Category: Uncategorized

This blog has been copied — lock, stock and barrel — from crippledcollie.com, where the blog was started in 2007. This will be the blog’s new home, though I’ll update both domains in parallel (probably for months) to give everyone time to move here. Eventually, crippledcollie.com will be retired, and all the new material will be here. However, I am in no hurry to retire crippledcollie.com, which gets about 5,000 visitors per week. Since 2007, I’ve written so many posts on so many subjects that a lot of people land here with Google searches. I don’t want to lose all that Google traffic.

Note that when you visit the Into the Woods blog here in the new domain, all the existing posts have been copied here, going all the way back to 2007. You’ll find a simpler, fresher look. Photos will display slightly larger. And, because the new blog uses the latest version of WordPress, I’m hoping that comments will be easier.

The Into the Woods blog will continue to focus on simple living in rural America. But because Acorn Abbey is increasingly involved in publishing, a new domain, appropriately named, with some shift in focus seems appropriate.

I’ll have more information soon on the next book to come out of Acorn Abbey. That will be Fugue in Ursa Major, a science fiction novel by David Dalton. The novel is finished and is now being edited. Soon the novel will be in the hands of my three distinguished reader/advisers. After that, there will be more editing and minor revisions before it’s published. Publication should happen in late November or December.

I’m going to self-publish Fugue in Ursa Major. The odds of finding a commercial publisher are terrible. Self-publishing is no longer stigmatized. I’ve been in publishing all my life, so it’s easy work. There will be a trade paperback version available through Amazon, as well as an Kindle edition and an edition for Apple iBooks.

More than 6 inches of rain has fallen here this week. The rain was forecast to turn to snow tonight at midnight, but it turned to snow five hours early. Plus, it’s thundering. Last week the temperature was 70 degrees.

I’d much rather have the rain and snow than the spookily warm weather. The cherry trees were blooming in Winston-Salem. And this is the kind of prolonged winter rain that feeds the aquifer and protects our well water.

Ninety-nine percent of cats and 90-year-old women agree: fireplaces, wool rugs, and fleece blankets are a winning combination. Lily is stretched out at the left of the fireplace because Mama took her chair.

I’ve mentioned a number of times the unusual amount of military helicopter traffic over Acorn Abbey. I think I may have a clue. On Thursday, 36 hours or so before Hurricane Irene came ashore in North Carolina, there was a westward parade of helicopters, all following the same course (though at a higher altitude than usual, probably around 7,000 feet). Then today, after Hurricane Irene had safely passed by, there was a eastward parade of helicopters on the opposite course.

It seems very likely to me that the military was moving aircraft stationed in eastern North Carolina to another military base to keep them safe from the hurricane. Then they moved them back. As far as I can tell, if you draw straight lines between all the military bases to the east and west of me, none of the straight lines pass directly over Acorn Abbey. A straight line from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in eastern North Carolina to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, looks like the best match. Maybe the aircraft alter their course to stay north of the much more densely populated Winston-Salem and Greensboro area.

These clouds over my place on Friday produced no measurable rain.

Continuing with the subject of abnormal and dangerous weather, Elizabeth Kolbert has a piece in the June 13 & 20 issue of the New Yorker on the recent extreme weather and how it is exactly what has been predicted as a consequence of global warming. The article is free to non-subscribers.

I finally broke down and bought a new camera. Well, not a new camera — an eBay camera. It’s a Nikon D1X, which Nikon stopped making in 2004. They were Nikon’s top of the line and quite expensive when they were new, with a list cost of almost $6,000. But professionals now consider the D1X obsolete, so good ones can now be found on eBay for less than $300.

The camera did not come with a lens. I also bought a lens on eBay. I took a chance on an oddball lens — a 28-200mm zoom lens. It’s a telephoto lens, but it also doubles as a “macro” lens for close-ups. The lens seems to be well suited for nature photography, which is mostly what I do. I haven’t tried it out yet with food photos. That will be a challenge.

My old camera is a Kodak DC265, an early digital point-and-shoot camera from around 1998. It’s a testament to the old Kodak that I’ve been able to use it for this long. But eventually the bad habits of lower-end cameras become unbearable. They shoot whenever they feel like it, rather than when you press the shutter button. It’s impossible to take multiple photos in rapid sequence. You’re stuck with one (sorry) lens.

But the Nikon D1X is a very different story. It’s ready to use the instant you turn it on. When you press the button, it shoots. If you hold the button down, it will take take three pictures per second and keep shooting (essential for action shots). It’s what the professionals all used not too many years ago.

I’m still figuring out the camera, but here are some early test shots.

Ken’s van, parked in the storage area above the garden

Ken has departed with a one-way ticket for Coldfoot, Alaska. It was a miserable 95F outside yesterday when I drove him to Winston-Salem to catch a bus for the first leg of his trip. I couldn’t help but quip that heading for the arctic is what a sensible person would do right now.

Ken put out ads to try to sell his celebrated van, but there were no serious offers. So Ken is still the van man, even if the van is in storage for a while here at the abbey.

I believe Ken plans to write about his adventures at his Spartan Student blog.

Photo by Ken Ilgunas

The groundhog population at the abbey has grown by at least two. We’ve seen them several times, not behind the house and garden where Mr. Groundhog usually appears, but in front of the house along the road, as though they’re living in the rabbit patch. Ken took several photos of the two baby groundhogs, as well as a video.

Ken’s blog is here, and this is a permalink to the groundhog post. Ken also has posted some nice photos of spring growth at the abbey.

Not that I’d ever want Acorn Abbey to be a bed and breakfast, but even if I did, the health department would never give me a license. Cats are not allowed in B&B kitchens.

Lily is almost as nosy as Ruth, one of the chickens. I easily convinced her that she doesn’t like spinach, but she still wanted to watch and get in the way.

Photos by Ken Ilgunas

I’ve commented before on how much helicopter traffic there is in the sky above Acorn Abbey. Usually these helicopters are Huey-size military-looking helicopters, dark gray. Yesterday while Ken and I were working in the yard, there were three Chinook helicopters. We were not able to get a photograph.

This morning, though, I heard a helicopter approaching and ran out with my camera. I caught this Chinook helicopter seconds before it vanished behind the trees.

These helicopters always fly at very low altitude, usually east to west.

That military helicopters frequently fly over North Carolina is not surprising — there are three Air Force bases in eastern North Carolina. But what puzzles me is why we see them so frequently at low altitude over the abbey.

My best speculation is that the helicopters are on training flights, on visual flight rules. We usually see them in good weather. The sky is overcast this morning, but the ceiling is high. When pilots are casually cruising on visual flights rules with no particular place to go, they like to fly toward what is visually interesting. So my guess is that they’re attracted to the unusual mountains in Stokes County — Pilot Mountain, Hanging Rock, and Sauratown Mountain. Also, from looking at a map, it seems to me that if a helicopter from, say, Pope Air Force Base wanted to fly toward the nearest mountains, it would head northwest toward Stokes County.

I found a news report from 2009 about Chinook helicopters landing in a rural field near Raleigh. The military bases said they knew nothing about it.