Stranger With a Camera

Here are a couple more quotes dealing with the issue of cultural stereotypes and Appalachia. Please note that Shelby Lee Adams uses his family ties to Hobart Ison as a reassurance to Lecher County residents that he is "one of them," and not exploiting them. I am somewhat less convinced by this credential, as people often exploit their own. However, Ison and Adams have a lot to show us about the conflict between the "from here" and "come here" Appalachians.

"Appalachia, Democracy, and Cultural Equity" by Dudley Cocke of Appalshop's Roadside Theater

A story points to how confusing poverty is to those who are poor and those who try to empathize with it....As part of the national media's coverage of...[Johnson's War on Poverty], CBS produced "Christmas in Appalachia." Charles Kuralt narrated: "Up on the hill is the Pert Creek School. And up there on this one day is the only sign in this hollow that it is Christmas in Appalachia." The camera cut to half a dozen kids gathered around a coal stove singing "Silent Night." After the broadcast, a little town in Virginia named Appalachia received so many pairs of shoes, simply addressed to "Appalachia, U.S.A.," that....a shoe-burning party was proclaimed by City Council.

The events covered in Stranger With a Camera, 2000 deal with the results of such well-intentioned attention.

....On September 24, 1968, a Lecher County, Kentucky landowner, Hobart Ison, shot and killed National Film Board of Canada director Hugh O'Connor for filming a poor family on his land....filmmaker [Elizabeth] Barret uses...this incident to raise troubling ethical questions about identity, balance and media exploitation which no journalist...can afford to ignore.

Poverty was not new to Eastern Kentucky in 1968; absentee mine ownership, mechanization, unemployment, strip mining, decaying company towns had left more than half the population living below the poverty line. But it was the politically charged atmosphere of America in the 1960s that transformed these creeks and hollows into symbols of persistent poverty, a standing rebuke to the American Dream. Barret traces how a courageous expose by a local lawyer, Harry Caudill, generated front page articles in the New York Times, a BBC documentary and Charles Kuralt's classic documentary, Christmas in Appalachia....

Many locals agreed with Ison that the issue wasn't poverty but the right of outsiders to holdup another people's culture. Ultimately Ison served only a year in jail for his crime. In the 60's Ison's argument about outside agitators was already familiar in the South from White Citizens Councils attacks on the Civil Rights Movement. Today it resonates strangely with certain strands of post-modern cultural criticism....

Little Sockprints in the Snow

Here's evidence that I occasionally complete a knitting project. The pattern is "Little Wave" from Barbara G. Walker's Second Treasury of Knitting Designs. It's a good sock choice, as it draws up slightly, and stretches well. I'm not sure why I felt compelled to rush outside and photograph the socks in the snow on our tractor, but here it is.

Shelby Lee Adams' Photographs

I love to look at old black and white photographs. I'm not fussy--Ansel Adams is great, but I also like the work of unknown portrait makers showing people in their yards, their porches, or their coffins. Some time ago, I started to write a short essay on Shelby Lee Adams's work for my Appalachia collection, and just bogged down with it. I still can't decide what I think of his work. In composition, and in the use of contrast, the photographs are beautiful. I don't find his portrait subjects all that disturbing, but I grew up on a farm in Iowa, where hog butchering, woodsheds, satellite dishes, and outhouses were routine, and I wasn't raised to ignore the poor, the handicapped, or the infirm, either.

Adams' photographs feature all these subjects in rural Kentucky. While he protests that these people are his friends and relatives, he only "summers" in the Appalachians. When he returns to his Massachusetts studio, he has to understand that his suburban gallery-go-ers will gawk at these pictures like a fatal car crash. "My God! The poverty, the deformity, the white trash! How much for a print?"

He's making money and a career off the hillbilly stereotype, like so many others (including James Dickey and John Fox, Jr.) have before him. I'm not sure what I think of that, but God help me, I like many of the pictures. You can see some at these links, and also read other reviewers' anguished musings about what it all means.

• Shelby Lee Adams Gallery photos
• More gallery photos, with Adams' CV & bio
• Shelby Lee Adams, Gallery Exibition
• Another gallery, another exhibition
• another one yet
• 2002 review: "I do not see poverty in my pictures:"

  Are Shelby Lee Adams's documentary stills of rural Kentucky insightful or exploitative? Sarah Milroy talks to the photographer, who is himself tormented by contradiction.

• From: Appalachian Books Summer 1998 Releases: Appalachian Legacy: Photographs by Shelby Lee Adams. Oxford: University of Mississippi Press, 1998.

  The author's autobiographical essay and his explanation of his rationale for creating this disturbing book are both interesting. Adams grew up in rural Letcher County, Kentucky, and ironically Hobart Ison who shot and killed a Canadian photographer there in 1967, when Adams was a senior in high school, was his cousin. Adams claims he is interested in the last remnants of traditional mountain people, but he has obviously chosen for this book a disproportionate number of traditional people who happen to have physical and mental abnormalities. They sometimes appear especially grotesque the way Adams has configured the pictures. Thus, despite the title and despite the fact that several of the pictures here are outstanding, this is not a book about Appalachia. Instead, too much of it is simply a book which serves merely to reinforce the worst stereotypes of the region as a whole. As part of a larger collection of all kinds of regional photography, this book may serve an artistic or sociological purpose....

• The holler dwellers: The photographs of Shelby Lee Adams' Appalachia are so honest, they make you wince" by Christina Rees (Dec 3, 1998).

  ....We're more likely to look to third-world countries for signs of gross poverty or archaic society than we are to search our own back yard....To most of us urbanites, Appalachia's impression was sealed in celluloid in 1972....Part black-and-white documentation, part haunting artistic vision, Adams' photos go beyond the call of duty on either end....National Geographic meets Diane Arbus, On the Road with David Lynch instead of Charles Kuralt.

  ...most viewers will likely forget they're even looking at stunningly composed photographs. They're too busy marveling at what they reveal: a legacy of rural tradition anchored in welfare, alcohol, coal mining, religion, and questionably extended families....We are outside looking in, and though we try, we can't quite grasp what separates these people from the rest of us. We can't fathom that it's because we own computers and fast cars and work in office buildings, and they handle snakes in church and slaughter hogs and use outhouses. Sure, theirs is an evaporating culture in a fast-homogenizing world, but you can see in those eyes, those knowing, challenging gazes, that their mixed fate is rooted far deeper than the material, far past their lack of college education and paltry paychecks. That Adams' photos can hint at the complexity of this buried mountain culture without exploiting its people is the second part of his art.

  ....It's difficult to neatly package an emotional response to this work. The sensationalist in us wants to know all the dirt, to find affirmation in our suspicion of the subjects' depravity. The humanitarian in us wants to suspend judgment and study the photos as art and fact. Devil on the left shoulder, angel on the right. In the end, our projected criticism may say more about us than about them--Adams' endangered holler dwellers. And we can only hope that if someone photographed us in our natural environment, our eyes could meet the camera with the same soulful honesty, the same beautiful truth.

Sewing, Linux and Social Bookmarking

I've been trying to understand Web 2.0, and social networking. Really, I have. For me, Technorati, Digg, and other hip sites just aren't very interesting. I keep checking back every few months, though. Last week I made my first interesting discovery using the social bookmarking tool del.icio.us. You'll see by my sidebar that I like Linux and sewing. Here's a website relevant to both topics: Free-penguin.org: patterns for Tux

Welcome to the free-penguin project page. This project provides 'executables' that enable you to make your own soft-toy Linux® penguin.

