Empty Mailboxes Salute Ford

All federal facilities, including post offices, will be closed on
Tuesday in honor of former President Gerald R. Ford.

Not getting mail for two days in a row will certainly cause Ford to be
remembered, though not necessarily in a good way. One man suggested a
better way to honor Ford would be to allow everyone to mail letters to their
friends and relatives free on Tuesday. This, he said, would be in line with the
Republicans' concern for "Family Values".

I'm thinking of those, especially some of the older folks, for whom going to
the Menlo post office every morning is a highlight of their day. They may get
only a bill or an advertising circular, or nothing, but that isn't the only reason
they go. They see other people, exchange greetings, stop to chat awhile.
Some will not have heard and will go anyway, stare blankly into their empty
boxes, try the inner door, even though it will be covered by a blind, the lights
off. I saw folks reading the sign on the outer door on Friday, shaking their
heads in dismay.

Most already remember Ford as the Man Who Pardoned Nixon, and many
believe he would never have become president had he not agreed to the
pardon in advance. I'm sure all the young people drifting through the county
jails because of various petty crimes remember that a president who
masterminded breaking-and-entering, burglary, sabotage and worse was
pardoned, while they had to serve time.

For children who have been told that any child can grow up to be elected
president, Ford means that some children can grow up to be president- and
vice president- without being elected.

The business of pushing hero worship is getting harder in this age of
information. People are making their own heroes, as witness the accolades
to James Brown. When the man had been dead three days, he was packing
them in at the Apollo, capacity crowd. And the tears shed for him were real.

I think of those who waited for hours along the route to glimpse the train
carrying FDR's body from Georgia, and can't imagine such a scene for
either father or son Bush, Carter, Clinton, or Ford. The last mass
outpouring of grief over a president's death was when Kennedy was
assassinated. But that was before we knew he'd tried to have Castro killed,
approved the clandestine bombing of North Vietnam, and instigated the
assassination of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. Seymour
Hersh in his book, The Dark Side of Camelot, told how reporters shielded
from public view JFK's sexual escapades that included having law
enforcement officers in various cities bring to Kennedy's hotels high-priced
call girls, two at a time for Kennedy and one apiece for other members of his
entourage, and other such activities that could have made Clinton, with his
blow job in the White House, look like a choirboy.

But the reporters were following tradition. Voters never knew the terrible
extent of Franklin Roosevelt's infirmities. He was never photographed in
the wheelchair to which he was confined, and only those present saw what
an ordeal it was for him to pretend to walk, with his son dragging him along,
what agony to stand while he gave speeches. If the voters had know how
unfit he was to serve, they may not have re-elected him.

Nixon and Watergate punctured the media conspiracy to perfume and
powder our nation's great leaders before allowing the public to view them.
Now a new book which I must read: A Century of Media, A Century of
War, by Robin Andersen. Publicity about the book states that it "traces
media gullibility, official deception and propaganda through the years. It's
a reminder that the media's role in making the case for the Iraq War is part
of a larger story, that of a press corps that regularly cheers on American
military action while shielding readers and viewers from its consequences."

I hope it lives up to its promise. Shine a little more light this way, please.

Peace on Earth?

Author William Blum writes in the preface to the British edition of his
book Rogue State:

"If I were the president, I could stop terrorist attacks against the United

States in a few days. Permanently. I would first apologize -- very publicly

and very sincerely -- to all the widows and the orphans, the impoverished

and the tortured, and all the many millions of other victims of American

imperialism.

"I would then announce that America's global interventions -- including

the awful bombings -- have come to an end. And I would inform Israel
that it is no longer the 51st state of the union but -- oddly enough -- a
foreign country. I would then reduce the military budget by at least 90%
and use the savings to pay reparations to the victims and repair the damage
from the many American bombings and invasions. There would be more
than enough money. Do you know what one year of the US military budget

is equal to? One year. It's equal to more than $20,000 per hour for every

hour since Jesus Christ was born.

"That's what I'd do on my first three days in the White House. On the fourth

day, I'd be assassinated."

You can read more about Rogue State at William Blum's website.

And the Band Played On

Lighted Christmas trees can still be glimpsed through windows. Little
bulbs that would be white if lighted drip from eaves, emulating icicles
in temperatures that would melt ice during the day, re-freeze it at night.
Inflated Santas and grazing reindeer are stranded among the string after
string of colored lights that still outline windows, walls, and trees. They
have the lost and forlorn look of waiting, their blaze of glory ended,
time to crawl away unheralded into their almost year-long hibernation.

The poor children who were gifted and feted go quietly about their
business of living in poverty, conveniently forgotten except as adjuncts
to the warm glow still occasionally remembered by those who Helped
Make Christmas For Those Less Fortunate.

Walmart can take down their giant overhead posters showing smiling
people with new cell phones, jewelry, computers, children sitting in a
plastic car, all with the large words: "Be Bright". Took me a few minutes
to connect those words with one of the songs that kept erupting from the
radio if one didn't keep the dial moving. Your days will "Be Merry and
Bright" if you buy all this stuff, particularly if you buy it from Walmart.

Shredded wrapping paper and strands of tinsel lay across the glass
and plastic dead soldiers on the trash heap. The party's over.

There'll be another burst of merriment, real and artificial, as the year
grinds to a halt. Then the cold dawn. Then the credit card bills will roll
in. Bankruptcy courts will be crowded when the Piper cannot be paid,
even though the new laws have made it so much more difficult and
expensive that debtors will have to seek new loans, going even further
in debt, in order to file. The rate of home foreclosures, already the
highest in years, will accelerate.

One of the houses outlined in lights and flanked by several large
Christmassy figures is, according to notices in the newspaper, in
the midst of foreclosure now. And all the lights are lighted. A last
hurrah....

I lit a candle to celebrate the shortest day of the year. Now that
it's gone, each day will be seconds and minutes longer. Available
light, truly a gift.

Expensive Creationist Stickers

Four years ago, Cobb County Georgia school officials had placed inside

35,000 textbooks stickers that read "Evolution is a theory not a fact".

The lawsuit by opposing parents has finally ended. The judge ordered the

stickers removed last year and school officials had them scraped off, but
appealed. Terms of the recent settlement include no altering of the evolution
material and $166,659.00 payment toward attorneys fees by the school
system.

I cannot help thinking how enriched the school libraries would have been

if the $166,659.00 could have been spent on books. And it's shocking that
books were defaced by those who tell children not to deface books.

Below are the ending paragraphs of the article as printed in the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution, or read the whole thing (you may have to sign in).

"They were trying to do the right thing," said Taylor, a parent of three Cobb
students. "It's terrorist organizations like the ACLU that are hijacking our
country's educational system by imposing their own secular agenda on the
rest of us."

Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church
and State in Washington, D.C., hailed the case's conclusion.

"Students should be taught sound science, and the curriculum should not be
altered at the behest of aggressive religious groups," Lynn said. "Cobb County
school officials have taken the right step to ensure that their students receive a
quality education."

Incoming school board member John Crooks, a Baptist minister who opposed
the stickers, said he was pleased the board reached a settlement.

"Moving on to more important educational matters is essential," he said.

Here Comes the Sun

It was 70 degrees on Saturday and I was working up a sweat, leveling
the ground with a mattock, setting concrete blocks to extend one of the
garden beds. No need to think of ice frozen across the creek only a few
days ago and more bitter cold to come. This may be December, but it
won't officially be winter until the solstice, so it must be autumn still.

I have to dig into the chert below the bare inch or so of soil. It's a slow
job. I have to stop every few minutes to remove the rocks, and I've had
to use a crowbar and hammer to dislodge some of the bigger ones. In a
normal subsoil, the smaller rocks could help promote drainage, but in chert
they serve to bind the clay into something resembling concrete. Occasionally
I expose an earthworm and quickly re-bury it so it can continue to hibernate.
Buckie eats the grubs I uncover. Sometimes he starts trying to dig with me
He seems to think I am trying to dig out some creature, such as a mole,
for that is the reason he would have for digging. But the chert is so hard
packed he loses interest and wanders away.

There's a ridge to the west of here so these short days are even more
quickly truncated as the sun drops low in the sky. Then I have to put
on my coat. It feels like autumn again.

I'm thinking about the last year my maternal grandmother was alive and
we sat outside without sweaters on Christmas Day. Ever after we called
it the shirtsleeve Christmas.

And I'm thinking of how the seasons of the earth have been used as an
analogy for the ages of humans. There's the September Song, for instance:
"and the days grow short when you reach December..."

Mother used to say she was living on borrowed time after she'd passed the
Biblical three score and ten. Falling leaves, bare skeletal trees,
teetering on the edge of winter.

Well, we are all living on death row. The difference between me and that
teen-age boy who was killed in an automobile accident last week is that I
have been fighting gravity for enough years that I'm aware there can't be
too many left. Yet it is still fall for awhile...

Heavy rains have leached the bright colors from the leaves carpeting the
yard and left them a motley brown. So far I've filled seven trash bags and
still have no rake to replace the one destroyed in the house fire, but the
leaves are so deep in some areas it's been easy to gather them. The large
leaves from the sycamore tree quickly fill a bag. I've set the bags up
near the road where the sun will hit them and help turn them to compost
for my garden beds, and where they will help insulate the place where a
water pipe cracked last summer and spouted a geyser that cost me a $60
water bill.

