every generation needs a new revolution

The words of Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826):

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.

Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.

Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.

Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.

Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.

Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

Errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

Every generation needs a new revolution.

Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.

He who knows best knows how little he knows.

I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too.

I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.

It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.

No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden.

Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.

The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory.

Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very fast.

We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.

When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe

Everett Street, Then and Now

The upper photograph was taken in 1938 for the Tennessee Valley Authority, and identified simply as "Fryemont Office Building."

The lower photograph was taken this week, seventy years after the first shot, and shows the current appearance of Everett Street, Bryson City, NC.

The columned building on the left is the old Citizens Bank Building, constructed ca. 1900. According to a sign in the window, it will house the Storytelling Center for Southern Appalachians (opening this fall).

You have to wonder how the stories to be told there will measure up to the stories that were told in the Pool Room and the Shoe Shop of long ago.

If You Wanna Be a Patriot You Gotta Dress the Part

The news media has done a great job enlightening the citizenry this week.

On Sunday morning, I heard Bob Schieffer grill General Wesley Clark about the race for the White House. Clark opined, “I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.”

I was shocked, I tell you, shocked! Fortunately, Schieffer was there to express a nation’s incredulity over such an outrageous remark. “Ruh-ruh-reeeallyy?????,” Schieffer sputtered.

With the media relentlessly shining its light on this episode, Barack Obama wasted no time repudiating Wes Clark for the General’s ludicrous assertion, and even proposed a Constitutional amendment requiring any potential President to ride in a fighter plane and get shot down.

It’s that important!

And kudos to the media for coverage of the other crucial issue of the week: Mr. Obama’s American flag lapel pin flip-flop. “I decided I WOULDN’T wear the American flag lapel pin before I decided I WOULD wear the American flag lapel pin.”

We know there’s an element of risk in Obama’s decision to stick it – the lapel pin, that is. The small size of the pin makes it difficult to distinguish the details. How would we know that the flag pin on Obama’s lapel DOESN’T look like this...

...a subliminable message giving aid and comfort to Islamofascists the world over.

Barack Hussein Obama could show us he’s a genuine red-blooded patriotic American…by getting the American flag tattooed on his forehead, like any genuine red-blooded patriotic American would. But that’s pushing political expediency farther than it needs to go.

Size matters, though, and an itsy-bitsy American flag lapel pin just isn’t big enough to make the point. For instance…

This lovely model has graciously volunteered to demonstrate how a larger flag proudly worn draws attention to her…hmmmm…patriotism.

Yes, that’s it. Her patriotism. Maybe if Obama wore a bigger flag, then HIS scrawny chest would swell with pride for his country, too. Actually, if he really wants to display his patriotic fervor, he should adopt an entirely new wardrobe for the rest of the campaign. He could dress like a real man, a manly American man, and go with the Rocky look:

Or...to project the right image, Barack Obama could make a dramatic entrance at the Democratic convention this summer...ride a motorcycle into the arena, hit the ramp at 80 MPH, sail over the delegates and land on the stage wearing this patriotic number made famous by Evel Knievel.

I’d love to see him deliver his acceptance speech dressed in that suit.

On the other hand, he could go for a more traditional look, while still showing us whose side he’s on:

Indeed, there’s more than one way to wear your patriotism on your sleeve, so don’t stop with wearing it on your lapel. That’s what I would say to Barack Obama.

Of course, by now, some of you might be thinking it would be un-Presidential, unseemly, or even silly for him to don some hokey costume just to get elected. “Barack Obama,” you assert, "would NEVER do such a foolish thing. He has FAR TOO MUCH DIGNITY to do anything like that."

To which I would simply say…

“Ruh-ruh-reeeallyy?????”

Locomotive Difficulty

See updates below

Locomotive of the Tuckasegee and Southern Railroad that fell through the Scott Creek trestle, 1940

I've been scratching the surface of what's available from the National Archives, and came across this photo of a train in trouble. Although I'm not certain, this mishap might have been the result of the 1940 floods in Jackson County, NC. On August 30-31, 1940, unprecedented floods swept through the Tuckasegee valley.

