Facebookization

Why don't she write?!

Facebookization.

I've meant several times to start up again -- geez, it's been a year! But well... blogs (writing and reading) for me are huge time sucks. And Facebook is the huge time suck that I've been abusing most recently.

Note to spammers: that does not mean that you can graffiti my blog with your crummy, spammy links. I still delete those.

Anyway, I'm still alive, though parched with drought. Thinking about starting back up again, or at least posting every now and then.

The photos show something I've been obsessed with lately: I'm on a huge succulent kick, potting them up in thrift-store finds. I can't say which is more squee-inducing, finding new plants, or discovering containers that speak to me (marked way, way down).

Ick, sick

Since just after my last post almost a month ago, I've been unwell.



First there was discomfort, and an attempt to postpone the doctor til after the craft show. Then there was pain, a can't-take-it-no-more doctor visit, and the missing of a craft show. Finally there were pills and a little loopy relief. Eventually a long, slow recovery, with lots of wish I had more pain pills malaise.



I'm 90% better, but that last 10% is taking forever. I'm still not in good form for bending, stooping, or scrunching photography maneuvers. So I've been playing in Photoshop with earlier shots.

Acoustic Cafe

Yellow Bearded Iris

My wildflower buddies and I made another visit to the Acoustic Cafe Amphitheater.


Steve Masterson

Steve very graciously took us on another guided tour. Most of my flower photos didn't turn out well (it was too sunny) - the ones from last year are here.


Mabel and the formerly perfectly fine soaker hose.

Mabel's the new pup on the block, and she's very friendly. She's still at the chewing stage though, and will probably be on vacation during the upcoming festival, so as to save tent ropes and such.

Sadly, the lovable Buster passed away since last year. Lucy is as aloof as ever.


Tadpole

Tadpole walked with us. Her sister (Sarah) joined us briefly, but was skittish of the camera. Katy the calico slept through the whole thing.


Fiery Searcher

On our walk, we spotted a Fiery Searcher, Calosoma scrutator. They're also known as Caterpillar Hunters.


Another view

So brilliant in the sun! If not the most beautiful beetle, he's at least in the top ten. He was large, as beetles go, and very fast.


Take off your shoes

Also new since last year, this exquisite hardwood floor (Ash).

There are some wonderfully worked details. I didn't forget to photograph them, but I did forget to remove the lens hood. (The lens hood is great for reducing flare when you're taking pictures in the sun. When using the flash, it causes horrible shadows. Duh.)


Skull tree

The skull tree. Still wishing I'd thought of that. Now that we have Jasmine the bone-stealing dog, we don't find the number of skulls that we once did. But I'll remember Steve's advice for cleaning such things: stick them in an ant bed. Reeeeally wish I'd known that before the antler incident.



The Acoustic Cafe is all about String music, and this is its museum. (Click for a larger version.)

It includes:
John Hartford's bowler hat,
Sam Bush's whiskey bottle,
Vassar Clements' pipe, and
Duke Bardwell's photos of playing with Elvis.

Now, Steve knows that while my friends and I do enjoy string music, we are pretty much totally ignorant about it. "You may not know his name," he said, speaking of John Hartford, "but you know his song, Gentle on My Mind."

I didn't realize though, til just now when looking up his links, that I did know John Hartford. He was on the PBS special Songs of the Civil War, that I had taped years ago, and watched dozens of times.

Here he is singing my favorite version of my favorite Civil-War-era song, Lorena:


link

Just lovely.

I looked for another song I remembered from the show, Sweet Honey in the Rock's rendition of Climbing Jacob's Ladder. Couldn't find the video, but I believe this contains the audio:


link

OK, one more. Another favorite from that show was Hard Times Come Again No More, sung by Kate and Anna McGarrigle and their families. I found this somewhat later version by them that I actually like better, and it has the added bonus of Emmylou Harris:


link

Rufus Wainwright is in both versions. Here's a link to the original, with a much younger Rufus and Martha.


Waiting to greet you at the Acoustic Cafe Amphitheater...

Stumpery

Squirrels have their own ideas about what makes a good stumpery. "Feeding platforms, a must-have!"



This is what remains of our old falling tree problem.



Turkey-tailish fungi march up one side and down the next.



Flamboyant fungus.

-----

I only learned about stumperies earlier this week, when a friend sent me an article about the one on Vashon Island. (Pat Riehl, the owner of that one, will be speaking at the B'ham Fern Society lecture in May.)

