Context

So often after I visit a place I develop an intense curiosity about it. As a teacher, I know how important it is for students to be able to make a personal connection to instructional material, how such a tie makes it easier to learn and retain skills and information. As an adult, I see this principle in action in myself. Researching activities and destinations for a future vacation in a place I've never visited is too abstract; the information slides from my brain like butter on hot teflon-- no more than a skim coat of retention. Once on site, though, I'm motivated to voraciously consume any material I can get my hands on, but it is usually unsatisfying, perhaps because I am distracted by actually being on vacation and all. Back at home, I spend lots of time researching the place I just left, a bittersweet experience because I'm essentially discovering every cool thing I missed on my visit.

Take my recent trip to Fort Valley, VA for example. I stayed for a couple of nights at a ranch there and took a trail ride through George Washington National Forest. It was beautiful-- the mountains of western Virginia at their summer finest-- all dappled light and fragrant hayseed fern, elder berry, hemlock, and mountain laurel-- and so much less inhabited than this urban area where I reside. Our bunk house cabin may have been a little rustic, but there were bull frogs and river otters just outside our door, not to mention all the stars in the sky which were only obscured by the blazing camp fire we had each night.

Once home, though, I found that this valley within a valley was not only the site of three iron forges destroyed by the Union Army because of the Confederate canon balls they were churning out, but also the location of the very first CCC installation, Camp Roosevelt, built in 1933. AND it is named Fort Valley because it was George Washington's fall back plan. The first access road was built so that the Continental Army could retreat to this naturally fortified place for a last stand against Cornwallis. Fortunately, the Battle of Yorktown made Fort Valley a footnote to history, but now that I know a little more about the place, I can't wait to go back.

Greetings

I continue to be fascinated by facebook: fortunately not in the spending-too-much-time-sharing-too-much-information way, but rather in the I-can't-believe-I'm-back-in-touch-with-that-person way.

Also in the look-how-many-people-wished-me-a-happy-birthday way. That's kind of cool.

Dispatch

My birthday today, and I write from the garden where I came to weed and water thoroughly before literally heading for the hills for a couple of days. (We're taking the older nephews to a ranch in the Blue Ridge for some cabin-camping and horseback riding.) A dead robin in the flower bed was a sad start to the morning, but the weather is glorious and a goldfinch perching prettily on one of the tomato cages was somewhat of an antidote to that gloom.

The birds like the water, and now there's a pair of finches hopping and playing in the sprinkler spray. They glow in the sunlight, and I choose them as the heralds of my next year.

Lucky

Yesterday I noticed a couple of wasps flying around my Adirondack chair. The weather here has been HOT and the end of the school year hectic, so I haven't spent much time in that spot. These wasps seemed a little too familiar with one of my favorite seats: an investigation was definitely in order. Having no pesticide handy, I grabbed a bottle of kitchen cleaner and set the nozzle to stream, then I used the sliding screen door for protection, took aim, and drenched those vespidae in that ammonia-based concoction. (Yes, I felt a twinge of guilt.)

Off they flew, presumably to nurse their toxic exposure, and I tipped my chair back to reveal a small but promising start to a paper wasp's nest. There were six cells, and one of them already contained eggs. I scraped it off and then sprayed the underside with insect repellent. The wasps returned a little while later, and perhaps I anthropomorphize, but rather than being as mad as the hornets they were, they seemed confused and upset by the loss of their fledgling colony. I sighed, but humans and wasps cannot co-habitate, as charming as we both might be. Eventually they flew away and did not come back.

I considered how fortunate I was. An evening or two later, a drop in the humidity, a lull in the chaos, I could have unknowingly plopped myself right on top of a wasp's nest. Even discovering it a few days down the line would have made it much harder to take care of. Of course the best case scenario would have been no nest at all, but then I wouldn't have known how lucky I was.

Greed

What is it about money? We have out of town visitors, and so we got tickets for the Bureau of Engraving tour. As our assigned-time group of thirty or so walked through the facility where half of our nation's paper currency is printed, the avarice was palpable. In fact, I wish I had ten bucks for every time someone said Do they give free samples? because then? I'd be rich!

Reciprocity

I had such vivid dreams last night that I woke a little disoriented. They were the kind that make you wonder, sort of like Karen Blixen, if they could possibly be one-sided.

Here is one of my favorite passages from Out of Africa:

If I know a song of Africa-- I thought,-- of the Giraffe, and the African new moon lying on her back, of the ploughs in the fields, and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Would the air over the plain quiver with a colour that I had had on, or the children invent a game in which my name was, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel on the drive that was like me, or would the eagles of Ngong look out for me?

Blockbuster

Nearly seven months ago I wrote about how the trailer for Toy Story 3 brought me to tears. Today the preview delivered it on its promise to make me cry: I sat in the same seat in the same theater and wept through the whole dang movie-- boo hooed at how Andy is no longer an imaginative little boy, at the toys' moving response to mortal danger, at a final sacrifice for the good of those you love-- aye yi yi, the movie was devastating!

Was my weepy response genuine emotion? Could it have been stress or hormones? Take your pick, but in any regard, I vigorously scrubbed the tear stains from my cheeks as the lights came up. Maybe it was just the Gipsy Kings' rousing rendition of Yo Soy Tu Amigo Fiel.

Maybe not.