For more background on that flood check out Lynn Hotaling's terrific recap published in the Sylva Herald:

http://www.thesylvaherald.com/flood1940-083100.htm

The Digital Heritage website also provides good coverage and lots of links on the 1916 and 1940 floods in WNC:

http://www.digitalheritage.org/index.php/heritage-moments/3-other-moments/7-floods

Now that we have lakes on the upper reaches of the Tuckasegee, flooding from a weather event like that of 1940 won't be nearly as bad. Either that, or it will be a whole lot worse than what occurred back in '40.

Time will tell.

In May 1976, tornadoes and heavy rains swept across North Carolina causing several deaths. The Associated Press quoted an earwitness making the very predictable statement, "It sounded like a train coming." The story went on to report:

Two earthen dams near the community Speedwell south of Cullowhee were "in danger of collapsing"....both dams are on Cullowhee Mountain, one of them on a 20 acre lake. "If one goes, the other goes..."

A little searching failed to yield answers on the train falling through the trestle, but I did discover a website entitled "appROACHES: an annotated bibliography of COCKROACHES in starring and cameo roles in the creative arts." (Prepared by: Marion W. Copeland, 128 Amherst Road, Pelham, MA 01002) Don't assume that cockroaches are a subject of limited significance:

Literary cockroaches usually empathize and are associated with the weak and downtrodden - from Aristophanes' beleaguered farmers in "Peace" (421 B.C.) to the poor, drug-addicted, outlawed and stigmatized whether because of race, ethnic heritage, sex or sexual preference, age or species. For that reason, Willie Baptist, speaking in the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, used this association to move his constituents to take advantage of a leadership training program especially designed for the powerless: “Let us do as the cockroach and not as the dinosaur,” he advises. “ The sensitive [survival] instincts of the cockroach must be matched by our own mental capacity to attain scientific truth about our conditions and about the strengths and limitations of our enemies.”

With amazing regularity, the cockroach represents or symbolizes the plight of those, world wide, most severely stomped on by the dominant, still patriarchal power structure. There is even a suggestion that, because of that association, the roach may prove one of the heroes of 21stcentury ecofeminism, dedicated as that movement is to cleaning up the remains of the patriarchy--of all modes of dominance--and establishing healthy, balanced ecosystems for all life forms. The goal?--making us all as likely to survive as is the ultimate survivor, the roach.

Anyhow, I stumbled upon the cockroach bibliography because it included a literary cockroach moment set on the Tuckasegee River:

Reichs, Kathy. Fatal Voyage. New York et al: Scribner, 2001. In the fourth of her Temperance Brennen, forensic anthropologist mysteries, Reichs creates a memorable cockroach encounter. Temperence is knocked-out, bound, sacked, and left by the Tuckasegee River in the Smokey Mountains of North Carolina, for later disposal by a mad, cannibalistic megalomanical adversary:

“My heart rate slowed…, and cogent thought began to creep back. “It was then the thing crawled across my cheek. I heard dry insect sounds, felt movement in my hair, then the tickle of antennae on my skin. “A scream formed in my throat. I rolled back and forth, batting at my face, my hair. Blinding pain seared my brain, and my innards jammed up against the back of my throat. “Quiet! One functioning brain cell commanded. “Cockroaches! The others shrieked.” (335)

“I kept at my ankles and wrists, yanking, twisting, tugging, stopping periodically to monitor the sound outside my bag. “Roaches scuttled across my face, their feet feathery on my skin” (338).

Once loose, Temperence encounters a far deadlier foe, her human would-be-killer, and the roaches are forgotten.

As it turns out, Reichs will be speaking at Western Carolina University this fall:

Scheduled to participate in the Chancellor’s Speaker Series in 2008-09 is Kathy Reichs, forensic anthropologist and best-selling author whose novels inspired the Fox television series “Bones,” on Nov. 18.

UPDATE - According to another source, the train mishap was the result of the 1940 flood and involved a Blackwood Lumber Company locomotive, seen here before the flood waters had subsided:

The identifying information accompanying the National Archives photos I've been examining is sketchy at best. If the trestle shown here actually did span Scotts Creek, it might not have been anywhere on the current rail line. And there was no Tuckasegee and Southern Railroad. According to a comprehensive list of North Carolina railroad companies, it was the Tuckasegee and Southeastern Railroad, founded in 1922 and running 12.5 miles from Sylva to East Laporte. Had this rail line not been discontinued (in 1946) it might have served us well, helping to relieve automobile traffic congestion between Sylva and Cullowhee.