Hardware Requirements: First research efforts have shown that at least a needle, a long thread, black and white plushy fabric as well as yellow textile are necessary. Other assets that might be needful are thimbles, more thread and scissors. Warning: Before you start, make sure that you know what you are doing. Doing things on a trial-and-error basis in the fields we are dealing with here can do a lot of harm.

And they have a blog! Will this sew a del.icio.us button back on my Mozilla toolbar? Only time will tell.

Poetry, Newton, and Alchemy

Here are some excerpts from an interview on Newton's alchemy with historian Bill Newman, who has some interesting things to say about alchemy, poetry, and riddles. It's no wonder alchemy interested both John Donne and Isaac Newton.

[A]lchemy has been portrayed as the epitome of irrationality and a sort of avaricious folly....But we now know that most of the great minds of the [seventeenth and eighteenth centuries] were involved in alchemy, including Robert Boyle, John Locke, Leibniz, any number of others....[Alchemy] became legal during Newton's time. But why was it illegal? There's a long association, for good reasons, between alchemy and counterfeiting.

....[Newton] thought that alchemy promised tremendous control over the natural world. It would allow you to transmute virtually anything into anything else, not just lead into gold. There are other things, too, that probably were in Newton's mind. For example, alchemists realized that if the philosophers' stone were real and it got out to the public, it would ruin the gold standard.

....[T]his was the enigmatic language of alchemy. I mean "enigmatic" in a quite strict sense: it was a riddling language. The best way to look at these metaphors is in the light of riddles....the "menstrual blood of the sordid whore" is decipherable. It means simply the metalline form of antimony. That is the "menstrual blood" that's extracted from the "sordid whore," which is the ore of antimony.

It is a code, and it's clear that the alchemists delighted in this code. It's almost a form of poetry. In fact, lots of alchemists wrote in the form of poetry, quite literally.

....Newton was reading alchemists over a period of time, ranging over perhaps a thousand years, and there was a lot of development in these treatises. But Newton generally thinks they're all saying the same thing, so that's a problem....he was weaving together extracts from different authors, trying to make sense out of them. I think alchemy was the ultimate riddle. Newton delighted in riddles, and this provided a challenge to him that he just couldn't resist.

My inevitable list of links:

• The Alchemy Website. A broad range of articles, illustrations, and essays on the many meanings of alchemy.
• An interview on Newton's alchemy with historian Bill Newman. Part of Newton's Dark Secrets PBS (November 15, 2005)
• Isaac Newton by James Gleick (2003) is an excellent biography of Sir Isaac Newton. I had previously read quite a bit about Newton, but I couldn't seem to form a mental image of the man or his environment. Gleick interweaves the scant Newtonian biographical material with the political, economic, and science history.
• James Gleick has a very interesting internet site, around.com, where he archives some essays, reviews, and an ecclectic collection of links. It hasn't been updated recently, but there's plenty here to amuse and instruct.

Chemistry Lessons and John Donne

I'm preparing another chemistry lecture, and I keep coming back to John Donne. It may seem strange, but it's all connected in my head. I suspected the Bridgid in Cyberspace celebrants might find the final couplet of Donne poem Love's Alchemy a little, well, misogynistic, so I went with a The Relic (equally strange and blasphemous in its own way). But my reading lately has included some history of chemistry, including its early roots in alchemy. Here's Donne's chemistry connection:

Some that have deeper digg'd love's mine than I,
Say, where his centric happiness doth lie.
        I have loved, and got, and told,
But should I love, get, tell, till I were old,
I should not find that hidden mystery.
        O! 'tis imposture all ;
And as no chemic yet th' elixir got,
        But glorifies his pregnant pot,
        If by the way to him befall
Some odoriferous thing, or medicinal,
    So, lovers dream a rich and long delight,
    But get a winter-seeming summer's night.

Our ease, our thrift, our honour, and our day,
Shall we for this vain bubble's shadow pay?
        Ends love in this, that my man
Can be as happy as I can, if he can
Endure the short scorn of a bridegroom's play?
        That loving wretch that swears,
'Tis not the bodies marry, but the minds,
        Which he in her angelic finds,
        Would swear as justly, that he hears,
In that day's rude hoarse minstrelsy, the spheres.
    Hope not for mind in women ; at their best,
    Sweetness and wit they are, but mummy, possess'd.

Here's my usual list of links:

• The Alchemy Website. A broad range of articles, illustrations, and essays on the many meanings of alchemy.
• An interview on Newton's alchemy with historian Bill Newman. Part of Newton's Dark Secrets PBS Airdate: November 15, 2005
• General, Organic and Biochemistry, courtesy of James K. Hardy and the University of Akron. An excellent quick reference to the chemistry I'm concerned with now.

Sweatshirt Patterns--Finding a Favorite

Last week I started a developing favorite sweatshirt pattern. I had purchased Kwiksew's Sweatshirts Unlimited because I liked their "Beautiful Lingerie" book, and the company Web site's blurb promised:

The Master Pattern included in this book is for a sweatshirt in eight different sizes....The book includes unlimited variations for necklines, hems, sleeve finishes, design changes, decorative finishes and much more. With the help of this book, you can design a sweatshirt for any occasion from sporty to a dressier look.

This sweatshirt book was published in 1989, at the height of the Dreadfully Oversized Women's Wear Epoch, so the photos may distress the fashion-conscious. However, there is a nice size range, from finished chest measurements of 35 inches to 56 inches, and there are many neckline, sleeve, pocket, and bottom-edge variations, as well as a substantial section on "design changes." The design changes include yokes, elaborate fabric inserts, and many surface embellishment techniques. It cost about as much as three regular patterns, and I think it was a good buy.

I handled the oversized styling issue by guessing how much wearing ease I would like. About four inches works well for me for loose-fitting knit clothes; the patterns as written allow eight inches. I copied the pattern in my best size guess, cut up an old sweatshirt (from the same Dreadfully Oversized Epoch) as a first test, and found the fit through the body about right. The shoulders were still too big for my taste, so I took out some of that fullness, and got a good fit in my second trial, using $1.50-a-yard sweatshirt fleece. Now that the fit is worked out, I can have fun experimenting with some of the design variations.

J.J. Thomson's Experiments--At Last, I See!

When I was an undergraduate student, I believed my chemistry and physics professors hated me. I was a biological sciences major, and had to take large lecture sections with the 200-300 pre-med and pre-vet students. They were no fun as classmates. ("Will this be on the test?" they whined; later, as an instructor, I heard a pre-med choral whine of "My daddy will sue you for giving me a C.") As a student, it was almost impossible for me to ask a question in lecture, and I never got a civil (let alone helpful) answer from a chemistry or physics professor in the three years I spent in those departments.

This was in sharp contrast to my experiences in all my other classes, from Chaucer to calculus to microbiology. Of course, I graduated loving Chaucer, and statistics, and botany....and hating chemistry. Of course, every science job I ever had after grad school was in biochemistry.