When I was acquiring this place, the seller, who built the house and lived
in it for a few years, told me, "Don't rake the leaves! Let them rot,
they're good for the ground!" And he was to tell me again, and yet again,
as if he had invented the idea of enriching the earth with rotted leaves. Or
did he think I was decrepit and hard of hearing, I was only in my 60's then.

Gil and I, as first time gardeners on the Menlo lot, had subscribed to the
magazine "Organic Gardening", so I knew something about using leaves to
build good earth. So I didn't rake them. And when the creek flooded the
yard in February, as it does almost every year, it pulled into its swirling
waters all the leaf remains along with any topsoil they'd help create when
it receded.

The next year I bagged some of the leaves and set the bags, three or four
of them, beside the house foundation, thinking they could help insulate and
maybe help keep the waterpipes from freezing.

And when the creek rose again the bags were broken open, the leaves
carried off.

I'd like to think of fall as a time of rest after the harvest, of fields lying
fallow. But just like the farmer who didn't actually rest, but turned to different
chores, there's plenty here to do outside, and not just work.

My middle son, who is a forest ranger, bought me an LED light on an elastic
band to wear on my head. He said I could walk along the creek at night and
see any animals more easily in its bright light. It's also good for a night walk
in the woods, it leaves my hands free to push aside branches and briers. By
the time Buckie and I started out on Saturday night it was down to 35 and
the brilliant white light showed my breath as a dense curling fog that obscured
my vision. There was a clamminess to the cold that made it seep into me, so
we didn't go far before we turned back.

Then Sunday it was again up to 70! The crows seemed especially
delighted, flying from tree to tree and calling to one another in their
raucous voices. They seemed to be playing a game. I frequently see
them in the pasture looking big as chickens walking around. One is
crippled, so I know it is the same bunch that has been hanging around
for years.

I worked a little while at the garden bed, then I put the tools aside and
spent the rest of the afternoon just dawdling and poking around. I was
sorry I had taken down the hammock and stored it away.

It is good to have this hiatus, to be able to be outside in the sunshine on
these warm December days. It is good just to be.

Deep Freeze in the Sunny South

There was frost on my pumpkin Friday morning, or there would have been
if I had a pumpkin.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution predicted the lowest Georgia
temperatures in two years With "Deep Freeze in the South" headlines.
Strange to walk on frozen ground, like walking on concrete, the grass
glinting with ice crystals. Ice on the creek made it resemble a still pond,
but the water was flowing under the ice covering and tumbling over the
rocks just beyond the bridge. Buckie walked across the creek, then tested
the edges with his paw until he could press the ice down and drink the water
that puddled on top. We've had cold nights, plenty of frost and some ice,
but this was our first hard freeze.

After seeing the forecast, I crawled under the floor to check on the water
pipes. It was the first time I had been under since I repaired a bad leak in
mid-summer, and I was dismayed to see several wet spots on the ground,
indicating minor leaks and drips. Maybe those drips would help prevent
freezing, I thought, along with the faucets dripping inside all night. I hope to
be able to wait until spring to start replacing the pipes, for the builder who
sold the building to me wrapped all the pipes in plastic and wound electrical
tape around the plastic.It was harder to cut this material off than it was to
replace the cracked pipe last summer.

When I first acquired the building, there was an outside hydrant flush against
the house, but the water turn-off valve was past it, under the house, and there
was no way to turn off the water to this hydrant except by turning it off at the
meter. Builder had encased the shaft up to the handle and spout in concrete in
an effort to prevent its freezing, but it had apparently frozen anyway, for there
was a constant dribble through a crack in the concrete. Still, it came in handy
as my sole source of water when I had the hot water heater moved from the
pantry, where it crowded the space and was warping the floor, and a washer
connection installed in the utility room I had built on half the back porch. I
still haven't installed another outside hydrant. I made one attempt, but gave
up, there's a rock that will have to be broken up before pipe can be
connected. I've always just carried water from the creek for my plants.

My learning to plumb has been like someone re-inventing the wheel. I had
watched Gil when he laid a pipe from the old house to the garden, and
that was the first plumbing he ever did. Not long afterward, being faced
with being without water while he was away for several days was a great
incentive to my learning to replace a pipe or two. It was a skill that came
in handy during his long illness. It's amazing what one can learn when there's
little money and things have to be done. I also re-wired the telephones after
lightning struck and fried them.

Now I still repair when I can, replacing washers in faucets for instance, for I
can eat for a week for the total of one plumber's bill. My daughter-in-law,
who had to serve as an apprentice plumber for several months as training for
her job as office manager and sales rep for a huge plumbing supply company,
installed my new toilet and will be bringing a new faucet and spray set for my
kitchen sink, but she lives too far away to call on often. I've bought a new
pipe-cutting tool, no more tedious hacksawing and filing off burrs, and I'll be
working on the pipes next spring- if they only hold until then. And if only the
pipes outside under the ground don't freeze, as they did one year at the old
house.

By afternoon it was up to 40, the sun shining, the air still. Buckie and I
walked down the creek bank, breathing in the cold, clear air. The
ground stayed frozen and not much of the ice melted, for the sunshine was
pleasant, but seemed to lack heat. I finally had to come inside, my toes
were numb. Back down in the 'teens on Saturday night. The hard freezes
will kill off a lot of the destructive and annoying insects, unlike last winter
when, although it stayed cold longer than usual- I had to have heat in
early June- there were no really low temperatures. I read there were
problems with huge swarms of yellow jackets in Alabama, and this was
blamed on the lack of a hard winter.

Yes, I know our winters are a joke to those in the north. I lived in
Chicago for 20 years. But the cold here never lasts, it will gradually
warm up until it rains again. Then cold and freezing again. One can
never become used to the cold so that each cold spell is something of
a shock. But then again, after it has been so cold, a day when the
thermometer reaches 50 will feel almost balmy, especially if the sun
is shining and there's no cold wind.

I wish we would have a real snow this year. It's cold enough to snow
throughout the winter, but seldom does. When even a light snow is forecast,
people flock to the stores and buy up all the bread and milk, children are
sent home from school and the mills let the workers out early. We have hills
and no salting or snow removal equipment. A deeper snow can shut
everything down for days. If it warms up enough to partly melt and then
re-freeze at night, the ice can bring down power lines, and what is common
in the North can become a crisis here in the South.

I've filled jugs with water and stocked my pantry, and I still have the
concrete blocks and metal plate I used to heat food and water for coffee
by the gas wall heater the last time the power was out, so I'm ready.
Let it snow!

Living Off the Land

Not exactly.
I never have.

My mother gardened when I was in my teens and my husband had a garden
some distance from our house. I was never invited to work in them, nor did I
volunteer.

Mother raised tomatoes, green beans, and usually a few stalks of corn. She
canned tomatoes and blackberries, but wouldn't try canning green beans and
corn for she didn't have a pressure cooker. She also made blackberry jam
and jelly and once someone gave her some apples. Our old house had no
closets so she stacked the jars of food against the wall in the middle room,
supposed to be a dining room, but we needed it for a bedroom. After the
apple jelly had cooled and sealed she was putting it away as I passed
through on my way to the kitchen. She was holding a jar to the light,
admiring its amber contents.

"Look," she said, "isn't it pretty!"

I mumbled something, thinking I'd appreciate it more if she'd offer me some
for the biscuit I took from the warming oven. And someone should have
slapped me up side of the head for not appreciating her and the work she'd
done, but my head was full of school and boys and the need to polish my
black-and-white saddle oxfords for the next day.

Then I was grown and I was canning and freezing and preserving food in an
attempt to make a cotton mill worker's wages stretch to cover the needs of
six people. I was also washing, ironing, sewing shirts for the boys and dresses
for the girl, cleaning the house and attending PTA meetings, and I had little
time for gardening. We did, when the children were old enough, go berry
picking, and I made blackberry jelly, and yes, the jelly was pretty in the jars.

When Gil and I moved to North Georgia to a house with a large garden plot,
we gardened with zeal, at first from necessity, later because the food we grew
tasted so much better than any we could buy. The garden grew up in weeds
during his long illness, though we usually could manage three or four tomato
plants.

Now it is necessity again that is making me into an avid gardener. I want to
grow my own spinach and green onions and not risk death or paralysis from
buying them. And the store prices of produce continue to climb commensurate
with the price of fuel for transportation. This past summer I was able to buy
some produce for less at the flea market from local growers, or from some
who haul the produce in to sell with no store overhead, and I shall continue
to buy some there, for I won't be able to grow all I need.

This lot used to be part of the pasture that borders it, and the ground should
have been made rich from horse and cow droppings over time. But the
ground here is low, and the man who built the house didn't want to spend
the money to have good fill dirt hauled, so he filled it in a little with chert,
which is a mixture of red clay and rock, frequently used as a base for roads.
It supports a mix of grass and weeds that pass for a lawn, and that's about
all. In order to garden, I've had to build raised beds, rectangles enclosed
with concrete blocks and filled with some bought dirt and composted cow
manure, sand from the creek for drainage, compost from my two plastic
trash cans, a slow process, and some good earth from the woods when
I can get it, carrying two half-filled buckets at a time.

