'm building a berm to direct water flow away from the place it runs under the steps and alongside the house. The rain washed leaves, twigs and pine needles in small piles in my walkway. I'm filling the five-gallon bucket with this wet debris and dumping it in a line that is an angle to the flow down the area beside the tire tracks to the cemetery. There's no rush. A bucket a day. Then I'm lining them with small rocks to hold it in place while it redirects a river. I want to plant day lilies behind the berm. Seeds galore will fill them with roots to hold them in place as they shrink to the ground over years. In the years the berm sinks, the day lilies will be growing and multiplying. Their dense root system and the thickness they grow into will take the place of the berm and redirect the water permanently, better every year. I may encourage Dutch iris along the stretch where the water flows beside the tire tracks. The iris will slow the water flow and direct it back to the tracks to carry it on down the parking area away from the house. I need to do some more shovel work along the side of the gravel area where the blade on the back of a tractor left a wall three inches high that holds the water. I will lower the wall to ground level and fill a place where the water puddles with the gravel. Already have in one place. This will help the water flow on into the woods and not gather into a lake. 

I learned a great deal the day I stood on the deck in a rainstorm watching the flow of the water. Carpenters will be here this coming week, I'll be going up there every day. I'll carry a bucket load of leaves and pine needles from my walkway each trip. All I have to do at the other end is dump it. By end of summer some of the seeds will sprout and give the berms added strength. Next year they'll be about like speed bumps, just enough rise to redirect the water, not enough to trip over. Several clusters of day lilies and Dutch irises over the next few years will multiply into tremendous clusters to slow, stop and redirect water flow. They will hold the water to their roots, too, for times the rain is scarce. The Dutch irises transplanted a couple weeks ago are healthy and stand up straight. The mountain laurel transplanted is doing well. May transplant another. I found a place in the nearby woods where small mountain laurel are popping up out of the ground. It's easier to get all their roots when they're small and they're quicker to establish themselves in their new ground. I aim for the berm to work the first year redirecting the water and better every year thereafter. 

photos by tj worthington

*

   

THE WOOD BLACKSNAKE

george catlin

A few weeks ago I attempted the gentle way of encouraging a phoebe, a fly-catcher, to find another location for a nest. The phoebe was constructing a nest on a rafter above the deck at the Carpenter's house across the road and into the trees. The nest was directly above the deck on the place you put your foot for first step onto the deck going out the door. Phoebes use mud to construct their nests. On the deck under the nest the bird left an area of mud splatters. Later, when chicks hatch, she throws their droppings out of the nest and they land on the deck below, in front of the door. It makes a mess. We considered what to do, harm to the bird not an option. I remembered a wooden snake I had found in Halsey drug store's toy shelves. The price was $5. I thought it would be fun to have one, but not for five dollars. After having them awhile, they reduced the price to $1. I said, hail yeah, I'll buy myself a toy snake for a dollar. Ten to fifteen years ago. It has floated about the house. It's flexible and wiggles in a serpentine way that is almost creepy. Thought I'd paint it black, black as night, black as coal, I wanna see it painted, painted, painted black. Sprayed its belly white, turned it over and painted it black, tip to tip. It's made of little wedges of wood attached to a ribbon. Painted glossy black, it favors a blacksnake well. We put the snake on the deck a couple weeks ago. When I go to the house, I move the snake. On the big table, on the small table, on the deck floor, on the railings, on chairs. I've seen no more mud droppings under the nest. I see no bird droppings on the railing where she likes to stand still and watch for flying bugs. 

george catlin

We might have found the key to keeping birds off the deck. We were glad to note Mama Phoebe had enough time to build a nest somewhere else. In my early years in the mountains I probably would have found a long branch on the ground in the woods and knocked the nest down or sprayed it down with water from a hose. This is the Western way. Destroy. I have found after a lifetime of paying attention to the four-legged and the winged, consciousness without spoken language, they are conscious, I set out to learn how to communicate with them. I don't mean conversationally, but consciousness to consciousness. Eye contact, tone of voice. Words carry the vibration of their meanings. We hear the vibration, though we're not aware of it. The four-leggeds are not aware of it either, yet they hear it and pay attention to it closely. Consciousness is love, which tells me they live their grazing lives in love, uncluttered by mind, by self awareness, by self consciousness, by worry. I read Donkey Jen's mood by her movements, her eyes, her ears, her snorts, her face, her general demeanor throughout her body. It is similar with Jack, though a different personality. Talking with Jack at carrot time, when I say to him, Jack's my friend, he snorts approval. I remember the first time I told him he was my friend. He put his head down, snorted and shook his head lightly. He understood it and it touched his heart. He feels the same toward me, he just isn't able to say the word. I see it in his behavior, in how he takes a carrot from my fingers and never bites, even when a finger gets in the way. 

george catlin

The donkeys, big, rambunctious, powerful, fierce, dangerous, have become quiet and gentle with me after a year and a half, even affectionate. I feed them treats, talk to them, and most of all, I love them. They, in turn, love me and want to please me. I don't need to scold them, even when they get rampageous and have a sparring match with me between them. They don't want to kick me, step on my foot or knock me down. They know I'm a fragile two-legged easy to push off balance. It is something they'd use against me if I were to make them mad enough to want to get back at me. Donkeys are like cats in that they return to you what you gave to them almost immediately. If not now, soon, and if not soon, when the time is right. I have no reason to make them mad at me. It is natural for me to treat them with respect, because I respect them. They, in turn, respect me. I respect them as other conscious beings, like people, aware they are animated by love, itself, minus the distractions of mind, the illusions of duality. I regard them with a loving heart and they open their hearts to me in turn. It brings to mind a Doc Watson concert. He sang his songs from the heart with a loving attitude toward his audience. The people in the audience felt his love, it opened their hearts and they sent loving feeling to him, enlivening him, and he sent it back to the audience, enlivening them. I felt like a circle of love was flowing between him and the audience, from him to the audience, from the audience to him, until there was no knowing when or how it started.