Now I'm teaching a college-level chemistry class, and having flashbacks to the seventies as I prepare lectures. I'm current on DNA, but haven't thought about electron shells, subshells, and orbitals much lately. That's how I got curious about John Thomson's nineteenth century experiments on subatomic particles and electromagnetic charges. My chemistry students were supposed to work through a little computer simulation on "how we discovered the mass of the electron," but we couldn't make it "come out right." When I did this in physics lab in 1976, with equipment old enough to have been original to Thomson's lab, we got the same non-result. I couldn't make sense of it then, but I was determined to figure it out this time. That's how I came to find these excellent links. There are some amazing student resources available now. I'm a bit jealous.

• Three Experiments, One Big Idea. This is an excellent explanation from the Center for the History of Physics. I'm slowly working my way through the many interesting chemistry and physics "exhibits" on their site.
• Joseph John Thomson (1856-1940): "Carriers of negative electricity." Nobel Lecture in Physics, December 11, 1906. [from Nobel Lectures: Physics, 1901-1921 (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1967)]. The text of Thomson's Nobel Lecture. I was amazed to find I could follow it.
• J.J. Thompson's experiment and the charge-to-mass ratio of the electron. Mark E. Tuckerman of New York University has his lectures for General Chemistry I (Honors) available on line. The Thomson experiment lecture is quite clear and readable.
• A Brief History of the Electron from Egglescliffe's Physics Website.Their information is quite comprehensible, and this is their generous mission:

  The idea behind the website is to encourage the study of physics at post-16 level and share ideas and educational material....Feel free to print/download these pages and use them in lessons / private study or starting points for www exploration. Any of the material in this website is freely available for anyone to use in their own educational web projects. If you want to acknowledge this site as a source fine, otherwise do not worry."

St Bridgid's Day Poetry Reading

Last year Reya threw a poetry reading in honor of St. Brigid. This year, Deborah Oak is hosting the event. I find I'm reading much the same poetry as last year--for me, midwinter is John Donne season. Part of it is his surprising use of science language and imagery.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears;
    Men reckon what it did, and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres, 
    Though greater far, is innocent. 

Dull sublunary lovers' love 
    --Whose soul is sense--cannot admit 
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove
    The thing which elemented it.  

Part of it is the mingling of the profane and the divine. I keep coming back to "The Anniversaries." They are too long for a poetry reading, and I can't seem to excerpt, so here is a shorter, strange musing, "The Relic" by John Donne.

            When my grave is broke up again
            Some second guest to entertain,
            --For graves have learn'd that woman-head,
            To be to more than one a bed--
                And he that digs it, spies
A bracelet of bright hair about the bone,
                Will he not let us alone,
And think that there a loving couple lies,
Who thought that this device might be some way
To make their souls at the last busy day
Meet at this grave, and make a little stay?

            If this fall in a time, or land,
            Where mass-devotion doth command,
            Then he that digs us up will bring
            Us to the bishop or the king,
                To make us relics; then
Thou shalt be a Mary Magdalen, and I
                A something else thereby;
All women shall adore us, and some men.
And, since at such time miracles are sought,
I would have that age by this paper taught
What miracles we harmless lovers wrought.

            First we loved well and faithfully,
            Yet knew not what we loved, nor why;
            Difference of sex we never knew,
            No more than guardian angels do;
                Coming and going we
Perchance might kiss, but not between those meals;
                Our hands ne'er touch'd the seals,
Which nature, injured by late law, sets free.
These miracles we did ; but now alas!
All measure, and all language, I should pass,
Should I tell what a miracle she was.

I Heart Beartown

Beartown State Park is an interesting rock formation on Droop Mountain, almost on the Pocahontas-Greenbrier county line. In the 1970's the parks department built a boardwalk through it. On a day like today, I might get some spectacular pictures, but odds are good I'd slip on the ice. I can do that here at home on the porch more conveniently, so I thought I'd post these photos from last October.

Hatfields and McCoys

While we're thinking about West Virginia history, we should remember that Sid Hatfield was kin to Anse Hatfield, and the other participants in the famous feud. Here's my favorite book on the topic.

Feud: Hatfields, McCoys, and Social Change in Appalachia, 1860-1900 by Altina L. Waller. 1988. University of North Carolina Press. This is a scholarly book, but very engaging. Waller avoids simplistic explanations of the Hatfield-McCoy feud. Many older references explain it as the natural violence of the inbred, degenerate hillbillies, while more recent authors present it as the exploited natives driven to violence by outsider-capitalists. Waller examines the feud in the social context of its place and time, and bases her account of the community on contemporary resources such as court records, deeds and wills. There are good pictures. (I always like pictures.) The amazon.com link includes some reviews of the book by authorities in the field.

Sid Hatfield's Trial

On this day in West Virginia history: On January 28, 1921, the trial of police chief Sid Hatfield for his role in the Matewan Massacre began in Williamson.

When non-union miners in Mingo County went on strike for the right to join the United Mine Workers in the spring of 1920, mine guards from the Baldwin-Felts detective agency evicted miners from their company-owned houses. After twelve Baldwin-Felts men arrived in Matewan, chief of police Sid Hatfield encouraged townspeople to arm themselves. The situation exploded into a gunfight in which seven detectives and four townspeople were killed.

The trial of Sid Hatfield and twenty-two other defendants for the murder of one of the detectives, Albert Felts, began on January 28, 1921. Some forty armed Baldwin-Felts agents lined the streets of Williamson that morning to influence the pro-union jury. Despite the testimony of numerous eyewitnesses, the jury acquitted Hatfield and the other defendants in what was the lengthiest murder trial in the state's history.

Realizing the impossibility of gaining a conviction in southern West Virginia, Baldwin-Felts gunmen prevented Sid Hatfield from standing trial in an unrelated case in McDowell County later that year. Hatfield and a deputy, Ed Chambers, were murdered on the steps of the county courthouse, sparking an armed march on southern West Virginia by union miners, which ended with the Battle of Blair Mountain. Again, despite numerous eyewitness accounts, accused murderers went free. Baldwin-Felts agents C. E. Lively, "Buster" Pence, and Bill Salter were acquitted of the Hatfield and Chambers murders on the grounds of self defense, although neither victim was armed.

As usual, I have links:

• Matewan, WV Homepage includes detailed information on the Battle of Matewan.
• Mingo Genealogy's Matewan history page
• History of Mingo County
• The Red Neck War of 1921 Michael M. Meador, originally published in The Goldenseal Book of the West Virginia Mine Wars
• Blair Mountain from the Other Side by R. B. Adams, also from The Goldenseal Book of the West Virginia Mine Wars
• Wikipedia's "Battle of Blair Mountain" seems reasonably accurate (although I am no expert), and it has links to a number of interesting related articles.
• National Trust for Historic Preservation's Blair Mountain Battlefield page describes it as one of America's "11 Most Endangered Places."
• Preservation Alliance of West Virginia's Blair Mountain site also has information about the Battle of Blair Mountain.
• Ironically named Blair Mountain Estates, a ritzy development in Western North Carolina.

Prison Notebook of Captain James M. McNeill

Louise McNeill, Pocahontas County's most famous poet, wrote a short piece about her paternal grandfather, called The Prison Notebook of Captain James M. McNeill, C.S.A.. Here's an excerpt:

James McNeill, "Grandpa Jim", grew up on the family farm at Buckeye, Pocahontas County. He remembered seeing the wild pigeons how all day long, flying over, their wings darkened the sun. Almost his first memory was of the big and the three smaller Indians who came to his mother's cabin when he was five or six years old. He remembered, too, going to "pay school" and cutting his bare feet on the crick ice....

