Sunday, 8 February 2009
Perfect way to sell Girl Scout cookies: grin like this!
Hmm. I went through approximately this stage during late summer, when the sweet corn was coming in, and darned if I was going to eat my corn any other way than off the cob. Made a heck of a mess, with the cob rubbing my cheek so I could get some purchase on the goodie, but I was happ-ee!
Saturday, 7 February 2009
Egad, this part of the Midwest is flat.
Last week I participated in a side trip to the Phyllis Haehnle Memorial Audubon Sanctuary, northeast of Jackson, which is a well-known resting place for whooping cranes during their migrations. The terrain is pretty flat, although we stood on an overlook above the marsh that attracts the whoopers, and I didn’t think any of the pictures I took looked particularly lively or interesting.
I just flipped through them again, and wondered if this bench, awaiting birders with its slowly melting cap of snow, might serve as a visual metaphor for…I dunno, life? love? lasagne?
You pick….
Friday, 6 February 2009
The mining company has piled this waste crap (okay, tailings) next to the road in Copperhill, Tennessee. I thought that strange until I got home and looked at GoogleMaps, and I can see that they’re using the pile as a visual buffer, so you can’t see the even uglier mining activities behind it. Clever. I had thought they would prefer not to remind us of the ugly by-products of their surface mining. Apparently, it was the lesser of two evils…. As one county webpage notes:
Copper ore was discovered in this region in the 1820’s.* From the time of this discovery through 1987 the Copper Basin had the largest metal mining operation in the Southeastern United States. Early profiteers gave no attention to the environment, cutting down every available tree for copper smelting, creating an acid rain that killed over 60,000 acres. This turned the land into what was later described as having the appearance of a red moonscape.
So, now most of that hideous moonscape is hidden, mostly by vegetation barriers, but also by being buried. Here, where the highway passes right next to the mine (or smelters, or other machinery—something ugly), they’re “using” the waste piles….
* Not quite; Native Americans knew about the copper deposits before Euroamericans arrived….
Thursday, 5 February 2009
That’s 1.5°F (or a bit more) below zero! Brrrrrrr.
When the thermometer looks like this, and you’ve been living in the Sunny South for decades, you figure: it’s about time to hit the road. Southbound….
…and we capped off the day with a lovely dinner—mmmm, bean soup in winter, mmmm, the best!—with friends in Lexington kay-why, where we saw limbs down all over, although the destructive ice we photoed northbound is now melted.
Wednesday, 4 February 2009
We spent quite a while this afternoon laughing at the antics of Salem the Cat as he chased the reflection off Dad’s watch (until he got tired and just watched it from a sprawl). Sunny day! Lovely!
* Ever a worthy occupation in the northern hemisphere in the dead of winter….
Tuesday, 3 February 2009
This is the day I discovered that my thinsulate gloves are excellent for Georgia cold, yet hardly put a dent in temps below 10°F. Good thing it was sunny and I didn’t have to stay out long!—only 1–2″ of fresh snow to get off the driveway….
Monday, 2 February 2009
The blast of the title does not refer to the wintery weather (although it could!), but instead to visiting the now spiffed up building that used to be plain cement block and is where I used to go for monthly 4-H club meetings.
The most interesting tidbit gleaned from the Wikipedia entry on Alaiedon township based on 2000 census data:
For every 100 females there were 123.7 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 130.4 males.
This imbalance confuses me. Of course, I’m a woman who left, so I’m part of the reason for this stat? (Can’t believe it; that was quite a while ago.)
Far more interesting, however, is this history from a 1880 book; the earliest (Euroamerican) settlement dates to the late 1830s. Many surnames mentioned here survive as road and street names (e.g., Strickland, Phillips, Dell, Darling), and even some (I assume!) descendants carry a few of those names.
Sunday, 1 February 2009
The original Stormy Kromer headwear, although named for a man, was crafted by a woman, Mrs. Kromer, who modified a baseball cap. I’m partial to modified caps, although my own most famous modified cap has gone missing—very sad.
On this day I learned the legend of Stormy Kromer. I had thought it just a myth. Silly me.