(NUNAL) (EYEBALL)

2009-07-16T15:03:00.003-04:00

Have you noticed that there are a lot more smokies on the roads these days?

I am sure it is because the states are broke but can't exactly raise taxes. What easier and more regressive way to raise money than to unleash cops to pull over people for significant crimes like speeding, failing to signal when they change lanes (or, in many parts of the state, to be DWB)?

There are noticeably tons of police out here in the Great State of Illinois, and apparently the fines have gotten huge for tiny infractions (one mile over, for example). I've been noticing a similar increase in the police presence on the highways in Virginia. Driving on 95 to DC at the end of last week I saw at least one police car in every turn around on the road and/or a pulled over motorist. I am not exaggerating--in the space of the 90 minute drive from Richmond I saw a cop waiting to pounce or issuing a ticket almost the entire time.

2009-07-16T14:55:00.003-04:00

I am sure Nunal is not alone in seeing absolutely nothing at all unseemly, let alone untoward, in Goldman Sacks reporting huge multi-billion dollar profits and giving huge salaries and bonuses at a time when the taxpayers have given away billions of dollars to the firms that owed Goldman money such as AIG, when the government oversaw the dissolution of Goldman's competitors, all under the steely guidance of former Goldman execs who have resisted efforts to tighten the regulatory structures that might somehow interfere with such all-American hog wallowing. And Nunal is equally confident that you will agree that we the taxpayers out in "real America" should not think that the oligarchs lavishing ever-increasing riches on themselves should be asked to pay more in taxes so the unemployed and underemployed in the rest of country can have something as outrageous as health insurance.

2009-07-16T14:39:00.002-04:00

I am visiting my folks with the Lil Buddha and typing this on my mom's computer, which means it will be short since she has her computer arranged on a sideboard thing such that it is virtually impossible to use. The keyboard is on a slide out thing that bounces a good 1.5" with each key stroke, and the mouse pad is in a drawer (on top of the drawer contents), you pull out the draw and put the mouse in it to use. Not really adequate for even the barest fulmination here on Nunal.

Not much time either, Lark is going in all directions at once. She is having a great time, especially playing with all the old toys we had growing up (nothing in this house ever being discarded)--cars and trains being her favorites. But one thing that has really caught her eye is the toy chain saw. I never registered that we had grown up with a toy chain saw (complete with working trigger so kids can gain a rudimentary understanding of the functioning of a real chain saw) but I would have liked to have been in the planning room when it was pitched. Well made little thing too, four decades old and in perfect shape.

I can't post a picture of it because I don't have my cord to connect the camera to the computer. So I did a google search for toy chain saws, and it seems they still make them, very realistic ones. (this is a real toy, not the whole genre of Texas Chainsaw Massacre toy chain saws, which I think of as more of a specialty item). Now I know what Lark's go-to present is going to be for all the birthday parties she is invited to.

2009-07-09T11:32:00.006-04:00

And you can see the advanced state of Lark's development in this video, where she explains what is on her mind at the moment.

2009-07-09T11:32:00.001-04:00

The total failure of the daycare system is this country outside of the elite circles and certain costal enclaves is a clear sign of the failings (if not outright failure) of the marketplace. It is an interesting analog to the health care crisis. As any parent will tell you, it is almost impossible to find affordable and acceptable daycare (and good daycare is a whole other order more difficult) despite the fact that it is essential to have if one has a "job".

This is as strange as it sounds. Somehow the market has utterly failed in supplying the demand. It isn't as if people have stopped churning out babies (exhibit: Palin family). Every daycare facility that is not either a Christianist front or a death trap with kids wallowing in their soiled diapers has a waiting list of a year or more. All of them are expensive. All of them have inconvenient hours. And, all of the daycares serve garbage as food and refuse to let you bring in your own. They all revert to a mantra of 'FDA' standards as if the ketuchp-as-vegetable standard is a benchmark of quality. The government insists that children be fed a meat at every meal. This meat item is generally something of the faux-meat variety, like chicken mcnuggets

Up until a couple of months ago, we did have a daycare that was relatively inexpensive, very friendly, clean, and competent, did not especially hassle us about food, and was open until 8:30 pm, which was helpful given the impossibility of getting anywhere by 5:30. It closed.