[In the Battle of Droop Mountain, November 6, 1863] Jim McNeill was captured and started on his long journey to Fort Delaware. Driven north along the Droop road with the prisoners, he met his Yankee brother, Al, hurrying south with the Federal troops. "Howdy, Jim," said Al with a kind of narrow, Scotch-Irish triumph. But the Captain didn't even nod. "The Rebels ain't speakin' today." He looked straight ahead of him and went on to Fort Delaware prison where he was held prisoner till June 13, 1865....somehow, there he got hold of a pen and a little brown notebook and with only a few months of "pay school" for his literary stylistics began to write poems....

The notebook is a small, ledger-like book, some six by four inches in size, and is faded and torn. It has lain undisturbed in the top drawer of a black walnut highboy these 100 years and is filled with jottings and poems.Some of the poems are good poems, and many of them are written from a war prisoner's point-of-view.

• The text quoted above is from The 22nd Virginia Infantry Regiment History Society. They quote the article completely, but don't say where it was published. I think it's print source is Louise McNeill Pease, "The Prison Notebook of Captain James M. McNeill, C. S. A.," West Virginia History 31(April 1970): 180-184.
• Pocahontas County Early History. This is another interesting but poorly-attributed article on Pocahontas County history.
• McNeill family history. A genealogy resource.

5255 Pairs of Latvian Mittens

The 2006 NATO Riga Summit's Latvian Mittens pages include some wonderful images, and also an image archive including 5255 mitten pictures--photos of every mitten knitted for the summit, and more. I chose these three pairs of ladies' mittens (from the Kurzeme region) somewhat randomly, because I've just started to look through the archive. It was definitely worth the trouble I took to download and uncompress the 200 Mb rar file. Each .jpg file is 600 pixels wide, a big enough image so you can see the individual stitches, and therefore, copy the colorwork charts. I have 5255 new mitten patterns, for free! (I scaled down these images for the weblog--the archive .jpgs are 40% bigger.)

Latvian Mittens--An Amazing Library For Knitters

If you knit mittens (or socks, or do any kind of knit colorwork) you need to take a look at Latvian Mittens. You could say I found these in Rebecca's Pocket. (In fact, the mittens you would find in THIS Rebecca's pocket right now are a pretty Scandinavian design I got from Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitting Around. But I digress.) Here's what the 2006 Rega Summit Web site says about the mittens:

What will 9,000 hands have in common during the NATO Summit in Riga this November? 4,500 pairs of traditional hand-made Latvian mittens! That's what the NATO Summit Latvia Task Force has prepared for Summit guests. The mittens were specially knitted by hundreds of women and men around the country ranging in age from 30 to 86. Each pair features a unique design, utilizing a wide variety of traditional colors, patterns and symbols. For Latvians, mittens are much more than a way to warm your hands. Every ethnographic Latvian mitten tells a story, marks an anniversary and represents a specific region in Latvia (Vidzeme, Zemgale, Latgale and Kurzeme.) Some mitten designs are specially intended for weddings or other special events. There is even a rich tradition of folkloric etiquette associated with the wearing, storing and displaying of mittens.

Latvian mittens have been a hot issue for me since I first saw Lizbeth Upitis' Latvian Mittens: Traditional Designs & Techniques in 1982. It was in English and Latvian, and it didn't stay in print long. I eventually got a copy, and it is everything I like in a knitting book--lots of real mittens knitted by real people to keep warm and to delight. No "use my pricey yarn and pattern." The book cover here is a 1997 reprint from Schoolhouse Press (Elizabeth Zimmermann's publishing company), with a snazzy new cover, more mittens, and more photos.

The Riga NATO Summit site has lots of mittens you can view on-line, but I am hard-core, and I usually make my own charts from photographs, so I decided I needed to download the mitten archive, a 200 MB .rar file. (After all, I have all that data backup and storage capability now.) Of course, when I got it downloaded, I had no way to expand the .rar compression format. That's why I spent a couple of hours investigating rar and unrar resources. As usual, I have links.

• WinRAR is the Windows compress/uncompress utility for this format. You have to pay for it, but you can try before you buy. Of course, I don't do Windows, so I moved on.
• RAR for Linux 3.3.0 Beta 3 from Tucows. Shareware. I never got it running.
• unRAR 2.71 from Tucows. Freeware, just the uncompression (unrar) utility, not the compression (rar)one. I never got this running either, but I came a little closer.
• I finally figured out that I didn't have the "non-free" libraries in my /etc/apt/sources.list (I just installed Debian Sarge on this hard drive a couple of weeks ago, with much whining.) I did that, and was able to "apt-get install" the Debian rar and unrar programs.

Once I unrar-ed the archive, I found seven directories with 5255 .jpg files, all of mittens. Heaven! They are clear enough to use as charts, and the color and variety are wonderful. They use lots of interesting traditional patterns with traditional meanings. At NATO's request, however, one common design was omitted. The NATO mittens were certified "swastika-free."

Web Resources For Sewing Lingerie

These are my favorite lingerie-sewing resources. I have no financial interest in any of them, beyond a desire that they stay in business so I can continue to shop.

• Sew Sassy Fabrics is my favorite source for lingerie "notions." They say of themselves:

  Sew Sassy Fabrics has been providing first quality fabrics and accessories to home sewers and cottage industries since 1987. We specialize in tricot, lace, elastic and lingerie fabrics, bra making supplies, lycra® and specialty fabrics for swimwear, activewear and costumes, and stretch fabrics containing lycra® or spandex for outer wear.

  I've been very pleased with everything I've bought from them, and I particularly recommend regular visits to Sew Sassy's sale pages. A few years ago, I got 500 yards of 3/8 inch plush lingerie elastic for $15.00. Since elastic is often the biggest expense in a lingerie project, this makes my sewing much more economical.

• Wazoodle has a great selection of high-quality knits at good prices. Their tee-shirt grab bags are a fine source for inexpensive lingerie fabrics. I usually get one long-sleeved tee-shirt and a pair of underbritches per piece of fabric.

  Wazoodle started in 2002 as a part time business....Today we run operations in Toronto, [and] Montreal....We specialize in better quality textiles used for casual clothing, outerwear and children's wear. We occasionally dabble in finer ladies wear and home decor....We operate a retail web store at www.wazoodle.com. Our site is one of most visited fabric sites on the web, with close to a million visits each month.

• Kwik-Sew pattern catalog. These days, I prefer Kwik-Sew patterns to the "Big Three" (Simplicity, Butterick, Vogue) I always used to browse. Kwik-Sew's patterns seem better-made and better-sized, and they include all sizes in one envelope. (I transfer my size to brown wrapping paper, and make alterations to my heart's content; or try a different size if need be. Meanwhile, I have a library of sizes in case I sew for someone else later.) Kwik-Sew has lots of lingerie patterns (for women, kids, and men, although I don't suppose you call mens' underbritches "lingerie").

  I usually pick out my patterns on this Web site, and order from Sew Sassy Fabrics or Wazoodle when I order fabric and sewing notions.

