SustainFloyd next Weekend

We visited Floyd last month and really can't wait to go back again.

From friend Fred's blog:

After a successful assembly at the foot of Buffalo Mountain for a drizzly-foggy October 10th “350 climate action”, SustainFloyd now looks ahead to the first community festival of its kind in the county, the SplitRail Eco-Fair, to celebrate ecologically-sustainable aspects of agriculture, arts, commerce, education and life together in vibrant community in a changing world.fragmentsfromfloyd.com, Fragments From Floyd, Oct 2009
Read the rest here

YouTube video of Buffalo Mountain assembly

Really wish I could go, but probably won't make it. It's a rather busy time for me right now - but my heart is there, and I have high hopes for a great weekend for those who can!

the plural of impetus

...is supposedly "impetuses." this sounds ungracious to me; not something a southern lady would say in public. but i digress.

Development in Flood Plains Continued after '93 Floods

I just have to underscore the stupidity of purchasing property in - or even near - flood plains, and am very sorry to actually have to say it. People seem to think that it's perfectly fine "because the government approved it," or something equally ignorant. No one realizes - or acknowledges - the fact that the government approves whatever developers (aka private property owners) ask them to approve. It is anyone's god-given right to develop privately-owned property in the United States. Meaning, that line on the map? Actually means nothing. FEMA cannot keep up with how quickly it moves. Picture a sponge, representing the ground, and a massive steel plate being pushed down in the middle of it, representing development (which, for you unimaginative ones and non-scientists, means increased impervious surface. I'm sorry - that would be a big word. It means paving and rooftops where rain cannot percolate into the ground). Water can't seep thru the steel plate. Therefore, what does it do?

Maybe you smart ones might try this experiment at home. Maybe the light will go on. This should not take a degree in hydrology to figure out.

Somehow, however, I doubt it will seep in for most of you, if you pardon the pun. People are just too dense where their land investments are concerned, especially if the particular investment in question represents HOME. But this is why I don't listen to the reports of distressed, displaced property owners any more. I do, however, have a high measure of condolence for those people who purchased their property well out of a flood plain 30 or more years ago, and now find themselves being flooded out because of increased development around them. If you're one of those people? I'm right beside you, loading up my word-cannon, wanting to blast the living daylights out of those greedy-assed creeps. Yeah.

Sorry, I'm a conservationist and a rebel at heart. And I like to shoot things that need shooting. Sometimes shooting relieves the stress that built up over a decade and a half of trying to convince people that building there wouldn't work out in the long run. I talked myself blue in the face, and people laughed and said, "You're crazy."

So yeah - I'm laughing now.

You property owners who purchased property in the past five or ten years or so, thinking you had all the rights in the world to go on imagining that you were safe or the government would protect you because your property was approved? And bitched and complained because the locality or bank made you purchase flood insurance, and the stupid government employee that you hounded down at the building permit office actually did his or her job and refused to write the letter you requested so you could save a measly few hundred dollars a year on your homeowners insurance? Hey, FUCK YOU. I'm fiddling while your proverbial property rights get washed out to sea, baby. Hahahahahahahahaha.

If I had a dollar for every individual who stormed out of my office because I refused to write that letter, lying so that they could close on their house by noon that day, I'd be able to take a vacation in Cancun on the savings. But I don't. Not that I wasn't offered all manner of return favors, and plied with everything from lottery tickets to free lunches to write that letter.

FEMA is not the bad guy. But you government-reform assholes have certaily ensured it is pretty much unable to do the job it was formed to do: Protect property values, water quality, and habitat. You idiots whittled away at government regulation until it is no more than a dancing puppet, unable to do anything but be an ineffective shadow tracing the lines of its original purpose. Don't whine to me, Argentina. You made your bed by insisting we allow you to develop that property to its "highest and best use," god DAMN that term, so now you get to lie down in it, and splash around with the ducks.

The only thing FEMA actually does anyway is approve your ability to purchase government-subsidized flood insurance should you be stupid enough to purchase property in a mapped flood-prone area. FEMA cannot prevent you from building there... they shove that responsibility off to the states, who in turn shove it off onto the localities, who blithely ignore it. It's actually illegal under federal law for participants in the National Flood Insurance program to issue building permits in certain flood-prone areas, for all kinds of excellent reasons that ensure property rights in the long run are preserved. But the administrative wherewithall for ensuring that gets enforced is placed with individuals who have a vested interest in seeing that it is NOT enforced: Tax Assessors and County Administrators, whose directive from the people who hired them (politicians) is: INCREASE THE TAX BASE AND TO HELL WITH GOVERNMENT REGULATIONS.

Who in their right mind thinks about the long run? People are human. The long run means nothing, except when it becomes the short run.

