Dawn Song

You know the soundtrack.
Sure, you can hear it, looking at this photo - that same lilting melody used over and over to announce dawn in the Warner Brothers cartoons. We didn't know then that it was real music - the "Morning Melody" was sister to the dwarf-march of "In the Hall of the Mountain King" and all of those tunes were far from looney.
We get up early at the lake. 5 a.m., usually. Early enough to see Orion wheeling to the north, eternally chasing Taurus, eternally trailed by his faithful hounds.
We watch the sun come up over the water, gently as it did this past Saturday morning, or in flame a few weeks ago, or sifting the clouds gray by gray.
Later that same morning, we saw the white deer, picking its way to the water's edge like a harp passage, or maybe an oboe solo for the eerie magic of its presence. Later yet, as we beat harborward from a full day of sailing, a bald eagle flared overhead like a trumpet fanfare.
What a programme!

A Google Earth view: Mountaintop removal

People who live in the coal mining regions of West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky know about mountaintop removal.
It's the easy way to get coal. Instead of tunneling under the surface, or stripping away the overburden along the mountain contours, you just blast off the entire peak, dump it in the valleys, remove the coal and leave a nice flat top covered with quick-growing grass and trees.
That's "nice" if you like your mountains decapitated.
Or if you don't mind the hydrology destroyed, to say nothing of old communities of people and other living creatures.
The problem is, most people don't see this. It happens in fairly unpopulated areas, and even if you see some of it from the interstate, the scope of this damage isn't visible.
Now it is.
A new website uses Google Earth technology along with photos and videos from activists and local residents to show exactly what's going on.
Take a look. It's a good counterbalance to the claims that this process is worthwhile because it provides flat land for development, and all those TV ads with cute kids telling us about how much coal we have in this country.
Yes, we do have coal. And it can help feed our energy needs. But coal has always come at a huge cost. As a longtime resident of West Virginia, I remember the miners with broken bodies and dust-clogged lungs. I remember the mine cracks that made fields unusuable and shattered homes. I remember streams running red from spilled acid water. I remember the (old-fashioned) stripmined areas that never looked natural, but at least preserved the general appearance of an area. With time, nature could heal those wounds. I don't know that the mountains will rebuild themselves any time soon.

Blogging and Blackbird on a full moon night

Spent a nice afternoon at Old Salem with folks from Press 53 - Sheryl Monks, Kevin Morgan Watson and Joe Mills. We read, and tasted the cider and Moravian sugar cake, and chatted about all sorts of things - including blogging and why we didn't do it nearly enough.
So tonight I'm catching up a bit. It's been a busy month, with readings to do for Wake Wake Wake and sailboat races to run. Jack and I had our last outing in that series Oct. 29-30 at Smith Mountain Lake, where Jack was the principal race officer for the "Jane at the Lake" event. Winds hit 47 knots at one point on Saturday, cancelling races even for the PHRF class racers involved. We got in three races on Sunday with good but not excessive wind - it was great to watch our new friends the Bennetts in their Olson 30 compete with a field of J-24s, Hunters, Beneteaus, Ericssons and others.
I was pleased to see my poem "Adam and Eve as Fire and Water" appear on Blackbird, the great online journal from Virginia Commonwealth. And it was very exciting to see a previously unknown poem by Sylvia Plath is in that same issue. If you want to visit, here's the link:
Blackbird
So, with the readings and the sailing winding down, it's time to get back to work on the novel-in-progress. I took a break from working on a chapter where Suzan, one of the main characters, takes an unexpected trip to St. Maarten with her lover. There's a cold full moon out tonight - a hunter's moon? - and thinking about the tropics helps keep away the chill.
Kevin and Sheryl - your turn!