Journal

The Name of the Rosewing

Fri, 11 May 2012 22:09:36 -0500

In the wake of Tuesday's results, those of us from the Old North State who opposed Amendment One are having to face an enormous uptick in the number of rude and/or dismissive comments about North Carolina, and the sad fact is, they're deserved.

That doesn't make them any more fun to read or hear, alas, but other than cursing the 61% of the voters who opted for adding bigotry to our state constitution, there's not much we can do about it at the moment. I personally am taking some time away from considering politics and focusing instead on contemplating the beauties of nature. And by great good fortune, I have just received a tool to make such contemplation easier: The Peterson Field Guide to Moths of Northeastern North America.

The nice people at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt supply me with occasional review copies of bird-related books, many of which I find pleasant and diverting, and at least one of which (Pete Dunne's Essential Field Guide Companion) has become extremely important to me as a tool for identifying birds. Given my own publishing history, seeing bird books in their mailings is no shock, but having no experience with moths whatsoever, and not much at all with insects in general, I was puzzled when I received this new moth-related title by David Beadle and Seabrooke Leckie.

What I quickly discovered when I opened the book, however, is that you don't need any knowledge of entomology to enjoy it; all you need is an appreciation for the dazzling, the improbable, and even the farcical. It's not necessarily that the moths themselves possess these qualities, though many do, as you can tell from the thousands of photo illustrations. No, the best place to see these qualities is in their names.

I don't mean the scientific names, which are couched in a Latin far more advanced than my studies would allow me to understand, but the common names, which are highly surprising and delightful to readers more familiar with bird names.

Why? Because American bird names are, for the most part, utilitarian. They tend to describe the birds in terms that help the observer more easily identify them, whether by plumage (Black-throated Blue Warbler), voice (Laughing Gull), or other noteworthy physical feature (Scissor-tailed Flycatcher). In other cases the names may reflect the habitat where you're likely to see such a bird (Marsh Wren, Western Meadowlark) or occasionally memorialize the naturalist who first described the species (Wilson's Plover, Cooper's Hawk). Though they occasionally display a bit of whimsy--the Whip-poor-will, whose name is its call, or the Ovenbird, named after the shape of its nest--bird names are generally not an arena for enormous creativity.

Where moths are concerned, however, quite the reverse is true. The name given a moth might be a mythological reference, or a refined metaphor, or an obscure joke, or simply a collection of improbable words. These names are not merely creative, but evocative of art in all its forms. William Faulkner might well have titled a novel The Hebrew or The Penitent. P.G. Wodehouse could easily have written a tale about the misadventures of young Baltimore Snout, or his paramour, the Beautiful Eutelia, while Edith Wharton would certainly write a novel with the protagonist Iris Borer and her overstrict guardian, Major Sallow. Philip Glass would not hesitate to name a composition "Implicit Arches," and I think "Mournful Thyris" might be a suite by Mendelssohn. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would cheerfully have titled a Sherlock Holmes story "The Adventure of the Sordid Wainscot" or "The Case of the Nondescript Dagger." Mark Rothko could hang "Obtuse Yellow" or "White-Striped Black" in any gallery in the world. Charles Dickens probably did write about crotchety old Vagabond Crambus, The Scribbler is a Dorothy Parker column waiting to happen, and I refuse to believe that Philip Roth hasn't already published a story about Melsheimer's Sack-Bearer.

Beadle and Leckie offer nearly 1500 common names to the reader, and in some cases, the names here are their own coinages--no previous publication offered one. Consequently, I have to give them credit not only for tracking down such wonderful names, but for creating some as well. Best of all, there is often an appealing air of mystery in the nomenclature. Much more is suggested than is revealed, leaving the reader curious, even fascinated, by the possibility of learning more about the creatures that bear them. Who could resist the allure of the Confused Eusarca, the Honest Pero, the Scarce Infant, or the Unicorn Prominent? And how about:

Rusty Virbia
Exhausted Brocade
Exposed Bird-dropping Moth
Pearly Wood-Nymph
Sober Renia
Rosy Rustic
Morbid Owlet
Wavy Chestnut Y
Mottled Prominent
Chickweed Geometer
Frosted Tan Wave
Little Virgin Tiger Moth

Flipping through this book generates seemingly endless questions in the reader's mind, questions far beyond a simple "Don't you want to know more about Horrid Zale, Gooseberry Barkminer, and the Purple Fairy Moth?" (You do. You know you do.) Among the questions that arose in mine:

What's so pleasant about the Pleasant Dagger?
In what way is the Abrupt Brother abrupt?
And to what, exactly, is the Similar Eucosma similar?

