Smokey Mountain Breakdown

The Goat Yoda and I took a journey into K-town today with Daughter Dorie. Betsy was delivering a handsome little Nigerian Dwarf she had sold to a fellow and his family. We also had a little doe kid who was being delivered to a Mennonite family. And I was going to get two Shetland sheep from the same Mennonite family.

I'm telling you...you don't know what fun is until you are heading down the interstate in a mini-van with three chicks and a couple of goats.

We met up at Tyson Park where an SCA tourney was taking place.

The Society for Creative Anachronism is the group where people get together to study and re-enact skills from pre-17th century Europe. It's what the nerds were doing before computers.

I used to be in the SCA...like 25 years ago. Back then, I was much slimmer and fitter...not to mention lupus and scary clotting disorder-free...so I really enjoyed donning my fighting gear and wailing the hell out of other people with a rattan broadsword and lugging around that big shield. I thought myself quite the badass. The SCA was where I first learned to make armor. A skill I parlayed later in life in the theater.

We sat on the grass with the baby goat who drew the expected crowd of sweet faced children. One little boy was really excited and going on about "Kitty! Kitty!"

He got within three feet of little Lizzy and ran screaming in terror. Musta been the eyes. Goat eyes. They'll get you every time.

We took a detour by Betsy's Greek Orthodox Church. It's a homeless ministry but was really wonderful. They had some very cool relics and stuff. I want Betsy to take me back there for a service.

I mentioned that we were on our way to pick up sheep. One of the older homeless men's face lit up at the mention of sheep. He used to herd them back in Utah. Big herds of them. It was a happy memory. He liked sheep.

I stopped myself from asking, "Like in Brokeback Mountain?"

But that was what went through my mind. Because I'd seen the movie, I sort of knew the kind of job he had once had. Probably without the romantic interest, but still.

So, I'm back home with two woolly buggers on the back porch. I'll keep them there until they get a bit more used to me. I promptly forgot the names the Mennonite family had given them. I don't think they know their names anyway.

I've been calling them "Mutton" and "Chops".

I rarely rant but I really need to.

My internet tubes are so clogged, I think it's time to call Computer Router.

And it's not my machines or internal phone lines. It's Bell Fucking South ...now AT & Fucking T...or whoever the hell it is and their failure to provide equal and adequate phone service to mountain residents. I don't mind being on dial-up. But the phone lines here only can handle 26.6K modems. They are the very same phone lines that they put in after the flood of '72.

I just really resent paying full price for substandard phone service and there doesn't seem to be anything I can do about it.

Last time this happened it was a DNS issue, so I switched to openDNS. FireFox is barely functional so I'm limping around on SeaMonkey.

So...if I haven't been commenting on your blog, it's because your comment page times out before I can get to it. I can read your blog...I just can't comment on most of them. It took me 45 minutes to get this posting field to come up . Yesterday's template redesign took me 12 hours. Not because I didn't know what I was doing...most of that time was loading up windows in the browser.

So, hopefully they will mosey on over and find whatever phone box is now home to a litter of possums or whatever has chewed a hole in the phone connection between here and Big Creek Market soon.

Secret Agent Hot Dog Man

On another note. I was in town evaluating a cocker spaniel at the shelter and meeting the new director and stopped off to get a hot dog at the new A&W joint in Newport. It's roughly where Hot Dog Man used to set up. I hadn't thought about Hot Dog Man for a while.

When the hot dog man showed up in Newport, I was partly thrilled and partly dismayed. Thrilled because most people here wouldn't recognize the superiority of a Nathan's Skinless Frank. I like Hebrew Nationals, too, but they are a bit salty for my taste. Folks here like the sort of wieners that come 40 to a bag and are bright red. So Hot Dog Man had a little Nathan's cart just like in New York. So that was why I was thrilled. Real Nathan's Hot dogs in lil' ole Newport!

I was dismayed since it was pretty obviously an incursion from the outside world that I fled from. I nervously wondered if a Starbucks couldn't be far behind.

Anyway, Hot Dog Man showed up during the FBI investigations. These had actually been going on for a long, long time. As far as I know, they are still going on. But at that time, they were still investigating the cock fighting. And the Sheriff's Office....well, just about any sort of government office is investigated in Cocke county. We still have that old-timey corruption thing going for us. Boss Hawg and all that. I like it. It's charming.

A rumor started circulated around that Hot Dog Man was an FBI informant. Hell, by the time it got around town, he became an undercover operative for the FBI.

'Cause, you know cockfighters love a good hot dog. Everyone does. I used to order the chili-cheese with extra onions. He never asked me any probing questions.

