Back on track

Nice long weekend solo en casa. A mojito, then a steak sandwich at the local watering hole. Phone calls from friends and family. Painting cabinet doors. I have decided that when people ask me how I'm doing, I'm gonna say "I'm back on track and I'm leading the pack."

All that junk that's in yo trunk

I spent the morning counting grass and forb species in the field margins of Bryan Farms in West Point. I found at least a dozen ticks on me before eleven o'clock. But I am not complaining. The field I was in today hosts primarily native grasses, mostly Indian grass, a few big bluestems, some little bluestems, some broomsedge and one or two panicums, and just a few forbs, mostly goldenrod and boneset, and no signs of wildlife (save one birdsnest and some coyote tracks in the adjacent soybean field). The best thing you could say about this habitat is that the survey was quick and easy. Back into town for some asbestoes floor tile chippin'. That went slowly. Trying to chew through a thin layer of tile and glue and not gouge the wood underneath too severely. I rented a machine that is supposed to do the job, but I curse this machine and grab a big steel shovel/hoe-like scraping implement. Twenty minutes later I throw this tool aside and throw the switch once again on the machine. And so it goes. At five I discover that the real problem is a lack of gin. Back at my desk, where I make the magic happen, I revamp my blogspot profile. Check it out and you will notice an improvement. My new resolution: to get through July without mentioning the eighties.

So long, Empire

Had to say goodbye to the old floor furnace. Sad, but we just don't have room for one of these guys around here. I took him to a farm where there are some really nice people and he can run around with lots of other furnaces.

Just one egg

Here is a little nest I found yesterday in the hillside prairie at Bryan Farms in West Point. I don't know what kind of bird this belongs to, but the plant it is nestled in is Ironweed, Vernonia altissima.

Eggs

A few weeks ago I was doing vegetation surveys at the Chicasaw Village site on the Natchez Trace just north of Tupelo. In one of the plots we flushed a Bobwhite quail and found her nest. This was pretty exciting. This site was the only one (of the four sites we are on) that has any quail, and it has a lot. Bobwhite quail populations have dropped a great deal in the last thirty years or so, and the notion that it might be brought back up to a huntable level is an important part of the effort to convince landowners to participate in prairie habitat restoration. Anyway, this nest had fifteen eggs. They have probably hatched by now. If I had time, I would go see how they are doing. Here is a shot of where the nest is, well-hidden, under a clump of grama grass.

Sunday

Had a fine b-day party for the Zapper yesterday. The Gator is already broken: it won't go into reverse. One of the Moms at the party told me that her friend had one that would only drive IN reverse, so it could be worse. We rented a bouncy castle and had a lot of fun in it, even though the temps got into the mid-nineties. I made a bunch of deviled eggs, but the other Mommies (no Daddies showed up) I guess were watching their figures or something, because they each only ate one (there were only two of them), so I had to do a Cool Hand Luke over the last 24 hours. Can't let them things go to waste.

blue bath

My bossman is fishing in the Gulf for a week, so I have made some progress on the house. Got the sink and shelves out of the blue bath. I am working on stripping wallpaper. Boy is that fun. The tile guys are done with the kitchen and it looks good. They are going to start on the baths on Monday, apparently. Here is some before and after of the bath demolition.
These pictures are a little jumbled up, as I have not mastered the picture formatting technology yet. You will be required to use whatever basic notions of causality you have developed over the years to distinguish "before" from "after".

S spent a good deal of time cleaning and refinishing kitchen cabinet doors with minwax yesterday. She also cleaned and polished all the copper hardware that goes with them. They are looking good.




We bought the boys one of those 12-volt battery-powered cars for Zapper's birthday. It is in the shape of a John Deer gator. It even has a little dump bed in back. They are having a blast driving that thing around the yard. J's party is today. We are renting a bouncy castle. I better go around and fluff up some pillows.

Another Beauty

I found this at Bryan Farms. Bryan Farms is a thousand-plus acre family farm in nearby West Point. Most of it is cattle pasture, but also some cotten and corn. In the field margins are a few hundred acres of prairie habitat. This was found on a north facing hillside. It is Polemonium reptans, or Greek Valerian. It is not actually a valerian. It is the same genus as Polemonium van-bruntiae, Jacob's Ladder. This is the only one we found. I can't get close in with my camera, but it has both deep violet and indigo blue flower petals. It was a tricky ID because the leaves had all turned brown and were falling off. It wasn't obvious at first that they were compound leaves.

Scraps

Very few things are happening right now, so I thought I would share some of my new favorite websites with y'all. One is www.ubcbotanicalgarden.org. It is the best botany site I have found on the 'net. The botany picture of the day is excellent, and the forums, especially the plant ID questions, are cool. Another place I like to check on from time to time is www.everythingispointless.com, a science and atheism blog. When I am feeling low, I can always find something here to cheer me up. I also want to say that, I don't care what anybody thinks, I like Green Day's cover of Working Class Hero. I have always thought the song was a little whiny and paranoid, but oddly compelling. I think the Green Day drummer does a good job with it. I know it is not cool to like Green Day, but, you know, cool people like me do things that are not cool all the time. It is our little way of letting the world know that we don't care what you think. Which is really cool. That is why leaving all your friends and moving to a place like Starkville, Mississippi is about the coolest thing you can do. Lastly, I have added another item to my List Of Things I Want To Do Before I Die: Scam the Special Olympics into letting me participate. Man, if I could pull that off I would be so proud. I would throw the javelin.

For context...

...here is the same view as below, taken from pretty much the same spot, on the day we first looked at the house back in March.

