About a week ago I had a visit to the blog from Sue Bell (no relation that I know). She is an aspiring jazz singer from Seattle who, in addition to saying nice things about the blog, provided a link to her own web page where one can listen to samples from her album. I listened, liked what I heard and followed the link to CD Baby and ordered the CD. Is she the next great voice in jazz or pop? No, but I like her. Why? It's hard to explain, but let me try.

Picture this: You are in a little jazz club. The band is great, all old pros who are tearing it up while trying to keep the music accessible to the casual drinker off the street. The club is almost empty. At the table with you is a talented friend who has sat in with the guys before. They invite her up on stage to do a few songs. Not show tunes or jazz standards, but some of those tunes from the seventies that you secretly liked but were too cool to admit to while putting your Clash or Elvis Costello lps on the turn table. She sounds great. Not a perfect voice, but she sings the hell out of those sappy old songs, stripping out the schmaltz and leaving the honest sentiment behind. And the band sounds like they are having the time of their lives. It's over, and as you walk out, you leave smiling.

While down with the flu this weekend I had the rare treat of being awakened out of a feverish sleep by phone call after phone call only to discover that it was not my wife checking in from her business trip, or my in-laws calling with an emergency or any of our neighbors reporting errant livestock. Instead, it was some damnable recorded voice droning on (and on and on) in behalf of one or the other of the rival candidates in the particularly nasty race for the Senate here in Virginia. It does you no good to scream at a robot, but I tried anyhow, croaking from my sickbed as I slammed the receiver down. And don't even get me started on the omnipresent t.v. ads. The professionals who run these campaigns must truly believe the voting populace consists of idiots who can be swayed by nothing more than a breathless voiceover magnifying the real or imagined sins of the rival candidate. I actually began this election cycle with a certain measure of respect for both George Allen and James Webb, which has declined steadily as their staff and supporters have done what they think is necessary to win my vote. Their thinking is, to say the least, flawed. While it may be unjust to judge the man by his minions, if their campaign staffs are a measure of the candidates' character, I no longer trust either of them to be my Senator. In fact, I am not sure I would trust either of them to be the guy who pushes my trash down with a pole at our local dump station before pushing the big red button on the compactor. Nonetheless, at some point tomorrow I will stand up in a polling place and be faced with the choice between one of the two. This leads me to introduce my own idea for election reform; Vote None of the Above.

I propose a law that would require that in any race there be an additional option to vote for "None of the Above" positioned immediately after the candidates' names. If "None of the Above" leads by a plurality of the vote at the conclusion of the election, then a new election would be held within a reasonable time to allow the parties to reconsider their choices. The parties could, if they were so inclined, re-nominate the same candidates and independents would be allowed to run again. If however "None of the Above" wins an absolute majority, none of the previous candidates would be allowed on the new ballot.

It could be argued that this crackpot proposal would potentially delay the filling of public office and throw our system of government in disarray. Well, as they say in the computer world, that's not a bug, it's a feature. Vote None of the Above!

The view from home this morning.

Many thanks to all the folks who stopped by the blog and particularly those who left comments. For those in search of a real phone of your own, try eBay, or if you do not mind paying a premium for a guarantee that everything works, Vintage Swank on Main Street in Front Royal, a few blocks away from my office, carries a fine selection.

Now that the Instalanche is subsiding, regular blogging will resume with usual selection of farm pictures, literary references, rural anecdotes and the occasional odd thought about my odd life.

It's an Instalanche!

October sunset

Yes, it is a telephone. More particularly, it is a vintage Western Electric telephone, the kind you used to lease from Ma Bell back in the old monopoly days. It is nearly indestructible, the sound quality is great and it rings. It does not beep, buzz, squeak, play hip hop or chatter at you like a mini smoke alarm. There is an actual bell inside and it rings. Some days a small thing is all it takes to make me happy.

By all evidence, the change of the season is here. Top coats are starting to come out of closets around the house. I put on a battered old farm coat yesterday to go track down a ewe who seemed to have some hoof problems and found a pocket full of twine and scraps from feed sacks, left there since early spring. The sheep seem to be noticing the change in light and temperature. Susan looked out the door Monday evening to find half the flock looking back at her, plainly expecting something. It is heading towards that time when we put them in the barn at night and supplement the sparse winter grass with grain and hay, but we are not there yet. We told them so, and eventually they gave up and went back to grazing, casting reproachful glances in our direction as they left.

Here is Twitch, the kitten in question, in focus this time. I had propped an old mattress against the wall in the living room until we could bring the farm truck around to load it up and carry it away. It was climbed, conquered and claimed by the latest addition to the household, lord, as you see, of all he surveys.

No, I have not become a modernist painter. This little bit of "found art" from my picture files illustrates what happens when a small kitten, tricky lighting, and a photographer who (a) did not check the camera settings and (b) did not put on his glasses all join together.

Morning Fog 

A New Year?

The Labor Day weekend just sailed by and I wake up to find myself well into September, the kids back at school and our late summer drought broken by heavy rains.  I'm glad to see the rain for the sake of our parched pastures, but now regret the chores I've put off which will be that much harder in a muddy barnyard.