Isn't Spurge Hawkmoth a great name for an action hero?

How can we even discuss the paradox of the Nameless Pinion?

I haven't been inspired to go out and set up a moth trap yet (though instructions for doing so are included in the introduction), but I have to say that flipping through the pages of this guide is a delight for anyone with a love of nature, and for anyone with any love of language at all.

Stop by your local bookseller's and take a look. And tell them Vagabond Crambus sent you.

One Last Plea

Mon, 07 May 2012 20:20:13 -0500

If you're a North Carolinian, please get out to the polls on Tuesday, May 8th, and vote against Amendment One.

Thanks.

--PC

Mayday

Tue, 01 May 2012 21:15:02 -0500

The odds are good that if you're reading this at all, you know perfectly well what my position on North Carolina's "Amendment One" is. And since most of you reading this are friends and relatives with whom I get along well, there's even a pretty good chance that you already agree with me.

This is not written for you. --PC

MAYDAY

This is written for any readers who might be inclined to vote in favor of Amendment One, and it is a good-faith attempt on my part to explain why I would like you to vote against it.

My own feelings on gay marriage or gay rights in general don't matter here. What matters is that Amendment One is NOT a ban on gay marriage. Gay marriage is already illegal in North Carolina.

Let me say that again, because there are folks out there who simply don't know yet:
Gay marriage is already illegal in North Carolina.

In short, if you're one of the many North Carolinians opposed to gay marriage, you need to know that voting for Amendment One will not help you get your way. You've already gotten it. Whether you vote "Yes," vote "No," or just stay home on May 8th, gay marriage will be just as illegal on May 9th as it was on May 7th.

But if you vote for Amendment On,e you are voting for a law that will cause problems for a lot of people. And many of those people are straight.

Various state, county, and municipal institutions, such as universities, offer benefits, such as insurance, to the domestic partners of their employees, and even to the children of those partners. If Amendment One is passed, public institutions will have to withdraw those benefits; an unmarried man and woman, even if they're in a common-law marriage, will not be recognized as a domestic partnership any more.

If you vote for Amendment One, you're voting for these people to lose their insurance and other benefits.

Laws against domestic abuse currently apply to people in all domestic partnerships, gay or straight, married or unmarried. If a man beats his common-law wife, he can be prosecuted under those laws. But Amendment One means the state can no longer offer special protection to that woman, because it does not recognize her as married.

If you vote for Amendment One, you're voting for these people to lose their protection.

There are people who feel strongly that gay marriage is wrong. I personally disagree, but my disagreement is not important. That's because this vote isn't about stopping gay marriage. It's about how much pain opponents of gay marriage are willing to inflict on their neighbors, gay and straight alike.

Amendment One is unnecessary, but worse, it is cruel. And I hope that the citizens of my home state will recognize that cruelty and take the steps to prevent it from being inflicted on one another.

Your fellow Tar Heels need your help. Please vote "No" on Amendment One.

--Peter Cashwell

Please feel free to copy and pass the above to any and all NC voters. All I ask is that my name be included at the bottom. --PC

Higher Ed

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 13:09:39 -0500

When you send your offspring to college, you have a natural tendency to worry that the experience will leave them overworked, depressed, and/or anxious.

Evidence would suggest that this has not been the case for Thing Two.

Good luck on your exams, kid.

Doris Betts, 1932-2012

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 10:43:57 -0500

If, as Robert A. Heinlein observed, There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch, it doesn't take a great leap of understanding to recognize the fact that we spend our lives getting into serious debt. Someone is out there buying our lunches from the first moment of our existence--before we know, or are even capable of knowing, who "someone" might be, or even even that we exist ourselves. That debt to our mothers is uniquely unrequitable, but there are other debts that we acquire from the moment we leave the womb that will almost certainly go without payback. We are in debt to our parents and guardians for shelter, for nourishment, for everything they teach us, good and bad. We are in debt to our siblings and friends for a whole different category of lessons, as well as for a kind of sympathy and companionship we cannot get from even the most generous of parents. We are in debt to our teachers, our coaches, our employers, all those who have taught us how to do what we do. And in many cases, we owe a debt to people we have never met: to those who raised our parents, and their parents, and all our ancestors; to those who fought for all the rights, privileges, and comforts we now enjoy; and to those who created the stories that nourish our imaginations. But as entropy takes us farther and farther away from those who helped launch us from our starting points, restitution becomes more and more unimaginable. No matter how much wealth you set aside for these generous souls, you'll never even find them all, let alone deliver to them what a strict accounting would say they deserve.