So no, I really, really don't even care about all the millions of dollars worth of property damage out there. You get the government you deserve; your karma, baby. As a geographer, I find it unbelievable that people can't see that water coming years before it gets there. As a person raised under the ideals of common sense, I still can't believe it.

You don't have to be a geographer to understand that when you cover the ground with buildings, pavement, and roads - the water can't seep into the ground. It collects in the low places. And the more you cover the ground, the fewer places it has to collect. It fills the low places, and then creeps up to less low places. Soon, what used to not be designated "flood zone," eventually qualifies, baby. It gets Wet. THIS IS COMMON SENSE.

Or, you could look at it this way: God is Punishing You for Your Ignorant Stupidity. The End is Near. The Apocalypse is Imminent.

I love how these people are always the same mouths who yammered for me to approve their goddamned flood-prone building lots. As if Christianity itself depended upon their getting that return on their investment.

Heh.

Either way you look at it - apocalypse or science, Shit Happens. We can't go on deranging drainage systems and drying up habitat and paving over flood plain and think God Won't Get Pissed Off Eventually. Or the earth will eventually take back what is hers.

Here's some bottom-line advice: Don't Build There. Buy a park bench and sit on it and enjoy the sunset. Bring your fishing rod, and a cooler of beers. Pitch a goddamned tent. But DON'T BUILD A HOUSE. A few localities that participate in the National Flood Insurance Program do actually refuse building permits for structures that meet certain criteria in mapped flood-prone areas. The reason I say "a few" is because out of the multiplicity of localities and regional governments that I personally have experience working for and/or with across the southern US, most administrators 1) do not understand the requirements for participation and 2) do not give a flying flip about them. Tax assessors routinely push to have building permits issued wherever and whenever they are requested, in order to increase the value of property, in order that taxes may be collected.

I really, really look forward to this day. Except a part of me doesn't actually believe it will happen. Soothsayers Rule #1: The future will be like nothing you have imagined, but when you get there, you will realize it is exactly what you expected.

Prometheans hate spelling things out. But apparently, you asked for it. And I have no doubt, will continue ignoring it. And humanity will survive, in spite of our angst.

Or not.

Blithe Cassandra, that would be me. I've done my duty in warning you, now I'll go back to what I prefer to do with my free time, which is sitting up here in my 18th century house high above the flood plain, writing porn about Jensen Ackles.

La,
S

i can hear: The Black Crowes, Wiser Time
it's my party & i'm: in your face
lost or found: down by the river
stats: sunny & breezy with a touch of headache

moonset over the pee dee

We woke this morning in the dark, gathering our things and venturing out into the world to find that frost limned the windows with silver lace. I spent a cozy night in a grain silo converted into a dollhouse, or rather a hunting lodge; four floors of airy living that the longer I stayed the harder I knew it would be to leave.

But I was only a momentary visitor to the Great Pee Dee Heritage Preserve, a once-a-year enticement that gives me fodder for ruminations and prose for long months afterwards. Like any foray into the wild, either modern or anachronistic, here is where I re-learn that my connection to the land is temporal and severe.

Image courtesy Johannes Kolb Archaeological Site Public Outreach

Last evening I drove up from Stateburg, entering the Darlington Historic District just as the sun dropped below the horizon, so that the last few miles of the trip were cloaked in gilded splendor, tracing the tender branches of the newly-budding willows that lined the corridor of the river, silhouetting the great Black Angus cattle as they lumbered toward dinner, the glow of new green grass behind them shouting the advent of spring as much as the fecund scent of orchard blossoms.

The Silo

Husband, the archaeologist, has a valid excuse to stay the entire ten days that the annual event is open: he's working. From all over the southeast dozens of volunteers, students, and faculty descend on the property once inhabited by one Johannes Kolb, a farmer of some success in this community that still derives the bulk of its income from agriculture. The site has been studied for over ten years, and has yielded a wealth of information about its former occupants.


But I do not come to study in any official capacity, I come to absorb and wallow in the good company and newly unearthed information. Archaeologists live simply, but believe in epicurean comforts. And there is always music. They incorporate what they have learned into their evening relaxations, as they turn a warm fire into the means by which reproduction earthen pots are kilned, as close as possible to that used by the makers of the shards dug up during the week. The bits are studied as to form, structure, and composition, and copies are attempted.

Some of them are marvelously useful. Others for some reason or other do not make it through the firing, coming from the ashes with deep cracks or scars, but these are still considered useful for what they yield about the process.


So we sat in the dark after dinner, imbibing our choice of refreshment, and laughed and talked and sang to the two guitars that appeared to accompany the evening's quiet melodies from the tree frogs and waterfowl. As I said, they live simple but rich, and anyone who wanted to suggested a song and whomever knew the words would sing. The musicians created fantastical accompaniment, and the frogs provided rhythmic backnotes.


