The End of January - almost

 It is closing in on 1 am, my husband has been asleep for hours, but my brain won't shut down. I worry about getting up in the night, it might disturb the doggies, and if they get restless they would wake my husband, and he needs his sleep. I can always take naps in the daytime, one of the many benefits of retirement and aging. 

It is cold tonight but not so cold as to require a trickle to be run in the tub. The thermometer on the back porch read 25 degrees F, when we went to bed at ten. There is still snow on the ground from Wednesday night/Thursday morning, but not much. We have not had any long stretches of deep cold this winter so far. Only two nights in December when the temperature dipped into the teens, and exceedingly few days when the afternoon temperatures have stayed below freezing. Just Tuesday the afternoon high was 62 degrees F. 

I am very ambivalent about this. There was a time when I loved winter. When I walked a mile from graduate housing to the Patterson Office Tower in 20 degree or lower weather and found it exhilarating. I had a whole hierarchy of clothing depending upon temperature. Below 20 degrees I set aside the jeans and got out ankle length lined wool skirts with long johns underneath.  Age, rheumatoid arthritis, and asthma triggered by cold air, make walks in temperatures below 40 degrees no longer feasible. I no longer enjoy the cold weather. But I know that these milder winters are not a good sign. No one mild winter of course can be blamed on climate change, but the pattern of milder winters that we've seen in the last couple of decades most certainly shows the influence of global warming. 

Moreover, while winters have become more pleasant and less harsh, spring and summer have become hotter and more humid. The fleas and ticks have boomed in recent years with mild winters. As a family with dogs and cats this has become a major expense issue. We can no longer stop flea treatments in the winter months, with so much mild weather. The lower costs for heating do not offset the higher costs of flea treatments when one has 11 cats. 

Eastern Kentucky, on the northwestern flank of the Appalachian mountains, is well situated for a changing climate. While our summers are definitely getting warmer, we are higher in altitude, surrounded by forests, and living in hollers which provide shade. The prevailing winds bring eastern Kentucky plentiful rainfall, rainfall that has been increasing over the past couple of decades. While there are occasional periods of drought (in late spring or early fall), they are both rare and short. 

The population here is declining and aging. The coal industry has been in decline since it peaked in the 1920's, but it has become nearly non-existent in the past decade. Environmentally this is a good thing, but little has replaced those jobs, so communities and families are struggling. The biggest employers in most eastern Kentucky counties are hospitals and schools. However, I suspect in the long run, if we manage to maintain our society (and I sometimes have my doubts about that), eastern Kentucky is likely to become a very desirable place to live, not too cold, not too hot, and plenty of fresh water available. I do not know if I will live to see that day. 

In Memory of Mat

My cousin Matilda was 8 years older than me. Growing up she was an exciting, awesome figure in my life. I didn't get to see her but every couple of years, but each encounter was fraught with significance. She was smart, funny and sassy and I admired her enormously.

I have a number of extremely vivid memories of Mat from childhood.

One summer when we were all together in our parents' childhood home of Troutdale, Virginia, Mat (then a young teen) took a whole troop of children including me and my little brother Charlie as well as several local children on a hike down to the creek and the swimming hole, without telling the parents where we were going. We came back hours later, hot, sweaty, sunburnt, our legs scratched from the brambles, and deliriously happy with great memories of water striders, newts, crawdads, and wading in the cold stream. I think the grownups yelled at Mat for scaring them.

A couple of years later, also in Troutdale, I remember Mat showing me how the neighbor's baby goats like to climb on things by getting down on the ground and letting the goats climb on her back.

When Mat was 18 (and I was 10), she had a VW Beetle - a convertible VW Beetle! This was the most awesome thing I'd ever seen. This was about the same time that I learned that Troutdale a little town I knew and loved was in located in "Appalachia" - a place that took on mythical proportions in the early 1960's. I made a vow about that time in my life that when I grew up, I was going to be a school teacher in Appalachia and have a VW Beetle (maybe even a convertible!).  It was by no means an accident that my first car (in 1975) was a VW Beetle, and I drove it all over Appalachia while I researched my Masters Thesis and Dissertation.