With payback an impossibility, then, what can a debtor do? My parents know how much I owe them, just as they know they'll never get fair restitution; the only thing I can do to is follow their example, and try to match their generosity with my own offspring. And they, of course, will have to do likewise. It may sound like some cosmic Ponzi scheme, but the relentless flow of time demands that we go to our graves both owing and being owed, each of us a borrower and a lender at once.

The grey-green landscape outside my window this Sunday morning is one that seems likely to produce thoughts primarily of debts, and that is indeed the main focus of my mind, thanks to the news I got late yesterday that Doris Betts had died. In my personal ledger, there are few debts larger than the one I owe her, but even as I processed the news of her death, I was realizing that Doris herself had no idea how much I owed her.

I first met Doris sometime in the mid-1970s, when she directed the North Carolina Fellows Program, at which my mother also worked, but I didn't really get to know her until I entered UNC myself in the fall of 1981. Thanks to my usual half-assed approach to anything bureaucratic, I mistakenly assumed that anyone who had qualified for UNC's Honors Program would automatically be enrolled in any writing course he wanted, leaving me shocked to discover that Doris's English 29W course had filled up when I wasn't paying attention. I could have settled for the non-Honors version of the class, I suppose, but for some reason I was determined to play with the big boys, so I wrote Doris a letter. I don't recall exactly what I wrote, but I did let her know that I desperately wanted to get into her class, and I added a line that, as I think about it now, could have easily been taken the wrong way; I told her that I'd be willing to commit "any number of felonies" on her behalf if she'd let me register.

As I soon discovered, that stupid joke was exactly the right way to get on Doris Betts' good side. Her reply welcomed me to the class and asked that the felonious gains be handed over in tens and twenties, please.

I spent that fall of my freshman year finding out that while I was a capable writer, I did not in fact know how to write. I had the ear for it, so to speak, and I had some chops, but I knew very little about the theory, structure, or history of what I was trying to do. Doris (and my classmates) provided plenty of feedback on my short fiction, including a peculiar bit of twist-ending crime fiction called "Your Basic Kidnapping," which combined my strengths (an enjoyable and conversational narrative voice with a certain degree of smart-ass wit) and my weaknesses (a ludicrous plot with no characters of note beyond the narrator). The course was everything I'd hoped it would be: a chance to write more or less what I wanted for an audience of interested and well-informed readers.

I was somewhat surprised, though, that after taking some time to study our writing, she gave each student a personalized list of short stories to read--stories that she thought would offer us some important insights into how we might become better writers. My list included "In the Penal Colony" by Franz Kafka, "Why I Live at the P.O." by Eudora Welty, and "The Two Bottles of Relish" by Lord Dunsany. They didn't have a lot in common, but they certainly got my attention, particularly the latter, which probably says something about me as a writer, or perhaps as a diner.

From 29W I went on to take Daphne Athas' class in Stylistics (which I loved, but which I was at least a year too young to fully appreciate), Jim Seay's course in Intermediate Poetry (which I signed up for without taking the beginning class, but was allowed to attend after auditioning with a few poems), and short fiction courses from Lloyd Little and Bland Simpson. When I returned from my junior year abroad, I was ready for the big kahuna: English 99, a year-long weekly seminar for seniors. Doris and Daphne were the professors, and the students included several friends from my past classes, such as Mimi Herman, and a number who would go on to write acclaimed work, including Tim McLaurin, Randall Kenan, Kate Rindfleisch, and Sharlene Baker. It was a total delight. Daphne encouraged us to experiment, with her wide-ranging mind bringing surprising and sometimes even bizarre abstract points to our attention, while Doris' droll wit and no-bullshit professionalism kept us honest and focused us on the work. I never took a better class, never learned more about myself as a writer and a person, than I did on Wednesdays in 1984-85.