The daycare we are using at the moment is purely a stopgap measure for a few more weeks. It is not an especially bad place, but definitely not one that I think is providing nearly enough of a challenge or learning opportunity for the Lil Buddha.

I will give but one example. It is actually the reason I thought to sit down here. When I went to pick up Lark at daycare yesterday afternoon I was astonished and a bit horrified to see a group of older kids sitting in a semi-circle while a woman with an utterly expressionless face held up a book and turned the pages. She wasn't reading the book. Instead, there was a boombox playing a recording of the book being read. The daycare worker simply turned the page. This was difficult for me to comprehend. It is certainly pre-literate, and seemed perhaps even a bit psychotic. What kind of lesson could the students have been learning to have the book read to them by the machine?

2009-07-09T00:14:00.003-04:00

We extracted honey today from the hives at the school. One (1) student showed up to help, which a charitable sort might not consider too bad I suppose, given it's midsummer and all. But it does bespeak a certain lack of obsession on the part of this year's class. Lack of obsession has no place in a beekeeper's heart. Though, it is true, fewer students meant less honey fell off the truck than is often the case.

I think we got a bit over 100 pounds today, with a several more supers (another 70-80 pounds perhaps) still waiting to be capped by the bees before being harvested. Not bad for a bunch of bugs, especially given the apocalypse I returned to last year.

I am supposed to be getting pictures soon and will post them -- if and only if they show me as I was, heroically and stoically getting stung multiple times by the one particularly ornery hive, all so you can sweeten your tea.

2009-07-02T21:55:00.006-04:00

This is working a bit backward, but the whole period of being on the road started with Skye and Miss Lark and myself headed to the mountains for few days of getting away from Tidewater, very welcome and much needed.

Like a true member of this family, Lark insisted on spending the drive thoroughly surrounded by her possessions. The dominant phrase of the weekend was "more dinosaurs".

She never once let go of that dinosaur. Lark seems to be defying convention and gender restraints in her love for dinosaurs. We'll be in Chicago in a couple of weeks and when we get to the Field museum it is possible she will explode.

Since we were driving right by Rockfish Gap I insisted that we stop and visit General Lee. Skye was not excited but, like the Army of Northern Virginia, I won on sheer willpower.

Last year when we hiked through Rockfish Gap on the AT (one of the few places the AT crosses an interstate in Virginia) we stopped at the run down little tourist info spot that sits there in the midst of about a half dozen decaying buildings. I had totally forgotten about it but in an act of supremely good timing my friend Chip sent me the photos from two years ago just before we headed up the same way.

This time around the man behind the counter, who was extremely nice, looked like a homeless guy, down to the snaggly teeth, stained clothing, and unzipped zipper. General Lee didn't look much better.

I love the water stain on the ceiling.

Lark was a wee bit afeared.

Note the death grip on the dinosaur.

2009-07-02T21:28:00.002-04:00

Nunal has been fairly static except for the periodic apologies for the lack of posting..usual disclaimers...

I've been all over for the past couple of weeks. I just spent several very enjoyable days at the conference of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. I presented a paper on my research on extraterritorial crime, extraterritorial abduction and extradition which basically compressed a couple chapters of the book I am writing. I thought it was pretty good and, more importantly, other people did as well. One never knows, toiling away in obscurity. The paper was, as you might imagine and as one historian said, rather "densely constructed", or as I would describe it more directly -- following the lyrics to one of Lefty Frizzell's great songs--"so round, firm, so fully packed." if you want to read it, send me an email and I can send it to you. (But that doesn't mean you won't still be on the hook to buy the book when it is finely done.)

Going to the SHAFR conference is always both very interesting and rewarding, not least because it is one of the few times that I am around people who understand what I am talking about. Really smart people too, I never ceased to be amazed how accomplished and sharp all of these historians are. I think more so than ever, or at least more interesting works are coming out, particularly those about American empire.