One of my best Mat memories is from when I was 18 (Mat was 26) and I graduated from high school. I had my very first trip on my own as an "adult" to visit Mat in San Diego where she was a Navy nurse. She took me all over San Diego, to all the tourist spots (Marine World, the San Diego Zoo, etc.), in her sporty little MG convertible. The best part of the trip was the party she and her roommate threw: they invited not only their nurse friends but a whole bunch of young Navy men! Men, dancing and beer! How could one not idolize a cousin like Mat.

As we got older the age difference mattered less. We became friends, who wrote, called, and visited. Mat's the reason I got on Facebook, she kept bugging me because she wanted to share pictures. Another way that we were able to keep touch with each other.  I will miss my cousin Mat. May she rest in peace.

Bureaucracy and Crying

I was having difficulty sleeping last night, something that seems to occur fairly often to me, and started thinking about something that happened a little over eight years ago.  Here's the story:

            We were getting a new house. I was 60 years old and buying my first new house, taking on my first conventional mortgage. The whole situation was fraught with anxiety from the start. My husband was terrified of taking on a mortgage, but our current house – a thirty-year-old, improperly installed double wide - which we owned outright through a completed land contract, was falling apart. There were gaping holes in the floor covered with a patchwork of boards and other places where the particle board sub-floor was so damp that it sagged in great wallows. The roof leaked in six different places. The stove top and oven had all died, and the dishwasher had never worked. Only one of the two toilets functioned. Renovations were out of the question. So we bought another, new, shiny, double wide manufactured home, to locate on another part of our property from the original falling down double wide trailer. This is important to the story: we were moving into a new house, but it was only 10 feet away from the original at the same 911 street address.

            The new house was delivered two days before Thanksgiving 2010. It took three weeks more weeks before it was properly installed, tied down, underpinned, skirted, with steps and stoops front and back. The next week the plumbing was begun and the electric utility arrived, on exactly the date and time scheduled. The electric utility was a marvel. Our utility company had a centralized office which coordinated all the activity on the job and we had one contact with a single person who managed all aspects of the job – and it was a big job. They had to run a new line from a completely different direction, get right-of-way permissions from other homeowners, have trees cut down, and install a new pole and transformer. Everything worked like clockwork. The electricity was turned on. The house warmed up, the heat pump company came and installed the heat pump. Then with heat in the house the plumbers came back and connected the water line and finished the septic connection. The old house was disconnected and the new house had functioning water and sewage in less than 6 hours. We only had to use the porta-potties twice. It was breathtaking how smoothly everything went, until we got to the telephone service.

            We had a land line from AT&T. Because we live in the mountains with some pretty harsh weather both winter and summer, electrical outages are fairly common. We averaged five to ten power outages a year (varying from an hour to ten days) and not even one land line outage. Phone lines can come down without shorting out, unlike power lines.  I didn’t want to trust our lives to an internet connection for phone. Those mountains also made (and still make) our property a dead-zone for cell phone service.

            I contacted AT&T several weeks in advance of our move. The problem began with that first conversation. I told the person in customer service that we were “moving” from one building to a new building on the same property at the same address. The service rep typed “moving” into the computer and started taking information. That’s when the trouble began. He needed two addresses one for service to be terminated and a second address for new service to be started. No matter how many times I explained it, he couldn’t understand why I didn’t have a different address for the new service. I couldn’t just ask for a stop/restart, because work crews were going to have to come out and string entirely new line in a different direction for the new house. The service rep’s bright idea was to use our current address 136 and then change it by 1 number making it 135. The computer would accept that when it wouldn’t accept the same number. Then it turned out that the earliest that we could get this service change would be January 21, almost a month after we moved into the new house.

            On our own we came up with a brilliant solution for that month. The houses were so close together that we bought new wireless phones, plugged the based phone into the still working old house phone lines, and set up the wireless extensions inside the new house. It worked like a charm, until January 21^st when AT&T cut off the old service, but no one showed up to hook up the new service. They’d told us the guy would be there in a window between 8 AM and 5 PM (you know how that goes). I took off work, on a bitter cold day with snow and ice on the ground to wait for the truck to show up. It didn’t. The next day, during customer service hours, I drove two miles from my home where I have no cell service and sat in the car to call AT&T. They could not explain why we had not received a service visit, but rescheduled one for the next week. The next scheduled visit came and went without anyone showing up. The next day, I needed to call customer service but it was 10 degrees above zero Fahrenheit and with two feet of snow on the ground. I wasn’t going anywhere in my car. I walked around outside and finally found a spot where I could get 2 bars on my cell phone it was in the middle of snow covered road where I, bundled up three or four layers with hats and gloves and scarves, dialed customer service. 