There is a lesson here: everything we have is all we need. They discussed the pits they'd dug, and assessed their uses as aboriginal refrigerators. They showed me how the pots were formed for differing purposes - some for boiling, some for storage, some for carrying. Some of them know how to make cordage from fibers found in the eastern woodlands, they know what mushrooms to eat and what leaves will treat wounds.

One of them can make fire in his hands. I didn't say with his hands, I said in his hands. That deserves its own post, for now I will leave that to your imagination, so you may feel the wonder of the phenomenon in the same mystery as the children for whom it was created millenia ago, and you may think about from whence come magical legends of such things. They weren't as magical, or as mythical, as you may believe. But I'll give you a hint: the aboriginal was a chemist.

The promethean in me laughs up her sleeve at that.

This is how I know humanity will be fine, no matter what. This is how I can bury my nose in my books, tend to my children, live my life, with only half an ear to the wind, listening to the wails that beset much of the world obsessed with oil and finance and danger. You tend to that if it pleases you. I'll be as far away from that as I can possibly be, heart dancing in accompaniment to the wind that breathes through my soul.

How can you live like that? I ask you.


Today is Good Friday. Let me tell you why it is ALL good: because everything we have is all we need. And there is only so much we can accomplish if we are listening to angry voices, trying to make up for sadness in which we had no hand, and for which the only answer is to pick up and walk away. And be the beacon. It only took me about 3/4 of my life so far to figure that out - Good God, do you think I want to dwell on how much time I wasted? Wouldn't you rather concentrate on what you've learned and may put to good use, enriching your everyday life and that of those you love?

I believe you would. And so would I.


The definition of wealth contines to evolve, and I am today as wealthy as I've ever been, even though dollar-wise I bring in less than 1/4 of what I did five years ago. I measure my wealth in smiles, and laughter, in peaceful moments around a campfire, in viewing miles of lovely arching trees, old oaks, willows, and pine; in quilted pastures through which creeks tumble in tranquil paths, neat farmhouses set back from the road, brick stores, lumber roads, and a deepest-blue veiled purple morn. And I measure it in better health, and seeing less stress in the eyes of my children. My world is a succinct registry of all that matters.


This morning I had a perfect sky of cerulean blue edged in a silken swath of apricot. Last night I took part in community harmony of the happiest sort, and watched artists at work making useful, beautiful things out of river mud. I was warmed by a red-hot purple-gold fire of wood gathered not fifty feet from where it was built, that served a dual purpose both in beauty and utility. I slept in a building that gives new meaning to the words "adaptive reuse."

PeeDee River at flood stage

It cost me exactly $14.43 in gas money. Everything else was free.

If that isn't your definition of a bargain, I'd really like to know it.

But there is more. Tomorrow I'll tell you all about it. But first, go out and greet the sunrise, say good-night to the moon. That is where it begins.

Note: You can read more about the Johannes Kolb site in this article originally published in South Carolina Wildlife Magazine, Life on a Sandy Knoll, by Christopher Judge.

Archaeologists Chris Judge and Jason Smith

one helluva mess

'Notes on the Flood
Elba, Alabama March 1991

There was a handmade sign at the bridge as you cross over into downtown after the flood that poured 16 feet of water into the historic area, inundating the courthouse and shoving trucks & conversion vans from a car lot adjacent to the levee into buildings like so many wadded up pieces of paper. In boldly painted letters, it read:

ELBA -
WE
WiLL
Build
Again

But overheard at the grocery store in nearby Enterprise:

"These Elba people don't seem to understand that the river is God and that God is the River, and that erosion and wind and rain are all part of nature; as such are things to be applauded, even worshipped. It is wonderful that we cannot control them, that they do not respect our petty political boundaries and that they remind us of what tiny specks we are in the eye of the Creator. It is a wonder that He allows us to go on at all, insipid and disrespectful and illusory as we are. As if we had any right to our own opinions about things."

The little town of Elba, Alabama built in the crook of a bend in the Choctawhatchee River behind enormous levees, was voluntarily moved to higher ground later that decade, after another devastating flood. They got the message. There are some places on this earth that just weren't meant to be inhabited by humans. They are where you can become part of the food chain. Why in God's name we insist on filling in wetlands and building houses & roads on them is a mystery to me. It isn't like the wetlands will go away. It's like trying to hold back a sneeze --you might be able to do it for a little while, but eventually it's going to come out, and it seems what we try to suppress comes out more violently than if we'd just let it happen in the first place. '