So far my beds are raised only by about 3 inches. When I get enough dirt in
them, I will start another one. This past summer I had tomatoes, jalapenos,
and zucchini. Squash borers got into the stalks and cut the zucchini harvest
short. But I also had basil, marigolds, and garlic chives, all in the two small
beds. And I planted sage and rosemary in two hollow slices of the tree that
fell and had to be sawed up, and oregano, thyme, pennyroyal and rue in
pots. All but the pennyroyal have been unscathed by the frost.

Coleslaw is a staple for my dinners through the fall and winter, cabbage still
being priced reasonably, certainly so compared to the so-called iceberg
lettuce, which has little taste and little nutrition. Romaine and the other good
greens have become dear. Alas for the spinach. I used to buy some for
salad once in a while, no matter the cost. No store seems to be carrying
any now, probably thinking no one would buy it if they did.

The American Cancer Institute's research showing that consumption of
cabbage as well as other crucifers decreases the risk of some cancers
helped me to resign myself to having coleslaw nightly instead of salad.
For awhile, that is. Then, just as I enjoyed the wildflowers that I didn't
grow, I began to look for food I didn't have to cultivate. There is
chickweed, it grows everywhere, dies back and gets tough in summer
but flourishes in the spring and fall. It is a good source of copper and is
sold in herb stores in mixtures reputed to aid in losing weight. Supposedly
the copper gives one added energy which causes more calories to be
burned. Years ago, my mother told me two of my great-half-aunts had
ordered some chickweed in capsules through a magazine ad. She said
she didn't think they got any slimmer from taking it. They could have
walked out the door and gathered all they wanted free if they had
known what to look for.

So now I gather a handful of the chickweed, a few of the smallest
dandelion leaves, just a bit of the wild onions, a few leaves of wild
clover, and the garlic chives that are still green around one garden bed.
This evening I found two dandelion blossoms, even after these several
frosty nights. The greens chopped into the shredded cabbage and carrots
make a delicious salad-slaw, especially with my good reduced fat dressing.

When some restaurants advertise "creamy coleslaw" it means shreds of
cabbage embedded in a blob of mayonnaise. I use half mayonnaise and half
plain unflavored yogurt, mix thoroughly, then add juice from a jar of dill
pickles (my favorite is Clausen), stir thoroughly and add more pickle juice
if a thinner dressing is desired. A sprinkling of dried Dill will make it even
tastier. I mix the dressing in a margarine cup, making enough for about a
week of coleslaw. An economical, tasty, cancer-fighting dish. What more
could one ask?

A National Day of Mourning

"The pilgrims had hardly explored the shores of
Cape Cod for four days before they had robbed
the graves of my ancestors and stolen their
corn and beans."
-------Frank James, known in the Wampanoag Tribe as Wampsutta


Not a day to give thanks, but a National Day of Mourning for the
Native Americans.

In 1970, James was invited to speak at the annual Thanksgiving feast by
the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. When festival organizers learned
that James's speech was an angry recounting of the treachery of the
pilgrims, an outcry against the genocide of the Wampanoags, they
refused to let him speak. He left the dinner and went to the statue of
Massasoit, Sachem of the Wampanoags, and gave his speech to 7 or 8
Indians and supporters.

Every year since then on Thanksgiving Day, Native Americans and their
supporters gather at the top of Cole's Hill overlooking Plymouth Rock
to observe the National Day of Mourning.

And every year. in schoolhouses all over the country, children enact
a simplistic, distorted pageant of kindly, virtuous pilgrims and
friendly Indians getting together for a meal which set the tradition
for the first Thanksgiving.

According to Indian sources, the meeting was about the Pilgrims
wanting to acquire land, the Wampanoags had the food for their own
traditional fall feast and brought it along.
See the Native Americans' Bureau of White Affairs.

Two hundred years later, there was no pretense of friendly meetings
when the Cherokees were driven out of Georgia. They were living in
houses, schooling their children, had their own printing press, and
were considered no threat to anyone. But those in power coveted
their land.

In 1931, Nancy Callahan Dollar, better known as Granny Dollar, died
on Lookout Mountain at the age of 105. Her father, William Callahan,
a full-blooded Cherokee, was one of several who escaped the infamous
Trail of Tears by hiding out in caves on the mountain.

There were men on the mountains who would not fight for the Confederacy
and slavery, and before that there were mountain people who would not
turn in the escaped Cherokees, but welcomed them as neighbors. And
there were men who stole their lands, forcing those who survived the
terrible march and those who escaped to start all over again.

Thanksgiving- Feast or Fast?

Thanksgiving is not a day of celebration for Native Americans, as Robert Jensen
points out in the article below. Jensen is a journalism professor at the University
of Texas at Austin. The article was posted by The Alternative Press Review on
November 21, 2005.

Give Thanks No More; It’s Time for a National Day of Atonement

By Robert Jensen

One indication of moral progress in the United States would be the
replacement of Thanksgiving Day and its self-indulgent family feasting
with a National Day of Atonement accompanied by a self-reflective
collective fasting.

In fact, indigenous people have offered such a model; since 1970 they
have marked the fourth Thursday of November as a Day of Mourning
in a spiritual/political ceremony on Coles Hill overlooking Plymouth Rock,
Massachusetts, one of the early sites of the European invasion of the
Americas.

Not only is the thought of such a change in this white-supremacist holiday
impossible to imagine, but the very mention of the idea sends most
Americans into apoplectic fits -- which speaks volumes about our historical
hypocrisy and its relation to the contemporary politics of empire in the United
States.

That the world’s great powers achieved “greatness” through criminal brutality
on a grand scale is not news, of course. That those same societies are reluctant
to highlight this history of barbarism also is predictable.

But in the United States, this reluctance to acknowledge our original sin -- the
genocide of indigenous people -- is of special importance today. It’s now
routine -- even among conservative commentators -- to describe the United
States as an empire, so long as everyone understands we are an inherently
benevolent one. Because all our history contradicts that claim, history must be
twisted and tortured to serve the purposes of the powerful.

One vehicle for taming history is various patriotic holidays, with Thanksgiving
at the heart of U.S. myth-building. From an early age, we Americans hear a
story about the hearty Pilgrims, whose search for freedom took them from
England to Massachusetts. There, aided by the friendly Wampanoag Indians,
they survived in a new and harsh environment, leading to a harvest feast in
1621 following the Pilgrims' first winter.

Some aspects of the conventional story are true

Read More

Consider the Lilies

Every year I think of all the things I want to do when spring comes, hundreds of
projects I can never accomplish. This year I failed miserably, and therefore
lucked out. If I had started the orchard on the Menlo lot, added another garden
bed and three or four more planters here, my efforts would have been wasted
because of the searing heat and drought this past summer.

I carried bucket after bucket of water to the straggly bachelor buttons I had
started from seed and was rewarded with only a bloom now and then, seldom
more than two flowers at the same time. I would have liked a dense bed of
them, for the flowers were blue and there don't seem to be many truly blue
flowers, most are tinged with enough red to make them more lavender than
blue.

But all through the heat and drought the wildflowers bloomed and bloomed
with no one tending them. Their leaves sometimes wilted a bit when the sun
had blazed down all day, but would recover by the next morning.

Consider the lilies of the field....

No lilies, no fields, but thickets of wild touch-me-not grew on the banks of the
dry creek bed, more than any previous year. Their orange flowers shaped like
little cornucopias drew hummingbirds, delightful to observe. Once I watched
from the bank as two of the tiny birds fought over one patch of blossoms.
One hung in the air against his blur of wings, a tiny guard claiming those blooms
as his own, darting forth to attack the other who hovered near and would not
give up.


The common name of this plant is jewel weed, probably because of the
translucent yellow-green and pinkish stems. The juice from the stalk is
considered an antidote for poison oak. It is called wild touch-me-not
because its sickle-shaped seeds burst open at a touch when dry.
Orange is another minority color among the flowers.

There were also lots of wild sunflowers, the flowers much smaller than the
cultivated kind, but tall and cheerful massed along the creek bank, making
my walks along the dry bed most pleasant. Down near the bridge tall stalks
of bright purple ironweed accented the yellow sunflowers.

Joe pye weed with clusters of small pink or white flowers grew along the
pasture fence and on the ditch bank by the road, the little florets at first
distinct, then becoming ragged as the summer wore on, so that from the
distance they appeared to be a fuzzy mass.


It was a delight to come upon an occasional cardinal flower with its
notched crimson petals, usually only one and usually low on the bank,
but occasionally two, side by side. The same with the lobelias, their
hooded blossoms providing another example of really blue flowers.

My mother used to laugh when she saw a flower described in the Field
Guide to Wildflowers as "escaped". She said she had visions of flowers
running down the road with gardeners in hot pursuit.

The Term "escaped" meant the identified wildflowers had also been
cultivated.I wanted to reverse the process and wished I had saved seeds
from the cardinals and lobelias. I had bought a small pot of lobelias, the
kind with prostrate stems that hung over the sides of the pot. It bloomed
continuously all summer, lovely little blue flowers with the distinctive hoods.
The plastic tag identified it as an annual; the tall wild lobelias survive the
winters and bloom again.