george catlin

I feed my birds and squirrels every morning close to the house, and the crows across the road by the mailbox. It's an open place for them where they can see up and down the road quite a ways. They used to scatter when I went out with seed. Now, if any are there when I go out, they fly to a nearby branch and watch. Mostly, I never see one. I call out with two caws when I throw the seeds into the air. Monday, I went out to throw some seed. I did not see a crow that was perched closer than one has ever been while I was out there. I cawed twice, threw the seed, and turned to walk back to the house. I turned around and saw the crow, surprised to see it so nearby. The crow looked at me and said caw twice. Consciousness to consciousness. It doesn't matter how the two caws translate. It matters that the crow spoke to me, person to person. It used the be the squirrels would run for their lives all the way to the nest when I went out the door. Now, a squirrel will jump onto a tree trunk and move around to the side I can't see and wait for me to leave. The birds fly up from the ground to rhododendron limbs and low branches to watch what I'm doing. Chickadees chirp at me. Squirrels sometimes make their chirping sounds. This morning the cardinal did not fly away. I whistle back and forth with a towhee when I walk to the car. Jack likes me singing with him so much that I can start him braying by doing my part of our duet. He joins me right away. Every day we sing our duet at carrot time and grain time. 

george catlin himself

*

CATFISH HEALED AND HOME

henri rousseau

The appointment to see auto mechanic was 1:30. I went out to the car at 12:30 to pour two quarts of fluid down the narrow tube with the only funnel I have, which turned out to be exactly the right size, like a wrench. I don't even know if the tube with the dipstick was the place to add fluid. Read the owner's manual on how to add fluid without destroying the transmission. No mention at all of where to pour the fluid. For that one, I was on my own. I did the only thing I could see to do. It worked. Drove to the shop, transmission working like usual, soft rain, wipers about half speed, water puddles in the road. I ran through nearly every one of them, washing the mud off the underside of the car. Didn't have a chance to wash it off for three dollars with a pressure-washer in town. Chuck put it up on the lift and the underside was cleaner than if I'd washed it. The problem was a hose, a small hose about a foot long had sprung a leak where it rubbed against a corner it bent around until it rubbed a hole. The parts store in town delivers right away. Easy to fix. The part and labor cost about a tenth of what I went there prepared in my mind to pay. I was also having two new horns installed. The horns on the car were not stock, came from I don't know what, Appalachian-American (redneck) rigged, as we call it around here. I had trouble-shot the electrical leak to the horns and removed the fuse to the line the horns work on. Goodbye radio antenna, clock, door locking and unlocking device, interior lights. I had not noticed how much I rely on the clock. Only driving by way of schedule, I like to know the time. And I like to listen to Charlotte NPR talk shows during the day in fifteen and twenty minute clips. Sometimes Fresh Air, Robin Young, Diane Rehm, The World, have some interesting subjects to talk about. They give trips to town and back some left brain activity to accompany the right brain of driving.  

henri rousseau

I felt refreshed learning the transmission was taken care of, the problem not on the inside. Chuck played the new horns for me. They are loud, like big truck loud. I sometimes tap a horn to alert deer at night grazing beside the road. They don't know what the two lights are. In deer culture, the ones that find out what the lights are don't live to tell it. This horn duet will get their attention. I tap the horn, too, when I pass Ross's shop and where my friend of many years, Tina, works. While Chuck was working on the car, I went to Crystal's sign-making shop, next to her dad's shop, to see her and visit. A young Alleghany woman came in about some custom tshirts she wanted made. She wore a jacket with a third-world array of rhinestones on the back in a big pattern, covered the whole back. She had tight jeans with rhinestone designs on the back pockets. I was thinking, There's a woman I'm told, thinks what's glitters is gold, and she's buying a stairway to heaven. Jimmy Page outer-space guitar solo. And what a hillbilly accent. I was curious for Crystal to tell me how she handled an issue with day-care personnel, one in particular, where Vada was concerned. She had legitimate cause, would handle it a thousand times better than I could. She did handle it well. It worked out so well for her she did not have to call the powerful woman within for backup. She spoke with the administrator, who understood what she was saying when the option of taking Vada out of the facility came up, a hefty amount a month. Crystal is good at making herself understood. She does it gently and mindfully. She was working on some tshirt orders. She's learning the process, teaching herself well. I had her make one for a friend's birthday coming up next week. 

henri rousseau

In Chuck's shop today, I heard a cut-loose fiddle tune and a tear-jerker gospel tune sung so beautifully in the hillbilly way it pulled both Chuck and me out of our conversation for a moment. A major part of hillbilly singing the people from outside the mountains don't hear is how from the heart the singing is. It doesn't sound like it. You feel it. All mountain music is about feeling. I could see in my mind's eye the people in an old-time mountain church singing the song, not a dry eye in the house. In the old way, the church was called the meeting house, the house for brevity. I love it when I hear a beautiful song someplace by surprise. At Ross's tractor repair and welding shop, he has satellite radio set on outlaw country metal. It's some straight-ahead Americana rock n roll. I hear good grooves in there too, Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams, Bob Dylan, Southern rock, the Stones. It felt today like I was riding a wave where everything flowed so smoothly no effort was involved in anything I did. It all flowed in a continuum of good feeling. First stop when I left Chuck's shop, Billings Tire & Auto, was the new auto parts store in town, O'Reilly's, to see about a battery charger. I've borrowed Allen's battery charger more times than he's used it. It was time to buy one. Found a good one listed at $120 on sale for $65. They had others for forty and fifty dollars, but only with slow-speed charge and extra-slow-speed. This one had an option for high-speed charging as well. The difference of a few hours or all day and all night. Found what I went in there for, got a good deal too. Stopped at the grocery store for catfood, drug store for pills and hardware store to have a spare set of keys made. Every step along the way felt good, accomplishing something that genuinely needed doing. And friendly associations at every stop. Even got a hug from Lynn Worth in Farmer's Hardware.  