Before, during, and after the conference I spent some very welcome days in the National Archives. It is, perhaps, the one place in the world where I effortlessly attain perfect concentration. Not exactly a zen state, but definitely a productive one. I am not sure why, but having absolutely nothing else to do but read these old documents must have something to do with it. This becomes doubly true on the days it is open until 9 pm, where you can have 12 uninterrupted hours. That is, twelve hours of reading things that possibly nobody else in the world wants to read and, in some cases, certainly nobody has read since they were created since I untie notes in ancient string that disintegrates at the touch.

The sheer relentless torrent of material is something that needs to be experienced. I've been looking at borderlands cases from the 1870s, which come in batches of hundreds of boxes...

2009-06-18T00:56:00.005-04:00

I'm a sucker for good (or at least, fun to page through) reference books, and maybe especially for field guides. Sometimes I feel like I have field guides to every damn thing on the planet, stationary, slithering, flying, whatever. But there are always others.

I've been really pleased, for instance, that next to the microfilm reader at the VWC Library there stands an unexpectedly beautiful book--Lichens of North America. Anytime I need a break from nineteenth century shenanigans, there it is. (Sure you can view it on google books, but you don't get the full impact). To actually learn the lichens awaits a new day.

Now a new book just came out about the Weeds of the South, and it is a masterpiece. Beautiful book with excellent images.

My students (and maybe my neighbors) will find the authors' definition of the South a bit broad (it includes the Ohio River Valley quite far north) but weeds don't follow invented regional distinctions, I guess.

I was interested, but not surprised, to learn that there is a whole field called "weed science" with their own association. No I haven't joined. Yet.

If you spend time with beekeeping old timers, as I do whenever I can, you realize that they always know exactly which plants are blooming and for how long. This goes double for the obscure weeds, which bees love and often get a lot of nectar from. I realized I needed to get much sharper on weed identification (I was already there on weed appreciation. It helps to be interested, as most of the grass on my lawn are weeds. My theory is that when mowed it becomes "grass').

Each of the weeds in this book deserves a narrative, even demands one. In this book we get only taxonomic description and sometimes a short statement describing each weed's salient characteristics. These are too brief, maybe closer to a zen koan. The narratives await their author.

There are, of course, some great names of weeds. I will toss out a few at the moment:

Apple of Peru (which we seem to have a lot of)

Pale Smartweed

Cancer-weed (which is not toxic)

Devil's guts (there are lots of devil thisthatortheother weeds, almost too easy)

Nap-at-Noon--also called "sleepy dick" and "Star-of-Bethlehem". This weed has something called "cardiotoxins" that will kill people and animals. I need to double check, but I believe half of my lawn is Nap-at-noon.

Nipplefruit Nightshade--grows in Florida and Gulf coast of Texas--"the poisonous fruit is used to kill feral dogs, rodents, and cockroaches in Central and South America"

Plant from Hell (also called Tropical Soda Apple)

2009-06-15T15:18:00.010-04:00

My blogging has been so light that it has been awhile since I reiterated Lark's dominance of the cutest toddler category.

A couple of pictures in the house...after realizing we hadn't taken a picture in the last five minutes...or something like that.

Lark sporting her new 'do, courtesy of yours truly:

Here lark was discovering the marvels of putting ice from a cooler on top of her head:

2009-06-15T15:11:00.005-04:00

You may recall that one of the swarms at VWC had moved into two empty medium supers stacked up. The bees have moved up and out of these boxes into regular Langstroth hives, so I dismantled it. Here is what it looked like (bottom view).

It is actually pretty neat, in part because I put the regular boxes on top and they comb which was damaged when I pried it open initially was slowly aligned to the new frames.

Here are the two frames that were in the top box when the swarm moved in. You can see the comb they built underneath.

Here is the comb from the box.

2009-06-15T14:53:00.005-04:00

Beekeeping may be illegal in Norfolk, but the bees sure as hell don't know it. I just recently got another swarm call in Norfolk. Like the last one, this was close by too.

These bees had moved into a garbage can. I think they had been there for at least a couple of days since they built up some nice comb. I gave the comb, which was fresh, white and beautiful, to the lady who called me about the swarm, she is going to use it for furniture polish.