Well, they busted the biggest illegal cockfighting arena in the United States here back in 2005. We made CNN. And Hot Dog Man mysteriously disappeared. I thought I saw him over in Cosby once. The rumors got so pervasive about his involvement in the raid, that the local paper, The Newport Plain Talk, ran an article where Hot Dog Man denied any involvement with the FBI.

"I'm just selling hot dogs."

The Plain Talk is one of those papers that you say, "The Newport Plain Talk...Bless their hearts!" They just are very gullible. They seem unusually trusting for journalists...even of the community variety. Yes. I subscribe to it. Bless their hearts.

I guess what brought it to mind was that Scott mentioned recently that Hot Dog Man had testified recently in one of the many court cases from all of the FBI's investigations in Cocke county.

So damn. He was an informant.

Secret Agent Man...Hot Dog Man.

I wonder how bad you have to screw up at the FBI to get sent undercover in Cocke county, TN pushing a hot dog cart?

I usually save this post for blackberry season...but peach season is coming up and I use the same exact recipe for it.

Cobbler is to southern desserts what apple pie is to American desserts. We just associate it so much with our region. Actually each area of the country, I have found, has their own version of something like cobbler.

In a way, it is a very old dessert dating back to colonial times. When I lived in the U.K. there were tons of desserts similar to cobbler. They are traditionally served with hot custard in the winter. They are very "rib sticking" which you don't actually mind if you are bundled up working on a film set in the cold drizzle. So, I'm relatively sure that our Scots/Irish/Brit ancestors brought something like cobbler with them.

I remember fondly the first time I saw the words "Spotted Dick" on a menu. It's such an outrageous name for a hot rolled up bread pudding log with raisins that is then served with treacle sauce and hot custard.

So, cobbler does come from the long and honorable tradition of stodgy hot desserts. We prefer to serve it with ice cream.

I have several cobbler recipes in my cookbook, but I'm going to share the most unusual and most satisfying one with you. It has some odd steps and it's a very old recipe. When I say very old, I'm talking 1900. My oldest cake recipe from my family is from around 1810. I have copies of the same recipe written in the hands of 5 generations of women.

But this one, this one was from my grandfather's sister, Emma. I have tested it, and it has quickly become my favorite cobbler since the boiling water step produces an extremely satisfying crunchy/chewy crust. You can substitute your favorite seasonal berry or stone fruit for the blackberries.

To three columns, that is.

Please bear with me as I reconstitute the page in this new format.

I know you are all jonesing for food porn...I'll get it up as soon as I get this thingy done.

It's about this time of year, when the thunder is heard in the distance, like a car hitting the side of your house. It comes crashing up suddenly on a day when you thought it might rain but just weren't sure. Those are the early spring days that you like to go out and dig. The ground is soft from the rain last night and the glare doesn't hurt your eyes.

It's a gentle sort of day, but an unpredictable one. It's like a lover you know you should drop but can't. Because they are usually so pretty or sweet or kind. But you're never quite sure when they are going to go apeshit on you and punch a hole through the living room wall. That's the sort of day you find spring lizards.

And you never know where you will find them. They are special that way and you uncover that wet clammy earth with your shovel and there it is. All red and black and shiny.

Belated you worry that you have hurt it. You wonder if the shovel nicked it and you are always a bit afraid that the shovel has cut it in two. So you pick it up, expecting to find a soft, wet, pliant body. But it's not any of those things. It's sinuous and strong and if you aren't careful it will bite you.

And that's just how it is with spring lizards. It's how it is with some people, too.

When I was a child, my big brother and I would go down to the spring house to find them. I would squat on my haunches and look under rocks for them. The harder you looked the less likely you would find one. Salamanders, they are, and love the damp places under rocks. They don't like the light.

The light shows them in all that red, black and shiny truth.

I'd gather some watercress to take back to grandmother for sandwiches made on salt-rising bread with mayonnaise so as not to go back empty-handed.

And that's just the way it is with spring lizards. And some people too.

They just aren't what they seem.

Just to let you guys know. Idgie, the editor, over at Dew on the Kudzu, has done gone and nominated me for The Million Writer's Award over at storySouth.

The Dew is the only ezine that publishes me on occasion. Primarily because Idgie contacted me first. As you all know, I am notoriously lazy about submitting my work to places. All that talk of SASE's and mean editor talk just makes my head swim and I end up saying screw it, I'll think about it next week. Honestly, I wouldn't mind having a mean editor to whip my ass into shape now and again. Fish net hose and spike heels are strictly optional but highly recommended if you are interested in the job.

Everyone has been so supportive of my writing and I do recognize that I should make more of an effort to get out there and get published. I will try to do better. Next week, maybe.