henri rousseau

Stopped by the coffee shop for a pound of Ethiopian coffee and a cup of the coffee of the day. Saw Bob Bamberg and we talked. He was alarmed by the repeated news of cops killing unarmed black men, women and children, retarded people of any race, homeless, poor people without recourse. I felt jaded hearing his bewilderment. He's bored in his retired years, talking about finding a job, something to do. I was taken a little aback. I'm loving my retirement so much there aren't enough hours in the day. I'm busy all the time with something, allowing self days when I don't feel like doing anything at all but sleep and watch movies. Those are my battery charging days. Naps are about recharging. At home after a successful drive of no engine problems, I took shoes and socks off, stretched out on the bed, pulled on the cover and couldn't sleep. I relaxed and waited til feeling like getting up. I find to lie there and rest is as good as sleep for a quick recharge. Needed to go to Carpenter's house and have a shower, it being a warm day. I noticed on the deck that the phoebe is back, building a nest high on a rafter. Tiny mud splashes sprinkled the deck in front of one of two doors. Judy does not like this. I agree with her, the worst place for a bird nest, except for the bird it's great. Being in a place of exploring gentleness instead of force, I can't knock the bird nest down, but can persuade the bird to suspect the security of this location. I have a toy snake a couple feet long made of a hundred or more slices of wood that allow it to wiggle like a snake. Freaky likeness in the wiggle. Bought it for a dollar. I found some black spray paint and painted the wooden snake a glossy blacksnake. In the morning, I will put the blacksnake on the deck table, a light tan octagon. I believe the bird will see it. I'll go up daily and move it to a new place. If it doesn't work after a few days, I'll find a long branch on the ground in the woods and put the blacksnake on the rafter beside the nest. That'll do it.     

selfie by henri rousseau

*

  

BIG BIRD ICHNOLOGY

This morning I went to my neighbor's house to do laundry. This is Judy and Lucas Carpenter's summer place across the road and into the trees. The snow is mostly gone from places the sun hits and continues in shaded places like the north side of mountains and the north side of a wall of trees. The parking area at the house was all snow. It had shrunk from seven or eight inches down to one or two, different in different places. I saw tracks in the snow from the car window. Stepped out and had a good look at tracks I'd never seen before, three big toes going forward from a place that looked like the palm of a hand, a pad. The toes splayed out like ten o'clock, twelve and two. Not a bear. It had to be a bird of some sort. Not an eagle's foot, not even close, and not gigantic turkey. The tracks lacked the toe that goes backwards for grabbing and roosting. It is a bird that evolved away from roosting, a bird that does not fly. A big bird. I have heard of people having emus in the county. The only one I'm aware of is across Hwy 21 from the skeletal remains of AM radio station WCOK, the place Lillie Nichols once lived. I don't know who owns the land now. The bird's tracks walked down the drive from the Caudill cemetery. At the parking area it walked around all over the place. It appeared Big Bird wanted to step into the woods among the trees, but could not find an area open enough. Evidently, the bird is not accustomed to walking in the woods. It walked all over the parking area. Twice left it to look for a place to travel on, could not find an opening in the trees to suit it, turned and came back to the parking area. It walked around and around, giving the appearance it was looking for where to go from this space. The driveway makes a U-turn the bird could not see from the parking area. 

The bird's exploration's found the U-turn and took the driveway toward the road. It searched along the side of the driveway for a place to step into the trees, but could not find an opening. The tracks went off down the driveway until the snow ended. It could see an opening at the end of the driveway from the last of the snow. I gather from it staying in open places, it lives in a fenced-in field. Driving up the road, earlier, near the turn up the driveway from the road, I noticed a smashed splat I took for bear first, but could tell driving by, it was not bear. On the way back, driving home, I stopped and made a picture of it and examined it. Definitely not bear. Bear is full of seeds. This had no seeds, even favored donkey without the fiber. It dribbled some walking away, the spots of dribble turning to the left toward the donkey meadow the other side of the road. Fence all the way along, I doubt it went into the meadow. My sensing is that it walked down the road past my house. It would not turn in here for all the trees and rhododendron. Maybe. The only place I can see it going if it went down the road would be to turn in at Allan's driveway, the open gate. If it went up the driveway, it would have found meadow, but fence on both sides all the way to the lake. It could turn into the driveway to the barn Gene Dysart built. The bird may have found the meadow to the right along that short driveway. If it took either way, it may still be in Air Bellows. I had not been to Carpenter's house since Saturday, and the tracks were not there. Driving home from town yesterday a little after five I did not see the splat in the road. I would have. I always notice when a bear takes a dump in the road. It looked like it had been run over only once. Not much traffic on the road in this weather. First thought seeing it this morning was doubt bears are out in this cold time. 

Driving home, I saw tracks in the meadow across the creek from the donkey meadow. Snow was still on the ground, it being on the north side of the ridge. I walked out into the meadow after giving the donkeys some grain to take a look at the tracks. They were dog. I called Allan just now to tell him I suspect a possible emu may have walked up his driveway toward the lake. I said my feeling is that it was last night. He said there was a time Martha the dog barked for an hour at something, a bark he'd never heard her do before, the quick frequency of barks is what was different. He said the dogs don't bark at bears. Perhaps she saw something she had never seen before, didn't know what it was. He said he had heard about a woman who lives in Whitehead who had an ostrich. I'd guess an ostrich and an emu have similar footprints. Not the same, of course, but to someone who had never seen either, one or the other is the best I can do with a guess. I knew who he meant by the woman with the ostrich, but could not think of her name. I called somebody I knew who knew her. She does not have an ostrich. We talked awhile about who in Pine Swamp and Whitehead had emu. The only two we could think of were close to town. I came to a dead end. I'd put pictures of the tracks on facebook, telling that a possible emu is in Air Bellows, hoping somebody who saw it would know somebody with emus and alert them. I hate for Big Bird to be lost these cold, unforgiving winter nights. I trust it knows how to hunker down in a tight space to sleep. If coyotes are about, it won't live long. I feel an urgency to find whoever is missing an emu to rescue it. I've done all I'm able. I feel like facebook is the best place to post an alert. Beyond facebook, all I know to do is turn it over to God's will with a prayer. 