So yes, I owe Doris a debt I will never get to pay back, and she simply couldn't have known what those days in Greenlaw Hall meant to me. But maybe she had a vague idea, because there was one thing I got from those classes that she could see as clearly as I can the two brilliant pink azalea blossoms bending under raindrops outside my window. One of my 29 and 99 classmates, with whom I remain convinced I was fixed up by Mimi and the others one afternoon in 1985, became my wife, whose value to me is beyond any of the words I learned to use. I'll never be able to give Doris anything close to what I owe her, but because she was my teacher, I now have people in my life who can accept the lessons and the love she gave to me.

No, the lunch in this world is not free. But I learned from Doris Betts that we can always buy it for each other. And that, after all, is the way it tastes best.

A Good Name for a Band

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 16:30:46 -0500

Like most Americans my age (and younger), I've often played the game of coming across an interesting or unusual combination of words and pretending it's the name of a band. It's a simple game that requires little effort beyond saying "That would be a good name for a band!" and it can be played literally anywhere--in the car (Soft Shoulder), at the candy store (Whack and Unwrap), or online (the Search Tools). Having been through the agonizing process of selecting a band name numerous times, it's a game I enjoy much more now that there's nothing at stake--in other words, I can afford to be amused by the name when I know I'm not really going to have to be known to the public as a member of Insatiable Sucking Desire. (Yes, this almost happened; we also considered Herd of Turtles and the Mudheels before settling on Terminal Mouse.)

But last night in Richmond, the issue of band names was brought home anew as Kelly and I headed to the National to catch a new favorite band of ours, Raleigh's own American Aquarium. Lead singer/songwriter BJ Barham describes the group as "five-piece Americana, fronted by giant asshole BJ Barham," and their own name is a tip of the hat to legendary Americana group Wilco, whose song "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" begins with the line "I am an American aquarium drinker." Many groups take names from the movies--Duran Duran from a character in Barbarella, Faster Pussycat from Faster, Pussycat, Kill! Kill!, They Might Be Giants from They Might Be Giants, etc.--but it's relatively rare to see one taking its name from a lyric, or at least we haven't been able to come up with any other good examples.

The reason we were thinking up examples, however, was because of a problem at the show, one which is easily identified and even more easily fixed. When we arrived at the door, one of the three opening bands was already playing... but we didn't know which one. They played at least three songs while we stood waiting for the next group to come on, uncertain whether the next group would be A.A. or another opener, and at no point in the between-song banter did the frontman mention the name of the group, or for that matter the name of the group that would follow. As they were not the headliners, there was no reason for the band to assume that the members of the audience knew anything at all about them--most people choose their live music experiences according to the main event--so the lack of information was particularly odd.

The next group came out and immediately announced to me (except, y'know, not out loud or anything) that they weren't quite used to this whole rock-and-roll thing. Partly this was due to the appearance of the acoustic guitarist, who had on an untucked off-white golf shirt with some company's logo on the breast and generally gave off the aura of a fraternity bro who'd gotten into Dave Matthews a year or two back and has been learning his way around the instrument... and hey, maybe he could get into a band thing while he's trying to make up his mind about business school. This quartet also made the peculiar choice of both opening and closing their set with covers of Tom Petty songs. They weren't bad performers, and their taste in cover tunes was actually pretty good, but their originals didn't really leave me interested in hearing more. And they, like the previous act, did not inform us who they were or mention any of the other groups taking the stage that night.

Kelly began seething. "I need a sign to hold up that says 'Say Your Band's Name.' Or maybe we could hang a banner at the back of the auditorium."

The third group, a trio, brought a welcome degree of professionalism to the night. Each member wore a vest (or in the frontman's case, a vest and suit jacket), providing a visual hook for the audience, and all three were obviously experienced musicians. Alas, though they thanked the previous two acts--the Atkinsons and the Good Birds--and the headliners, they did not mention their own name. Still, we were pretty happy with their contribution to the show. The lead singer played acoustic guitar, while the upright bass player and banjo/harmonica/tambourine player added backup vocals, and they turned out a set of about twelve original songs with strong melodies, varied and interesting arrangements, and quality instrumental and vocal performances. But no, they didn't tell us who they were... until the end of the final song, when the lead singer finally identified them as "James Justin & Co."