But this past summer it was too hot even after the sun went down to do
much work outside, it was all I could do to keep the grass cut. I couldn't
bear to think of building planters or making more flower beds, and the
"escaped" flowers would have to be confined so that I could mow around
them.

A few years ago, there were only a few stalks of jewel weed here and there.
Now there are thickets, and there are small clumps of them all up and down
the creek.I can hope that the cardinals and lobelias will likewise spread.

And next spring I would... But that is the cry of all gardeners who dream
over seed catalogues throughout the fall and winter. Next spring, next year.....

Red and Blue Splotches on a Solid Pink State

After the recent election, the New York Times showed Georgia as a solid
pink state, meaning it was held by the Republicans, with no gains by either
party. As the Times was only concerned with the major offices, the governors,
senators, and members of congress, this was true from their viewpoint. But as
the people who live in the state find their lives affected by holders of all the
offices, it wasn't exactly true.

Republican Governor Sonny Perdue was re-elected, the voters also elected
the state's first Republican lieutenant governor, and, for the first time, a
Republican received the majority of votes cast in Chattooga County in a
race for state senator, all a cause for rejoicing by the local Republican Party.

There was another race that was very important in this small area of Georgia,
and should be important to the entire country.

About two years ago, just before the last election, the local offices of State
Court Judge and Solicitor General became vacant. The local newspaper
published the names of candidates for the offices, which are non-partisan, but
the two most well-known candidates were both Democrats, and both had a
good chance of winning. Governor Perdue stepped in and, according to a law
which allows him to do so, appointed two Republicans to fill the vacancies,
thereby taking the decision away from the voters.

The Perdue appointees, both decent, competent men, had to run for re-
election this year, and both lost- to two Democrats, including one of those
who had tried to be a candidate two years ago. In the interim he had been
convicted of Driving Under the Influence, and the State Court Judge he
defeated had been instrumental in setting up a drug court, intended to help
first offenders of drug and alcohol abuse get into rehabilitation programs.
Even with this blot on his record, and even though there were more votes
for Republicans than Democrats in most of the other contests, he and the
other Democrat won.

There were constant reminders that elections for these two offices were
non-partisan. But Perdue had made them partisan by appointing Republicans.
Some of the Republicans in the county voted Democrat, and voted in a judge
with a DUI conviction, because that was the only way to show Perdue that it
was wrong to take away the people's right to vote.

The Supreme Court's overturning the Georgia law requiring that voters present
a driver's license in order to vote was also a people's victory. This smacked of
the old poll tax which was intended to keep Blacks from voting, but which also
kept many poor whites away from the polls. Those who make Georgia's laws
did not seem to care that many poor and elderly people do not drive. Now the
some 17 documents that can be presented as proof of a voter's identity include
rent receipts, utility bills, birth certificates. It's a shame that it still takes a fight
through the courts to preserve the right of everyone to vote.

A Fairyland of Lights

It happens every September.
I will walk down by the creek one night and there are hundreds of tiny
bluish-white lights dotting the banks, the sandbars, and even in the grass
near the water.

The first time I saw them it was one of those late evenings when I was
burning brush and waste paper and at the same time cooking what I call
a trash fire supper. Burning the trash- a necessary task- leaves beneficial
ashes for the garden beds and provides me with a delicious meal, usually
potatoes baked in the embers, they bake to mealy goodness best when those
aluminum nails are run through them, and sometimes thin little steaks rubbed
with butter and garlic, and usually a pig's foot or hunk of backbone for Buckie,
who also gets one of the potatoes.

While waiting for the potatoes to finish cooking, I walked over to the creek
bank. Even on fall nights before it turns too cold there is a chance of seeing
one of the elusive water snakes gliding along. No snakes this night, but I saw
something glittering at the water's edge.At first I thought it must be broken
glass reflecting the fire's light, so I started down the bank, planning to pick it
up. And found myself surrounded by a fairyland of lights. I turned off the
flashlight and just stood there breathing.

Finally, after what seemed long time of stillness, I moved cautiously forward,
not wanting to step on the lights. But they would go out when I walked near
them, no matter how carefully I stepped. Sometimes, as I stood watching,
many of the lights further away from me would disappear, but when I swept
the banks with the flashlight then turned it off, they would come back on,
shining steadily, as if in response to my light.

My quest to learn what they are was hampered for a long time because
I assumed they were some type of crustacean. I had forgotten that
sometimes the way to knowledge is to first discard all preconceived
notions and set forth with an open mind. But when I learned there are
many bioluminescent marine creatures, but rarely any in fresh waters, I
was sure these must be some of the rare ones.

Then my youngest son, Andy, came to see the lights, and stood there,
delighted and awed. "I've been around creeks all my life, " he said,
"And I've never seen anything like this." He had to dig one out to see
what made the lights, and exclaimed, "Why, it's just a bug!"

Then I stopped seeing little crustaceans and began comparing them to
illustrations of bugs. I would never have thought of fireflies, for fireflies
have traffic-light yellow lights that blink off and on, and these were a more
pleasing greenish or bluish white that did not blink. But they are indeed
fireflies (Lampyridae), the lightning bugs of childhood, or rather it is the
firefly larva.

They are about an inch long. look flattened, mud or sand colored. Such
homely creatures to make this fairyland of lights. One theory is that they
burrow in damp earth because that is where their prey is, earthworms or
other small worms.

The light show by the creek usually lasts about two weeks. After the first
heavy rain there is only a scattering of lights. I don't know if the rain washes
most away or if they simply burrow deeper to prepare for the cold soon to
come. As the nights become colder, as usually soon happens following the
hard rain, the lights disappear altogether.

It is usually late May or early June when the mature fireflies rise up from the
grass and turn their yellow lights on and off and on throughout the summer nights.

It was in June when Gil and I brought our eight cats from Chicago about
three months after we started moving to North Georgia. Oscar, one of the
younger cats, was irritable from the long drive and wary of the strange
surroundings. He would stop complaining long enough to rise on his back
feet and bat at the low-flying fireflies.

Then I realized we hadn't had fireflies in Chicago. I was well aware that we
had never been able to see the stars. So on that June night we walked about
the yard with the cats beneath a starry sky with fireflies drifting lazily upward
around us.

That was when we were living in the house that burned last January. Gil, the
cats, and the house are all gone now. But the same sky full of visible stars
stretches overhead here, fireflies rise up from the grass on summer nights,
and every fall I can look forward to the fascinating light display their young
provide.

Columbus, Anyone?

In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue...

Does anyone celebrate Columbus Day other than school children, who must
suffer again through the tale of how the sailors panicked, fearful that
the ship would sail over the edge of the world and drop into a void
during that voyage motivated by greed and the drive to conquer that
brought death and disease to the native peoples.

For me, it means I can spend the whole day at home, post offices closed,
no mailing of book orders. But for most working people it is just another
mark on the calendar, no three-day weekend for them.

Native Americans claim Columbus never "discovered" America, for the country
was never lost. Last year a tale was circulated about how some American
Indians were going to rent three ships and set out to discover England and
Spain. Nothing was said about whether they were to take along strings of
beads and other trinkets.

A Native American member of Biblio, the booksellers forum by listserv,
wrote that only the week before he had discovered New Jersey, but had
decided against making an offer for it, returning instead to the Canadian
province where he preferred to live.

The day after Columbus Day we had to resume mailing out books.

Closed For the Season

Another summer gone. The leaves are turning. The color gives depth
to the woods around me, no longer a solid wall of green. Individual trees
stand out on the hills and mountains. Through my window every day I
see the bronze of dogwood, the red of maples amidst varying shades of
yellow and brown deep in the remaining green across the creek.

Frost killed the tomato and pepper plants and blackened the tall basil
more than a week ago. Gone are the barefoot mornings, the freedom from
coats and sweaters, and no more sleeping with the doors left open all
night. No more standing by the garden bed and eating tomatoes warm from
the sun.

I used to dream of hot southern summers when I tried to swim in Lake
Michigan too early in the season. Louis Grizzard once wrote that Chicago
has two seasons: winter and the Fourth of July.

But I am glad to be living where there are four distinct seasons. Not for
me the endless summers of those much-advertised old folks' retreats in
Florida, nor Houston, where I spent last New Years weekend when it was
in the mid 80's and the sidewalks reflecting back the heat made walking
around uncomfortable. They may not have cold winters, but neither do they
have real springs.

Now I shall enjoy the crisp, bright days of fall. Highs are usually 50's
to 60's, falling to chilly 30's or low 40's at night. I won't have to travel
far to see a color display. In a couple weeks or so the trees on the ridges
and mountains should be clothed in all their glory.

One year the fallen leaves completely covered the creek. It was a moving,
undulating carpet of patchwork color. No water visible, it looked as if
one might walk across it. Leaves float down it now, but not since that
particular year has the creek been completely covered.
Every year is different.

When I drive to my small building where my books are stored, a drive
between trees turning and changing and color deepening. I think of the
Zen phrase: "Be Here Now."

Now I shall be here. Now I shall exult in being alive on each of these
beautiful fall days.