The bees were extremely gentle even though they might be considered a nascent hive rather than a full blown hive. I managed to find the queen and grabbed with a little queen-grabber device (that is the technical term), so the whole thing was a snap.

I used some other really technical tools to remove them--my swarm bucket of course, and then an empty Tecate box that was rolling around in my truck. Turns out the Tecate box was the perfect thing to get the bees out of the trashcan --2x4s and other stuff snarled together. The box was easily molded to the side,. I got most all of the bees.

The bees are in the bucket in this photo.

The woman who called me was not terrified as some are, but not getting too close either. She asked me if I was worried about driving around with the swarm in my truck. I said no. In fact, I was on my way to pick up Lark at daycare.

I thought she would ask if my daughter was afraid of bees. Instead, she asked: "does your daughter know that you are insane?"

No, not yet, she is still too young.

2009-06-15T14:46:00.003-04:00

If you have access to the Wiley-Blackwell Synergy database (or whatever name it has these days) you can read my article which finally just came out last week: "Latino Migrant Music and Identity in the Borderlands of the New South," Journal of American Culture 32:2 (June, 2009): 114-125.

I am not allowed to post a pdf of it (since Blackwell thinks that might interfere with the half dozen people or so in the world who might ever read it), but I definitely can email you a copy of it if you are interested...

I've been planning to continue study of the music at Mexican rodeos in NC and Virginia (I have already been to several, but there is always more of this rigirous research to be done), but work has been slow on that front since I have been holed up with the extraterritoriality book. And now I find that the next rodeo in Manassas isn't scheduled until Sept 13 (Noon-8, at the Prince William County Fairgrounds, in case you are making a schedule) and I'll be in Berkeley by then. But there are some scattered smaller ones I am going to try to make before then. having hit a rodeo south of San Antonio on a brutally hot Sunday afternoon back in May I now have a new high standard with which to compare all future events.

2009-06-15T14:14:00.003-04:00

Time has little meaning in the summer. That would be by way of explanation why I haven't posted in something like two weeks.

A sizable chunk of my absence from Nunal was due to the Mt. Airy Fiddler's convention, which is one of my favorite experiences of the year. Partly because I was gone at it--and partly because of a longish recovery curve upon returning back...

Though not the largest old time convention in the South, it surely is one of the best. Mt. Airy stands at the core of Surry County, which is the heart of a still-living tradition of old time music making that is unequaled anywhere else. (Notable enough that a friend of mine is writing a dissertation about it). It doesn't hurt that pioneer old time fiddler Benton Flippen is still around, and that Mt. Airy has the WPAQ radio station (Voice of the Blue Ridge) maintaining the flame.

At the fiddlers convention there is, of course, music day and night. I generally played until 4:30 or so each morning, and then went to sleep to bands playing well past dawn. Mt. Airy draws both old time and bluegrass musicians from all over (though this year I thought there was marginally more old time music). So, if you like the real, traditional bluegrass that has been snuffed out in so many other places, this would be the place to hear it.

There are contests in all instruments at Mt. Airy, but what I like is getting the chance to go play. The people I most enjoy playing music with I generally only see at fiddlers conventions in the summer. Nice to live to another season to have the opportunity.

Republicans really, really never want to win an election again

2009-05-29T15:53:00.004-04:00

"Former GOP congressman Tom Tancredo (Colo.) also took Sotomayor to task for membership in the National Council of La Raza, labeling the nation's largest Hispanic advocacy group as "a Latino KKK without the hoods or nooses."'

Meanwhile, bloviating fool Rush Limbaugh compared her to David Duke...

2009-05-29T12:31:00.003-04:00

I can't really figure out why we are supposed to be saddened by the decline and deaths of local newspapers. These papers are terrible and I think their disappearance is going to have every little overall impact. Whatever small contribution they make could be done much better online. This is not necessarily the case with the major newspapers also in crisis at the moment. The disappearance of these papers will have a very real, even drastic impact on our political life. But even in this case, much can be done by the new media. Small papers like the Virginian-Pilot that once were decent little papers with a purpose are now nothing more than a waste of paper and ink. Most of these papers have been owned by huge media corporations which have eliminated any distinctiveness or independence (the Courier-Journal comes to mind). They have been "local" only in the vaguest sense for years, even decades, and are instead just AP stories embedded in large furniture store and hearing aid ads. The Op-Eds are usually syndicated pieces, often ones that appeared several days earlier in the NYTimes or the Washington Post. The local columnists are reason enough not to read the paper given their aggressive stupidity. Even the feature fillers are grabbed off the wires, so here we regularly read wire stories in the 'Daily Break' section about new trends in Dallas in articles that aren't even minimally rebadged for the local market.