• Dharma Trading Company has great prices on fabrics, as long as you like white and black, or you're willing to dye them yourself. (It's easy and I really enjoy it.) For lingerie purposes, they have many weights of woven silk fabric, and decent cotton jersey and cotton lycra among their knit fabrics. (I haven't yet tried their silk and hemp knits, but I'm intrigued....) They also stock dyable underwear and socks, if you prefer to dye without sewing.
• Fay's Fashions and Fabrics has nifty value packs, grab bags of fabrics or notions. I particularly liked my elastics and lace trims.

Hillbilly Babylon: The View from Berlin

Hillbilly Babylon is the name of a Appalachian film and bluegrass music festival in Berlin. I'm not familiar with the musicians (they seem to be Europeans), but the 2006 film line-up looked quite interesting. I particularly like the Welcome page which explains Appalachia thus:

Hier setzt HILLBILLY BABYLON an. In einer Reihe von Dokumentationen zeigen wir das Bild eines sehr eigenen Menschenschlags, rau, unabhängig, oftmals sehr arm. Wir zeigen Menschen mit einem fast anarchisch anmutenden Freiheitsdenken, verbunden mit einer tiefen Religiosität und einer allgegenwärtigen Melancholie. Einen besonderen Schwerpunkt widmen wir der traditionellen Musik der Region. Moderne Country- und Bluegrass-Musik haben sich daraus entwickelt. Das alles vor dem Hintergrund einer fantastischen, naturbelassenen Landschaft. Neben den Dokumentationen zeigen wir eine Reihe von Spielfilmen, die sich auf unterschiedliche Weise mit der Hillbilly-Thematik befassen.

Here's their English version, which doesn't sound nearly as intellectual, except for the "ubiquitous melancholia."

Here, HILLBILLY BABYLON begins. In a series of documentaries we show a very unique ethnic group, coarse, independent, often very poor. We show people with an almost anarchist sense of freedom, tied with a deep religiosity and an ubiquitous melancholia. A special emphasis is placed on the traditional music of the region. It is the origin of modern country- and bluegrass-music. All this framed by a scenic, fantastic landscape. Aside from the documentaries, we show a number of feature films that deal with the hillbilly theme in different ways.

Lingerie Sewing--Choosing a Pattern

My scrap fabric reclamation project last month involved tee-shirt trials as well as lingerie pattern and fabric experimentation. I'm currently test-driving a dozen pair of underbritches (not all at once, mind you) in various styles, sizes, and fabrics. As with the tee-shirt pattern search, I'm trying to identify one or two favorite patterns.

I had good luck with the patterns from Kwik-Sew's Beautiful Lingerie, from Kwik-Sew pattern 2100, (at right; especially useful because it includes hip sizes from 34 to 52 inches--you could make presents for most of the adults you know) and from a discontinued Kwik-Sew lingerie set pattern. The Kwik-Sew Website says of the Lingerie book:

Kwik-Sew's Beautiful Lingerie is for everyone who loves to sew and a necessity for those who want to discover how easy and fun it is to make lingerie. With fancy laces and soft fabrics you can create beautiful lingerie that will not be duplicated.

The master patterns included in this book are for slips, camisoles, briefs, panties, teddies, nightgowns and robes. All styles are easy to make and designed for both woven and knit fabrics.Create unlimited variations. from basic to elegant. Make it for yourself or give it as a gift....The master pattern includes five sizes from extra small to extra large.

I particularly like this book because it encourages you to experiment with pattern variations, fabrics and trims, and gives good directions for sewing with knit fabric, stretch lace, and lace decoration. It's a good place to start. (If I'd bought it first, I would have saved money on several patterns I'd purchased previously.) There are no patterns or directions for bras, but I'll cover that topic in a later post.

Kwik-Sew also offers many different styles of underbritches, from long underwear to G-strings.

If you're seriously cheap and also bold about sewing projects, Leena.com has downloadable " miniature patterns in S, M, L and XL sizes." Even if you decide to buy a pattern, Leena.com's directions for sewing and embellishing are well worth a visit. Rusty Bobbin presents her own pattern review, with excellent step-by-step illustrations, and finds that she gets her best fit from a pattern traced off her favorite store bought britches.

John Hardy Was A Desperate Little Man

On This Day in West Virginia History...African- American railroad worker John Hardy was hanged at Welch, McDowell County, on January 19, 1894. I just discovered this feature of the West Virginia Division of Culture and History. It promises to be fascinating.

If you're at all familiar with the Carter Family, or if you play the banjo in West Virginia, you know that

John Hardy was a desperate little man
He carried two guns every day
He shot down a man on that West Virginia line
You ought a seen John Hardy getting away
You ought to seen John Hardy getting away

John Hardy stood in that old barroom
So drunk that he could not see
And a man walked up and took him by the arm
He said Johnny, come and go along with me Poor boy
Johnny, come and walk along with me

John Hardy stood in his old jail cell
The tears running down from his eyes
He said I've been the death of many a poor boy
But my six-shooters never told a lie
No, my six-shooters never told a lie

The first one to visit John Hardy in his cell
Was a little girl dressed in blue
She came down to that old jail cell
She said Johnny, I've been true to you God knows
Johnny, I've been true to you

The next one to Visit John Hardy in his cell
Was a little girl dressed in red
She come down to that old jail cell
She said, Johnny, I had rather see you dead
Well, Johnny, I had rather see you dead

I've been to the East and I've been to the West
I've traveled this wide world around
I've been to that river and I've been baptized
So take me to my burying ground
So take me to my burying ground

John Hardy was a desperate little man
He carried two guns every day
He shot down a man on the West Virginia line
You ought to seen old John Hardy getting away
You ought to seen old John Hardy getting away

The West Virginia Songbag, edited and published by Jim Comstock of Richwood, WV in 1974, devotes many pages to the John Hardy/John Henry confusion, and includes five West Virginia versions of the John Hardy ballad. There are also several first-person recollections of John Hardy. You can see in the photo of the hanging that John Hardy was not a "little man."

Finding the Perfect Tee-Shirt Pattern

When I made the clothesline full of tee-shirts last month, I was searching for the "perfect" tee-shirt pattern. I'd been using Kwiksew 2900 (at right), and it worked well for very soft, not-too-stretchy cotton jerseys and interlocks, as long as I made long-sleeved shirts. But with stretchier or softer knits, the results looked sloppy and unflattering, and with short sleeves, there was always too much ease in the armhole and sleeve. I tried some now-discontinued lingerie undershirt patterns, and used many pattern adjustments, but my results were hit-or-miss. Part of the problem is the wide variety of hand and stretchiness in fabrics classified as jersey, interlock, rib knits, or simply "stretch knits." The only way to deal with this is to try lots of different fabrics. It's a dirty job, but somebody's got to sew it.

This fall I tried Wazoodle.com's "most popular Tee pattern in the world," Jalie 2005 (below). I made the three-quarters-length sleeve style first. The armhole fit well, but it was much too large in the shoulders. A simple alteration took care of that, and I have my new "favorite tee-shirt pattern." The short-sleeve view works very well too. Of course, I've made my own long-sleeve pattern variation, so that I could do one-to-one comparisons. Jalie 2005 works well on all the stretchy fabrics I've tried, including interlock, thermal cotton knits, and technical wicking fabrics. I need to try it on simple tee-shirt cotton jersey, which is less stretchy than interlock or thermal knits. If it works well, this could be the one perfect tee-shirt pattern, the one to reach for when I need to make something to wear.