Red Was the Midnight

Atlanta, the City That Wasn't Always Too Busy to Hate, has more than one
chapter of shame in its past. The Coalition to Remember the 1906 Atlanta
Race Riot scheduled a series of events in September to mark the hundredth
anniversary of the riot, which wasn't a riot but a four-day rampage and
massacre of African Americans by a mob of about 10,000 whites. They
dragged Black people from their homes and from streetcars, and when their
rampage ended, a hundred or more Blacks and one white person were dead,
an untold number wounded and maimed. Many fled this most segregated
southern city, fearing for their lives. One account states that a white woman
died of a heart attack after seeing a black man hacked to pieces.

Inadequate affordable housing and competition for jobs between poor whites
and the blacks streaming into the city in search of work had caused a volatile
situation. Into this powder keg were dropped sensationalized and mostly untrue
newspaper accounts of whites being attacked by blacks.

Almost immediately when the riots subsided, the same newspapers played
down the violence, stating that all was now calm and peaceful. And so the
coverup continued until recently, with no mention of the events in history
books. But the study of the riots is now part of the new Georgia Program
Standards for 8th grade, and many of the teachers who were supposed to
teach this had never heard about what happened in 1906.

The Coalition to Remember's website has resources for educators and links
to further materials, as well as educational material for the general public. An
ongoing exhibit at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site is
entitled Red Was the Midnight- the 1906 Atlanta Race Riot. There's a
walking tour through the area where the riots occurred on every second
Sunday throughout the rest of this year.

Now Georgia 8th graders will learn about the 1906 riot. Maybe eventually
there will also be an effort to teach them some of the other parts left out of
the history books, such as the brutal treatment of workers of all colors
struggling to gain better wages and safe working conditions. Or will they still
read, as we did in school, mostly about how the kings, presidents, generals,
and other such great leaders accomplished everything.

A Fair and Tender Maiden

The war goes on. Global warming threatens to wipe us out.There are vexing
family problems, the prices of everything we need keep rising.

Sometimes I turn away from the news, my books, and anything else that might
be thought provoking. Sometimes I want to escape thinking for a little while.
One route I've found is to watch a bad movie. Not mediocre, they're simply
irritating, but those so bad they become hilarious. Something like giant rabbits
taking over the world, when I might cheer the rabbits on, or even Night of the
Living Dead, although for one who has stood on the street corner in any large
city and watched people emerge from the subway or bus at the end of a
workday, that film isn't always far enough removed from reality.

It's even harder to find the truly bad book. Here again, mediocrity rules, and I
lack the patience to read more than a paragraph or so of such drivel. However,
I did stumble across one this week and it's a gem. I read a page here and there,
then went back to read some that I had missed.

Dainty's Cruel Rivals or the Fatal Birthday, by Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller,
copyright 1898, published by The Arthur Westbrook Company, Cleveland.

Shades of Cinderella, although the fairy tale is a great classic compared with this
pot boiler. Not stepsisters, but two cousins are out to get poor Dainty Chase and
prevent her from marrying Lovelace Ellsworth, heir to the fine Ellsworth estate
and tons of money. Judith Ellsworth, currently in possession of the estate, has
invited all three of her nieces to visit the Ellsworth mansion. She schemes to
maneuver her stepson, Lovelace, called "Love" for short, into marrying either
Olive or Ela, thus keeping the mansion and money within the family. Dainty she
had invited as an afterthought, not considering her in the running for Love, who
would only be interested in attractive women, and Dainty's father, Judith's half-
brother, "was a very homely man and I never heard that his wife was a beauty"
so Dainty could not possibly be pretty.

But Olive and Ela, both beautiful women and educated as well (they were
schoolteachers), "feared the rivalry of a girl as fresh and lovely as the morning,
and with the rounded slenderness of eighteen, piquant features, rose-leaf
complexion, delicious dimples, a wealth of curling golden hair, and large, deep,
violet-blue eyes full of soul and tenderness." She was also empty-headed, a trait,
I believe, as undesirable as the maliciousness of the sisters. Nevertheless,
Lovelace takes one look at her and falls head over heels. Olive and Ela had
taken a night train, knowing if they did not wait to go the next day Dainty
would be too cowardly to go by herself. The next day, while she is weeping
and complaining bitterly to her mother about how they have tricked her out
of her holiday, for indeed she is too timid to travel alone, Lovelace happens
by on his way home from his many travels, offers to accompany her to the
mansion, and falls in love with her during the journey. (Dainty likes him too,
but she says she wouldn't be happy away from her mama.)

He is so blinded by love - or lust- that he fails to see the spineless,
tear-sodden creature that we are shown, even as the narrator keeps telling
us what a lovely, pure and sweet creature she is. The sisters are must more
interesting as they and Aunt Judith race about trying to prevent the marriage.
The press of time spurs Lovelace on, for he must marry by his 26th birthday,
about 3 weeks away, or lose his inheritance.

When Olive and Ela tell Dainty there are ghosts at Ellsworth, she goes into
hysterics every night believing that she is seeing and hearing the ghosts, even
though the servant who is forced to sleep in her room never sees nor hears
them. Olive masquerades as a gypsy telling fortunes.Dainty staggers from the
tent, "her face as white as her lilies. and the tears hanging on her lashes like
pearls in the moonlight" She was scarcely able to stand as she was being
urged to relate her fortune from the "gypsy". "..her eyes turned mournfully
to [Love's] while she faltered, fearfully: ".[The 'gypsy' said:]..'You do well
to choose lilies for your adorning, for they are funeral flowers, and you will
soon be the bride of Death!'" And she "dropped like a broken flower and
hung fainting on her lover's arm".

After Lovelace proves that the "gypsy" fortuneteller was actually Olive, the
doctor states that "the dreadful prediction..would have preyed so deeply on
[Dainty's] sensitive mind as to cause her premature death" had the farce not
been exposed.

Ela's boyfriend, Vernon, whom she had jilted when she thought she had a
chance at marrying a rich man, followed her to Ellsworth. Lovelace is told
that it was Dainty who had jilted Vernon, and that she had been meeting him
and exchanging notes on the sly. This gives her another chance to weep
copiously and prove again how pure and virtuous she is.

Later, someone pretending to be the ghost starts carrying her from her room,
drops her when attacked by a servant, and she lies in a coma for a few days.
She gets a lot of mileage out of this while Lovelace hovers over her lamenting
her fate. After she revives, she is kidnapped on the eve of her wedding day.
Lovelace is shot in the temple by Vernon, Ela's old boyfriend, which destroys
his memory. Dainty finds he doesn't know her after her rescue. She is ordered
to leave the Ellsworth mansion, fed some poison, and when she stubbornly
refuses to die, the cabin in which she has sought refuge is set on fire.

While reading this silly tale, I thought of the old movie serial "The Perils of
Pauline". But Pauline's many brushes with death were the result of her active
involvement in one adventure after another while Dainty seems to do little
but stand around waiting for the next attack. And I'm sure Pauline didn't
weep buckets even when she was tied to the railroad track or when the
saw whirred inches from her head.

All works out in the end, of course, Lovelace miraculously recovers. They
had been married secretly days before the planned wedding day, so he
inherited the loot after all, the three who connived to separate them are
exposed, and Dainty's mama comes to live with Lovelace and his bride in
the Ellsworth mansion. And Dainty stops fainting and crying for a page or
so at least. Lovelace orders Aunt Judith, Olive and Ela to leave, and "the
veil of a merciful oblivion fell over their future fate as scheming adventuresses
to the end of their days."

This was no. 88 of The Hart Series, issued weekly, one of 103 titles listed
on the back cover. It could be ordered from the publisher for 20 cents in
coin or postage stamps.

Drought

48 counties in Alabama and several counties in Georgia were declared natural
disaster areas in June because of the drought. By the end of August, the
Environmental Protection Division had issued a level one drought declaration
for the entire state, and several other southern states were declared in various
stages of drought conditions. Restricted water use, farmers eligible for
emergency loans. Record temperatures and little rain. Farmers and ranchers
in the plains states were talking about the 1930's dust bowl. Now, as then,
stunted corn stalks rattled in the fields, water holes were gone, and large herds
of cattle were sold off to save them from starvation.

Cane Creek is drying up. The music of running water is stilled. Long stretches
of rock and sand with only an occasional pool of water. It was like this four
years ago, but there were more and larger pools of water then. This is the
worst I've ever seen here. There were a few good rains in August; 24 hours
after the rain ended the ground would be dry, and I would be carrying water
to my little garden and small herb patch.

There is still a stretch of shallow water bordering my yard, but it was divided
into two parts in August, and now in September into three, with rocky barriers
between. One day in August as the water receded, I was in the back yard
when I heard a loud slapping sound. A fish had somehow flipped from the
water onto the dividing rocks. I wouldn't have believed that a fish no larger
than my hand could thrash about so vigorously and make so much noise. I
saved it by flipping it back into the water with a stick. But that fish and many
more will die as the drought continues. They are slowly being deprived of
oxygen, and they normally depend on bugs and debris washed in along with
run off from the rain for some of their food.

Four years ago, as the water sank lower and lower, big suckers over a
foot long lay gasping and dying in the shallows. I've seen no suckers that big
since, and now I'm not seeing even hand-size fish. The shallow stretch of
water along my back yard is covered with an ugly scum.
Buckie and I went walking in the dry creek bed, as we did four years ago.
It's the only time we can safely walk long distances through here during the
summer. We can see there are no snakes underfoot on this strange, rough
road.My walking stick was provided by the beavers. There were always
limbs and sticks floating down the creek, each neatly cut at an angle, peeled
clean of bark. I saved those that were straight and sturdy and of a comfortable
length.

