Southwest Virginia Blogs

Just a quick mention that Cafe Spinless is now serving all your invertebrate favorites. Drop by and order something tasty. This installment of Circus of the Spineless has a little of everything--except vertebrae, of course. There's even a Fragments post of the butterfly flavor.

AKA Landing: I found the dentist’s appointment card while rummaging through my pocketbook on October 29th. I was cleaning it out in preparation for my trip to Boson to visit my father in the hospital. The card said my next cleaning would be March 20. Isn’t that my dad’s birthday? The first day of spring? Will he still be here then? I wondered as my heart sank.

Everything was moving too fast. Even the sun moves across the sky fast this time of year, making the hours in a day short, and the pace of my trip preparation frantic. But I didn’t mind. I was trying to hold onto every last bit of normalcy. I felt safe in the daily routines of my life, even if packing for Boston added some extra work. I worried about what I would find in Boston and knew that once my plane landed there that my life might never be the same. The hospital staff had told my family that my father needed surgery to repair a broken neck vertebra, which he sustained in a recent car accident. At that point, a ventilator was breathing for him, and he was being tube fed. We were beginning to fear a worse case scenario and were gravely concerned about him undergoing surgery at his age (81) and in his condition.

On my last day home, one of the last things on my to-do list was to plant the 8 daffodil bulbs that I had recently bought at the Garden Center. Last year, I planted tulips and held a few aside, hoping to plant them the following year, once I had a better idea of where I wanted them. But when this year came along and I opened the brown bag of tulips bulbs, I found that they had crumbled to dust. I didn’t know how long I’d be in Boston. The ground might be frozen by the time I get home. I might really need to be cheered up this spring, I thought while digging in the garden.

Everything I did on that last day had a sense of intention and permanence to it. I learned when I lost my brothers, Jim and Dan, 4 years ago that the last few weeks of someone’s life might as well be set in stone because those are the memories you will play in your mind, over and over. Will my dad still be here when these daffodils bloom was all I could think of as I buried them.

If he wasn’t, I knew that daffodils wouldn't be enough to cheer me up.

The Good News Update: My dad was transferred from the regional hospital he was in to the New England Medical Center, where, according to their reassessment of his condition, it was determined that he would not be operated on. When I saw him Saturday, he was breathing on his own, and we were all feeling more encouraged and hopeful for his eventual recovery.

The Kansai Electric company in Japan has deployed new equipment that enables them to transmit 1 terabit of data per second over their company fiber lines.

That is 100 times faster than most of the fiber transmission electronics currently in use, and shows why fiber, while somewhat more expensive on the front end, is such a safe bet. Research in laboratories has actually achieved even higher speeds, but the Kansai equipment has actually been deployed in the field. Fiber can be upgraded without replacing the fiber and duct lines in the ground or on poles, which is a big advantage, and it makes fiber future proof.

I had a few minutes on Saturday to swing over to the Blue Ridge Parkway--a route that was once my way to work and town. I got to know it well those two years we lived on Walnut Knob, and was able to see the thirteen mile stretch of the 400 mile parkway change through the seasons. I remember lamenting how much of the road's right-of-way had been taken over by Tree of Heaven, an oriental invasive crowding out native trees until there is ijn places nothing but an unbroken stand of this unlovely tree.

In just the short while since we drove the parkway regularly, it has been invaded by yet another oriental import: Oriental Bittersweet. I was shocked to see its orange fruits hanging in bush after shrub after tree for miles of the Scenic Hiway. Once established, the vine can grow until it's trunk is four inches thick, and it is almost impossible to eradicate. Kudzu with fancy fruits.

Here's one more instance where a 'good idea' horticulturally (useful in dried arrangements) has turned out to be a bad idea, environmentally. This plant was imported by somebody who like its looks. (Kudzu was imported ostensibly as fodder for cattle; multiflora rose as a 'living fence.') And it has now joined the list of 'invasive plants' defined as follows:

"Plants that have, or are likely to spread into native or minimally managed plant systems, and cause economic or environmental harm by developing self-sustaining populations and becoming dominant or disruptive to those systems".

A mere inconvenience, a minor cosmetic blemish on the countryside where it makes no difference, you might say. Well, I'll post later this week about an 'invasive' that may be changing the fate of the planet. Stay tuned!

Gov. Mark Warner wants to get people off Interstate 81 and into the hills of Southwest Virginia to see and buy the region’s arts and crafts.

That’s why on Thursday he awarded the town a $3.1 million grant to build the Southwest Virginia Artisan Center.

"While the facility is sitting here in Abingdon and Washington County, it isn’t just for (the two localities) but for all of Southwest Virginia," the governor said. "This will be a gateway to the great Southwest and a jumping-off point" for tourism.