The story that was submitted was Cat Fur Jelly. This was my story about my pilgrimage to Martha and Lizie's grave one fine spring day and my reverence for these two lovely, elderly mountain women who I never met. Re-reading it...it's a good story, but my verb tenses forgot to wear their underpants.

storySouth is a fairly well distinguished online literary journal that focuses on writers and writing from the "New" South. For this reason, it has not been on my short list of places to submit, but I'm quite sure there will be some excellent stories and writers nominated and the competition will be quite stiff.

The Million Writer's Award is open at this time to reader and editor submissions. You may nominate a 1000-plus word story that you have read or published as an editor as long as it has appeared in an online literary journal or ezine during 2006. Here are the rules.

If you are an editor of an online ezine or literary journal you may make your editor nominations on this page.

If you are a reader and would like to nominate one story you have read in an online literary journal or ezine you may make your reader nominations here.

Nominations will be accepted until April 15, 2007. Then 10 of those stories will be selected by the editor of storySouth and voting will begin on May 15th and continue through June 15th.

That is Violette (Vi-vi) in the foreground and her sire, Beacon, in the background. She looks more and more like him each day. Her spots are gray "moonspots" while his are white. Both seem very shy when the camera comes out, unlike BossyToe who loves to have her picture taken. Actually, I think BossyToe thinks the camera might be tasty.

During Vi-vi's entropion confinement, she developed a taste for udders other than Blinkin's. It's my fault really. Vi-vi refused to suck from the bottle and each feeding session became a wrestling match with most of the milk ending up on me. The solution was to put her to Pearlie and Maggie when they came up for their twice daily milkings. Vi-vi heartily approved of this plan. Pearlie and Maggie...eh...not so much so.

As long as Pearlie and Maggie are being securely held or in the milk stanchion, they will put up with this outrage. Vi-vi doesn't understand this yet and this results with her being head-butted quite a bit for being a brat out in the pasture. But Vi-vi is now very gentled and not afraid of me at all. She follows me in the hopes of me holding down one of the other does for her to have her illicit drink of milk.

I'm now working on little Rose. She's the runt of this year's doe kids now that Bridey has shot up in height. Rose takes the bottle very readily so I'm bringing her indoors and giving her a bottle. She will calm down very soon. I'm wondering if Rose is just going to be a small
stature goat. I'll wait and see if she starts to get some size on. If she doesn't, I may pet her out. I need her to at least get as big as Maggie.

The other spotty doe is Sonya. I've developed a bit of a soft spot for her and her sloe-eyed self. She lacks Freaky Didi's patrician roman nose and her eyes are wide spaced and oddly set. But she whinnies and nickers like a horse and it's a sweet sound with all of my bawling discordant Nubians and grades. The Saanens have sweet sounding voices, but Sonya is now the nicest singing voice of the lot.

She's very sweet and comes running when I call her name. Very affectionate little goat.

It was the first day that I had thoughts based in reality and not in the odd coma world I had lived in for the past two months.

I had been swimming, or trying to swim all of that time in my head. The dream repeated itself over and over again. I knew I was in a hospital. But I had decorated it to my liking with a big chunky schoolroom clock and bubblegum lights. I thought, for some reason, that I was in the Sol Blatt P.E. Center at the University of South Carolina in Columbia where I used to swim. I was aware of the ka-chunk-hiss-ka-chunk of the respirator. I heard the doctor's voices. One of the interns from India had a high-pitched whiny voice and it seemed like she was always getting fussed at despite the fact that her father was someone important. Her name was Mehta. I felt the presence of my family at times. Sometimes I thought I could see them. I remember feeling angry that they would not let me out of the bed to go to the bathroom. It did not occur to me that I could not walk. It did not occur to me that I was hanging on by my fingernails to sentience. But the dream was always the same. I was firmly convinced that I needed to escape. It was foremost in my mind.

I say, a dream, but coma dreams are horrifically real. The line between reality and dreams does not exist in the coma world. There were "visions". It is Alice's world. I would rise from the hospital bed. I would release one of the other patients from the machines because I knew they needed to escape too. Sometimes I would have to carry the other patient. We would get to the elevator and take it to the bottom floor. The pool was the destination. If I could only get to the pool, we could get out of this torture chamber. The underwater lights at the ends of the lanes. That's where we needed to go. The end of the lane. Into the warm, wet heat of the pool where movement was easy and I could feel the water sliced by my efficient stroke. Sometimes we were chased. I could hear Mehta's voice sometimes whining that I had gotten lose again and had taken this patient or that patient.

The outcome was always the same. Sometimes I would get in the water and sigh at its warmth but the moment I dove below the surface to kick off I would be back in the hated hospital room. I played this scenario over in my mind thousands of times in the coma world. I kept changing bits of it to see if another scenario would work. I went by myself once...fleeing the pleading of the other patients who wanted to come with me. I took the stairs. I changed bits of the puzzle in minute ways to see if I could finally reach my destination. I never did.