From the "Frontier the Yankee Made"

Henry Shapiro's 1986 book, Appalachia on Our Mind: The Southern Mountains and Mountaineers in the American Consciousness, 1870-1920, discusses how Northern missionaries drew back, in the 1870's and 1880's, from teaching and saving freed slaves in the South, and retreated into the mostly white Southern Appalachians, where education and conversions were less complicated by race relations or Klan violence. Shapiro's style is less compelling than W.J. Cash's The Mind of the South (1941), but it addresses the same issue Cash tackles in this passage:

And in this connection [regarding the way vengeful Reconstruction policies increased white Southern solidarity, hatred of the North, and hatred of blacks] we come upon a figure which deserves some notice. I mean the Yankee schoolma'am who, in such numbers, moved down upon the unfortunate South in the train of the army of occupation, to "educate the black man for his new place in the sun and to furnish an example of Christian love and philanthropy to the benighted native whites." Generally horsefaced, bespectacled, and spare of frame, she was, of course, no proper intellectual, but at best a comic character, at worst a dangerous fool, playing with explosive forces which she did not understand. She had no little part in developing Southern bitterness as a whole and, along with the peripatetic Yankee journalist, contributed much to the growth of hysterical sensibility to criticism. But nowhere was her influence more important than at the point with which we are engaged.

For if she was not an intellectual, the South, with its vague standards in these matters, accepted her as such. It saw her, indeed, as a living epitome of the Yankee mind, identified her essentially with the Northern universities, took her spirit for that of the best intelligence beyond the Potomac, read in the evils springing abundantly from her meddlesome stupidity categorical proof that Northern "theory" was in toto altogether mad. And so she served as a distinct power in bringing Southern fear and hate to explicit focus in the purely ideological field--in setting up as definite a resistance to Yankee thought as to Yankee deeds.

From The Mind of the South, Book II, Chapter 1: "Of the Frontier the Yankee Made" by W. J. Cash

If this connection is valid, the ambivalence and bitterness that some people feel concerning Appalachian identity can be traced to Reconstruction, a policy whose effects historians tend to minimize in the Southern Mountains. James Dickey comes down on the side of the Yankee schoolmarm. Who'd have thought it?

Appalachia: A Strange Place and a Peculiar People

I've found these two academic books very interesting as I cruise the bookshelves, reading about Appalachia. They were published 20 years ago, and I don't know how the "Appalachian Studies" folks view them these days, but they explain some attitudes that have puzzled me.

All That Is Native and Fine: The Politics of Culture in an American Region by David E. Whisnant. 1986. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0807841439. This is an academic book on "systemic cultural intervention" and its effects on Appalachian communities in the late ninteenth and early twentieth centuries. Whisnant describes the way urban Americans, interested in the European idea of Volkskultur, identified the Southern Appalachians as a backwater in which otherwise lost Anglo-Saxon folkways and folk arts had been preserved in pure form. They also identified their rural "informants" as needy, and they proposed to collect and preserve the cultural heritage at the same time they brought them the benefits of urban education, morality, and capitalism. This book focuses on the consequences, intended and otherwise, of this meeting of two "cultures." It's a slightly dry read, but the data are fascinating, and there are some great photographs. I recommend it to anyone interested in Appalachian traditional music (or other arts). How much of what we accept as "traditional" is really traditional? What does "traditional" mean?

Appalachia on Our Mind: The Southern Mountains and Mountaineers in the American Consciousness, 1870-1920by Henry D. Shapiro. 1986. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0807841587. This book is also about how outsiders have discovered Appalachia, described it, and decided it needed to be fixed, by them. This isn't one of the "capitalist exploitation" histories focusing on material change, but rather an exploration of how outsiders have defined Appalachia by their own lights, sometimes accurately and sometimes not, and used their own definitions as justification for intervention of all sorts, from missionary work to nature preserves. Except for a few stylisitic affectations (I was ready to scream the twentieth time he used the phrase "a strange place and a peculiar people"), this is an interesting and readable scholarly book.

Sugar Maples In a Row

There is a big stand of sugar maple on our ridge, the progeny of three old trees in a long abandoned fence row. I had plans to sugar this winter, but never bought the necessary equipment. Given the topsy-turvy winter weather, who knows whether we'll have cold nights and warm mornings, or when the sap will decide to rise?

One of our neighbors, a die-hard maple syrup fan, cooks down his sap on his kitchen stove and cans his syrup one pint at a time. It takes 30 to 35 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup, so he must boil off about four gallons of water for each of his pints. I imagine they have no problems with dry winter skin at his house.

Server Side Includes For Spice Ridge 2.0

I seem to be on a long do-it-yourself kick. Computer upgrades, sewing projects, and now, upgrading my "Web presence." It's way past time to work on my Spice Ridge pages. They are currently static html, coded by hand in Emacs. While reinstalling Debian Sarge on my new, extra-large hard drive this past weekend, I happened upon a .deb package for html helper mode. This really improves the Emacs html mode, and upgrades it so you can use cascading style sheets much more easily. Thus, I am newly prepared for the project.

For quite a while I've known I needed to start using server side includes. The Web pages are getting complex enough that updating is an unpleasant chore, and I know (in a sort of theoretical way) that it could be made much simpler with SSI. To that end, I have added a "Last updated" line to my home page (and so far, only to my home page). Here are some excellent SSI tutorials I've been reading.

• Server Side Includes on Ross Shannon's HTMLSource: HTML Tutorials. Excellent tutorials, with just the right amount of levity.
• Bignosebird's Server Side Includes Tutorials: The home page states "There are over 300 pages of tutorials, reference materials, and other free resources located on this site." And an extensive and handy set of resources they are.
• Apache Week Archive's SSI feature has helpful hints for beginners, and helped me understand what's going on with that code.

A Poet Points to PHP Tutorials

You never know what you'll find on Sherry Chandler's weblog. It's usually poetry, thoughtful political commentary, Kentucky history, and writer's comments on writing. I didn't expect to find good PHP tutorials (and she probably didn't intend to point to them) but there you go. She linked to an interesting toy on Miss Fortune's Cookies, one that generates "peculiar aristocratic titles" like "Reverend Countess Bootsie the Indecisive of Lower Bumhampton," and there, on her "About" page, were links to PHP tutorials she recommends.

Isn't it interesting how things just turn up when you need them?

Three Days Backing Up: A Tale of Woe

Three days spent on data backup. The good news is, my data are backed up (redundantly). The bad news is, I spent three days doing it. I ordered a 160 Gb internal hard drive (Seagate, 160 Gb Ultra-ATA, definitely not bleeding edge equipment) a couple of weeks ago, with the intention of putting it in an external drive case I already had. I'd been using that case for a year or better, swapping a 10 Gb and a 20 Gb hard drive in and out when I wanted to back up the data on my eMac. The new drive was going to save me the trouble of swapping drives (not a quick process, as the case was not made for this) and allow a back up of the entire 40 Gb eMac drive.

