Category: Uncategorized

---

Tomorrow, July 18, will be the 10th anniversary of the Into the Woods blog.

I started the blog while I was still living in San Francisco, more than a year before I actually moved to North Carolina. I hope you will indulge me for a moment for a few self-referential comments.

• In the past 10 years, I have written 1,219 posts, totaling almost 400,000 words. That would equal about four good-size novels.

• About half the readership of the blog is by regular readers who come here almost every day. The other half come from web searches, people who stop by to read an article on a particular subject.

• The most-Googled post is the one on “Buffalo China — a sad American story.”

• Quite a few people stick around and read dozens and dozens of posts, pretty much all the posts about the building of the house at Acorn Abbey, a gothic revival cottage. I’ve lost count, but a number of people have bought the plans to the house from the architect, Rodney Pfotenhauer, and have built (or are at present building) a similar house. I’m going to guess that I’ve helped Pfotenhauer make a good bit of money (which he richly deserves).

• About a third of the blog’s regular readers are outside the United States, particularly in Europe. Readers who come here from Google are from all over the world and are particularly interested in my more nerdy posts, including my post on the Nikon Model S microscope and the post on rebuilding classic Peerless speakers.

• During the past five years, five books have been conceived and/or written here — three by Ken, and two by me. Of course there will be more.

• I am planning a book on the building of Acorn Abbey, but that book is in the queue behind the third Ursa Major novel, to be released next year. It will be a book not just about building a particular house, but about downsizing and simplifying while remaining a productive citizen and staying involved with the world.

Thanks for being a reader! And here’s to the next 10 years.

---

This summer — August 21 — a total eclipse of the sun will sweep across the United States. This is the chance of a lifetime to experience one of nature’s strangest events.

Unless you’re inside a path that is about 70 miles wide, you won’t see as much. A partial eclipse is not nearly as impressive as a total eclipse, because a little bit of sunlight goes a long way. Only on the path will you see a total eclipse. So, if you plan to witness the eclipse, you need to plan ahead and pick a good spot in the totality zone.

Here is a link to Xavier Jubier’s interactive Google map. This map should help you get a general idea of where you’d like to be for the eclipse. Notice that the map also will show you the percent of “obscuration” for locations outside the path.

However, for picking your location in much greater detail, I’d recommend using Google Earth. Download this Google earth file (also from Jubier), which, when opened in Google Earth, will show the path of the eclipse. Then you can use Google Earth to zoom in as close as you like to scout for locations.

A lot has been written about the danger of looking directly at the sun and why protective glasses are necessary if you want to do that. But, in the early 1970s, I witnessed a total solar eclipse in eastern North Carolina. I will never forget it. Lots of people had telescopes set up with special filters.

But looking at the sun during an eclipse is not the part that I found fascinating. Rather, the coolest part was watching how nature responds to sudden darkness in the middle of the day. You’ll want to be around lots of birds, if possible. They’ll go quiet, and as the sky lightens again they’ll start singing again. And yes, during a total eclipse it gets very dark. Not as dark as night, but spookily dark. It’s easy to understand how eclipses terrified the ancients.

Instead of worrying about glasses and filters, I’d recommend making a pinhole projector, using some white cardboard or corrugated whiteboard as the screen. With the pinhole projector (Google for how to do it), you’ll be able to see the black disc of the moon slowly moving across the sun until everything goes black. If you’re standing under a leafy tree with dappled light on the ground, you’ll see that the dappling of the light is made up of thousands of pinhole projections, in which the gaps between the leaves are the apertures. Thousands of little blurry discs on the ground will turn into crescents, because they are images of the sun.

In short, don’t look up! Instead, look around you, and listen. That’s where you’ll see (and hear) the most interesting stuff.

---

For an animation describing the astronomy of a total eclipse, here’s a video.

---

---

---

The Miracle of Dunkirk, by Walter Lord. Published in the United States by Viking (1982) and in Great Britain by Allen Lane (1983). 324 pages.

---

Last week, in a post about summer movies, I wrote about the movie “Dunkirk,” which is to be released on July 21 and which seems sure to become a summer blockbuster. I mentioned in the post that I was looking for a good book to read on Dunkirk. I ended up with The Miracle of Dunkirk by Walter Lord.

I could not put this book down.