That all said, I do get the Pilot delivered to my house, if only to read about the local crimes of regular appalling violence that are the hallmark of "the 757". I like to read the paper over breakfast, and have no option to get the Times delivered in this area so I am stuck with the Pilot. But almost everyday I wonder why I am wasting my money.

Though I was surprised to learn today that Virginia Beach has 2,321 licensed vehicles.

how it should be done

2009-05-29T11:56:00.003-04:00

For all the growing optimism that we may be pulling out of the downturn, there has been appallingly little discussion of the fundamental rot at the heart of our economic (and, let's be honest, moral) system built upon debt and consumer spending...and debt, debt, and then some more debt. This optimism is based on growing credit (also called "debt") and consumer spending, while the savings rate is zero or below zero. The obvious truth is that we can't forever borrow money and spend it without one day paying the (Chinese) piper, but nobody is willing to push for change in other directions.

Meanwhile, things are much different in Asia where they, like, you know, build things and export them. And where the rich save their money in banks, of all places. The wealthy in Korea spend a lot too, but if you are saving 31% of your income that seems ok.

"Korea’s wealthy save more money and spend less than their peers in other Asian countries, according to a recent consumer survey of 4,106 people in top income brackets in eight Asian countries including Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore.

In the poll by Visa Card, 91 percent of Korean respondents said they save every month, comparable to results for China and Singapore and close behind India’s 94 percent. Only 74 percent of the Australian rich save monthly, slightly lower than 78 percent in Japan.

Wealthy Koreans said they put an average of 31 percent of their monthly incomes into bank savings, the highest among all the respondents and far higher than the overall average of 23 percent. Belying the widely-held belief that they are the heaviest savers in Asia, Japanese polled said they only deposit 16 percent of their monthly income in the bank.

Bank savings was by far the most common financial investment among Koreans, with 99 percent saying they owned such accounts, followed by 77 percent with life insurance accounts and 57 percent with financial investment fund accounts.

The report also showed rich Koreans spend about $1,299 on average each month, which ranked them as the sixth-biggest spenders among the eight countries.

At the top were the Australia rich, who said they spend an average of $3,861 each month, followed by $2,541 for Japan and $2,327 for Singapore, though spending patterns may depend on price levels and currency rates against the U.S. dollar.

Visa polled people in the top 20 to 40 percent income bracket across Asia from September to October last year.

2009-05-29T11:44:00.003-04:00

Several people have asked me what I think about the situation in Korea (i.e. the posturing by North Korea) though, it is worth noting, I have no particular expertise in North-South relations. But my sense from reading those that do is that this is not a crisis but instead the theatrical periodic demand of the North to be taken seriously and to have attention. respect, and possibly funds focused on it. I am persuaded that North Korea acts rationally, though I think it does indeed represent a danger not just to Asian peace but especially in terms of global weapons proliferation. So far everybody is playing their scripted part--the sabre rattling of the North is met with enhanced levels of readiness, stern words from ROK and American leaders, reaffirmed support for ROK and Japanese security, further apocalyptic threats from the North. Obama, not dramatic by nature and not stupid and rigid like Bush, is unlikely to feed the issue (one good sign is that John Bolton is warning of doom, surely that is a sign that Obama is doing something right). Now it is just a matter of cycling it down and avoiding even the naval clashes that have of late been the main focus of conflict. Of course, the whole game is a bit more dangerous when there are nukes involved...

2009-05-27T23:43:00.001-04:00

In what must be some kind of record, the goldfish are already dead.