--from the 1991 journal of someone living & working there at the time



Overheard below is something overheard recently, and I'm going to try to pass it along to you as it was given to me, and you'll have to pardon the language but to try to write it without the patois takes something away from it. It isn't funny, but weeping and wailing and ignoring the root of this problem isn't going to help. We need to LEARN from this, people:

first speaker:
"well. i be tryin' to keep up wif de hurricane victims, but it's all most distressin'. 2 states is unda watta and de rest o' de country's bein' affected, too. kin you 'magine havin' to walk aroun' grubby and hot and wet fer days at de time? and all dose po babbies what needs medical 'tention. shoo. seem to me dey ort to be able to figger out some way o'd dispersin' these damn things 'for dey reach shore."

the response:
"now u be thinkin' lak an engineer. an' dat whut got 'em in dis mess.

de fax is dis: iffn dey dind develop 1500 SQUARE MILES OF WETLANDS along de gulf coast in de last 20 years de water woulda BEEN DISPERSED. DAT WHAT WETLANDS IS FO'. donchano. God KNOW WHAT HE BE DOIN' WHEN HE MADE LOUISIAN' & MISSISSIPPI!! They wuz de nation's kidneys at one pernt. Dat what I go to school fer & learn all about how de coastal ecosystems works. How de soil take up so much water & cleans it. How de plants works to hold de water & slow down de tides. How de lettle animals functions as part o' all dat, including little oysters & mussels & clams, what won't grow nowhere else but in dem tidal wetlands.

but NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! Dam greedy bastards come down & piss all over ever'boddy. Dey see wetlands fer miles & miles & not a house in sight & dey say, "DAM! Lookit all dat bare land! We kin make a passel o' money!!!" So dey commences to fill in de wetlands & build roads & houses & make all kinds o' mess. An' when de storm surge come, it got no place to go but de low places. An' like somebody flush de toilet, Louisiana & Mississippi at de bottom o' de tank when de storm surge go up & den it gotta flow back downriver to de sea. An' de dam moneymakers o' course dey gits de hell outa dere & go back to New Jersey & sits in de bars an' watches de storm on TV an' dey say, "Oh, hoo! Dat wuz one helluva storm! Pour me anudder gin & tonic, Mo! I hadda a helluva time gettin' to de airport!" And who is lef' down dere but de po' people what ain't made all kindsa money and dey ain' got no way out.

God DAMN them Yankees!!"

OK. Before I get rained all over, I need to perhaps explain one local's definition of Yankees. They would be those assholes who bring their money and their eager ideals to the South and just like colonials, think to capitalize on any investment they make without thought or prayer for any effect on the locals. Yankees can exist in just about any state or any country, actually. And they don't even have to be from "up Nawth," altho' a preponderance of them are. And thanks to them, we have high water, high taxes, and increasing poverty in the South. OK, I'll stop now. After all, it wouldn't be ladylike to say any more on the subject, like speaking of someone's bad manners beyond the mention of them. And I do feel the need to put my Lady mask back on for the moment. I'll need it when I go out in a little while to do my part. I know you good people have already driven deep into your pockets and given lots of money to the Red Cross or other missions for good. At least I hope so. Especially if you are a carpetbagging piece of the problem who ever made a dime off of any land transaction in the areas affected by Hurricane Katrina.

Land is not a commodity. It is our skin.

historic lands

A key historic farm in Delaware is under imminent threat of suburban strip commercial & high density residential development. Oh, and the School Board wants to tear down the historic manor home and build a school. What kind of history lesson is that?

Please read, sign, and pass along to your neighbors. Visit the links on the right-hand side of the petition page to learn all about the issues surrounding this disturbing situation. The Friends of Historic Glasgow have done an excellent job monitoring and fighting the case up to this point, but they need your help. The owner, who has Alzheimer's, expressed her intent "never to sell to developers" her entire life long. Shame on her wayward children:
http://www.ipetitions.com/campaigns/historicglasgowpark/

Another reason why if any of you out there have significant environmental or historic property you would like to protect, please consider deeded conservation easements. Historic overlay zoning can be overturned and watered down. National Register status is only helpful if you *want* to protect your property, it is absolutely meaningless if a property owner (or future owners) wants to develop it in spite of your past wishes.

taking the blue pill

i have seen more than i want to,
and less than i deserve.
it is time to move on.
to be a martyr no longer to an unrecognized cause,
one that few believe actually exists.
would that it were so.
my venue lies in another sphere, and here i stay listening, listening
eyes shut, ears in fine tune
for the next call of duty
the next will o' the wisp
calming, quiet, hot and breathless it will come
and fall upon my would-be deaf ears
should i not be at attention
and ready to put the cause to action
i will pick up my pen
and march ahead to meet the dawn
while others sleep
and find myself among them,
somnolent sustenance in my throat.

the open road

on the way to badger's house...
my husband tells me that there are no badgers east of the mississippi, and they are mean & nasty creatures to boot. so i feel the need to clarify: moley & ratty are just ahead and if we scurry, we can catch up to them and have a lovely tromp thru the wild wood...