What I eventually learned: The case (the board, the firmware, some part of the case) is incompatible with my new drive. I can't use it in the case with the eMac or the Linux boxen. Along the road to this new knowledge, I took apart two Linux boxen, reformatted several hard drives repeatedly, reinstalled Debian stable several times (I lost count) and tried every possible configuration of hard drive jumpers.

The new drive isn't going to waste. It's now the master drive in a Linux box, and I've backed up the "critical data" over my LAN, using ftp. This freed up another 20 Gb hard drive for the external drive, so I can now swap between two 20 Gb's and a 10 Gb. It's not a pretty solution, but I can load lots of photos onto the newly-improved Linux box. I did consider replacing the hard drive in the eMac, but you have to remove about half the guts of that cute little gum-drop-shaped machine, including the cathode ray tube, to get to the hard drive. I'm just not woman enough for the job.

As usual, I collected some links along the way.

• Articles: Using an external USB hard drive. This is the way my installation should have worked.
• Advice on buying an external hard drive from MacOS Hints. This is, essentially, what I did.
• External USB hardrive not mounting after update. Various suggestions are offered, tried, and discarded. The thread ends with this puzzling and uninformative result:

  The external HD is now working again. After trying all the other routes I finally switched the power switch off on the drive and started the Mac, then switched the power to the drive on and it mounted. Perhaps the drive needed to reset itself but thankfully it works now.

  Some of the problems I had with the Mac disappeared when I restarted it whenever I changed drives in the external case. My Linux boxen have similar issues, and the easiest way to handle them is a reboot.
• Can't format external hard disk. Been there. Failed to do that.

More Chemistry Links

I spent Thursday and Friday immersed in chemistry review and computer chores. Everything takes longer than you think it's going to in both endeavors. Here are some more chemistry links, mostly because I don't have a better place to keep them.

• Chemical Education Resource Shelf: Book reviews--chemistry texts, and other books of interest to chemists and science educators.
• Welcome to Wikibooks, a collection of free content textbooks that you can edit. The chemistry sections have some good content, but some topics just have stubs for now.
• George Cain's Online Mathematics Textbooks List:

  The writing of textbooks and making them freely available on the web is an idea whose time has arrived. Most college mathematics textbooks attempt to be all things to all people and, as a result, are much too big and expensive. This perhaps made some sense when these books were rather expensive to produce and distribute--but this time has passed. A few years ago when I first posted a list of mathematics textbooks freely available on line, there existed only a handful of such books. Now there are many. The list here has grown and grown and is perhaps in serious need of some kind of organization into topics. There are also now many other sites at which there are links to on-line mathematics books and lecture notes.

• A Brief Review of Elementary Quantum Chemistry by C. David Sherrill of School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Georgia Institute of Technology.
• ChemViz Curriculum Support Resources. This is a resource for students in a particular course, but I found it quite helpful.
• Physical Chemistry 351 at the University of Connecticut: Guided Readings.
• Organic Chemistry Help by a graduate student in Frostburg State University's chemistry department, who identifies himself only as chemhelper. (I'm guessing the stick figure portrait is male, but I could be wrong.)
• Virtual Textbook of Organic Chemistry by William Reusch. This is linked to Textbook Revolution, another group of free online texts and resources.
• Science & Engineering books for free download. More free texts online!
.

How I Spent My Christmas Vacation

Several years ago, when I started sewing more with knit fabrics, I read that you should save even small scraps, because they could be used for small projects, including garment embellishments and lingerie. This was probably not advice I needed to hear, given my tendency to save any piece of fabric that is colorful, costly, of interesting texture, or large enough to "make something someday." This past December, in my period of much sewing and little writing, I proudly used up half my knit fabric scraps. Half! That amounted to one bushel basket packed tight with leavings from past sewing projects, and a number of ready-to-wear turtlenecks and tee shirts that failed to fit or flatter.

This clothesline full of knit shirts represents part of the scrap fabric extravaganza. The rest became lingerie. I have tastefully refrained from sharing these.

Snow Day

Given this winter's weather so far, I thought it would be wise to document that we had some snow in January. School was canceled, although I hear that the snow didn't actually stick to the ground in Hillsboro or Marlinton. Of course, Princess works every day, regardless of the weather.

Last Winter's Compulsive Stitching Project

I have a history of compulsive winter sewing projects. Here are some of the window quilts I made last winter. I can proudly announce that I used about a bushel of rayon scrap fabrics that are generally "useless" for quilting projects. I expect they'll rot away by and by, but I learned about foundation piecing and machine quilting, and I didn't spend more than $10 on materials. The curtains also serve their intended purpose, and keep the house warmer on those cold winter nights. (We had some last winter.)

Baby Got a New Pair of Shoes

I bit the bullet and switched to the new, improved Blogger this week. I tried to keep up with the changes by altering the page template by hand, but it was just taking too long. I've said goodbye to my comfortable old blogging shoe, and moved on. The "labels" funtionality will be worth it.

More Flannel Shirts for 2007

I have roused myself from December's compulsive sewing frenzy, but I have little to blog about except the results of said frenzy. I liked my new flannel shirt from November so much I ordered some plaid flannel from Wazoodle.com and proceded to make three more. This is a break with tradition for me, because I tend to lose the urge to sew before the fabric comes in the mail. Only two of the shirts are for me; the second red flannel number was made as a gift.

A Little Sock-Knitting for the New Year

Although I've billed this as a knitting blog, there has been precious little knitting in 2006, other than small repair and redesign projects. However, I recently started a pair of socks in Browns Sheep Farms sport weight wool (not sure of the official name--it was a remnant from Appalachian Baby Design days.) The pattern is called "Little Wave" in Barbara G. Walker's Second Treasury of Knitting Designs. It's a six-stitch repeat that forms a sort of rib, with a traveling twist-stitch zig-zag on a garter-stitch ground. It makes very nice socks. In Walker's book, the pattern is given for back-and-forth knitting. I had to rewrite it for myself in circular knitting, so here's my revision, for those who may want to use it in four-needle socks.

R1: *Knit all stitches*
R2: *Knit 4, purl 2*
R3: *Knit 3, Left Twist, Knit 1*
R4: *Knit 3, Purl 1, Knit 1, Purl 1*
R5: *Knit 4, Left Twist*
R6: *Knit 3, Purl 2, Knit 1*
R7: *Knit all stitches*
R8: *Knit 3, Purl 2, Knit 1*
R9: *Knit 4, Right Twist*
R10: *Knit 3, Purl 1, Knit 1, Purl 1*
R11: *Knit 3, Right Twist, Knit 1*
R12: *Knit 4, purl 2*

Barbara Walker's Right Twist: Knit 2 together, leaving stitches on left-hand needle; insert right-hand needle from the front between the two stitches just knitted together, knit the first stitch again. Slip both stitches from the needle together.

Barbara Walker's Left Twist: Skip one stitch, knit into back of next stitch; then insert right-hand needle into backs of both stitches (skipped stitch and next stitch) and knit two together in back of stitches.

Bigfoot Visits the Greenbrier

Last week, a friend told me about the Bigfoot Research Organization (BFRO) and their recent trip to Pocahontas County. BFRO says of itself:

As a result of the education and experience of its members and the quality of their efforts, the BFRO is widely considered as the most credible and respected investigative network involved in the study of this subject.