-----

Trying to google images of stumperies brought me to an interesting blog, the Folly Fancier, who had featured this stumpish superstructure.

I saw that FF had also written about the Lupercale grotto, another coincidence, since of course Lupercalia starts tomorrow.

-----

And a dog nicknamed Stump just won the Westminster dog show.

Historic day

It was bound to happen sooner or later.

But it's so much earlier than I ever thought possible.

Today they'll be swearing in a President who's...

younger than me!

-----

Update:

I love Google Trends.

How else could I have known, that on Inauguration day, there were only two other pressing issues on America's mind...



... a good snow cream recipe, and free makeup.

-----

Click the screen capture to see it writ large.

Husband humor

Hubby: I think I'll go up and get my hair cut.

Me: It doesn't look that long.

Hubby: Mmph. [Still moving towards the door.]

Me: But what if I want to run my fingers through it?

Hubby: I'll have them put it in a bag for you.

Stupefied by the labor of digestion

Bluh. I had to relax and do genealogy all day today, to recover from yesterday's intense gluttony. Bluh. Diet starts again next week, I guess.

I am much too lazy to send handmade cards for Christmas, so it's a wonder that I receive any.



My Mom's cross-stitch. I forgot to ask if she started these last Dec 26.



Cutie-pie niece designed this card from my sister's family. (My brother-in-law says he's the handsome one in this drawing.)



Mt artist friend included one of her dogs on their card.



OK, this one wasn't homemade, but my brother knows how much I love Edward Gorey!

-----

Stupefied by the labor of digestion: Stolen from Anaïs Nin's diary, which was featured on the Writer's Almanac today.

War of Wealth

Geez, y'all stop collapsing the world financial system, would you?

This is a poster from a 1895 play. I'm not sure if today's equivalent would be War of Wealth, War on Wealth, or War for Wealth.

Wikipedia has a handy reference of Economic disasters in the US that includes 16 incidents labeled "Panics". I guess since the last one was in 1911, somebody thought it was high time for a good old-fashioned panic. Many panics seem to start when the Joe Moneybags of the world try to grow even filthier rich, by means of dodgy schemes designed to swindle everybody else.

-----

Here are a couple of money-saving tips that I learned by accident.

#1: Discounts.
Hubby had a few medical tests a while back (he's fine). The bill was substantial, about $1000. I always feel a little cheesy doing it, but since we have one of those BigNameGasStation credit cards that rebates 1%, well, why not use it. I've learned to tolerate a little cheese.

"Can I pay over the phone with a credit card?"
"Yes. How much would you like to pay?"
"All of it."
"I can offer you a 20% discount for paying the entire amount."
"What!"

I'm sure if I'd written a check, they'd have happily cashed the whole thing.

#2: Look closer.
Counterfeit $10 bills have been passed in Oneonta recently. Who's risking a felony charge for $10?! ("Teenagers" comes to mind.)

This is another thing I love about small-town living. The bank teller not only told me about it, she showed me the bill in question. I would never in a million years have caught this bill as a fake. It just looked and felt like one of the new tens that had already seen a lot of wear.

She told me there were two ways to spot it as a fake: look for the plastic security strip by holding it up to the light, or check that the glossy "10" (in the lower right) changes color when the bill is tilted. But who does that kind of thing for $10 bills? I check the strip on $50s and $100s at craft shows, though it always makes me feel so rude. Hubby's been saying that I need one of those currency-checking pens instead, but the teller told me that counterfeiters now use paper that the pen doesn't detect.

Bottom line, if someone hands you one of the newer bills that seems like it's seen a lot of wear... take a closer look.

Seven things

While I was gone, Twinks asked me to do a meme. I'm supposed to list seven random things, but since I'm contrary, I'm going to list seven things that happened during my lost four months. It's longer than my normal posts, but since I'll be out of town for a few days, feel free to read in shifts!

1. I joined The Gym.
Really, that's what the gym in Oneonta is called: The Gym. I joined with a friend, and wheedled my way into a good deal via a long-term, prepaid, early-hours contract. I can't say I've lost any weight, but I feel in better shape. I'm getting to know my friend a lot better too, since we gab for about four hours a week more than we used to.

