Now here’s the kind of Dan River chart I like to see — a steady rise over 24 hours, well above the median. And it’s still raining. These rains should go a long way toward making up for the long drought.
Finally, rain
WXII.com
The winter weather patterns have returned, and rain is finally happening. During the summer, most of North Carolina’s rain is from thunderstorms. During the winter, moisture is pushed in from the Gulf of Mexico, and much more general rain happens. That’s what’s happening today. My neighbors-to-be in Stokes County tell me that the drought caused the little branch on my property to stop flowing completely. Now, of course, it’s flowing again, and the Dan River is running much stronger:
USGS
Photographer David Rolfe from the Winston-Salem Journal checks out the fall foliage. This photo is from Raven’s Knob:
Winston-Salem Journal
Trying to rain?
If you’re a drought watcher, as I am, here are a couple of good resources. The “haze cam” is on Sauratown Mountain looking toward Pilot Mountain. The United States Geological Survey maintains a real-time water-level gauge on the Dan River at Francisco. Francisco is up near the Virginia border, so the Francisco gauge reflects rainfall in Patrick County, Virginia, more than in Stokes County. But still it’s the only Dan River gauge in the area that I’m aware of.
Triad Haze Cam
USGS real-time water level gauge, Dan River at Francisco
United States Geological Survey
In the graph above, the little triangles represent median flow for 64 years, so you can see the Dan River is running low. The small storms on Oct. 18 and 19 weren’t enough to even bring the river up to the median.
Give bats a break
What’s Halloween without bats?
Many bat species are endangered, and bat populations are threatened worldwide. Many organizations and universities are working to save bat populations. One thing we can do, if we have a place, is to give bats a place to live.
The University of Florida has a fairly gothic bat house:
Here’s another nice bat house in Tallahassee:
Lucky me. I have plenty of room for bats on my place in Stokes County. I’ve already bought a couple of these ready-made bat houses. I’ll put them up on the hill on the other side of the branch, not too close to the house:
I’m looking forward to having bats as neighbors. They’re very useful to have around, because they eat mosquitos. Though I think the cute bat below is a fruit-eating bat.
No wireless Internet on new Alltel tower
I’ve been hanging out of a couple of Internet forums frequented by cell-phone nerds hoping to find out whether broadband Internet service is available on the new Alltel tower on Mission Road east of Danbury.
I think I have a reliable answer now from an Alltel field technician. The answer is that, at present, the new tower supports only regular cell phone service. It seems Alltel is still making decisions about where to expand its Internet broadband service in 2008.
This type of service, by the way, is called EVDO broadband, and it supports Internet connections at about the same speeds as DSL. Where available, it costs about $60 a month. To use the service, one buys a wireless PCMCIA card and inserts it into a laptop.
There also are wireless routers than can take the EVDO signal and share it onto a WiFi network.
I certainly hope Alltel provides Internet broadband in rural Stokes before much longer. It’s expensive, but it’s less expensive than satellite Internet, and, given that cell phone towers are now common in rural areas, it’s probably the best way of delivering broadband Internet to more remote rural areas.
Joan Baez, older sister to the Boomers
Joan Baez, born in 1941, is a little too old to be a Boomer. The first boomers were born in 1946. So Joan Baez was more like an older sister to us Boomers, someone we looked up to. I sometimes think that, if I’d been born for no other reason than to hear Joan Baez sing, and if the rest of my life had been nothing but a vale of tears, it would still all be worth it.
We have watched her age, and we have listened to her voice age. Her voice no longer has the agility it once had, but her musical authority is intact, and she is as beautiful as always.
Sweet Sir Galahad (Youtube recording)
Diamonds and Rust (Youtube recording)
Some Stokes photos
It’s always a good morning when the Winston-Salem Journal has a story and pictures from Stokes County. It reminds me how darned picturesque Stokes is.
The Journal has a story this morning on crews doing wildfire practice near Hanging Rock State Park.
Winston-Salem Journal
And from WXII.com, a photo of the leaves starting to turn on Pilot Mountain.
WXII
Eat more garlic!
Here in San Francisco, it’s easy to follow a Mediterranean diet. San Franciscans have far more interaction with Tuscany and Provence than we do with Kansas, so the grocery stores and restaurants reflect that. San Francisco is surrounded by amazing farmland — Sonoma to the north, and places like Gilroy and Monterey to the South. San Franciscans eat extremely well.
It is getting easier to have a Mediterranean diet in the provinces. A Mediterranean diet is all about local, fresh, in-season fruits and vegetables, going easy on refined carbohydates, olive oil, olive oil, and more olive oil, and wine. What’s not to like?
There are a couple of good stories in today’s New York Times to help us Boomers stay healthy: why garlic is good for you, and a story about new research on diabetes. Managing diabetes is about diet, exercise, and reducing inflammation. The subject of how to reduce inflammation is very interesting to me, and I’ll post more on that subject in the future.
The American market is being flooded with cheap, low quality garlic from China. This is causing big problems for California growers, who grow superior, but more expensive, garlic. I intend to experiment with growing garlic once I’m settled in Stokes. Garlic comes in many varieties, even though you’ll only find one or two choices in the grocery store — regular garlic and “elephant” garlic. I don’t like elephant garlic. It may be easier to peel, but it’s very inferior.
Check out The Garlic Store.
A third Trader Joe's in Charlotte
I’ll write more in the future about why Trader Joe’s has been my main grocery store here in California and how Trader Joe’s makes a healthy diet affordable. Well, less unaffordable, because good food is not cheap. Trader Joe’s also has an excellent selection of wines at very good prices. Trader Joe’s is not all that good a place to buy fresh fruit and vegetables, but their less perishable items are of very high quality and typically cost a third to a half less than comparable items in a regular grocery store. I’m guessing that one of the ways Trader Joe’s keeps its prices down is that they don’t offer much of the fresh produce items that go bad in grocery stores and which grocery stores throw out at a disturbing rate. Fresh produce also is very expensive to ship. An excellent way to have a good diet in the provinces would be to go to Trader Joe’s for one’s staples once or twice a month and to depend on local farmer’s markets, or one’s own garden, for fresh produce.
Now if they’d only open a Trader Joe’s in Winston-Salem. If Charlotte can support three, surely Winston-Salem could support one.
From the Charlotte Observer:
Trader Joe’s coming to Midtown in 2008
Specialty grocery store Trader Joe’s is opening a center city location at the new Metropolitan development in Midtown, store officials said Monday. The store, the third Trader Joe’s location in Charlotte, will open in 2008, company spokeswoman Alison Mochizuki said.
The Metropolitan is home to a newly opened Target and Home Depot Design Center, which opens Thursday.
Trader Joe’s opened its first Charlotte store in August at the Shops in Piper Glen, 6418 Rea Road. The second Charlotte store, at 1820 Arbor Drive near Mallard Creek Church Road, is expected to open later this year.
At 13,100 square feet, the Midtown location will be larger than the 12,500-square-foot store in south Charlotte.
Trader Joe’s sells a wide variety of items, from salsas to granolas, frozen foods and candies. The company often uses small, artisan producers. In a typical Trader Joe’s, more than 80 percent of the products are exclusive. It aims at nutrition niches, such as gluten-free, kosher, vegetarian and vegan products.
Stokes County canopy tours??
Winston-Salem Journal
Along comes another piece of evidence on the resourcefulness of Stokes County people in finding neat little economic niches in the Stokes woods and hills. It’s canopy tours, from a place called “Carolina Ziplines.”
I don’t know about y’all, but I can’t wait.
Winston-Salem Journal