            If you’re not an AT&T customer or have never called their customer service, you probably don’t know that AT&T has dozens of customer call centers in widely separated geographic locations. Every time you place a call you end up with another call center and another customer service agent. It is never possible to call back to someone you’ve talked to before. Each time you call you have to explain the entire story from the beginning all over again. On that day, I talked to six different customer service agents in at least five different call centers. I would explain my story and get put on hold and then after holding for 10 to 20 null the phone would go dead. They kept asking me for a number for a call back later that day or the next day. And I would explain once again, that I had no phone at which they could call me back, because I had no phone service in my home, and my cell phone only worked in the middle of the road, and I was not going to sit outside in 10 degree weather on the off chance that someone might call me back in a few hours or “sometime tomorrow.”

On the fifth call I was in the middle of a call out there in the road in 10 null weather, with someone who actually seemed to be sympathetic and helpful, and I slipped on the ice, fell in a snow bank, losing hold of the cell phone in a snow bank. By the time I recovered it the connection was gone. With my hands increasingly numb I dialed the service number again. Of course, I got yet another call center and another service rep, and had to begin my explanation all over again.  She too wanted to know if she could “check into it and call you back later today.”  At that point, 3 PM with the sun and the temperature dropping, having been without phone service for 10 days, I began weeping hysterically. I sobbed uncontrollably. Suddenly, the service rep entire manner changed, and she immediately transferred me to some supervisory person, who stayed on the phone and talked me down from my hysteria until I was able to able to choke out my story one more time with some degree of coherence. 

        This supervisor, without putting me on hold, contacted to work crews in my area.  She was able to ascertain that 99% of the problem was that the address of 135 (that the initial pencil pusher put in the system) was “not a legitimate 911 address”. The supervisor then directly linked me to the field workers so that I could give them directions to my home, and guaranteed that they would be there within the hour (they were there in 50 minutes) and that I would have telephone service before the day was over. Over a period of 10 days, I had talked reasonably, clearly, and respectfully to at least 8 different customer service agents. None of whom had been able to tell me why we weren’t getting the scheduled service visits, none of whom was able to solve my problem. But with one totally unplanned, spontaneous, break down into hysteria and tears got me hooked up with someone who had all my telephone problems solved within 8 hours.

            The workmen who showed up at 4:00 PM as twilight was falling, who had to climb poles and crawl under my house in temperatures hovering just above zero degrees Fahrenheit, were not at all happy about the situation.  They grumbled a lot, but they got the job done. 

            There was one really odd note in the evening. Not long after it got dark, one of the workmen came to the door to ask me if I knew whether my neighbor’s “German shepherd dog” was friendly or not. He said the dog was sitting up on the hillside and staring at them, and it made them nervous. I told him that he must be mistaken. No one in our neighborhood had a German shepherd. One neighbor had an old coon hound that spent a lot of time in the hills above our house, and another had a black lab, but there were no German shepherds. I told him all the neighborhood dogs were friendly. He did not seem to be fully reassured but went back to work, and nothing more was said about the dog. They finished the work and left about 11 PM that night. It was two or three days later that I realized that the unfriendly “dog” they had seen on the hill was probably a coyote because quite a number of coyotes live on the old strip jobs in the hills above us. They come down into the neighborhoods looking for stray cats and other small animals to kill for food. I was really glad that they had not realized they were being scrutinized by a coyote! 

I am still astounded by how quickly I got service and assistance after my breakdown into tears and hysteria. Why couldn't I have gotten that kind of service long before things things reached such a state?

The best moment of the year

It's the middle of May in eastern Kentucky and white blossoms are everywhere. Wild roses (rosa multiflora) and blackberries spill from banks and hillsides perfuming the warm air, while field daisies and daisy fleabane (erigeron strigosus) march gaily along the roadsides and adorn the unmown yards and meadows.