2. I thought I'd found a diamond.
People with a five-carat diamonds don't shop at Wal-Mart, I suppose, but I was momentarily dazed by the karmic thrill of it all. My mother lost her engagement ring stone over 40 years ago, and I imagined it had returned, with interest! Turned out to be only a cubic zirconia though, drat. Here is how you tell the difference. I couldn't read a newspaper through the CZ, and was already dreamily wondering how long the police would have to hold it before it was deemed unclaimed. The dot test worked like a charm, though. Like a big, balloon-bursting charm.



3. The garden refused to bend to my will. Again.
I had fun with the Zinnia experiment though. I got a late start, and Powdery Mildew crept in when we left town for a week. The grass got way out of control, as usual. Somehow I still managed to grow a few flowers to donate to Hospice. Maybe next year I will finally have my act together enough to get them there throughout the blooming season.

4. I won a major award.
Because I could remember the Alabama state bird, mammal, fossil, etc., when an emergency preparedness expert spoke to our wildflower group. OK, the award wasn't really all that major, but I basked in the egghead trivia glow anyway. Then a guy even more pointy-headed than me whined that my answer of "some kind of whale" to "What is the state dinosaur?" wasn't up to par. "The Basilosaurus cetoides is the state fossil, not dinosaur!" he moaned. I hugged my MRE and ran out of the meeting room.

5. We let Anatoli go. He'd developed a lump that we decided may have been from improper nutrition or insufficient sunlight. Since he was wild-born, we figured he'd fare better on his own. We saw an unusually high number of anoles this fall, but I was never sure if any of them were Anatoli.

6. I had to wait in line to vote!
There were all of four people in front of us when we arrived at our polling place. An elderly couple let us cut in front of them though, since the man was still searching his wallet for ID. There were a few local issues on the ballot so turnout was very high. The tallies from my precinct, not exactly what you'd call a democratic stronghold, included:
Obama 45, McCain 450
Figures 52, Sessions 442 (US Senate race)
Tag fee increase: Yes 59, No 392
Wet/Dry referendum: Yes (Wet): 226, No: 270
The ratios for the whole county were similar. I still haven't figured out how Vivian Figures, a State Senator from Mobile, received more votes than Obama. Most people in north Alabama weren't even familiar with her. I read that her budget was $22,000; the incumbent Sessions spent multi-millions. (I have loved her ever since I read that she was able to get the outdated, misogynistic Alabama State Senate dress code changed... the one that said women couldn't wear pant suits or slacks on the Senate floor!)
We needed the tag fee increase ($15), which would have gone strictly towards road maintenance. I had a feeling it wouldn't pass, but I was surprised at the resounding defeat.
I'm glad we stayed a dry county. I wouldn't mind alcohol sales in stores or restaurants, but didn't want a bar across the street from us. Rural counties don't have a lot of regulations, so it could have been a real possibility.

7. Alabama football, woohoo!
I had to say that before we play Auburn and Georgia Florida, just in case.

Bitternsweet

I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off (as usual), busy with last-minute preparations for a local craft show.

"Come look!" My husband was very excited. "I think it's a Bittern!"



My reaction involved trudging and muttering. I was busy. We had to leave soon. Not that I wouldn't love to see a Bittern; I'd only seen one once before, at the coast. They're secretive birds. But my husband, always a birding optimist, has a track record for thinking that other things are Bitterns.



He was right though. It was indeed an American Bittern, Botaurus lentiginosus.

"You can use the pictures for the triumphant return of Rurality!" I had to laugh, but it really was time to start back. It was October 4th, and I'd been rude for two and a half months already.

Then the next week I caught the crud that's been going around here, and was down, down, down, for way too long. I was in the clutches of a cold that had managed two years at Influenza Junior College. ("In the grippes of it," she said, going for the year's most obscure pun.)

And there was an insidious feature. Every day, I thought I'd be much better in just another day or two. I missed the trip to Georgia I'd been planning for months. I also missed the Native Plant conference that was the brightest thing on the calendar in five years, and that I'd already paid $100 to attend. (That I probably could have gotten a refund for, if not for the insidious feature.)

So anyway, when I finally could force myself to move around, I had a lot of catching up to do in a hurry, soapmaking-wise, before the last and biggest show of the year. So no time for Rurality. (All of this in explanation to those folks I told that I was just about to start back, and then didn't. Sorry!)

How rude!

How rude, to just disappear for so many moons with no explanation.

In the beginning, I didn't realize it would be so long. I intended to start back several times, but somehow my good intentions kept getting foiled. (Evil forces, no doubt.)

Listlessness, lassitude, lethargy. Laziness! And also a bit of a detour towards a genealogical addiction.