The beavers have long been gone. Buckie ran about sniffing their caves.
I wished I'd brought along a flashlight so I could see how far they'd dug into
the creek bank. Only once have I seen the creek ice over, and then the ice
only lasted a couple of days, so they do not need to build winter lodges and
stockpile food as they do in the northern ponds.



Trees at the creek's edge sent their roots down through the water into the
bottom of the creek bed. Now these roots are exposed, gnarled and twisted.
Behind these roots are the beavers' caves. The odd lacework of roots reminds
me of burglar guards across a storefront. They wouldn't provide the beavers as
much protection as a burglar guard against their enemies, dogs and men, but
perhaps they made them feel more secure.

I wonder where the beavers are, and if they've even survived. I'd think they
would have headed for the nearest water, the Chattooga River, about 7 miles
away. It's still running, though very low. Bevers move clumsily on land.
They would have had to cross highways and fields near houses with dogs.
And the Chattooga River is polluted. The textile factory in the next town
has been fined several times by the EPA for releasing dyes and other wastes
into the river.

In one pool we pass, at least a dozen crayfish dart about. I usually only see
crayfish at night when I stand on the back deck and shine a light into the
water, catching them by surprise before they scuttle backward into the sand.
Also concealed in the sandy bottom in normal times are the mussels. I've
yet to see a live one, but I've often seen their shells, left by some creature
that savours their flesh. Now the empty shells are strewn through the rocks,
many so tiny they seem not worth the effort to open for the tiny morsel within.
Mussels don't seem to grow very large in this creek, the largest shell I've
seen is about 2 1/2-inches long. The shell linings that look like mother-of-pearl
are not as thick and lustrous as in the much larger shells I've taken from the
Tennessee River.

The bits of color in the woods to either side were leaves, gold and bronze
and crimson, turned and fallen two months before their time. Trees were
dying. Dead limbs littered the creek bed.

My attention was drawn to a pile of what looked at first to be rat droppings.
Poking them about with a stick, I discovered they were periwinkle shells, dusty
from dried mud, for they, too, spend much of their time buried, trying to stay
safe from predators. But one must have crouched here, sucking out their flesh
and then tossing the shells into this neat pile.

As to what feasted on the mussels and periwinkles, I can only guess.
Raccoons? Opossums? Or do coyotes roam the woods here, about two miles
north of my house. And I once saw a pair of muskrats swimming down the
creek at night. They were terrified of my light and swam quickly away to
hide. They could also have a taste for shellfish.

Walking down this rocky bed, I've never seen any Indian tools or artifacts.
Most of the rocks are dark and dull, indicating some iron content, or they
are sandstone, not the kind of stone for making arrowheads or tools. And
why should the Cherokees have camped long beside this creek, so
insignificant compared to other bodies of water not so far from here, the
Chickamauga Creek, the Tennessee River, and even the Chattooga River
when it ran clean and pure. And they did not always camp beside creeks
and rivers. I know of fields far from large bodies of water where spring
plowing never failed to turn up a few arrowheads and an occasional stone
tool. At least this was true several years ago.

Even though wading the occasional pool alleviated the heat, it was still too
hot for walking before late afternoon in August, so we could only wander
for about three miles or so up the creek before turning back if we were to
get home before dark.

Another afternoon I had planned to clean the kitchen, but the forecast was
for rain the next day. I thought it could be the first rain of many and the creek
would fill up again. It was four years ago when the creek dried up, and would
it be four years again before I could walk that rocky bed? And would I, when
four years older, be able to walk it?

I set the broom aside and pulled on my creek shoes. The rippled soles help me
to navigate the rocks, and the mesh tops drain out the water after I've waded.

This time we went down the creek, ending up within sight of a house, the first
one visible from the creek during our walks. Children were calling to one
another and someone had started a fire, I suppose for a cookout. The house
was some distance from the creek, but I felt like a trespasser, and we had
traveled our three miles or so.

Shortly before the house there is an underground stream that surfaces just
below the creek bank, filling the creek bed with cold, clear water. It was
only a few inches deep, but felt so good to my feet, cooling and refreshing
me. The evening air was thick with humidity from the impending rain.

Then the dry, rocky stretches all the way home. Here, as up the creek,
I was struck by the silent tragedy of countless deaths. All the tadpoles that
would never become frogs to serenade the summer evenings. There was
never a trace of the fish or the smaller water creatures such as the caddisflies.
The birds and the woods creatures must have feasted.

The polar ice cap is melting and polar bears are losing their homes. Here the
water world had vanished, and how would it affect the surrounding area.

Do not ask for whom the bell tolls..

It was getting dark. We had started out later than usual. Only an occasional
faint star shone through the clouds and there was no moon to light our way.
I was glad when the bridge suddenly loomed a few feet ahead, for under the
bridge and we would be beside our front yard and home.

After walking on sand and rocks, my feet felt as if they had been massaged.
I slept deeply that night and dreamed of running water where fish leaped
silvery in bright sunlight. That dream would be shattered many times in
the following days when I walked the dry creek bed again.

I started writing this in August. By the third week of September, although
we had rain and no longer had the blasting heat that dries up the rain soon
after it falls, the pools of water were noticeably smaller. There was no water
under the bridge. The creek bed had been dry at least a month longer than
it was four years ago. Then at last, during the fourth weekend of September
rain poured down and by Sunday afternoon the creek was filled with muddy,
flowing water. There is again the music of water rippling over rocks and
cascading over the edges of one rocky island that remains. We again have a
creek. The water will become clear in a few days and I will be wading again,
especially after a hot afternoon of yard work or grass cutting. There were
beavers in the creek again after the last drought. I wonder if they or some
of their offspring will come back this time.

Tiny But Terrible

The toilet was running and wouldn't stop. I rushed out to turn the water off,
grabbed the railing as I raced down the front steps. And cried out. Felt like
a red hot needle had been jammed into my hand. I went on to the side of the
house and turned off the water, Then came back to see what had stung me.

After I took its picture, I rubbed meat tenderizer into my reddened and
swelling palm. It took most of the pain away and helped prevent further
swelling and itching. Then I looked through my Field Guide to the Insects
of America North of Mexico, by Donald J. Borror and Richard E. White,
the Peterson Field Guide Series, 1970, Boston.

Saddleback Caterpillar (Sibine stimulea). All the time I have spent outdoors
and gardening and around trees and I had never seen one, never even heard
of them. One-inch long and its sting is worse than that of a wasp or yellow
jacket. I found more information on several gardening forums. People have
been stung from just brushing against them. I got an especially painful sting
I guess because I pressed it as I grabbed the rail. Some of the spines on its
back are filled with a poisonous venom. All one has to do is touch those
spines to be stung.

Here are some better pictures. Some of the gardeners, like me, had never
heard of the saddleback. One said it looked like a scottie dog. I think of the
pictures of thoroughbreds draped with cloth and the saddle on top of the
cloth. The adult is a drab little moth with dark fuzzy wings and body. The
larvae supposedly feed on tree leaves. This one must have dropped onto
the railing.

What a strange and beautiful creature. If I hadn't been stung, I might not
have noticed it, for I was so preoccupied with the water problem.

Them Bones Them Bones

Them Bones, Them Bones Gonna Rise Again

I just want mine to keep me upright for the remainder of my time above
ground. Judging from the results of recent tests, I think they might. I've just
viewed a chart that shows that bones inevitably "thin" or diminish in density
as one ages. Osteoporosis. Porous bones. Hunched backs and fractured
hips. Caucasian and Asian women are most at risk, as well as men who
have taken steroids.

A Dexa Scan last month shows I've actually increased the Bone Mineral
Density (BMD) in my spine- only by one-tenth-of-one-percent, but I think
any increase is significant.I would have been happy if the numbers had
stayed exactly the same as the first scan showed. But alas, they didn't.
The BMD loss in my left hip increased by -.9. (They didn't have a machine
that scanned both hips in 2004; this time they did.)

Bones change so slowly that Medicare will only pay for a Dexa Scan, also
known as a bone scan, every two years.The two scans I've had show that
I have osteopenia, which means some loss of BMD.

The doctor who ordered the scans prescribed Fosamax, a bisphosphonate,
which has increased bone mass in some people, but not all. After researching
osteopenia, osteoporosis, bisphosphonates, and trying to decipher the Dexa
Scan report, I've decided not to take the medication. I've learned that my
amount of BMD loss increases my risk of fracture by one-percent. Therefore
I don't think the even greater risk of known side-effects of bisphosphonates
is justified.

The University of Washington has an accessible course in bone physiology
which includes a lot of information on understanding the Dexa Scan and
on osteoporosis, including methods of prevention.

Here are my T-scores: Spine: -.9
Left Hip: -1.3
Right Hip: -1.2
My spine is considered "Normal", according to the technician who did the
scan, and according to material available on osteoporosis. T-Scores of +1
to -1 = normal; -1 to -2.5 =osteopenia; -2.5 and higher = osteoporosis.
The yardstick is the BMD of a 30-year-old woman.