Driving this week car windows down to smell the roses and blackberries, I found myself saying "now is my favorite moment of the year." Then I laughed to remember that just four weeks ago, when the purple redbud and lacy dogwood were in bloom, I had said the same thing: "my favorite moment of the year."  Moreover, a few weeks before that in mid-March I was sighing over the splashes of yellow daffodils, and exuberant forsythia everywhere, also thinking "best moment of the year."

Not long from now in June I'll be thinking the same thing when the first local blueberries come to the Letcher County Farmer's Market and the day lilies turn my hillside orange. The thought will come again in July when my first tomatoes get ripe and I eat them warm off the vine. I will also be thinking it when the jewel weed blooms its millions of tiny orange flowers that attract the hummingbirds to sup in September - also the moment when the Virgin's bower vines burst into delicate white blooms.

Then comes October and all the maples go scarlet and rose. Once again, I'm thinking "my favorite moment of the year."  One might think that was the end of it, but in November when all the leaves are gone the stately majesty of white limbed sycamores stand tall as the guardians of the winter forest causing me to once again think "this is it."

So it turns out that every moment in the mountains of eastern Kentucky is the best moment of the year.

A January of Small Stones 18

daily three or four times

deep booms and tremors

of dynamite

are followed by the long

waterfall of rock against rock,

the assault of the mountain

continues.

January 18, 2014

In Praise of Winter

At work today, a young woman making casual conversation asked me if I was "ready for summer." I hesitated, because it was one of those things that people say on a cold, grey day expecting only a pro-forma agreement, but then I said the truth "no, I'm not ready to let winter go yet." My response startled her, but she was working and needed to move on, so she just nodded and said bye.  

I am no longer as fond of cold weather as I was when I was younger. Winter weather exacerbates both my arthritis and my asthma. I dislike having to take all the additional medicines necessary to allow me to function when it is cold. I am also less confident of my ability to drive in sleet and snow as I once was. 

But I still love winter. I love how the forest becomes naked and the bones of the world show through - the rocks and crevasses, the bare forest floor. Every drive to work or store is a treasure hunt for the stark white fingers of sycamore trees. I love the lace of brown branches edging the mountains against the pale sky. I love the way the wind rattles the dry leaves and rubs the bare branches together. 

But most of all I love how winter makes spring possible. Until you have lived in a place (like California) where the transition from winter to spring is scarcely noticeable, where roses bloom all year round, you cannot truly appreciate how winter gives birth to spring.  So, no I am not pining for summer, nor waiting for spring, but living with joy in winter.

An twenty-four year old environmental puzzle

The second blog post I ever made (back in 2005) concerned an environmental puzzle that I had observed for some 15 years. It is now eight years later, and I am no closer to having a real answer to my question.

Since 1989, when I moved into this part of central Appalachia, I have been observing a trend with the Ohio Buckeye tree.  These lovely trees can be seen all over eastern Kentucky, southwestern Virginia and northeast Tennessee. They have large hand shaped pinnate leaves in groups of five.  They seem to like moist areas and are often seen along creeks and rivers (and the roads that run along creeks and rivers).

Guides to eastern trees speak of the gorgeous pumpkin orange color of Ohio Buckeye trees in the autumn.  However, my environmental puzzle concerns why the Ohio Buckeye has been showing fall color earlier and earlier each year for the past twenty-four years.

 When I first arrived in the region, the Ohio Buckeye changed color at the beginning of the normal autumn season in late September or early October. Between 1989 and 2005 I observed the Ohio Buckeye beginning to show it's brilliant color earlier and earlier.  In my 2005 post, I observed by early to mid-August. Since 2005, the color change has moved even earlier. This year, the color change began last week - the first week in July. The images here were taken today, July 5, 2013 in Kingsport, Tennessee along Reedy Creek from the Kingsport Greenbelt pathway.

This is how it begins a small branch or two of each tree turns brilliant color, then more do, and then the leaves turn yellow and brown and fall off - MONTHS before any of the other trees in the forest. Each year the process of turning color and losing leaves gets earlier.  A tree that once turned color in late September early October, now begins turning color in June and July and has lost all its green leaves by August. At some point in time, if this continues, the tree will not have green leaves long enough to provide the energy it needs to keep on living.

What is going on? Why is this happening? There does not seem to be any pest involved. Is it changing climate? If so what is it about the climate?  Central Appalachia is getting both measurably warmer, but also wetter.  We've just completed one of the wettest Junes on record.