And that left the headliners, whom everyone had come to see. And the first words out of BJ Barham's mouth when he took the microphone were "We're American Aquarium from Raleigh, North Carolina."

Learn from this, opening bands. Learn from this.

Won't It Be Peachy If We Win the Game?

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 22:58:44 -0500

Fight fiercely, Harvard,
Fight, fight, fight!
Impress them with our prowess, do!
--Tom Lehrer, "Fight Fiercely, Harvard"

I've spent some years talking with students about college, and one point I'm increasingly likely to make is that admission is often something of a crapshoot. At competitive universities, even students with outstanding academic and extracurricular records are fighting long odds of acceptance. Case in point: according to the Harvard Crimson, only a minute fraction of this year's crop of applicants will be heading to Cambridge this fall--a whopping 5.9 percent:

At 5 p.m., 1,260 students received notifications of their acceptance by email. In total, including the 772 students admitted in December in the early action acceptance round, a total of 2,032 initial offers, more than 100 fewer than last year, were extended to applicants. The admit rate for those considered under regular decision, including the 2,838 early action candidates who were deferred to the original round, was 3.8 percent.
This year's accepted students were selected from an applicant pool of 34,302, down 1.9 percent from last year.

As I've told my students, Harvard gets applications from over 5000 different schools every year; even if it accepted nothing but the valedictorians, it would be turning down the majority of them--and Harvard doesn't want a freshman class of nothing but valedictorians. According to one Yale admissions officer who spoke to me a few years back, Yale rejects 52 percent of those students with perfect 800/800 SAT scores (on verbal/math, that is).

In short, there's nothing wrong with applying to an Ivy League college; I did it myself, and I certainly wouldn't tell any student he had no chance of getting in. That said, I'd be quick to tell him that he should not view a Harvard rejection as a mark against him.

After all, at least 94.1% of his peers are walking around with that same mark. And not a few of them are friggin' geniuses.

To the Dogs

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 10:14:08 -0500

If you type the word "romney" into a Google search bar, the #2 result that fills in automatically is romney + dog. (In fact, if you type "romney(spacebar)" you'll get it as your #1 option.) It's listed above romney + vs Obama, romney + for president, and romney + Illinois. Worse (for Mitt, anyway) the result after that is romney + dog roof.

In other words, Mitt's Google problem is only marginally better than Rick Santorum's, though the former is at least a little easier to bring up in polite company. Millions of people are out there looking for information on the now-infamous story of Mitt's having driven off to Canada with his dog strapped onto the car roof, and the story isn't dying down; if anything, it's growing more intense, as witnessed by the existence of DogsAgainstRomney.com, featuring a variety of posters, t-shirts, and other products and images intended to keep the story of Seamus, the Romney family's late Irish setter, in the public eye.

The events that catapulted Seamus to internet glory occurred in 1983.

Family members told the Globe that Romney attached a special windshield onto Seamus' carrier to protect him from the wind. Romney was traveling that summer with his wife, five sons, and Seamus to his parent's cottage on Lake Huron. But hours into the ride, Seamus apparently suffered diarrhea, which ran down the back window of the car. Romney's sons, all under 14, howled in disgust. Romney pulled off the road into a service station. There, he borrowed a hose, washed down Seamus and the car, and they drove on to Ontario.

The first account of this incident was reported by the Boston Globe in 2007 (though the original article seems to have been removed from the Globe's website), and it created something of an uproar even then. Nowadays, as Romney grows increasingly likely to be the Republican nominee for president in November, it's drawing increased attention, and I've seen more than a few Republicans who are upset about that attention, protesting that they've "seen dogs riding on the back of pickup trucks on many occasions... they seem to like the air blowing on them."

Leaving aside the question of whether a dog in a pickup bed is getting the same kind of breeze as a dog spending twelve hours in a cartop carrier, not to mention the question of whether Seamus' explosive diarrhea ought to be considered a direct commentary on his feelings about the issue, it's also worth noting that some Republicans have not hesitated to attack Romney for his actions. These Republicans, however, are also hoping to earn the party's nomination this fall, so we may perhaps consider the dog-related criticisms issued by the Gingrich and Santorum camps to be somewhat compromised.

