turnip greens, black eyed peas, and cornbread
We had our traditional new year’s day lunch and now it is time for a nap.
fallie, mumblelard, finn, floyd (left to right)
I think this is the closest to Halloween that we have ever carved jack-o’-lanterns. Going to Florida last weekend really threw us off schedule. Between taking birthday cupcakes to Fallie’s class, opening presents, carving pumpkins, and eating birthday cake with my parents, today was a busy but fun day.
Tomorrow we go to the Halloween party at the nature center, Saturday is the neighborhood Halloween party and trick or treating, and Sunday is Fallie’s birthday party with a dozen children and even more adults. It looks to be a busy but fun weekend. I love this time of year.
fly agaric (Amanita muscaria) or gee whiz I haven’t had a good old fashioned psychotic episode in a while
Muscarine poisoning is characterized by its psychotic effects. It leads to a condition akin to drunkenness, accompanied by hallucinations and convulsions with episodes of hilarity. There then follows a sub-comatose, depressive phase when the victim falls into a long, deep, drugged sleep. It is hard to awaken the patient and when wakened, he is in a depressed state from which it is hard for him to recover. (via The Great Encyclopedia of Mushrooms by Jean-Louis Lamaison and Jean-Marie Polese)
Jean-Louis and Jean-Marie proceed to mention that everyone from Lapps to northern Italians use them in “religious rituals,” and question whether or not the Ancient Romans really used them as a poison or if they possibly confused them with Death Caps.
These are up the street from us near some really nice wild muscadine vines.
This is what the flood looked like to us when we went to the river on Tuesday. The water was high and brown but not dramatically so unless you are familiar with how it looks normally.
We got a new roof last year; the storm would have wrecked us if it had happened to the old roof. Thankfully, the storms and flooding have not caused us any real problems.
We never expected to stay in this place for so long, and for several years we didn’t really pay attention to its details, but now we realize how much those details have come mean to us. Seeing the changes made by the years of drought, the drought ending, and experiencing epic events like the storms and flooding of the last week, experiences like these have gotten to me. I like the feeling of knowing how the place acts, what it has gone through, where it may be going next. I like watching the slow patterns emerge and seeing these rare moments occur.
I have lost the chance to watch a place for 80, 90, 100 years. I only have a few more chances to grow into a place like I have grown into this one, only a few more chances to stay somewhere long enough to really get to know it. I think we are going to have to leave this one soon or decide that we are going to stay for good.
(Chattahoochee River via USGS)
pink blot blight
Somebody is using big pink spots to slash lame tags. It could get out of hand, but for now I am enjoying it.
F. P., Resaca, Georgia, 2006 by Alec Soth
We saw the Alec Soth exhibit at the High Museum over the weekend. There were only about a dozen pictures, but several of them were stunners (see above). The way they were hung and lit resulted in a bad glare on most of the pictures, but we still enjoyed it.
In the basement gallery, they had a bunch of photos from their permanent collection on display including one by Ralph Eugene Meatyard. He is an old family favorite so it was a nice surprise to run into some of his work on a Saturday afternoon.
There was a rumor that the High was going display some of the Sally Mann photos they commissioned a few years back, but this rumor turned out to be false.
outside canton
There was a nice storm this morning, but a house about a mile from us got struck by lightning.
I was driving around somewhere just outside of Canton looking for a place I had found about seven years ago. I am pretty good at navigating on sight, and after I have been somewhere once, I can usually get there again no problem. It didn’t work for me today though. I never did find it. It’s probably gone.
A lot had stayed the same, but enough had changed that my memory of the place never matched the place I saw today. Big trees and bigger farms were gone, and there were a lot more of those silhouette men leaning up against utility poles and mailboxes, like scouts for some invading shadow army. On one road, I saw a silhouette man standing right next to a white cross with plastic flowers marking a roadside death, but I don’t think they were related.
found black racer (cameraphone)
crow spirit circle of life thrift store (cameraphone, Dawson County, Georgia)
(via the News and Events page of The Flannery O’Connor - Andalusia Foundation, Inc. which maintains Andalusia, the farm in Milledgeville where Flannery O’Connor wrote and raised her peacocks)
I highly recommend the Flannery O’Connor - Andalusia Foundation News and Events page for its reporting of Flannery O’Connor related entertainment news.
ON PLANET SNAUSERO THINGS STAY IN ANY ANGEL THEIR IN UNLESS MOVED
One of the treasures of the mumblelard family library. This signed copy was purchased during a family trip to Paradise Gardens.
(from Howard Finster’s self-published science fiction graphic novel coloring book, VISION OF 200 LIGHT YEARS AWAY SPACE BORN OF THREE GENERATIONS FROM EARTH TO THE HEAVEN OF HEAVENS : HOWARD FINSTERS VISION OF 1982)
We are at the Cohutta wilderness overlook on our way to hike the Gahuti staring into the sunrise over the mountains.