2009-05-27T22:35:00.009-04:00

This is a worthwhile piece about post-apocalyptic (specifically post-nuclear) novels. It links up Mccarthy's The Road with some recent, lesser, mass-paperback post-nuke books. The piece is both funny and thoughtful (Ron Rosenbaum calls them "nuke-porn" books), and free of the usual snark that tends to hollow out pieces in Slate.

His consideration of McCarthy's book is worthwhile. Rosenbaum would, of course, have no way of knowing that I had discussed the current context of The Road much the same way he did when I gave a brief talk on it to our freshmen class last August...

I think the Road stands as an important and striking book and the quality of its writing makes it stand out from most all the post-apocalyptic works. One aspect of its power is the starkness of the writing. And the lack of politics. McCarthy is not using the apocalypse to flog a current political point, and so little is indicated about the main character that he could, in fact, be anyone. And the specific apocalypse is never made clear--it could well have been a natural extinction event.

Rosenbaum could have included the spate of new books and tv shows about the natural world after people disappear. I would classify some of these works as genocide fantasy, often by left-leaning environmentalists who wish people would just go away so nature could be restored, cities and especially suburbs would disappear, and huge ranges of birds and bison would come back. The tv shows might be a bit less political--my feeling is that they are just looking for an outlet for computer graphics and this pseudo-documentary style doesn't require the narratives a disaster film has.

What makes the 'world without us' crowd especially scary is that the genre never details how or why people disappear, they just do. It is genocide fantasy minus the messy details. Cut to image of trees growing in the middle of city streets...

Of course, there has long been a religiously-based genocide fantasy (or fantasies) in the form of pre-millenialism, but that is worth a discussion at another time (or not).

Speaking of nuke-porn and genocide fantasies on the part of the literati, I have been waiting for a good opportunity to write something duly harsh about World Made by Hand, by James Kunstler, which I had been led to by a New Yorker piece that described him and his blog (Clusterfuck Nation). That blog can be ok reading at times if you like a screed. Yet his novel is, simply, garbage. It veers dangerously close to white supremacist fantasy in seeking to populate a new perfect community in which there is no diversity, only white, Christian small towns modeled on some fictional historical model of homespun salt-of-the-earthiness coupled with rigorously defended purity and homemade style.

The book is formulaic in the way that a decent post-apocalyptic novel should be (right down to the gratuitous tour of the ravaged and returning-to-nature landscape), and the writing is workable even if the story is flat. It ends weirdly with the introduction of a human termite queen with extra-sensory powers?--don't ask.

But what makes this novel really terrible is its thick vein of self-righteousness. The hero takes evident glee in the demise of a lifestyle that was not fulfilling or 'real' a life, if you read it clearly, that the author just considers fundamentally tacky. The pre-collapse world rested on hollow things and meaningless tasks, whereas the truly discerning in the new world get everything they want and everybody is fulfilled because real work is fulfilling. And so on. Old(er) men like the protagonist, virtuous as he is by function of embracing the post-apocalyptic world, is rewarded by having a young beautiful recent widow move in with alacrity (crowding out the mistress...you see how it functions as fantasy).

The 'world made by hand' that Kunstler creates is an old timey New England town that is wholly white, a town standing as a refuge from the racial apocalypse that seems to be ongoing down in Maryland and points south. (By contrast, race does not appear as a factor at all in McCarthy's book, and in most post-apocalyptic films, society is almost unbelievably well integrated).

It is hard not to read Kunstler's book as tacitly embracing a notion of lily white virtue, the flip side of the current reality of dying, boring small towns in marginal areas being outstripped by vibrant yet often turbulent multiethnic cities. If the book was set in the South it would scream Klan fantasy, putting it in the northeast only obscures this theme a bit. Indeed, the protagonist in the novel finds a sympathetic compadre in the white, violent, sterotypically fundamentalist Virginian, who arrives in town with cult (and muscled enforcers) in tow and helps the town to retain its stability and order. At first you are led to think there is going to be conflict with this auslander, but it is this hand-tooled violence blended with faith (all under the eye of the ESP termite queen) that helps the hero clean up the town and blah blah blah. Boring, actually, but disturbing that a post-apocalyptic fantasy on the anti-development left supposedly heralding a new sense of purpose so prominently lacks a sense of actual community, or humanity.