I know, those dead relatives aren't really going anywhere. But with the living ones, well you never know. Got to prise all those deep dark family secrets out of them while they're still around. Got to motivate them to dig in the closet for those old portraits, before they're sold for a song at the estate sale (since nobody has a clue who those old moldy dudes are anymore).

Anyway. Sorry for the long absence. Hope you'll forgive me.

Capture

I have a new computer that's taking a little getting used to. The pros are obvious: My m and n keys are no longer worn out, the case isn't cracked at the seams, and boy, is it zippy fast.

Really the only con is that many things work differently. As an official old person, I think I'm obliged to resist change. Or whine about it a little, at least.

Photoshop Elements will do so much more than my old mini-featured generic program. I couldn't resist the urge to make my bug photo look like a cartoon, as you see. But the features aren't intuitively obvious, and they're not much like the old Photoshop 3 I used to know.

You people with wide-screen computers were so sweet not to tell me how off-kilter I've been. I like my new screen, but some things (mainly my blog header) appear centered incorrectly. I haven't figured out how to fix that yet.

The screen is also very bright. So I may have trouble getting the photo levels right for a while.

I have a spiffy new Bluetooth mouse. No cords, it's great! But it has a bit of a tendency to drift to the left all on its own when I use my usual sofa-pillow-as-mousepad.

I will figure it all out eventually.

Funny Bunny Sunday

I dreamed that I took my favorite photo ever, and decided that the definitive title for it would be Funny Bunny Sunday. My husband pointed out (in the dream) that the picture was of our cat Ginger, and not a rabbit. "It'll still work," I said.

I sat with camera in hand for at least an hour, obsessed with recreating my dream. I waited for Ginger to do anything remotely funny-bunnyish. But mostly he was just interested in sleeping.


"You are not putting that on the internet."*


Kind of bunny.


Kind of funny.

Ginger loves to crawl up my husband's chest, arch his back high in the air, then settle very, very close to the face. I tease him. "That cat looooves you."

-----

*I was able to change his mind.

-----

P.S. I forgot to add a link to the Circus of the Spineless earlier. Sorry, Doug!

Holes in the story

At my sister's house, insects lined up for dinner in order of descending appetites.



At my sister's house, mice held a Scherenschnitte party, but it was interrupted at an early stage.



At my sister's house, pixies were unhappy with their needlework, and unthreaded all the leaves.

Writing in books

I was well into my thirties before I could sufficiently suppress my upbringing, and dare to write in a book. Even now, it's almost always for practical reasons. Notes in field guides: how to distinguish similar birds, where wildflowers grow. Corrections to genealogies.

Maybe it's because it's not my habit. Maybe it has to do with being forbidden, or that it's hidden away beneath the covers. But I get a secret thrill every time I find someone else's handwriting in a book. All kinds of handwriting.

Straightforward: AUTOGRAPHS
Many Things Have Happened Since He Died and Here Are the Highlights
This wasn't an early printing. Someone -- I picture a tightfisted typesetter grumbling about the price of ink -- chopped the legs out from under the title of this lovely book.



What a fun surprise though, to find an autographed library book. I wonder about 14-year-ago Elizabeth Dewberry (Vaughn at that time), and what brought her to sign it.

Did I miss her reading at Springville Road, my old library? She grew up in Birmingham. Was she bored enough on a trip home to sneak between the stacks and practice guerilla signings? Maybe she just donated the copy.

And why does it say "teen readers"? It wasn't in the Young Adult section, and it certainly didn't strike me as a teen book.

Perfectly acceptable: GIFT DEDICATIONS
Holiday Tales
I'm not Jewish, but I enjoy reading about religions, so I was bound to gravitate towards this book.



But when I opened it up and found it already dedicated, to me, it sealed the deal.



I'm filled with questions about this other Karen. How did her book travel from South Africa to a thrift store in Boaz? She would have been almost exactly five years younger than me -- surely she's not dead. (So young!)

But why, after bringing it all that way, would she give up this book? Did she lose her religion? After moving to Alabama, was she overrun by Southern Baptists? Did she tire of musty old pages from her young adulthood? Or did she just lose it in a move?

Audacity: TALKING BACK
The Day I Became an Autodidact
I read updates on this author all the time. She's Kendall Hailey, who's married to Danny Miller, the blogger behind Jew Eat Yet. Talk about your fated relationships... before they ever met, her book fell on his head! I bought my copy from Ebay, since it's out of print now.