The beginning of September has seemed like the beginning of the new year ever since I started school circa 1960, much more so than any short, cold day in January.  The old Roman/Byzantine Empire started the New Year on September 1st, and the Eastern Orthodox Churches still use that date to measure the start of the Ecclesiastical year.  There is no special celebration that I am aware of, but it is customary for Hierarchs to note the date with a message to the flock.  Here is meditation on time and new beginnings from Metropolitan Herman of the Orthodox Church in America.  Since we spin around the Sun in a sort of ellipse, Nature does not provide any absolute beginning for the year.  Even the seasons vary depending on your hemisphere.  The carousel keeps moving so fixing any one "start" will always be arbitrary.  It can't hurt though to have as many opportunities for a new beginning as possible.  So, for those of you who could use an excuse for a new start, a re-start, or just a chance to take stock and try again, Happy New Year!

Outfoxed

Really, I had the pictures right there on the card.  I clicked the telephoto lens onto the camera, stepped stealthily out on the deck and caught the red fox prowling through the field next to the house.  Seventeen pictures downloaded to the computer, then deleted from the compact flash card.  When I went to open them up, gone, every last one of them, just like the fox himself when he caught sight of me.

Seraphims on-line

There are a number of "Seraphims" in the Orthodox blogging world.  One is a retired missionary bishop, author and saintly eccentric, currently visiting Moscow for the encouragement of small group of open minded Orthodox believers involved in service and evangelism.  Another is a fellow attorney who practices and prays at the southern end of the Appalachians a few states down from me.  I read both daily, but have a special affection for the second Seraphim whose life experience overlaps with mine in interesting ways.  I read this post last Thursday after a Wednesday I would not care to live over.  I had spent the previous afternoon fighting a doomed battle in a Court-appointed case where I was representing a mother whose child had been taken away for mostly justifiable reasons.  It was a hard case, which I believed I argued well, but ultimately unsuccessfully.  My client was broken hearted, I was depressed, and when my assistant found out that Virginia's Court appointment fee wouldn't cover even an hour of my time billed at our standard rate, she got depressed too.  I do these cases because somebody needs to, but they do exact a cost, emotionally, spiritually and financially.  It did my morale good to hear that sometimes it all works out:

I walked into the courtroom and gestured to my client to meet me in the back. He and his wife came back, still holding hands. He was almost distraught from worry and fear. “They’re coming home,” I said. My guy dissolved in tears and grabbed me in a bear hug, and for several minutes we stood there, me slapping his back, him sobbing, and — to be honest - me not completely dry eyed. Finally we broke, and I told him the plan. Visitation in his home starts on Saturday, and if all goes well, they will move in full time with him when Christmas break starts. He said he understood. I shook his hand, and he grabbed me again. “God bless you, man. God bless you,” he said. I stopped him. “I want to thank you for your prayers over these years,” I told him. “But your prayers have gotten you this: God has blessed you.”

Try to remember . . .

I had intended to link to this when I read it on Monday, but forgot in the press of business, until my assistant printed out the New York Times review of the same show for me today.  Why should I care what Terry Teachout or the Times think of a revival of The Fantasticks?  Teachout's lovely and wistful account of his connection with the play and the changes it made in his life brought to mind the very great changes it made in my own life. 

It was my first, and probably last, appearance on stage as an adult.  I have no ambitions to hit the boards again, but on some mornings, if you put your ear to the door and listen closely over the sound of the shower, you may still hear a somewhat worse for the wear baritone telling you about September, grass, grain and the innocence of youth.

The view from home; morning sun and a little mist. 

A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

If you have any literary pretensions at all, somewhere in the back of your mind is that vision of the perfect little coffee-house; a place to come in from the cold and find books, good company and a cup of something to take the chill away.  It appears that someone in Colorado Springs has been rummaging around in the back of my mind and brought a piece of that vision to life.  Anyone interested in setting up a Shenandoah Valley franchise?

Dormition of the Virgin Mary Greek Orthodox Church held it's Annual Greek Festival this past weekend. Family obligations kept me from helping the way I would have liked, but I did stop by for some pastries, some pictures and a little roast lamb. To read a little about the hard work that goes on behind the scenes in the kitchen, go here. (Registration may be required)

Small Pleasures

This past weekend I made a stop by Central Coffee Roasters after picking up some tools and placing an order for sheep mineral supplement at the nearby Co-op store.  While I realize that no sane person needs Certified Shade Grown Panama Finca Hartman or Yeman Mocca Matari or Sumatra Swiss Water Decaf dripping through the filter paper in the morning, there is just something about the smell of a fresh ground, properly roasted coffee ending it's journey from some exotic location at my breakfast table that drives me to fork over outlandish amounts of cash at least a few times a year for the experience. 

I am not sure whether this amounts to a guilty pleasure or not.  It perhaps goes into the same category as the Avengers Emma Peel mega-set DVD collection; not necessary, but probably not dangerous to your salvation in the long run.  In any event, I will continue to enjoy the scent from the grinder and coffee-maker in the morning and accept it as a kind of earthy incense blessing the beginning of the day.

Only in America . . .