It seems these respected investigators had a Class 1A sighting of Bigfoot the middle of this past October. Although their West Virginia Expedition, Oct. 2006 Field Notes point out that "Bigfoot/sasquatch field research also bears a tricky responsibility...knowing which information to not release publicly, such as specific locations in sensitive areas, or any other information that could be used by people with violent intentions," their pictures and accounts show they camped in Watoga State Park, and hiked the Greenbrier River Trail, in our part of the county. In October, these parks are high traffic areas for leaf peepers and mountain bikers, and local folks (apparently including Bigfoot and family) like to get out and enjoy the pretty fall weather too. Although several of my neighbors practically live in the woods, winter and summer, without seeing anything more exotic than mountain lions, the BRFO party had no sooner stepped away from their camp site than they were assaulted by a band of rock-throwing Bigfoots (Bigfeet?).

On this expedition indicative sounds were heard each day within a five mile radius of the base camp. On Saturday night a group of thirteen (13) participants said they were approached and intimidated by 2-3 sasquatches on a trail along a tributary of the Greenbrier. The incident lasted 2 hours. During the encounter there was one brief Class A sighting by Patty Lee (NC-BFRO) when the headlamp of Olof Seaman (VA-BFRO) briefly illiminated a large sasquatch as he (Olof) moved along a trail back towards his group. Those who were present came away very excited (some were slightly traumatized) by the encounter. They were unanimously adamant that the sasquatches were trying to keep them "herded" together, by skillfully throwing large rocks in the paths of those who tried to separate and move away from the group. After two hours the activity ceased.

Now, rock-throwing primates are not in short supply locally, and word got around in the grapevine about BFRO's visit in advance. Perhaps Bigfoot overheard it in Hillsboro.

I would have advised any Bigfoot seekers to follow Burl Hammons advice and head to Fallen Timbers, at the head of the Cherry River where Pete and Paris Hammons, (pictured here) and their father, Jesse, encountered the Yayho. These men were born and raised in the woods in the mid-1800's, and lived by hunting. If they didn't know what some large animal was, it must have been a rare creature indeed.

Procrastination Is the Thief of Time

I've discovered that chemistry is a lot more interesting than I thought it was when I was taking courses in college, or when I was struggling to acquire lab skills ASAP in a series of different government research facilities. It makes all the difference in the world to have time to think about the subject. That is, once again, what I don't have enough of. And yet, I find myself putting off writing my lecture notes for Thursday night. Here are some suggestions for things to do instead of chemistry "homework."

1. Search the Internet for useful and informative Web sites concerning chemistry. (See Monday, December 4 post)
2. Write blog posts reminiscing about college days.
3. Write lecture notes, homework, and exams for math and Information Technology classes. (The text for the math course is called "Math and Meds." How many times have you wished you had some meds to go with your math?)
4. Notice that the kitchen is increasingly cleaner and more orderly. How is this happening? Could this be because those short breaks for tea and snacks are not so short after all?
5. Make mental lists of sewing pattern alterations you'd like to try, socks you need to knit, recipes you need to write down.
6. Blog about procrastination.

Let's Get Chemical

Today was the first day we had to turn up the wood stove and burn some serious firewood this season. While I was dreaming, last month, of curling up with The Education of Henry Adams, I have instead found myself writing lecture notes for the chemistry class I'm teaching. Now, I took three years of chemistry in college, and I worked in molecular genetics labs for ten or more years, but electron orbitals, redox, and radioactive isotope decay are things I've never had to explain to anyone else. That's a whole different level of intensity, and chemistry was never a favorite topic of mine. The text for the course seemed a little thin on some topics, so today I've been digging for links to fill in my memory gaps. Here's what I've found helpful:

• General Chemistry Online from Fred Senese of the Chemistry Department of Frostburg State University. This is an attractive, fast-loading, very complete Web resource for chemistry students. This is the first place I'll be going for references.
• ThinkQuest Library index for Chemistry has Web pages on many chemistry topics, suitable for high school and early college students. The quality is high on the topics I've read through so far, and I was amazed to discover that these are written by students as part of a project sponsored by Oracle Education Foundation's ThinkQuest.

  ThinkQuest inspires students to think, connect, create, and share. Students work in teams to build innovative and educational websites to share with the world. Along the way, they learn research, writing, teamwork, and technology skills and compete for exciting prizes. Sponsored by the Oracle Education Foundation, the competition offers a unique project-based learning experience to students and teachers across the globe. Everybody wins by having their completed websites published in the ThinkQuest Library, a rich online resource visited by millions monthly.

• ChemTutor is a text-based reference, with very good information. I wasn't able to find out who is responsible for it, and I found that curious. Still, it's a good resource. It describes itself thus:

  Basic chemistry help is available here for high school or college students. Chemtutor begins with the fundamentals and gives expert help with the most difficult phases of understanding your first course in chemistry. Chemtutor is not necessarily a complete text for your course or a complete outline, but we are proud to offer some insightful help in the parts of primary chemistry that have been, from our experience, the hardest for students to grasp.

• The Biology Project from the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, University of Arizona. This site includes tutorials for someone needing to review basic chemistry for the biological sciences. They are well-done, and short enough to avoid discouraging the chemo-phobe.
• Curiosities Related to Chemistry from the Chemistry Teaching Resources, created by Knut Irgum and maintained by Svante Åberg at Umeå University, S-901 87 Umeå, Sweden. "This is an attempt to present a comprehensive list of chemistry teaching resources on the Internet." Sadly, quite a few of the links are dead, including the one I most wanted to revisit, that of some engineers at a Purdue University barbecue, lighting charcoal with liquid oxygen. Alas, it seems Perdue no longer wishes to display this early example of Internet viral video. (I first saw it about 11 years ago.) However, there are still links to alchemy, science jokes, and silly things students say to teachers. Lots of fun.

A Post a Day Keeps a Body In Motion

I posted something to my weblog every day in the month of November. I hope this qualifies me to display some sort of emblem of accomplishment in my template, although our intrepid facilitator is still working on this. There is also a drawing for prizes for NaBloPoMo-ers, but I am afraid the prizes just drive home to me how old, unhip, and uncool I am. Ironic sock monkeys, gourmet dog treats, and free psychic readings via phone just don't hold a lot of attraction for me. I hope the people who win these prizes enjoy and appreciate them.

For my part, this exercise made me raise the priority of my personal writing projects. I was hoping it might free up some suppressed creativity, make me see my writing in a new light, or show me some previously unidentified topic that I want to write about. As far as I can tell now, it just got me posting every day, even when I didn't really have time, or a complete idea, or something worthwhile to say. I don't see any November posts about new, intriguing topics, or special insights into anything. Wait--I have three posts about internal combustion vehicles. I've never posted about things automotive before. What can this mean? Am I trying to get in touch with my inner grease monkey? Well, anyway, it's something new for me. And consider this: November is over, and I'm writing a new post. Perhaps a habit is born.

Because I was successful with this month-long commitment to a project, I have been thinking of trying it again. I have decided that, for the month of December, I will practice a tune a day (concertina, banjo, piano accordion, whatever feels right). While I have the technology to share this over the Web, I will refrain from doing so. (The definition of a gentleman is, after all, "A man who can play the accordion, but doesn't.") I might, if it seems the least bit interesting, list my December tunes in weekly blog entries.