So my hips are only -.4 and -.3 points higher in bone loss than my spine,
or those same amounts less than "normal".

Bisphosphonates have been linked to osteonecrosis of the jaw bone,
commonly called "Dead Jaw" and also "Rotting Jaw". A lawsuit was filed
against Merck, maker of Fosamax, in April in Florida. There are other
brand names of biophosphonates: Actonel, Boniva, Zometa, Aredia.
Many of those affected are cancer patients, some having received the
bisphosphonates by IV, and some receiving large doses.

A local pharmacist wrote that "the threat [of 'dead jaw'] is not nearly as
alarming as it might sound. About 94% of the reported cases...occurred
in patients with bone cancer...The incidence is much lower in patients who
take oral bisphosphonates. It's probably less than one case per 100,000
patients per year." And he urges "patients" to continue taking the drug "as
your physician ordered. The benefits probably outweigh the risks."
(Cook's Pharmacy advertisement in The Trion Facts, Wednesday, August
23, 2006)

Unlike Cook's Pharmacy, I find the threat alarming. I would feel more assured
by such a message if it were not from someone who profits from selling the
drug patients are urged to take. And by someone who didn't pepper the
message with the word "probably". I can do my own conjecturing: Probably
Cook's would not so blithely dismiss the risks of osteonecrosis if they or
someone close to them suffered from it.

Attorneys soliciting clients for further lawsuits claim a large percentage of
bisphosphonate-related jaw damage has gone unreported.

I am just as concerned by reports that bisphosphonates can and have caused
visual disturbances, aching joints, and that, if taken for ten years or more, can
actually cause bones to become more brittle and at increased risk of fractures.
But most disturbing of all is that it remains in the body and in the bones for ten
years after one ceases to consume it. Five or six years from now it may be
linked to more, and possibly even worse side effects, and the millions, mostly
women, who will have it in their bodies for years, will be able to do nothing
but wait to see if they will be inflicted with such horrors.

So no thanks, I'm not taking it.
I believe if I work harder at staving off osteoporosis that I can prevent
further BMD loss, or keep it at a very small amount. I believe some of
my BMD loss was caused by my curtailed mobility much of last year
because of sciatica and an injured foot. I stayed active and continued to
work out, but I didn't walk as much and I kept the weights lower on
the leg machines at the gym.

The two main weapons against osteoporosis are taking calcium and weight-
bearing exercise. Walking is a good weight-bearing exercise, but I don't
think it's enough. I'll keep lifting weights at the gym and, thanks to a
chiropractor's help, I'm no longer hampered by sciatica so I have for some
time been using heavier weights on the machines. I don't need to increase my
daily calcium intake, with supplements and dairy products I get enough. I do
need to never get so busy that I forget to take the supplements, so I've made
a note to myself to never skip a day. I also take magnesium. I have read many
articles about how magnesium and calcium need to be in balance, just as do
salt and potassium. Articles on the Magnesium Website show that a high
calcium intake without sufficient magnesium can cause many problems, and
that frequently what appears to be problems caused by a lack of calcium are
actually symptoms of magnesium deficiency.

Another article on the Magnesium Website claims that primitive man, with no
access to dairy products, did not consume a lot of calcium. Our bodies have
changed little since those times, but our diets have changed drastically. The
article implies that it is because of the low-calcium diet in ancient times that
our bodies store calcium. Magnesium, however, was plentiful from whole
grains and green leafy plants. And so, according to the article, primitive man
had a diet much higher in magnesium than in calcium. But we aren't told what
effect this magnesium-calcium balance had on his health, there's just the
implication that this is the natural way to eat. Other good sources of
magnesium are nuts and legumes.

Health care providers routinely tell women to take Tums as a source of
calcium. But reading the fine print on a Tums label shows that 1,000 mg
of calcium carbonate per tablet actually means only about 400 mg of
calcium, and no or very little magnesium.

Some other interesting things I've learned: the diuretic action of coffee
causes some calcium loss from the body. Yet a recent report shows the
value of coffee as an antioxidant and the amount of calcium lost because
of a cup of coffee can be replaced by drinking one-and-a-half tablespoons
of milk. Those who add milk to their coffee are safe.I've always liked mine
black. People who eat a lot of animal protein have denser bones and so do
people who are overweight. Weight loss can cause a loss in bone density.

So one could gobble up the meat, pack on the pounds, and have high
cholesterol and maybe heart disease and strained joints and whatever
other illness baggage that comes with obesity, but have great bones.

I think I'll stick to the plan I've been following, although I will
increase my magnesium intake. It'll be another two years before I have
another bone scan. The results then and any new information I've managed
to gather in the interim may send me back to the drawing board for a
revision.I do know that wellness is not totally a matter of luck: one has to
work at it. We have to learn about our bodies and take charge of our own
health.

At least I have the information that allows me to plan. Thousands of
postmenopausal women in their 40's and 50's without medical insurance or
with inadequate insurance do not. By the time they are able to get the medical
attention they need, many will already have developed osteoporosis and have
no choice but to take the risky bisphosphonates in an attempt to rebuild that
which they have lost. Here in the only industrialized country with no national
health insurance, that hundreds of thousands are broken and debilitated from
untreated illnesses is a national disgrace.

The charge for my last Dexa Scan was $379.00. The imaging facility had to
accept the reduced amount Medicare would pay, but those who do not qualify
for Medicare or who do not have adequate insurance would be responsible for
the full amount, as much as a third or more of the monthly wages of many
women who are already stretching each dollar as far as it will go.

When I went back to the clinic a few days ago for a mammogram I saw a
new sign at the desk. It stated that patients with no insurance must now pay
BEFORE they can see the doctor.

Giant Panda Baby

Lun Lun, one of the Giant Pandas at the Atlanta Zoo, has a new baby. This
is cause for rejoicing, for Giant Pandas are an endangered species, with only
about 1,600 in the wilds of China, about 200 in captivity worldwide.

The Giant Panda is a symbol of peace in China, and was once used on flags
to signal surrender. It is also the logo of the World Wide Fund for Nature
(also known as the World Wildlife Fund), an organization dedicated to the
conservation and protection of the world's endangered species.

I have mixed feelings about caged animals being displayed, but sometimes
it is necessary for perpetuation of the species. The less than 2,000 in
their native habitat are fragmented, with little communication between those
in separate areas. This means in-breeding and can cause future generations
to be susceptible to physical defects or disease.

The pair at the Atlanta Zoo are on loan-lease from China. Atlanta pays
$1.1 million annually in lease fees, and about another $1.6 million annually
for the maintenance of Lun Lun and her mate, Yang Yang, who were
brought to Atlanta in 1999 on a 10-year loan program.If the cub survives, it
too will belong to China. and will be returned there in 2 to 3 years. If it
survives, it will be only the 5th to be born and raised successfully in
the U.S.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution has provided a video of this unusual
birth. You may have to register to view it, but registration is free and will
enable you to read articles about the pandas. More videos and articles
about cooperation for education and conservation are available on the
Atlanta Zoo website .

Watching this video, one is struck by the wonderful instinct of this animal.
This was her first time to give birth. She was in labor for 35 hours. Lun Lun
weighs 237 pounds, the cub an estimated 4 ounces. (Zoo releases compare
its size to a stick of butter.) It was born September 6, blind and almost
hairless, but immediately after birth it can be heard squealing loudly. Lun Lun
picks it up, holds it gently in her powerful jaws, and retreats to a corner where
she nurses and cuddles it.

She is being watched around the clock by zoo staff who are ready to take the
baby if necessary, but so far Lun Lun has proven to be an excellent mother.
Let us hope the cub continues to thrive.

More Independence

Because July 4th was on Tuesday this year, our family gathered and feasted
on Saturday. Most had to report for work on Monday and wished to rest at
home the following day.

I've had my own special days of Independence in the past, about which I may
write some day, but my July 4th celebration was contingent on burning the
shoulder-high pile of brush accumulated since spring, along with a big trash
can of waste paper from my office.

The county-wide burn ban in effect from May 1st until November 1st provides
exceptions for recreation or for cooking food, so I roasted a couple of hot dogs
and 2 foil-wrapped potatoes and Buckie and I circled the fire a few times, which
might pass for a sort of recreation. Then we waded in the creek to cool off. And
then we ate.

Independence Day is one of the few holidays I can support whole-heartedly.
Even so, I know it does not have the same meaning for all Americans.

I have a CD of Whitney Houston singing America the Beautiful over and over,
5 or 6 renderings of the same song, each slightly different. Quite a trip to play it.
And I like to play it on trips.

From sea to shining sea.

At one point Ms Houston stops singing and calls out: "America- America,
I love you!"

I saw African Americans buying charcoal and all the parts for a cookout on
Tuesday.Yet the Declaration did not mean Independence for their ancestors.

Thousands of slaves and freedmen fought with the British, for the British had
abolished slavery. (Thousands more fought with the Revolutionaries, mostly
Northern Blacks.) And thousands left on British ships for lands where men
could not be bought and sold like cattle. But many were simply abandoned,
left to face the masters they had deserted, when the defeated British pulled out.
And many died from smallpox.