Anyone out there know someone with an answer?

dogwood lace

In the last week, the dogwood has come to full bloom, scattered across the forested hillsides. About six years ago, the pine bark beetle decimated the stands of pine in Letcher County; but in the forest openings they left, the dogwood, an understory tree, has found new expression.

Driving to work this morning, it occurred to me that our Kentucky spring-time hills are like a wide-hipped, earthy "granola" woman, with a long, flowing brown and green calico dress decorated with bits of slightly tattered, antique cream lace.

the early bird catches the fog

Today was back to work day, the first day of in-service meetings for faculty and staff, which began with a breakfast at 8:30 AM. The breakfast was held at a location near our main campus, more than an hour's drive from my home. The trip takes me over Pine Mountain, a huge, ancient block thrust fault that separates the Cumberland Plateau of southeast Kentucky (visible in the photos) from the folded corrugated mountains and valleys of southwest Virginia.


Many of my friends have taken spectacular photos of morning fog from this vantage point on Pine Mountain's northern face (just below the summit), but I'd never had the favorable coincidence of time and fog and a camera on hand before.

The photos sweep from northeast to north to northwest from top to below. Tiny Whitesburg is hidden under the fluffy white folds of the center photo.

a view of kentucky

First view of Kentucky coming through the Pound Gap from Virginia on US23.

on driving home at sunset

sunset clouds of rosy hue
part for brilliant beams
that kindle fire
on wooded hills
a golden blaze all light.

©sgreerpitt
January 16, 2010

The lines came to me while driving home yesterday. The photos come from a month ago. The lower photo is out of focus, but it captured the color so much better than the ones that were in focus! I'm an artist so damn the rules.

One Single Impression -- Fragrance

Contrasts

How welcome,
sweet stale
smell of
rain
on summer dust
and sizzling
pavement,
a sigh of relief
from summer
heat.

Sodden reek,
muddy debris,
when long
the rains,
and bare
the hills.

sgreerpitt
Sunday July 26, 2009

You can read and see a bit more about our Sunday flood in the post below. You can read more (and nicer) poems on the prompt "fragrance" at One Single Impression.

Mine is only one of thousands of families impacted by the negative consequences of mountain top removal strip mining. Please learn more about this devastating mining technique and add your voice to those asking for stricter controls, and an end to the most destructive practices. Check out the I Love Mountains website. This isn't a "tree hugger" issue, its a people lover issue!! My family is lucky, only our yard and driveway (and peace of mind) are damaged this time. Many people lose their homes and their health as the result of mountain top removal strip-mining.

the flood

A while back my insurance agent and I discussed cancelling our flood insurance and using the savings to up the valuation of our household goods, but I never got around to getting over to his office on the other side of the county to sign the papers. This morning I was glad I hadn't.

This is purely the consequence of mountain top removal and strip-mining above our holler. Nothing like this ever happened before the mining began. Our neighbor above us, observed the water pouring over the hill above his house directly off the stripped bare mountain. The brown river in the center of the first photo is suppose to be our neighbor's drive way!

The photos below show the rushing river of muddy water that is normally our yard.

a peep in the night

Last night while we were watching TV we left the backdoor open. At one point I looked up and noted the dozen plus moths that had plastered themselves to the outside of the storm door. Then I did a double take. One of the light attracted little bodies was not a moth. So I carefully stepped outside with my camera to get a picture of this little Mountain Chorus Frog (formal name Pseudacris brachyphona, but more commonly known around here as a "peeper") whose little 1 1/2" body was plastered to the glass. Sorry about the poor focus.

One Single Impression -- The Stranger

Strangers in the Troutdale Dining Room

Faded wooden floors,
chintz curtains flutter,
enticing aromas
waft from kitchen,
two lone people
adrift, waiting dinner.

A smile,
a word,
a laugh,
tendrils of connection
centripetal attraction
pulls strangers in.

A bottle of wine,
talk of work,
dreams found,
and loves let go,
until the sinking sun
sends each spinning
a separate trajectory
into the dark,
life’s gravity
fixing different orbits,
yet trailing rosy clouds
of memory
for years to come.