In general, though, the attempts to defend Romney's actions strike me as unconvincing. You don't have to be an animal rights advocate to see problems with the decision to strap Seamus to the roof; all you really have to be is reasonably aware of what happens on interstates at high speeds. Practically anyone who has done any driving at all has come across items thrown from pickup beds or roof racks, sometimes because they weren't properly secured, or sometimes because the vehicle they were secured to was involved in an accident. I've seen lumber, suitcases, even whole trash cans that got flung into the roadway, and it's not hard to imagine a station wagon being forced into a situation where its rooftop cargo might come loose: a sudden stop that throws the carrier forward at 70 mph... an oblivious 18-wheeler lurching from the other lane, forcing the driver to whip the car sideways... or worst of all, catching a wheel in a soft shoulder and beginning a roll. Even what's under the roof will be in great danger in such a scenario; what's on top of the roof will very likely end up unrecognizable.

The story of Piddler on the Roof , then, seems like a good reason not to vote for Romney, but not because it's a case of Mean Mitt deliberately attempting to inflict suffering on his family dog. I'm more inclined to see it, as I've seen it written up, as an example of Mitt's lack of empathy, an inability to consider the feelings of others (e.g., the very poor) who may be affected by his decisions. That strikes me as reasonable, but perhaps not the best summary of the case.

Basically, I see the story of Seamus as the story of Mitt Romney's lack of judgment. If there's one thing a president must have, it's the ability to consider the consequences of his actions. And frankly, I don't want to elect a Chief Executive who'll be forced to pull the country over two years into his term in order to clean up all the shit he was too oblivious to expect.

Vacated

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 11:33:01 -0500

Okay, so the plan to record all my dining experiences for the week kind of fell through. To be fair, that wasn't the only plan that fell through; my initial hopes of logging life birds in Mississippi, Arkansas, and Oklahoma collapsed owing to two main issues: one, the timing of the trip, which was too late for the winter waterfowl gatherings in the southern part of the Mississippi valley, but too early for most of the neotropical migrants to have arrived, and two, the arrival of a big system of thunderstorms stretching from east Texas to roughly Kentucky.

There wasn't much to be done about the former, once Dad and I had realized that Yazoo NWR, while full of a remarkable number of species--we logged 62 on the day--simply didn't have any of the unfamiliar birds I was hoping to log. The White-fronted Geese had already left, the Purple Gallinules had not yet arrived, and the next thing we were likely to get a close view of was a good old-fashioned Turd Floater.

Thus, when we arrived at our hotel in Texarkana (on the Texas side, if you were wondering), we had a choice: hunker down for a major rainstorm or alter our travel plans. We opted for the latter, abandoning our plans to visit Oklahoma and instead making a lightning trip down through Louisiana to the Gulf Shore. Unfortunately, the rain followed us, ruining a morning's birding at Mississippi's Grand Bay NWR and sending us to our evening stay in Tallahassee in something of a funk. (Admittedly, we were in a somewhat better mood thanks to UNC's victory over Maryland in the ACC tournament.) The next day we took a spin by the Okefenokee swamp on the way to Brunswick, GA, stopping at an Applebee's to watch the UNC-NC State game. Aside from the LARGEST SOFT-SHELLED TURTLE EVER, there was little excitement from the nature viewing available there.

That left us one more spot for birding (Harris Neck NWR, just north of Brunswick), and the next morning we hit it hard--53 species total, including several birds I hadn't seen in years, such as the Yellow-throated Warbler, Anhinga, and both Black-crowned and Yellow-crowned Night Herons. In addition, Dad found us a Glossy Ibis, and we saw rookeries of hundreds (if not thousands) of egrets, herons, and storks, but the lifer-in-Georgia plan was not successful. We trundled up the interstate to a Mellow Mushroom near Florence, where we watched UNC fall short against Florida State before continuing to my folks' place in Pittsboro, NC.

That night, Kelly arrived, and yesterday the two of us went back down I-95 for a few days' vacation on the Florida coast with some friends. We are now perched on the edge of the marshy sound, just north of the Castillo de San Marcos fortress (a/k/a Fort Marion) in St Augustine. We have been visited by multiple species of herons today, and the view of the water has yielded everything from Willets to Ospreys to Semipalmated Plovers to Common Loons. It's a wonderful house, with huge windows and plenty of shade, and the breeze off the marsh is soothing in the extreme.

