Beware

In the wake of the firework perils of yesterday's post, this morning I woke to a gruesome story on NPR about table saws... an average of ten Americans amputate one or more of their fingers every day on this ordinary power tool.

Yikes! That every day sort of danger is terrifying. I take back what I said about being hard to scare; we were just telling the wrong kind of stories around the campfire.

Caution

While at the ranch we spent a couple of evenings sitting around our campfire telling scary stories, but it turns out that it's pretty hard to scare three teen-aged boys and a couple of forty-something ladies, so on the second night we had a few fireworks, too. They were really no more than glorified sparklers that we bought from a pair of wacky church ladies manning a tent in the Walmart parking lot in Luray. Even so, I confess to being a little intimidated, if not scared, by these incendiary devices, and I cautioned the boys more than once about their use.

When I was a kid, somebody always knew somebody else who knew somebody who had blown a few fingers off with fireworks. Urban legend or not, to me playing with firecrackers was like eating your Halloween candy without your parents checking it-- there could be a razor blade in your apple or LSD in your peanut butter cup.

The other night our pyrotechnics sparkled and burned bright and beautiful and without a hitch, but the same cannot be said for everyone this holiday. Here's a headline from the Washington Post: Police: NY Man Blows Arm Off With Party Fireworks.

See? It can happen.

Explosiony

This afternoon we saw one of those empty-headed movies that can be an entertaining way to wile away a too hot day. It lived up to our expectation of mindless diversion with the exception of misrepresenting Gandhi as a warrior's philosopher. To be honest that bothered me a little bit, but I soon forgot my concerns in the dazzle of all those white teeth and detonations. Ah, summer vacation.

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.