©sgreerpitt
July 5, 2009

Pen and ink drawing by sgreerpitt of the Troutdale Dining Room, July 1977, reproduced on a note card.

For more intriguing poems on the prompt "the stranger" see One Single Impression

rising water

The call came to say the scaffolding had arrived in Whitesburg for my mural project, so I took off for campus at noon today, only to be turned back by flooded roads.

In several places the stream had jumped the bank and was flowing, rapidly over the road way.


When I returned I took photos of Yonts Fork, which flows into the stream flooding the main road. This is the highest I've ever seen Yonts Fork, the first time in 13 years it has come so close to the roadway. In the picture on the right, the water is so high that you cannot even see the large metal culvert that channels the stream (most of the time) under the entrance to our road.

.
In the second picture (left) you can see the pipe, but just a bit downstream Yonts Fork has risen nearly to the level of a neighbor's driveway bridge.

The combination of extensive strip-mining in our locality, and heavier precipitation in recent years contribute to more and more problems with flash flooding.

music for the folk

A great place to hear music for the folk (i.e., true folk music) is at the Appalshop in Whitesburg, Kentucky. Appalshop which turns 40 this year, got its start through a program called "Community Film Workshops" from the Office of Economic Opportunity in the 1960's. The local youth involved with the program, turned what was suppose to be a job training program into an indigenous expression of mountain culture, which continues to thrive through music, art, film, and theatre. One of the highlights of the year at Appalshop (for 23 years) has been the Seedtime on the Cumberland festival with live music, films, and crafts.

I've probably missed more years than I've attended since I moved to this region 20 years ago. Some years its just been too darned hot; other years I've been ill, or had too much work to do; some years I just forgot until it was over. But I made a concerted effort to go this year, because one of the featured performers was John McCutcheon; McCutcheon is one of the performers who helped ignite my love of bluegrass and traditional folk music of the Appalachian mountains.

My father is from Appalachia, from the tiny hamlet of Troutdale, over in Grayson County, Virginia. Yet despite this fact, and despite having spent a half dozen summers in Troutdale while growing up, I don't remember ever hearing even one bar of traditional mountain music until I wound up at the University of Kentucky in January 1975.

I don't remember the first time I heard traditional music or bluegrass; as both were ubiquitous in Lexington in the mid-1970's. But, I was already familiar with traditional music by July 7, 1977, when I attended a long standing "Old Time Fiddle" convention in Galax, Virginia while I was working on my master thesis research (an historical/ethnographic study of Troutdale). As part of my thesis research I met and interviewed luthier and musician Albert Hash of Whitetop, Virginia, and I had the rare (for a non-musician) pleasure of listening to Albert jamming with a variety of musicians young and old, behind the scenes at the Fiddle contest in Galax.

So I was already well on the hook by the time the winter of 1977-78 rolled around. The winter of 1977-78 was a long cold one, especially in the coal fields of Kentucky and Virginia where one of the longest strikes in UMWA history was unfolding. A concert was held at the University of Kentucky that winter (if memory serves me right in January 78, but it could have been earlier or later) to raise money for striking miners and their families -- and raise awareness.

My reasons for attending were more political than musical -- at least at first. Two performances of the evening stand out in my memory. I have long since forgotten the names of any of the other acts, but I remember in shining detail both John McCutcheon and the all female Reel World String Band (which also still records and performs--sometimes at the Seedtime festival).

McCutcheon, an instrumentalist par excellence, played several different instruments that winter night, but what I remember, what has stayed with me all these years was his performance on the hammer dulcimer. Despite its ancient and venerable history, I had never encountered the hammer dulcimer before that night. The notes of the hammer dulcimer fall sweetly like spring rain, tripping brightly on the ears. The next week I purchased his album "The Wind that Shakes the Barley" (which was produced by June Apple records of Appalshop!). [I just put it on the turntable to provide the right ambiance].

Although it was his performance on the hammer dulcimer that made me a fan in 1977-78, I have since come to appreciate McCutcheon's own formidable song writing skills. This afternoon, he played both traditional pieces and his own compositions, including the "world premier" of a song against strip-mining and mountain top removal that he wrote last night on his way to Whitesburg.

Photo by sgreerpitt, John McCutcheon today, June 13, 2009, at Seedtime on the Cumberland, at the Appalshop in Whitesburg, Kentucky.