I suspect there is little likelihood of doing anything complicated today. Which is as it should be.

Road Food, Part 1

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 21:25:35 -0500

Burgers and fries,
Hot dogs and pies,
Gimme some grease (Get me a Coke!)
I really want it now.
Road Food!
--The Darryl Rhoades Orchestra

As Dad and I make our way west on our annual spring break trip, I'm certainly planning to spend a lot of time reporting on our various bird sightings, but that's usually the kind of thing that's more suitable for post-trip reflection.

In the meantime I thought I'd indulge in a little daily reporting on the other important part of our travels: food. Both of us are trying to eat somewhat sensibly on this trip--Dad's actually trying to follow the Atkins diet--so we may not reach our usual heights of culinary adventure, but what the hey.

Follow along with our simple instructions and eat hearty!

MONDAY, MARCH 5th

Breakfast:
My folks' place, Pittsboro, NC:
Coffee, two peanut-butter-and-chocolate granola protein bars

Lunch:
Lexington Barbecue, Lexington, NC (legendary home of "Lexington-style" BBQ; alas, not quite as exciting as its reputation might lead you to expect)
Pulled pork barbecue, slaw, hush puppies, unsweetened iced tea

Road snacks:
Granola protein bar, lemonade

Dinner:
The Olive Tree, Lithia Springs, GA (a pleasant little mom-and-pop Italian joint--great service as well as excellent food)
Cedar-planked salmon w/lemon sauce, grilled broccoli, water

Dessert:
Courtyard Inn, Lithia Springs, GA
Otis Spunkmeyer chocolate-chip cookie, coffee.

We're There

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 20:02:05 -0500

I'm pleased to report that the migration of petercashwell.com from its longtime home at the Fictional Company has been successfully completed.

The nice people at Site5.com have now taken over hosting duties, and with any luck I won't have to ask them quite as many stupid questions as I've had to ask Jonathan and the gang at FictCo since 2002. I'm sure the questions I have will be equally stupid, but perhaps not quite so numerous.

In any case, I wish Jonathan & Co. the best of luck with their newest endeavor, LiveBio.com, which looks like an attractive service for those interested in a straightforward one-page website.

My site email (cashwell@petercashwell.com) appears to be functional as well, so as always, if you have comments, questions, or suggestions, feel free to drop me a line.

Excelsior!

Are We There Yet?

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 00:09:35 -0500

Good question. My sources inform me that we've successfully transferred the site to its new host, and I have been able to see it and access at least some of the email functions.

With any luck, we'll at least be able to jump out of the car and run to the bathroom. Let's leave the luggage in the trunk for just a bit, though.

Although now that I look at it, it does look as though the clock's running about a half-hour behind. Hmm.

Testing

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 09:59:31 -0500

One

Two

Three

Onward & Upward

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 18:17:04 -0500

Well, this may be it--the last post I'll make with FictCo as my site's host. I've put in a migration request to the nice folks at Site5.com, and if all goes well, they'll be switching the site to their servers sometime in the next little while--but whether that means hours or days I don't know.

I'm hoping normal service (if that is indeed the term) will be resumed shortly. In the meanwhile, play nice. Or else.

Love,

PC

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 11:39:34 -0500

It's hard to believe, but true: I started this site almost a decade ago, with a post on March 19, 2002, discussing the mysterious contents of my desk.

Nine years and eleven months later, it's time to let you know that there are likely to be a few changes in the site in the near future, largely because my longtime web host, the Fictional Company, is shutting down its servers on February 29th in order to start up a new service called LiveBio. I've spent a little time checking out the LiveBio site, and it appears to be a very cool (and highly intuitive) way to host a website, but at the moment, it doesn't appear that it will work for petercashwell.com in its current form.

As a result, the odds are pretty good that I'll be moving the site to a different host sometime in the next week or so. My hope is that there will be no interruption in our service and no need to do anything complicated to get back to reading my various entries. Also, it might be a good excuse for me to spend a little time trying to update the site, which I have put off for a very long time and really need to get on in the near future.

But anyway, please join me in thanking Jonathon and his pals at FictCo for their hard work and friendly service, and if you're looking for a way to get a blog up and running, please consider paying LiveBio.com a visit.

And if anything else weird comes up, well, you'll know about it when I do.