But that's not what happened.

New Frogs

I'd been watching for two weeks.

Suddenly, the tadpoles that had been swimming around with big tails and tiny hind legs...transformed into little frogs...



...learning to swim all over again.



His (her?) first morning as a frog:

How Cold Mountain Got Its Name

Thomas Clingman explains how Cold Mountain came to be named Cold Mountain:

Several hunters were on the top of the mountain when it was covered by a thick sleet. The heels of one of them, to use a skater's phrase, "flew up," causing him to sit down very suddenly. Instead, however, of his remaining quietly thus at rest, the merciless action of the force of gravity, conspiring with the inclination of the ground, caused him to slide rapidly for a couple of hundred yards down the mountain-side.

When finally he did bring up in a bank of snow, he was decidedly of opinion that this mountain was the coldest one he had ever seen. In fact, when afterward questioned if he was not very cold, he said: "Yes, as cold as Cicero in his coldest moment!" He had doubtless heard some local orator pronounced as eloquent as Cicero, and thus concluded that the old Roman was a man of superlatives generally. Since that day the peak has rejoiced in the name of Cold Mountain.

-Appleton's Journal, December 27, 1873

Mysterious White Birds

God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages. - Jacques Deval

I received a note last week from a friend who had seen what he thought might be wood storks. Now that would be news. The wood stork is an endangered species. The closest known rookery for the wood stork is near Sunset Beach, NC, just north of the South Carolina border. And the birds in question were observed in the mountains of Western North Carolina.

Those wood storks of WNC join my long list of unsolved ornithological mysteries. Despite my interest in birds, I can’t presume to call myself a birder. That requires some innate talent I lack. A bona fide birder explained to me the differences between a red-shouldered hawk and a red-tailed hawk, which sounds obvious. But even when I got a good look at a hawk last week, I could not tell you if the shoulders or the tail were red. To me, it was simply a hawk.

The birders were always very helpful when I tagged along on field trips. “Look,” they’d exclaim, “in that oak tree. It’s a Prothonotary Warbler.”

I’d squint and scan the tree, not seeing any birds. Finally, I’d concede, “Where? I’m missing it.”

“It’s about a third of the way out on the second limb from the bottom. On the right.”

I’d squint some more and see nothing but leaves. Finally, I’d claim, rather sheepishly, “Oh, alright, NOW I see it.” But, of course, I never did see that warbler.

Despite my deficiencies as a birder, I enjoy watching birds, I enjoy listening to birds and I enjoy learning their life stories. Occasionally, I’ll see a bird so unfamiliar that I get busy trying to identify it. Sometimes, I figure it out, as in the case of an impressive black-and-white warbler that visited the feeder. Just as often, I come up empty.

Several years ago, I saw a white bird strolling about near my house. It was larger than the average songbird and had a little plume sprouting from the top of its head. It resembled a quail more than anything else. But a WHITE quail? I saw it a couple of more times that week, and after that, never again. My best guess is that it was a quail, but then again, maybe not.

On a cold evening several months ago, we were cruising along the Blue Ridge Parkway and caught a glimpse of a small white bird in the woods near the edge of the road. It was enough of a glimpse to observe the bird darting from a tree stump to the ground and back again.

After I got home, I perused my bird books and came up with the snow bunting as a possible identity for the white bird on the Parkway. Maybe it was a snow bunting. Maybe it wasn’t. I’ll never know.

Last week, a story came out of Stanly County, NC concerning an odd white bird. It was, in fact, a bluebird: an albino bluebird, with white feathers and red eyes. Millingport resident Martha Thompson said, “I’ve been watching birds 50 years and have never seen one before.”

Getting a close look at such an anomaly is a just reward for Thompson, who maintains 15 nesting boxes and five or six feeders. State wildlife officials deemed the albino bluebird “quite rare.”

My friend’s wood storks, like my own quail and snow bunting, could remain unsolved mysteries. However, I’ve learned another lesson in birding from that Stanly County bluebird. The next time I’m puzzled by a strange white bird I’ll try to get a good look at its eyes, to see if they’re red. Then, I still might have trouble identifying the species, but at least I could tell you whether it’s an albino or not.

I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven. - Emily Dickinson