It can only make matters worse to point out that though Kunstler makes the hero a fiddler, he makes him a contra fiddler. What could be worse in the doom of the future than the survival of the contra?

Me, I want no part of the apocalypse if the soundtrack is contra tunes. Give me the old time Pentecostal songs any day. Ain't No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down!

2009-05-27T11:30:00.003-04:00

Americans don't get riled up to protest. Give away billions in taxpayer money to financial fatcats with no accountability--no worries. Refuse to punish war criminal torturers--no problem. The battle cry is...moo.

Koreans, on the other hand, live in a vibrant democracy and their political action is a bit more direct. Here is a striking photo of union protesters in Daejeon using sharpened bamboo spears to attack riot police.

(an article about the current state of rioting in Korea, quoting a Sogang professor, is here)

2009-05-27T11:02:00.003-04:00

Lark has been into fish recently, so I went to buy her some goldfish. In typical fashion, this little project has ended up being both more complicated and more expensive than any reasonable person would anticipate. The goldfish themselves cost a quarter each. The filter was something like 1000 times more expensive, and ended up being powerful enough to whip these poor little bastards around the fishbowl so thoroughly as to be useless. One solution was simply to keep replacing the two-bit fish, but I chose the more humane idea of using a larger tank. As you might I expect, I have a fish tank sitting patiently in the garage for exactly this purpose. I used to keep Hector the giant Central American millipede in it, until he expired and I put him in the freezer awaiting future rebirth when science advances to the point to do so. So now there are two little goldfish in an unnecessarily huge tank. They are supposed to be able to live for 20 years. I give them a couple of weeks, tops.

Yes, Lark continues to be the smartest and cutest child on the planet. She counts now, in unbearable and almost too-cute fashion: "One, two, yellow." She has also learned how to drive.

2009-05-27T10:55:00.003-04:00

I am just back Monday evening from my annual section on the Appalachian Trail. We did 76 miles, which is a bit shorter than our hoped-for 100 mile yearly mileage. I am no more ravaged than usual. The trail is grueling, but I've learned my lessons over the years and do some amount of training yearround and so can walk without pain today, which has not always been the case when I've completed a section. It helps that Virginia has more forgiving trail than North Carolina (extremely hard) and North Georgia (brutal).

I've been hiking the AT with a friend of mine (also a historian, in South Carolina) for 10 years this summer. We've made it up from Springer Mountain in Georgia to the northern reaches of the Shenandoah National Park. It would have been nice to get half way at the end of a decade(Harper's Ferry is considered the traditional halfway point though I think it is not fully half way) but that will not be the case. But I'd still like to finish by age fifty, if possible.

(I will not dwell here on the reality that I'll be 50 in a decade...)

This year we plugged the one section we had missed a couple of years ago, when our trip was truncated and we didn't get to do this part. Last year, for a variety of reasons, we did a more northerly section north of Waynesboro. We have both had a nagging feeling about this undone 76 mile section, so it feels good to have knocked it out. It ended up being some of the nicest trail we've hiked. Of particular note was the 1 mile or so stretch down into Buena Vista along the James River, really a nice little piece of walking with the wide river on your left and some rocky bluffs on your right. (In Virginia, "Buena" is pronounced to rhyme with "Moon-a"). Perhaps the nicest view were just out side of Salem on McAfee Knob (which, as you might expect, is pronounced in the mountains 'MAC-afee'). This is a steep little mountain with stunning views from steep cliffs. Several miles along from that were the Tinker Cliffs, which also had amazing views. I don't hike the AT with a camera so I can't post pictures of myself up there (though my friend is supposed to send me some), but here is one I swiped from the interschnitzel:

Beautiful spot. We had some reasonably good mileage days, and on that day we did 21 miles, so topped a bunch of mountains only to end up in Daleville Virginia in the evening, eating Mexican food. Or what passed for Mexican food in Daleville.

Next year we'll continue on toward Maine.