There had been an epidemic, devastating to the Revolutionary Army, but less so
to the British, for more of them had acquired immunity as children. The slaves,
isolated on plantations, were especially susceptible to the disease. Most of those
infected were simply abandoned by the British, or driven into the woods to die.
But some were used in an early example of Biological Warfare: "On July 13,
1781, [British] General Alexander Leslie outlined his plan in a letter to Cornwallis.
'Above 700 Negroes are come down the river in the Small Pox.' he wrote.
'I shall distribute them about the Rebell Plantations'." (Pox Americana, the Great
Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82, by Elizabeth A. Fenn, New York 2001, p.132
see also p.130)
This seems patterned after the even earlier genocidal plan to give Native
Americans blankets from the deathbeds of smallpox victims.

And purple mountains majesty....

I may not love our history of injustices, but I do love this land. I love the rolling
fields and the deep valleys and even the cities. I love the ridges and hills and
mountains here in North Georgia. My heart lifts up when driving back from the
relatively flat Atlanta area into a higher and higher elevation where the road
begins to wind between wooded hills.
I love this little bit right here beside Cane Creek.

When we first began to march against the war in Vietnam, there were people
on the sidewalks calling out: "Go back to Russia!"

With Paul Robeson I wanted to say: I am an American. I was born here
and here I shall stay.

The biographical book by Robeson, the great African American singer, actor,
former football star, was entitled "Here I Stand.". And so he did. And so shall I.

Independence Day

Last year July 4th fell on Monday, so when a British customer emailed during
the weekend, urging that the book she was ordering be gotten off first thing
Monday by global priority mail, I wrote her that on Monday the post offices
would be closed and we Americans would gather around charcoal fires in our
yearly ritual of "celebrating our victory over you folks".

"Oh," she wrote, I'd forgotten about your Independence Day," and ended her
message: "But we still love you!"

This year the 4th was on Tuesday. President Bush spoke at Fort Bragg, NC,
home of the 82nd Airborne Division and the XVIII Airborne Corps,
America's only airborne corps and division. "I'm not going to allow the
sacrifice of 2,527 troops who have died in Iraq to be in vain" by pulling out
before the job is done, he said.

According to news reports it was the first time he spoke the actual numbers of
those who have been killed in this futile war. The row upon row of flag-draped
coffins have always been concealed from view. No trumpeting about Gold Star
Mothers.

I think of the young person led to the altar long ago as sacrifice to the tribal god.
If hunger followed, turbulent weather, game scarce, battles lost, did the tribal
members wonder if their offerings were not adequate or not sufficiently
attractive? Did they select two victims for the next sacrifice?

Bush did not speak the numbers of the 10 to 12 thousand wounded, many
maimed for life. He never has.

Does he not believe that their sufferings can be made not in vain by keeping
our troops in Iraq until there are 10 to 12 thousand more mangled bodies
shedding blood upon that ground.

Where have all the flowers gone....

The idea of propitiating the gods does not remain in the distant past. A
chaplain returned from serving in Iraq, in an interview with Terry Gross on
the National Public Radio's Fresh Air program broadcast on July 6th, said he
had counseled a soldier who believed that God was angry with him because he
had not felt remorse over killing an Iraqi and therefore had "visited" his mother
with cancer.

Couple years ago I was in Fayetteville, North Carolina, in the largest anti-war
rally ever held in that city. We, too, wanted to speak to the troops at Fort Bragg,
but that was as close as we could get. We would have told them that we support
them, too. We would support them by not sending them to be wounded and die
in a war that is enriching Halliburton and other big corporations.

Last year I was in D.C. with more than 100,000 marching in the biggest
anti-war action since the end of the Vietnam War. The Bush administration
were not swayed. Polls show that the majority of Americans do not support the
war. Their elected leaders turn a deaf ear, and Bush prattles on about continuing
the bloodshed so that the blood already shed will not have been shed in vain.

I think of the song Pete Seeger wrote and sang during the Vietnam War:

"We're knee deep in the Big Muddy, and the big fool says to push on."

Pets for a City Backyard

These photos were taken by my daughter four years ago in the Birmingham,
Alabama, back yard of her friends who own these gentle pets.
















I was trying to draw its face.

















It was easier to take another photo.
That's a bit of dried grass hanging from the side of its mouth.
They go under the house at night and hibernate there during
the cold months.

World's Longest Yard Sale

From Covington, Kentucky, to Gadsden, Alabama, it's called the
World's Longest Yard Sale. Also known as the Highway 127 Corridor sale,
it's usually held the first weekend in August. This year it was August 3- 6.

And every year I talk about taking some time off and traveling as much of the
450 mile, four-state route as I could cover in 4 days. I never did. And this
year I didn't even talk about it. Not in this heat wave.And not with these gas
prices. I just filled my cooler with bottles of water and set out on my usual
daily forays.

On the first day, Thursday, I sped past the parking lots and yards filled with
vendors and the tables set out in front of stores and headed for a place on
Lookout Mountain where I knew there would be books for sale. There I spent
about three hours. There were boxes and boxes of books, some set out
in the blazing sun. It's usually cooler on the mountain, but not a whole lot.
There is usually a breeze, but the sun feels just as hot at that elevation as it
does in the valley.

The books were cheap, but I must have looked poor in my straw hat, for
one of the women in charge came over to me as I sat on the sidewalk,
taking all the books out of one box and slowly putting them back in.
Lowering her voice so the others couldn't hear, she said: "Did you have a
limit to what you wanted to spend? We've added up the books you've set
aside and they come to almost fifty dollars!"

I know I was sweaty and grubby. Or maybe she had heard that old people
sometimes get confused and act erratically.

After I left that sale, I stopped at Mountain Mamas, a complex of little stone
buildings that many years ago were tourist cabins. Now they are filled with
pottery and craft items made by women and jellies and preserves made by
one of the owners. They offer rental spaces out front for the annual yard sale.

I found there a new aluminum squeegee thing for washing the car that had a
longer than usual handle for $1.50. I was standing at a table in the sun which
reminded me my straw hat was missing. I'd left it at the book sale. That hat
was a favorite, so I drove all the way back to get it. And bought another
book. And decided I'd had enough and headed for home, stopping only
to replace the $25 worth of gas I'd used and to buy a gallon of milk.
The sign on the bank read 100 degrees as I passed by at 7 p.m.
I don't know how hot it was in the afternoon.

Buckie always forgives me for leaving him. He's just glad that I have
come home.

It was 77 inside and felt good, but I turned on the ceiling fan because
Buckie likes to lie under it. I've never had air conditioning in this building,
and have never wanted any except for about two weeks in August,
but this year we were already having August weather early in July. Our cold
weather lasted longer than usual this year. I had to keep the heater on much of
the time through early June. And now, with this heat wave that is killing old
folks like me in California, I'm beginning to think seriously about the global
warming theories.

When I went back out on the front porch, I saw a large snake curled in the
shallow water at the far bank. I believed it was a watersnake, but the water
silvered it so I couldn't tell. I tried to photograph it from several positions along
the bank near the house. Too much light reflecting from the water.Then,
because it still lay unmoving, I decided to try and get closer. I put Buckie in the
van so he wouldn't follow me into the creek. And, because this was atypical
behavior for a watersnake, I took along my pistol.

When I got within about five feet of it and was ready to snap a picture, it
glided away. Wish I had snapped the picture sooner. I had gotten close
enough to know it was indeed a watersnake, the dark, heavy-bodied kind
that so many mistake for the poisonous water moccasin or cotton mouth.
This is why so many watersnakes are needlessly killed.

Slaughter of the innocents.

For the next three days I braved the heat and humidity and returned to the
yard sale vendors on the mountain. I got a couple more books, lots of
clothes, a dark pot that I need for making a solar cooker, and a strange
and inaccurate thermometer with little eliptical glass globes that float up and
down. So what if it doesn't tell me the exact temperature, I still like to look
at it. I got it and an ironing board and a slide viewer which also accepts film
strips- exactly what I needed!- on a return trip to Mountain Mamas.

The Tri-County Rescue Service at the Georgia-Alabama state line had
three funeral home tents hung full of clothes, many of them brand new
and most of them really good. They were selling at $1.00 for a plastic
grocery bag full, and, by careful rolling, a lot of clothes could be packed
into one of those little bags. I had to stop there every day because
shoppers were welcome to use the clean john in the firehall. There was
a fireman's boot outside the door for donations.
On the last two days there were signs under the clothing tents urging
people to "Take as many as you can haul off- all Free".
When I went by for my john stop late Sunday afternoon, the tents still
hung full of clothes.

On Friday I had dropped off Buckie for his second shaving of the summer
before heading for the mountain, and at 3 p.m. when I had picked him up
and was driving home, the bank sign read 104 degrees. I'm glad the yard
sale isn't running for two weekends as it did last year.

Buckie after his second and last shaving of the summer


Now I have a van full of books and clothes and not enough closet space
in this building. All my clothes except what I had packed for the trip
and the things I'd bought while away burned with the house. (I most
fortunately had not unloaded the van.) So I had had enough casual clothes,
but not much for dress. Now I do.

And the books- well, I will always find a place for books.

One of the best parts of the weekend was when it rained on Saturday
night. I went out at 11 p.m. with a bucket of suds and the new squeegee
I'd bought and washed the van by the light of the porch light.The blessed
rain, gentle but steady, washed the suds from my van and the sweaty
weariness from me.