Waypoints

The year in review

I plan to wrap up this project today, just a year after launch but not too soon I think. My thanks to everyone who came to visit, read and contribute to this blog.

Waypoints opened at the end of June, 2005, the day I turned 35. I wanted to keep the process going that led to the birth of my last book and maybe to spark a new one. Something like that might have happened; one post or another could germinate and blossom into something good. But if I don't write another book, maybe you (or you or you or you) will. I hope so!

I've spent the past year mostly watching my kids grow and worrying about them, which is normal. Worry is the necessary partner of love. I've been flying my hawks and worrying about them, too, which is nothing new for me. But for the first time, I fret now about the near future of my hunting---everyone's hunting, everyone's access to animals and to places where animals are. There seems to be a culture-wide pulling away from these most important things. To my inner ear it sounds like cloth ripping.

We are paving and posting and fencing like mad in Baton Rouge and everywhere I know. The "Animal Rightists" are louder and more accomplished than ever, seeming to find their message better received today, so accustomed we are to sales talk. Too few of us think about animals anyway; what use are our own opinions?

How will our governments---local and national---conclude their apparent efforts to see that no one grows an egg to eat, or keeps a pigeon, kills a hog, or owns a dog. What's next: a vegetable registry? A canning ban? The Wild Berry Protection Act?

What will my kids do for a living when their schooling's done? What for fun? Is it too much to expect those could be the same?

To these worries my aging friend Ida says, "Oh, it'll all come out in the wash." But she's a fatalist and doesn't have much to lose at this point. She has no children. The world is already unrecognizable to her.

But I'm not here to bring you down! In fact I think we'd all do better to cheer up. Waypoints are just places in the road. The road continues.

Blogger break

It's a good time for a blogger to pause, as a favorite author notes, whenever "the art does not press hard enough against experience."

The best posts are full of personal experience and informed opinion, goods I haven't got enough of lately. So I'm going to submerge for a while into the world, or maybe come up for air, depending on how you see the metaphor. Here are a few things I'll be working on:

In a way, the 06-07 hawking season has already begun with the training (in progress) of my new dog---that rare animal, the Whippet Spaniel. I posted a few videos here to illustrate our current state of readiness and will probably post more as we learn more. Opinions, advice and whippet-jokes, always welcome.
The revision and reprinting of a very good falconry book
Drumming up some more business
Doing my job
Putting together a PowerPoint (I know, I know!) for three upcoming falconry show-and-tell sessions
Visiting Grandmother
Raising tomatoes and twin girls, if not necessarily in that order
Reading a few more books, a few more blogs
Finishing a promised product to a good cause

In sum: "pressing harder against experience," which sounds bad and is probably illegal, even in Louisiana. Hasta pronto, mis amigos.

Small brush, big mess?

Forward-thinking scientists have now invented brushes small enough to tidy up microscopic spills. Why would you need something like that?

"We need to look at the needs in the nano-world, where machines and materials can be the size of atoms and molecules," said UH doctoral student Vinod P. Veedu. "As in the 'bigger' world, there are messes to sweep, walls to paint, tubes to unclog and electronics to power. So our invention ... demonstrates a way to make the tiniest of brushes to do these jobs."

Messes to sweep!

Tomatoes a'la B

This has become a May tradition, a couple years running at least: broiled tomatoes with cheese as an after school snack.

Thanks to Tom Coulson for the tomato lore and continued horticultural mentoring.

Plants go in in early March; begin to fruit in mid-April.

A few days on the sill...

Pepper, mozzerella and feta cheese, olive oil; 10 minutes at 400...

Nuff said...

While waiting...

...for my wife and kids to return from their weekly trip to Wal-Mart, a 132 year old general store in New York state went up for sale.

What's a general store? The author of this piece (rightly, I bet) guessed you'd need an explanation:

"[Owner Jim Marilley's] store once played the role of a rural Wal-Mart between cow farms and the Adirondacks' western edge: Long hours (even until midnight), convenient location, two creaking wooden floors of goods. 'If We don't Have it, You don't Need it!' the sign says."

Now, what's a cow farm?