The previous owner liked jotting comments in the margins.



Rather smarty-pants comments, most of the time.



But he ran out of steam after my favorite one:



I'm assuming it was at this point that the scribbler decided he was funny enough to write his own book. Wonder what it's called?

Re-emergence

I almost spoke too soon... after another marathon DSL fix-it session (two guys for 6 hours this time, and they didn't show up until Thursday), we thought all was well. Oh, the relief! The zippy page loading!

But that comfy, fluffy feeling was missing again the next morning, along with the DSL.

Yesterday it only took two fix-it hours (times two guys) to restore sanity. And so far, so good. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Update

Young whippersnapper: It's your router that's the problem.

Me: No, it isn't.

(He argues. I prove that it's not the router.)

Young whippersnapper: It's your computer that's the problem.

Me: No, it isn't.

(I contend that it is statistically impossible for all three computers to fail in the exact same manner at the same time.)

Young whippersnapper: I don't know how to fix this, so I will call in someone smarter, on the pretext that he has a laptop and I don't. And since you have argued with me, I will erase the dial-up program from your computer.

He didn't really say either of those last two sentences, but that's what he did.

Various Otelco DSL repair guys were here for five hours yesterday. It's only partially fixed. What that means is, if we want high-speed internet, we have to go sit in the junk room and hook directly into their cable. Guy #2 said our router was fried, but then he couldn't get the new router (that he was trying to sell us) to work either.

He said they'll be back "probably Tuesday or Wednesday".

K.O.

Thunderstorms with lots of lightning knocked out our high-speed internet. Posting will resume whenever it gets fixed... I've gotten spoiled and have lost all patience for dial-up.

Also, I missed most of the American Idol finale. (Storms + Dish Network = no TV.) So my teeth are still busy with their gnashing.

In the meantime, you can check out Last Friday's Ark, which I forgot to link to earlier.

Keep your fingers crossed that I don't get the same repairman as last time, who did not appear to ever have been on the internet.

Put upon

This poor little Trillium decumbens (Trailing Trillium) made the mistake of growing in an area with an overabundance of grasshoppers. It looks a bit frazzled. I feel the same, when thinking about everything I need to get caught up on in the coming week.

Stormy weather washed out the traditional best-sales-day of our last spring craft show Saturday. But like one neighbor observed, it could have been worse -- the tents could have been upside down. One bright spot was meeting an artist whose work I'd previously admired on her Etsy shop. I spent some more of my George money on one of her pieces similar to this one.

I'm thinking of trying Etsy myself, for one-of-a-kind soapy things, or the "bargain bars" that I normally sell only at shows. (We call them "cosmetically challenged" soaps because we hate to call them ugly.) Just one more item to add to the list of "things I should probably be doing instead of blogging"...

-----

If you like the creepy crawlers, check out the Circus of the Spineless!

Why We Buy (George money)

My new favorite t-shirt.

It's wrinkled, because I had to dig into the dirty clothes for it. I guess I should be ashamed of such a slipshod photo, but I couldn't convince myself to iron a dirty shirt.

One of these days I suppose I ought to start acting my age. I imagine even now, people point and whisper behind my back. Since my hearing's not what it once was, I just don't notice it.

Will I still be wearing zombie t-shirts when I'm 60? I don't know, maybe. I don't have any children to embarrass, so it's likely.

One of my friends calls the upcoming US tax rebate her George money. We plan to be good citizens and help the economy, by spending our George money instead of saving it. (Uh-huh.)

I started a little early. I've bought this zombie shirt and pre-ordered the new Charlaine Harris book. I'm already listening to my new REM CD. (I slipped up and bought a Teddy Thompson CD too, before I realized that he's British. To be a solid citizen, I should concentrate on US products only I guess.)

I also ordered this Zebra/UPC t-shirt but haven't received it yet.

I plan on buying a coffee press.

I want Annie to throw me a few bowls (if she ever gets around to pottery again).

Mmm, what else?

I've been meaning to read This Republic of Suffering and Peter Sagal's book. I want all of Elizabeth Dewberry's books. (Ack! Elizabeth Dewberry, you are brilliant, but you really need a website.)

When I told my husband I might spend all my George money on books and CDs, he thought I was kidding, and laughed.

What are you doing with your George money?

-----

The shirt is all Twinks' fault, by the way. I'd never have know about shirt.woot if I hadn't read about her Nessie shirt. I have a feeling I'll be spending lots of money there in the future.