It has been a curiosity since seeing the tracks. My feeling is I guessed its path, confirmed by Martha's barking last night. From there, it could be anywhere by now. I have to mark this a momentous day, 3/3/15. Finding emu tracks in snow on the mountain is as much out of the blue as finding elephant tracks. When something happens that is this odd, I pay attention. For what, I don't know. It is so much like a dream I want to look at it as a dream, interpret it as I would a dream. It brings to mind the time thirty or more years ago I found a turkey egg on the rock resting against the screen door. Dog was in the house. I still have no idea how the egg found my door. More than likely, I'll never know where the emu came from or where it went. Big Bird was here, took a dump, and left. I looked at the facebook post to see if any clues had come in. April Joines said emus have been spotted on the parkway where some evidently were lost and took up there. So we have emus on the parkway now. They're good if they can evade the coyotes. It seems like if this one lived along the parkway it would not be so hesitant to leave an open area. Something that has been in the "wild" for awhile soon learns not to be out in the open so much. My sense of it is the bird was so relieved to find the road it relaxed and let go a bowel movement. I don't think it was marking territory like bears do. What a curious enigma to wake up to this morning. The ghost of Big Bird passed through.   

*

THE LAYING ON OF PAINT

.

15, 16

Today was laying on the pigment day. I wanted these four quartets to contain the same psychic energy. Thought about doing two today and two tomorrow. Passion o'ertook the application of the paint. After painting two, I was wound up and wanted to do the other two. I covered all four in paint, one after the other. It looks like there wasn't much to it, just spreading the paint with a pallet knife, yet by the time the last one was finished, I was so exhausted I needed a nap. It was the same kind of weariness as after four to six hours of writing. I nearly always go straight to bed upon finishing one of these writings. Slathering on the paint today, I was like a child at daycare playing with finger paints. A look at my hands when the laying on of paint was over suggested I had, indeed, been engaged in finger painting. I'm not somebody who can play with paint and emerge from it spotless. My hands are covered in paint, shirt and pants are spotted, hair has at least one color smeared in it, and often some on the face. I get excited and pay no attention to anything but applying paint to surface. Paint on hands and clothes I think of as collateral damage, part of it. Sometimes I'll be in town and somebody will say, "You been painting." A streak of paint will be in my hair where I scratched my head with paint on fingers. I don't care. Paint on hands and clothes is like wrinkles on the face, signatures of experience. The day was exciting. It started with painting the edge black on each of the rectangles all the way around. Glad it's a fast-drying acrylic. 

13, 14

The red one I wanted to do first, the color I puzzled over the most. I wanted an in-yer-face red, yet a deep red. Just a breath of blue changed the intensity of the red without suggesting purple. The actual red of the pigment is something like left of center in the picture above. The right side of the picture is lighter than the paint. The fresh paint becomes a mirror to the window light. I felt it when the red was right. Mixing the paint with the medium in the bowl, I was liking the red, but needed a deeper red, a red that feels earthy. A tiny touch of blue drew the intensity out of the red while leaving it the same red it was before. Like the raw red was blaring trumpets, the deepened red is a tenor sax. I wanted the red and blue to go together like my associations with art of New Mexico Indians. I did not want to make Southwestern Indian colors in these mountains. Yet a blue haunted my mind, one that is about the same intensity as turquoise, but a deeper blue without the turquoise gem suggestion. Turquoise is a beautiful blue, but I wanted crayola blue in a medium-light range. Red is a powerful color that stands on its own. I wanted a blue that would pull itself up to the intensity of the red to stand side-by-side and not recede. Blue tends to recede visually. I thought a darker blue would go way back. Looking for a lighter blue this side of pastel that would stand next to the red and not fade away. I made a little more blue than I needed by adding more, and adding more, until it felt right next to the red. The paint on this one is so thick, spreading it was like sculpting it. The blue in the photo is not true. The very far left is the closest to actual. I'd put a breath of red into the blue to, again, take the intensity out of it. The blue, like the red, has an earthen quality. It's the earthy quality in these two colors that bonds them.

14

    

Here, again, the left side is closest to the actual color. This pair, the red and blue, will be in a triangle situated above and beside stairs going up to a loft. It's in a corner behind hand railings, a psychological barrier, a fence in front of it, though the triangle is above the hand rails. A stairwell in a corner makes the space unto itself. I wanted to use colors that would honor the space, feel the space, earthen colors, albeit bright, in something of an open cave. I feel like the corner is grounded, and a passageway to the mind's playground. I felt like I wanted to make the colors suggest earth, earth and sky, while primarily playing with red and blue. The stairs lead to Lucas's loft where he writes when he retreats to "the cabin" in the Blue Ridge. The other triangle, the one on the right, is above the space where one enters the door. To the right is the kitchen. The triangle stands above the kitchen, a light space with windows and ceiling lights. I felt like the triangle above the kitchen could be about light. It's where Judy prepares the food she's good at putting together. She cleans up after herself as she goes along, so you never see a mess when Judy is in the kitchen. I just walk through the kitchen and it turns to clutter. Judy has this knack from a lifetime of practice of keeping her space organized and uncluttered. It's easy for her. She cleans up as she goes along. She has a woman come in and give the place a thorough cleaning, dead flies on the floor, before they come for a visit. This way Judy only cleans up after the immediate kitchen concerns. I wanted yellow and white, sun and cloud, egg yolk and egg white, in the right triangle above the kitchen. Maybe it will look like a sign above a Japanese restaurant in a movie. 