I got nuthin

I know I need to futurize my attitude, so I went over to E!celebrity gossip and there was nothing, and I mean nothing, happening over there. So here is the latest picture of the house, with the studs gone, the laminated beam installed and sheetrock half done. We have taken the tubs out of the two baths and all the old flooring, they are ready for tile. I learned just this morning that I have the week off, so maybe things will start going a little faster over there. Basically I am letting my audience know that I am still kicking, and cooking up something to put out here soon, so keep reading.

make it stop

Today was a very tough day for me. I had just bought my "Free Paris Hilton" T-shirt and was looking forward to being the first in my little town to have one, and firm in my belief that she is the Patty Hears of my generation, I was gearing up to network with other activists and hoping that, through our shared outrage, we could perhaps at last bring down this sham that we call western civilization, when I got word that Paris had busted out of jail and was now holed-up in a safe house in Malibu. I am of course happy for Paris, but a little peeved that I spent $34 on a T-shirt which is now worthless, unless, of course, The Man puts her back in the slammer.
Things got much worse this afternoon, when I found out that Wikipedia had rejected my article for the Styx album "Paradise Theater." They called it "sloppy, lacking citations, and inflammatory." Since it won't be on Wikipedia any time soon, I have decided to post it here:

Paradise Theater

Few people remember the pall of uncertainty that hung over the country in the early months of 1981. Ronald Reagan had been elected in a landside the previous year, and the country rejoiced that the ineffectual, stammering peanut farmer was finally gone. But nobody could say for certain that the doddering horseman we had put in his place would have anything better to offer. A winter of plant closings and bad economic news was brightened a bit by the return of the American hostages from Iran (on the very day of Reagan’s inauguration), but few realized at the time that another equally significant event had occurred that same week: the release of what would become Styx’s fourth triple platinum album, “Paradise Theater.”
With the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to see how monster radio hits such as “Rocking The Paradise,” and “The Best of Times,” helped bring our country out of the doldrums and give us hope in a better future yet to come. The jingoistic platitudes that our aging Anglo warlord brought forth from his monthly reading of “Reader’s Digest” played a significant part, to be sure, and The Charlie Daniels Band struck a note of proud and steadfast unity with their hit “In America” that same year, but without the conceptual genius of “Paradise Theater,” with its archetypal symbol of a once-grand theater now fallen into decay, which could indeed be resurrected in all its glory thanks to the arena-rock sensibilities and artistic mastery of one of the greatest rock bands of all time, without that urgent message at that pivotal time, many cultural historians agree that the economic and cultural recovery, indeed some may say renaissance, of the mid-eighties in America probably would have never materialized.
It was a bold step when, on “Rocking The Paradise,” Dennis De Young called for us to “futerize our attitudes.” Especially since “futurize” isn’t really a word. Whatever. But bolder still was his skill as a lyricist to incorporate his overall concern with The State of Affairs in The World Today with a traditional love song. Since most of us alive today remember only the “pep talk” aspects (We need long term, slow burn, getting it done/
And some straight talking, hard working son of a gun...), we may be surprised to recall that both stanzas of the song begin with the words “Watcha doing tonight?”
A full two years after the release of “Paradise Theater,” when America had started to digest the positive message that Styx had carefully and skillfully laid out for us and had set itself steadily once again on the correct path, an insignificant and aimless little band from Ireland shamelessly ripped-off Dennis De Young and Tommy Shaw’s love-song/political anthem ethos with a flash-in-the-pan college radio hit “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” from the 1983 album “War,” both of which should immediately have been forgotten. After musing on such somber topics as “broken bottles under children’s feet/ bodies strewn across the dead-end street,” Bono croons “Tonight, we can be as one tonight.” Astute observers of pop culture immediately noticed that Bono has presumptuously changed Dennis de Young’s interrogative into a statement of fact. We will be as one, it is gonna happen, no sense in fighting back. Besides, I am so sensitive and aware of all that is going on in the world, copulation with an entity such as myself could, if you are lucky, bring you out of your small-town paradigms and happily into a bolder, more worldly awareness. Puh-lease. Young intellectuals inexplicaply, or perhaps predictably, bought into this U2 garbage hook line and sinker. And de Young’s more gentle, one might say more appropriate, “watcha doing tonight?” was quickly forgotten.
Of course, nowadays, music historians generally dismiss U2’s album “War” as one of many of their aimless experiments. “War” represents their hard-rock aspirations, and a pretty lame attempt at that, while their subsequent albums explored art rock, (Unforgettable Fire) prog rock, (Joshua Tree), Dance and Industrial (Achtung Baby) then glam rock (Zooropa) and finally power pop (All That You Can’t Leave Behind, How to Dismantle An Atomic Bomb). Face it, these pretentious blowhards have staggered all over the map, and, like many other bad artists, they are just slinging shit at the canvas hoping something will stick.
In 2005, in a moment of cosmic blind absurdity, U2 was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and then, in 2006, they inexplicably won five Grammies. Meanwhile, the surviving members of Styx bicker over who can use the band’s name while touring. In a universe that must by necessity be governed by some semblance of justice, all reasonable people agree that it is only a matter of time before the witless frauds known as U2 are unceremoniously expelled from their throne, their ill-gotten mantel as the world’s only supergroup will be stripped from them, and the original Supergroup, Styx, the only band in history to release FOUR CONSECUTIVE PLATINUM ALBUMS, will justifiably take their place.

somethings happening...

Big things happen at old house, walls going away showing old studs and scraps of ancient wallpaper. Three rooms becoming one just like Christian trinity. I spend big number hours in back room scraping and sanding the paint what has the lead, which one paper say can hurt brains, but friends not worries, brain good!