When I started the book, I knew nothing about the author, Walter Lord. I just now looked him up on Wikipedia. He was an American, born in 1917, died in 2002. He was an American blue blood, went to Princeton and earned a law degree at Yale. It is obvious, reading this book, that what fascinates Lord so much about Dunkirk is not the military angle, but rather the human angle, whether foible or great depth of character. The author’s sheer niceness and love of humanity somehow come through on every page, though the story is told by aggregating the memories of the men who were at Dunkirk.

Lord also wrote, in 1965, a book about the American civil rights era, The Past That Would Not Die. I do believe that Lord was a liberal, like me, and I think that must be the factor that can make a book about war so relevant. This is not a book that glorifies war or that makes little patriotic mascots out of veterans (though it treats the veterans with great respect). I believe I will read Lord’s book on the civil rights era. Obviously he is a writer who deserves to be remembered and kept in print. At least one of Lord’s books, a book about the Titanic (1955), was a bestseller. Lord was a consultant to the director who made the movie about the Titanic in 1997. I would not be at all surprised to learn that this book on Dunkirk fed into the screenplay for the new movie. I will watch the credits carefuly.

Whether or not this book was used by the screenplay writers of this summer’s Dunkirk movie, this book would have been perfect. Lord tells the story through the eyes of Dunkirk veterans, including even some Germans. Lord actually lists his cast of characters in the back of the book. The list is 14 pages long. While reading the book, I wondered how he assembled so much extraordinary detail. He explains this in the back of book with a section on source materials. Partly he relied on written reports filed with the British admiralty. But he also interviewed, and exchanged letters with, many Dunkirk veterans.

Lord’s last chapter, “Deliverance,” occurs on June 4, 1940. That’s the day that Winston Churchill delivered his “We shall fight on the beaches” speech to the House of Commons.

This book is out of print, but it can be ordered from used booksellers on Amazon. Somehow I ended up buying the British edition, though I didn’t realize it. The book was shipped by international priority mail from Goring by Sea, which is just west of Brighton. The book was delivered in nine days. It’s kind of cool, actually, that my copy of the book came from a bookshop right on the channel, not far from the action at Dover. Yup, I’ve been to Brighton, and to Dover, though I’ve crossed the channel only by the tunnel train. I have not been to Dover castle, which was used as headquarters for managing the Dunkirk evacuation. If I’m lucky enough to make another trip to England, I must visit Dover castle.

I’m persnickety about what Lily the cat eats, and Lily is too. Though I know that some cat keepers and cat food authorities say that cats should not be on a diet of only dried food, cats may have their own opinions.

Lily is very opinionated, and her opinion is that nothing will suit other than the Castor & Pollux organic cat foods. Many years ago, I tried cooking for Lily according to the best homemade cat food recipe that I could find. My plan was to freeze the portions and thaw them as needed. Lily wouldn’t touch the stuff (I can’t say that I blame her) and so I put it out back for the possums. When she was still a kitten, I bought her first bag of Castor & Pollux at Whole Foods, and that has been the deal ever since.

Her bowl is kept full all the time. When it needs topping off, she lets me know. She was abandoned and hungry as a kitten, which gave her a neurotic start where food is involved. My strategy was to make sure that she always had food, hoping that that would convince her that she is never in danger of going hungry. It seems to have worked. She’s not piggy. She eats when she wants. And though she is probably a pound or so overweight, she carries it well and shows no tendency to gain beyond her current weight.

I’ve offered her tuna and salmon. She sniffs it but won’t eat it. A few years ago, Castor & Pollux changed the shape of the kibble. That made her suspicious for a day or two, but she decided that it was OK. She drinks an appropriate amount of water. She likes her water cold, filtered water from the refrigerator tap, the same as I drink. At eight years old she has never been sick, and she has a beautiful coat. She’s as rambunctious as a kitten, is rarely naughty, and scratches only where she’s permitted to scratch. She knows a lot of language because she has always been talked to, and she is the most communicative cat I’ve ever known. She’s the first cat that I ever raised from a kitten, and I have to say that I’m proud of how she turned out. I sometimes say that she has a Ph.D. in cuddling, not least because she roots under the covers with me at least a couple of times a night.

Castor & Pollux cat food is pricey stuff. But my view of it is that, if it makes a healthy cat and reduces vet bills, then it’s worth the investment.

This sounds like a Castor & Pollux ad, doesn’t it. But it’s totally unsolicited.

My plan all along, regardless of the outcome of the election, was to pull up the abbey’s drawbridge the day after the election and go into literary mode. I’ll start writing Symphony in Ursa Major, book 3 of the Ursa Major series.