15, 16

The big "living room" area Judy divided into dining area with table and chairs around it on the side of the kitchen; the side with the steps to the loft is the reading area and the place for watching movies. I like the yellow and white on the kitchen side. Basic theme for the quartet was red, yellow and blue. Most often, green is used for the fourth primary color when there are only three. Why not use purple or orange? Why always green? Tradition, I suppose. I chose white for this space for its lightness, something to float above the light in the kitchen. Red or blue on the kitchen side would have been a hammer above the soft light. The red and blue belong with the stairwell, a minimalist landscape, the foot path to the mind. First thought for the opposite triangle was to make the tall one yellow and the short one white. I saw in my mind's eye the bold yellow, a color as powerful as red, would draw the energy out of the smaller white one, rendering it absent. The taller one white, the shorter yellow one enhances the white, pushes it all the more forward. The yellow can stand on its own. And the tall white one, in turn, enhances the yellow. I jump at every chance to use white and yellow together. I breathed some red into this yellow I wanted as close as I could get from memory to egg yolk yellow in fertile eggs. The four hang in another room where they will wait a few months before I touch them.  Oil paint is slow to dry, but I love the life in it when it's dry. It holds a luminous quality, to my eye. 

15, 16

*

.   

ROUND TRIP TO WHITEHEAD

shadow from the past

Laid down to take a nap at 6, woke a few minutes after 12 to the plaintive cry of a cat outside the door. I believed Caterpillar was in the house when I closed the door, but I've shut her out all night before. This is her home. She knows safe places under the house a dog can't get to. She can curl up and be warm at home. It's just my preference that she be in the house while I'm sleeping. Dogs come around by surprise. I want her in the house when dogs are present. The cry of the cat outside the door alarmed me. It sounded so forlorn like it was crying. My immediate thought on waking was I'd shut Caterpillar out and she was hurt, though really didn't believe it. She has a hidden bed in another room she sleeps in mostly now. She has several beds around the house. She moves around to the different ones. I learned early she does not like the same old catfood every day. I buy her a variety every time in the can, and each bag of dry food is different. She'd rather be having mouse or bird sushi. At age 17 she doesn't jump onto chairs anymore. I will lift her when she wants to nap on my reading chair, and lift her again to let her down. From the bed, I stepped into my slip-on shoes, hurried to the door, turned on the outside light and opened the door. No cat. It did not sound like a dream. Yet, I've never heard Caterpillar cry so mournfully. I was thinking she must be hurt. Or it could be another cat. Maybe the cat ran when I turned on the light. My dreams over the last few years are odd. I will meet someone in a dream, reach out to shake hands and wake up with my arm extended and hand ready for a shake. I've dreamed cat Tar Baby was standing on my chest watching me wake and when I wake, cat's not there. One morning I dreamed I was lying in the bed gazing out the window. I woke seeing the same scene with blinds closed. 

found art

Thought I might get up and read, but it was too cold. I'd have to put on a sweater and even then it would be too cold. Even turning on the heat, it would take too long to get warm enough to be comfortable slouched down reading. I threw on a sweatshirt and turned on the laptop. A good time to write to you after a 6 hour restful sleep. I wasn't sleepy when I laid down, just thought I'd take a nap between scenes. The day's project was to mix an orange to satisfaction and slather it onto prepared white surface with palette knife. I'd thought about it so much, I knew step-by-step what to do. I took a piece of scrap plywood I'd found someplace years ago 26x12 inches. Glued and screwed two strips of wood to the back to hold the plywood's tendency to warp over time. Turned it over and glued a rectangle of cardboard to it. I'd cut the cardboard from a box 20x6 inches, and placed it where it felt right for the feeling I was looking for to accompany the fire orange. This is a hot orange. I wanted to juxtapose a cold, geometric line with the hot color. Balance. It is minimalist. I slathered the orange paint on it with the palette knife to make an abstraction with the marks of the palette knife. I did not want the markings to look like I was trying to do pretty aesthetic sweeps of the blade or make a repeating pattern. I wanted to spread it over the white, to cover the surface, making it a point to let each swipe of the palette knife function to cover the white and thicken the thin places, only. Slapping the paint on is an abstract expressionist approach. For my own personal exercise in what I like, I like the principles of both. I feel like minimalism is abstraction without the personalized texture. Abstraction, soft edges, gave evidence a machine did not do this. Acoustic. A minimalist object looks like it probably was made by machine, had to be. Electric. Yin and yang. 

anthropocene tracks

About the time I was wondering where to put it to let it dry, thinking all the red in it will take at least a month to dry. The phone rang. Melvin wanted me to meet him in Whitehead with a check for him that came to my address in the mail at one, for work he did last week for Carpenters. He needed to be in town to get it cashed and get electric bill paid before two to prevent cutoff. He wanted me to meet him to save him the 20 minute round trip from hwy 18 to here. I did not want to go to town today. This was not going to town, just driving down the mountain and back up. Thought I'd take the camera along. We were to meet at the old Whitehead store, a Sunoco station before that. I was a little early and sat listening to NPR news product and looking around at familiar scenes, scenes so familiar I didn't see anything interesting in them to photograph. I saw the shadow of an old light fixture on the pavement, picked up the camera thinking I could get the picture I wanted without leaving the car, and left the car. Photographed the shadow and discovered details in the building I felt were interesting. Found some chance markings in the pavement made by tire, and several bottle caps melted into asphalt. I'd guess these were ones opened on the way to the car and cap dropped on the ground. On a summer day of sun all day long the pavement is soft, a car rolls over the cap and pushes its circular blade down into the asphalt and there it stays. A moment in time frozen into rock like dinosaur tracks. The graffiti of chance. The closer I looked, the more subjects I found. It came to mind to get some pics here for the facebook group called Rambling Revolution. It's about showing pictures from around where we live. Everybody lives in different places. What is familiar unto boring to us is fresh, exotic and new to somebody in another part of the country or world.  