Things for which there should be German words

2009-05-27T10:32:00.003-04:00

I haven't posted in almost a month because I have been basically traveling nonstop since the semester ended and haven't really had time to sit down with Nunal. Cataloging my travels can't possibly be of interest, but having spent 10 days in South Texas I can confirm that this remains a bright spot on my personal map. A few days in Florida confirms the opposite. I also spent some time in the superb libraries at the University of Texas at Austin, so the Yin of conjunto music and barbacoa tacos in San Antonio was balanced with the Yang of the Benson Latin American Collection library.

I left town with a feeling that was extremely hard to capture--that powerful sense of anticipation and relief (cresting as the semester came to a close) that I have an upcoming sabbatical that begins the instant the semester ends. I was thinking there likely is a 21-letter German word that captures this ineffable feeling--if you know what it is, let me know.

I am told there is already a English word for the feeling of returning from a sabbatical...

(As long as I am on the subject of things for which there should be long German words, it occurred to me in the Orlando airport that there should be a word describing the feeling of being stuck in that particular airport surrounded by double XL Americans waddling around).

Corridos de Caballos Famosos

2009-05-05T22:46:00.011-04:00

I've been thinking about the astounding Kentucky Derby results and wondering if any one is going to write a song about the winning horse, Mine That Bird.

There are a couple very relevant traditions of horse songs that should, in a perfect world, yield at least a few songs about this horse.

Not least, there is that great Kentucky tradition typified by "Molly and Tenbrooks", which, of course, is the quintessential horse racing song based on an 1878 race at Louisville (before even there was a Churchill Downs). Even more importantly, this is one of the most historically significant bluegrass songs. It was one of Bill Monroe's favorite songs and it was the song that the Stanley Brothers first recorded in the style of music picking invented by Bill. To quote Richard D. Smith, who wrote an essential biography of Bill Monroe, that recording "proved that Bill's music had gone beyond being the sound of just one band. It was now a true, recognizable genre." (p. 93).

So someone should absolutely write a bluegrass song about this horse. (And yes I know, what passes for "bluegrass" nowadays ain't nothing close to bluegrass, but there are still plenty of good players out there to step up to the task).

Another reason I think there should/must be a song about Mine That Bird is that the horse industry in Kentucky nowadays is reliant on Mexican immigrant workers (see, for starters, Brian L. Rich and Marta Miranda's "Sociopolitical Dynamics of Mexican Immigration in Lexington, Kentucky, 1997 to 2002,") and, it goes without saying, Mexican music is not unfamiliar with the topic of corridos de caballos famosos.

When I started thinking about horse songs I immediately return to the many corrdios de caballos Los Alegres de Teran recorded, and of course, more conceptually, the full albums I have straightforwardly called "Caballos Famosos", which cover the many Mexican regional styles, some of which are truly great collections, by Miguel Aceves Mejia (Mariachi), Los Halcones de Salitrillo (Norteño), Los Huracanes del Norte (also Norteño), and Grupo Laberinto and Banda Jerez (both playing banda). (I am not including Valerio Longoria's "Caballo Viejo" on this list because it is not exclusively dedicated to caballos). The Norteño versions are the best to my ear.

I realize now that I am going to have to buckle down and figure out which is my favorite of these corridos, which may take some time. Good thing the summer is nigh in a few days.

For a stopgap I'll put a vote in for "Caballo Alazan Lucero" as sung by Alegres de Teran. Singing doesn't get much better than that, though Los Donneños do a good job on that one. I don't think it would really be a stretch to say that if we consider Los Alegres as analogous to Bill Monroe then Los Donneños are the Stanley Brothers.

And from what I see poking around Antonio Aguilar recorded three volumes of Corridos de Caballos Famosos, which clearly I should locate just to be complete, though he isn't my favorite.

There should be a Corrido de Extrae Esa Aves. If one doesn't appear soon I may have to commission it...

(btw, I think I got that imperative form right but if not, forgive my execrable knowledge of Spanish)

On a side note, the International Museum of the Horse at Kentucky Horse Park is hosting an exhibition called Arte en la Charrería: The Artisanship of Mexican Equestrian Culture, which is surely a sign of the times. And something to see, too, if I can get up there before September.