Ken is here for the winter. He has a contract for his third book, which will be about the right to roam, a subject on which he wrote an op-ed in the New York Times earlier this year.

Horrible as the political situation is, I have to take a break from politics and take refuge in novel-writing, a process that I actually have come to enjoy and look forward to. In April, my two-year term as Democratic chairman for my county expires. I’ll probably accept another term, if they want me. I will return to politics to fight another day.

I’ll also continue to post to the blog, though I hope to steer clear of politics for a while.

I’d give credit for the photo except that I don’t know its source. If anyone knows the source, please let me know in a comment.

Wikimedia — Click on map for higher resolution

Next year, most of us in the U.S. will have a chance to see a total eclipse of the sun without traveling too far. The eclipse will be Aug. 21, 2017.

Here’s a web site with all the details: eclipse2017.org

I think I’ve already figured out where I’ll want to go to watch the eclipse. The path of totality crosses a magical spot in the mountains of North Carolina, down at the point where the borders of three states meet — Tennessee, Georgia, and North Carolina. This is Deliverance country. Spooky, no?

The spider in my window was having a stink bug for lunch. Way to go, spider.

When I was a young’un in the rural South, we called these doodlebug holes. There is much folklore about doodlebug holes. The version I learned as a child was, “Doodlebug, doodlebug, come out, your house is on fire.”

A little Googling reveals doodlebug holes to be the sand pit traps of antlion larvae. As for the adult antlions, I’ve already found one of them in the house this spring. I caught it in a jar and took it outside.

Wikipedia commons

When I check the logs of this blog, one post that I find is frequently read (by people searching Google) is “On letting grass go to seed” from May 2009. I owe my readers a follow-up on that post.

In May 2009, I was so busy finishing the building of the abbey that I didn’t have time to mow my grass, even if I’d wanted to. Also, I had reasoned that it couldn’t hurt to let the grass run wild in its first year.

But in the spring of 2010, I bought a lawn mower, and since then I have been mowing (though I don’t mow nearly as often as most folks or cut the grass as low).

Each spring, there is still an opportunity to let one’s grass go to seed and get a free seeding. The timing is tricky. The seed needs to be ripe, but it wouldn’t be healthy to let the grass get too tall and then mow it down. It’s hard on grass to cut too much of its growth at once.

I am not a horticulturist. But I am a careful observer, and I do know horticulturists who can give me advice when I need it. So, with your own grass, use your own judgment. I am more experimental than most folks. I love my grass.

One of the things I notice is there are many kinds of grasses in my yard. I tend to dislike monocultures. I have spread many types of seed based on the assumption that the happiest grass, the grass best suited to a particular area, will eventually dominate. And in any yard, grass will volunteer, though I have no idea where it all comes from.

To decide when to mow, you need to be confident that the seeds have ripened and matured and then dried out. Look closely!

I put some samples under the microscope. I was greatly surprised by what I saw. Grass looks like little corn plants! Each grass seed looks a lot like an ear of corn. If I’m not mistake, the seeds flower out the top through tiny silks, like corn, at least on some types of grass. I may be wrong about this, and I’ll need to ask a horticulturist. But upon seeing the resemblance of corn to grass under the microscope, I did some quick Googling. For example, Scientists Trace Corn Ancestry from Ancient Grass to Modern Crop.

In the microscopic photo below, notice what appears to me to be a little corn-like tassle at the top of the seed.

One of my favorite wineries in the Yadkin Valley is Rag Apple Lassie. It’s near Boonville in Yadkin County. Many of the Yadkin Valley wineries are hobby operations, typically started by rich CEO’s intrigued with the idea of making wine. Rag Apple Lassie, on the other hand, started as a true agricultural enterprise by former tobacco farmers who wanted to reinvent themselves in the modern world. The land has been in the Hobson family for more than a hundred years.

“Rag Apple Lassie” was a favorite dairy cow for whom the winery was named. Jenna Hobson, the matriarch of the Hobson family who presides over the business, gives everything a feminine touch, including the names they give their wines.

To a wine lover with Californiafied tastes, many of the Yadkin Valley wines are less robust than the sassy Sonoma wines that I prefer. I do like Rag Apple Lassie’s chardonnays.

The mountain in the background is Pilot Mountain, which is part of the little Saura mountain range that connects the Yadkin Valley with the Dan River Valley.

Jenna Hobson in her tasting room