ah-choo

I thought I'd mosey home, take my time and see what I can find on the way to make a five-image picture of scenes in Whitehead. I wanted to get pictures of a field of goldenrod in full flower where the pavement ends before the turn up the mountain on gravel road. I parked, walked up the road a ways looking at the meadow of goldenrod flowers assessing how I wanted to photograph it. I held camera up arms length with monitor turned downward so I could see like a periscope. That worked the best. At eye level, it was a line of the yellow flowers, green below and the green trees above. I needed to get the camera up high to get any sense of the field. Next stop was Air Bellows to get some pictures of a stack of rocks the man who lives there keeps growing and changing. He has been doing this for years. Sometimes a storm knocks them down when a tree limb falls on them. Sometimes somebody will knock them down. Turns out stacked rocks freak some people out. They claim it has to do with religion and the devil, but I suspect they get it from horror movies about devil-worship kinds of nonsense. The people freaked by stacked rocks tend to be of a generation that saw those movies in childhood, possibly parents went to church and watched horror movies until they fused in the kids' minds. There was a time I put rocks from the road on top of fence posts, something to do. It freaked out a lot of people. Somebody left a note under one of the rocks, "Are you a devil-worshiper?" I'm not going to look at any of those movies to see if there is anything to my hypothesis, but I already know it has something to do with television. It has been several years since I've seen evidence of that way of thinking. Possibly horror movie trends have got weary of the devil and now use trons.  

air bellows rock formation

*

TWILITE BROADCASTERS @ TURKEY KNOB

      twilite broadcasters

Saturday night in the Turkey Knob region of Alleghany County, these guys pictured, the Twilite Broadcasters from Asheville area, played in Rob Mangum's outdoor makeshift arena. We came with folding chairs to sit on the lawn before a log cabin Rob has reconstructed on his land as a guest house. The band played on the porch with modest sound system that was just right. The audience saw them in relation to the log cabin, while they saw us in relation to a landscape to horizon. Their playing was crisp and kept the music rhythms in motion. They had a bass, too, which isn't in the picture above, a promo photo I found on internet. The computer will not upload the pictures I got last night. Found some good ones I wanted to show you, too, but it's not working. My hypothesis is that the computer has its quota of pictures. However, I thought of it, meaning it can't possibly have anything to do with the problem. I've learned that my "intuitive" understanding of computers does not exist at all. Therefore, whenever I have an idea of what is going on, that is the one thing I can eliminate, because it can't possibly be the case. Never is. It's time to download pictures to disk anyway.

Rob is one of the people I've known the entire time I've lived here. He and his deceased wife, Bet, came to the county a couple years before I did, they from southern Alabama, below Birmingham. Two people with an attitude toward life that carried them well. Bet played banjo and sang, Rob plays guitar and sings. All the time I've know them, I've felt like they were some of my closest friends, though I see them every few years or so, seldom crossing paths. It's like I knew they were where they are and never just drove over there to drop in. Felt like it many times, but never got it done. Strangely, I see them so seldom, yet whenever I look in my mind at the people I call my friends, their faces are always at the top of the list. Now that Rob is without Bet, I see him at the coffee shop occasionally, and we've talked more than ever before. We've probably visited more since the coffee shop opened than in all the 35 years before. But that's all right. It's the heart that matters and in our hearts we are friends, mutually. Everybody who knew Bet, feels like I do that it's not right with her not among us anymore. Bet was someone I could say without hesitation or fear of contradiction is a beautiful soul. Nice to look at, too, but who Bet was is where her real beauty was to be found. She was someone who the better you knew her, the more beautiful she became.

It felt something like home in the audience. I knew everyone, but maybe 5 people. It looked like maybe 40 people were there. Many were coffee shop regulars, plus people I've come to know over the years, mostly people from Away. I got so many hugs I felt buoyed up. I don't see people I know a great deal, because I stay home as much as possible. I didn't come to the mountains to be social, and I adhere to original purpose, which was to embrace my spiritual path, dedicate my attention inside instead of outside. Then, I was changing worlds, from city mind to country mind. Very different minds. By now, I have found my place, one foot in each mind. I've altered my city mind by way of what I call the good sense of country mind. But both have their shortcomings and aspects to recommend them. My city mind is adjusted to relationship with country mind, which I have learned by association. I think I've taken the best of both worlds and incorporated them into myself. That's not really so. The "best" is my own interpretation and really has no objective foundation. Subjective is my point of view. Objective is for the lab of figuring things out.

Rob has a woman now named Donna, who came here from Asheville. If I remember correctly, yesterday was maybe Donna's birthday present from Rob. She evidently knew at least one of the people in the band, and this concert was apparently in her honor, the band chosen by her request, evidently people she knows in Asheville. I got a couple of  beautiful pictures of her, and now I can't get to them. Grrr. It's refreshing to see a "couple" who are truly happy with each other's presence. Occasionally, I see a couple who are like they were meant to be together. Most of the time I see marriages that confirm my determination to stay to myself. Like everything else, though, it's a whole spectrum of the relative. I went with my friends Lucas and Judy Carpenter, who are visiting from southern Georgia near Atlanta. They've been together 40 years and have a bond that seems to me similar to Rob and Bet's. It's like they're people who belong together. We're going to see Justin and Crystal later in the day, whose relationship seems to me to be inevitable.

The band played with the musicianship of bands that play with Scott and Willard at the Front Porch in Woodlawn. Superb musicianship. On the way back, Lucas asked me, "What makes them sound so good?" I knew the answer. Musicianship. They were excellent musicians. This is what happens when excellent musicians make music together. They make Xcellent music. They would be welcome by the Front Porch audience. They had good mountain drive, too. That helps. Lucas bought both their cds at the end of the show. I'm glad to see both him and Judy developing an ear for mountain music. That's the first step, being able to hear it. Once you start hearing it, then you start hearing what the musicians are doing, and before very long you're hearing remarkable musicianship. That's where mountain music pulls the listener in. Mountain people that listen to old-time and bluegrass are listening to musicianship. Musicianship is what it's about in mountain music. Complimented or praised, the mountain musician throws off on himself, says something like, "I try to pick." That's because they all know there is somebody better around here close to home or somebody far away he'd never heard of.

Like quick-draw artists, the mountain musicians know they are not the "best," even after winning at Galax fiddler's convention. Dewey Brown of Ralph Stanley's band won Galax bluegrass fiddle. He's really good, but he knows there is at least one better. Wayne Henderson, who has the name in the middle-class of "the best," won Galax 16 times in guitar, but he doesn't win every year. Scott Fore of West Virginia outpicks him every other year. Also, among mountain musicians, best doesn't have any real meaning. Several times I've heard Scott Freeman and Steve Lewis talk about their reasons for not taking fiddler's conventions seriously. The fiddler's convention is there for fun, to give musicians a chance to get together. A lot of times the people who win are dead serious about their picking, equals dead. Some get really good on one tune and play it over and over to win. Somebody like Scott Freeman could play any song he knows well enough to at least place in the top 10. Winning and losing is so incredibly relative it can't be taken too seriously. Trophies and ribbons are nice, but secondary to making music. Bluegrass banjo picker Jr Maxwell had all his trophies and ribbons stolen and didn't even care to find out who took them. Of course, he knew, but didn't care enough to confirm it.

As almost everyone in the audience knew each other or some of the people there, the intermission amounted to a talk fest, everybody jabbering as fast as they could go, self included. Small clusters of conversation standing mid the cluster of chairs, people moving from cluster to cluster, going to a cooler for a beer. Everybody got so wound up it was like a cocktail party on the lawn in the gloaming. The band started and we kept on running our mouths like high school kids between classes. Rob made an announcement for everyone to return to their seats. We kept on talking. Finally, he resorted to going through the crowd telling everyone individually that it's time for the music. The band was a singing band, only 2, maybe 3, fiddle tunes the mandolin picker played on fiddle. He was equally good on both. The guitar picker brought to mind the bass player with Thrice, though only in appearance. The women were talking about how good looking he was. The band had a solid sound of people who have made so much music together it's like fluency in a language. They played together like a band, a unit. Knowing Lucas's ear for music, I know why he bought both their cds. They're good listening.     

*

SOLVING THE WORLD'S PROBLEMS

by andrea galvani

Syria...outside intervention...Mr Mubarak 83 remained on a stretcher...a pornography site called Dream Board, child pornography...This is a lose-lose-lose situation...Obama trying to make sense to Republicans that don't pay attention to sense, they want dollars. Dollars only.



Five minutes of headline news. I saw a photograph of Mubarak on Yahoo news locked in his cage like a dangerous man. He may have been dangerous with power, but without his power he is humiliated after a lifestyle with the rich and famous of the world, now seen all over the internet and television in a cage at a kangaroo trial. I have to say I'm with going to the source of the problem, not to some low man on the totem pole all the trouble trickles down to. I can't make any kind of judgment about decisions made in northern Africa. I don't have any idea how they think. I only know that it's very different from the way we think in the American South. I've read several novels by Naguib Mahfouz, a writer I like so much I don't have to look up how to spell his name. Life in Cairo is unlike any I've ever known. I've heard from an American who's been there that Cairo smells like an open sewer.



I'm still feeling good from the midday party at Selma's coffee shop with the different people who came in. If there had been a checklist of who I wanted to be there, I'd have picked all of them. It was a good bunch of people I like an awful lot. We get along together like a gang of friends who have known each other several years. Conversation flows freely. Whenever someone speaks, others listen, and it goes around letting everyone speak and be heard whatever they have to say. That, in my way of seeing, is good company. About all of us, as far as I know, were anti-political correctness. Dudley thinks it's great that I'm as irreverent as he is. He likes having someone else irreverent around. I hadn't thought about it before, but we do tend to make irreverent remarks for humor when we're together. Selma has a good time the other side of the bar fixing coffee drinks and listening to what we're talking about. Sometimes she joins in, but mostly listens with a smile of satisfaction on her face. The smile tells me she is happy that her coffee shop generates such conversations as she hears at the bar when Joe, Dudley, Beth, I and others are making sweeping assessments about that which we know nothing. That's ok. We're doing what Americans do best. Talking. Doing our patriotic duty.



It's really curious having such a European atmosphere in a coffee shop in a small mountain town in the American South. The place has a Latin feel about it like it could be anywhere south of the border where Spanish is spoken. I like that Selma has no hesitation about her Cuban heritage. She's wide open with it. She gives Cuba a good name. She's none too crazy about Castro, while at the same time allowing me my own admiration of Castro for standing up to the American War Machine. He can't be too great when people are trying to get to America riding tractor tire inner tubes out into the ocean at night to be shark food. Nobody is riding an inner tube from Florida to Cuba. That tells me a little bit. Selma's husband made 15 unsuccessful attempts to cross and succeeded the 16th try. For each time he didn't make it he had to do 2-3 months in prison. I'd say he was committed. He looks like somebody who can't be defeated. I'd guess the equivalent of three years in prison, perhaps more, he knows how to fight. I wouldn't recommend going up against him. I'd say his woman feels protected.



My friends Lucas and Judy arrived today from Georgia, Conyers, about the last bedroom community exit off I-20 east of Atlanta. Allen Reinhart here in Alleghany, married to Susan Miles, used to manage a TG&Y store in Conyers. They arrived today refreshed to be in a temperature in the 70s instead of the 90s. Judy said it was unbearable. I expect so. I'm glad to see my friends. They don't seem to have enjoyed their recent visits here, but this time they feel happy to be here, enjoying watching the clouds turn pink from the deck after sunset with wine and conversation. We talked about the venality of the seditious Republicans in our government since the Reagan Revolution, the active hatred for the American people, the bottom 99%. I can't help but laugh at the irony, the ones waving the flag, hollering patriotism, are the enemies of the American republic and its people. Our enemies are not outside anymore. They're inside. And they're not the ones we think. They're the ones pointing the self-righteous patriotic finger.



Syrian troops...Mubarak...device attached to teen not bomb...beaten NC boy, 4, had alcohol in system...72 charged in child porn network...Italy going under...Greece going under again. Who knows where the time goes?



*

MY FRIENDS

bark



Judy and I went on a walk in the afternoon yesterday. Right away I found this tree trunk with bark I didn't recognize. I looked up at the leaves, way up there, and they seemed to favor wild cherry. Wild cherry bark makes patterns similar to this, but it's also very different. And beside it was a another tree I didn't recognize as native. It could also be that it's been so many years since I've spent time in the forest I've forgotten much, so much that everything looks brand new. It's like I've seen it all before, and it's fresh and new at once.



I like spending time with my friends. Lucas and Judy are my friends individually. It took a little while, in years, to get used to Judy, a Brooklyn Yankee, just cultural characteristics, the like of which she had to get used to with me, a Reb, and Lucas, also a Reb. Her Brooklyn accent made her an outsider in the South. They settled at Conyers, GA, east of Atlanta on I-20, and Judy has been in the public school system all the way along. She taught 8th grade for several years, burned out and took up counseling, which she's been comfortable with ever since. She intended to wait a couple years, but the administration at the school has changed, reverse racism is the standard and they want her out as much as she wants out. Wrong skin color. In Judy's experience of the South, she's assimilated well and gets along well. In herself, she feels neither Yankee nor Southern, just herself. The Civil War is no issue for her.



The Civil War is a very big issue for Lucas. He's read about it all his life, has shelves of books about it and picture books of b&w photographs. I happened to see the Civil War movie, GLORY, before he did. His first question when I mentioned it was, "How did they depict the Southern army?" I said, "Redneck farm boys." He said, "That's what they were." Lucas's other war fascination is VietNam. He has a lot of shelves of books about the war, picture books, fiction, the works. He went to a University in Belgium for a semester to teach a course on the fiction of the VietNam War. I believe he taught such a course at Oxford U in England, as well. He has taught the course at Emory too. His interest in the war has largely been inspired by his year of "duty" there. I don't believe he had any truly traumatic experiences, office work mostly. He didn't come home with post-traumatic stress, or if he did, I never noticed. Like me, his post-traumatic stress is with him all his life, the stress of growing up in the same house with a parent who came home from WW2 with it.



Lucas has done equally extensive reading in philosophy, literary criticism such as deconstruction and the other things they write about. Every once in awhile in extended conversation he will outline a line of development in a particular branch of lit crit and I love it. You might say he understands what he reads. He's a true intellectual in the real meaning of the word. He's not what Nixon and Agnew called an "effete intellectual," though they would have called him that. He and Judy were of a way of seeing that Ronald McDonald Reagan made into a bad word, "liberal," all of it coming to mean there is no place in the Republican Party for Lucas Carpenter. He thinks too much. He pays attention. He aint one of them, though he already knew it. He's not somebody those people fool easily, so they call him an effete intellectual and his voice is neutered by stupid politicians. Lucas is a Noam Chomsky kind of character who can read history and current events and see patterns of human behavior running through them, sees the propaganda for what it is. He's not fooled by shyster politicians, ever.



Lucas is not the kind of intellect to lose touch with his own humanity. He enjoys all kinds of people, likes knowing a wide variety of people, never holds himself higher than anyone just because he reads a lot, never talks down to anyone, ever, for any reason. And he's a popular professor, personable with the kids, actually appreciates them individually, just turned down an offer to be a Dean, because he'd rather work with the students face to face, the old-time way. He's about teaching, not administration. By now so many generation gaps have gone by that he feels in a foreign country with MP3s, iPods, iPads, kindel, blackberry, twitter. He doesn't get any of it and doesn't want to. But probably will. Like going from LPs to cassettes to CDs to downloads. Lucas would rather read a book. He golfed until a real estate developer bought the golf course and made a subdivision of it.



We were Dylan fans all the way along, included with us Lucas's sister, Jeanette, and her husband, Ty, in Atlanta, Norcross. They went to UGa in Athens. Ty became an advertising photographer and Jeanette teaches in a school for kids new here from other countries to help them with English at the same time they teach them so they can understand. Something along that line. I know she'd ammend that quite a bit, but might agree it's uneducatedly close. Like it missed, but it was close. When we were all much younger, before their kids were born, I forget how we all managed to come together for Dylan's first concert tour in Atlanta in whatever year that was, and the 5 of us went to the concert together. We had a ball. We were all such Dylan fans it was like a bonding event for all of us. To this day it rates at the top of the list of concerts each one of us has seen, before or since.



Lucas and Judy and I talked a good bit of Dylan this weekend, exclamations of how his most recent albums are the best ever. He started out making great albums, continued to all along the way. It was like he started at the top and got better and better. His last 2 albums are like beyond anything I've ever heard. Every song he writes, every song he sings is done with authority. Dylan is a phenomenon we have watched evolve and each of us appreciating him for our own reasons. Back when Lucas and I were at College of Charleston we talked meaning it that Dylan is rare as a Shakespeare, a Mozart, a Michaelangelo. We talked that way among ourselves. It didn't do to talk it too loud around people who don't listen to Dylan. I hold Dylan as one of the great artists of the 20th century with Brancusi, Duchamp, Rauschenberg. A poet the likes of Rimbaud. We always like to talk about Dylan and hear his music. Not exclusively, by any means. We sit on the deck with glasses of wine looking at the trees and sky, music playing inside the house behind us, every kind of music.