That's how I kept my brain alive for two months, trying to escape Wonderland.

What was going on in reality was much harsher. It was very hard on my siblings. I wasn't expected to live. They didn't know the battle I was fighting in my head to keep my brain alive. My chest had been split open to the heart and left that way so the mediastinitis could heal from the inside out. I had fevers of 106 that required a "cooling" blanket...basically a plastic duvet filled with circulating ice water. My sternum was removed and my chest required plastic surgery to reconstruct it. I had every "last chance" antibiotic available dripping into my veins. I died several times.

I also had young, sweet, new doctors who sneaked into my room to look at my chart and cheer me on...though they had nothing to do with my case. I met some of them, as well as a surgeon who had held my beating infected heart in his hands. The intimacy of it all was painful.

Later, when I visited MUSC in Charleston, where I actually was during this, I would run into them in the halls. Their eyes would light up with joy and they, strangers to me, would want to touch and hug me. Then tell me their story and how they knew me. What they did during my darkest days. How hard these men of science prayed for me. I'm still overwhelmed by what they did for me.

But on this day, 10 years ago, they took me off the ventilator. I remember the wet sucking squick of trying to cough it up and that first gasping, painful breath. I couldn't move, but for some strange reason, I thought I could. My brain had been working out fairly vigorously for the past two months and my body didn't realize it wasn't part of the plan. I could barely speak, but I thought I was speaking clearly. I had lost 70 pounds.

I remember my brother being there and looking very upset and worried. Expectant. Dr. Strange, head of the ICU, held up fingers and asked me to indicate how many he was holding up. My words were barely understandable but I had the right answers.

My eyes focused on my brother. "Guy Bebo, that fucking asshole!" I croaked at him, mentioning the name of the idiot G.P. that got me into this mess.

The doctor looked at my brother with concern, perhaps thinking my profanity a sign of brain damage. People with brain damage are often profane when they come out of their coma dreams. This was, after all, their greatest concern. I'd been gorked out for an awful long time.

A wide smile lit up my brother's face making him look like a young boy again.

"Yeah! That's her...She's back!" He said.

Dr. Strange continued his examination by asking me if I knew where I was. I did. Then he asked if I knew what day it was.

I thought he was being something of a smartass. I wanted to say, "Well, see, it's like this, I've been unconscious and don't you think it a bit much to ask me what day it is?"

But there was a calendar just over his shoulder where my eyes could make it out.

"It's March 17th. St. Patrick's Day."

Gather 'round close now, chirrun's, cause I'm 'bout to lay some serious BBQ wisdom down upon you'uns heads.

This will be primarily of the eastern Carolinas tradition...having nothing to do with the barbecue of Tennessee which is entirely different. Barbecue philosophy is a subject of heated debate, so these are merely my opinions here. There are also those out there way more bubbalicious than moi who have made it their life's work to perfect these arts.

I'm from the lowcountry of South Carolina. This means a few things in terms of barbecue. First, it means primarily talking about pig. When I lived in Dallas, I was quite flummoxed by the concept of barbecued beef. This just seemed wrong in so many ways. I've since had and learned to make and appreciate beef done this way, but it still doesn't seem like "real" barbecue to me.

The second thing is cooking. We are talking smoking pork over a pit or some sort of grilling device that allows for a long smoking period. Purists snort at gas or propane grills. I have a strong preference for well-fired oak coals that are then fed wet hickory chips. The tell-tale "pink line" is how you tell if the barbecue is authentic. That is the smoke ring. It will also have a bit of char on the outside of the meat. Authentic barbecue is always served separate from the sauce.

The third thing is sauce. Carolina style sauces all have mustard of some variety in them. The oldest of them have no tomato products. I've read that since our barbecue tradition is perhaps the oldest and dates back to colonial times when tomatoes were largely believed to be poisonous, that this is why we favor the vinegary, mustard based sauces. Don't know if that is true, but it sounds about right.

This is my uncle, Dr. Roy Gleaton's, Barbecue Sauce Recipe. I'm sworn to secrecy as to where he actually got it from, but the recipe dates back to the 1940's. I could give you my own personal secret sauce...but then I'd have to kill you.

Damn, I love a good pig pickin'.

I'm sort of sad that it has been so many years since I attended a pig pickin'. It used to be a fairly common event, particularly with political rallies. This is the best place to experience the type of barbecue that I've just described. I've often thought my farm would be an ideal location to have one.

A Pig Pickin' (not to be confused with a Hawg Killin' though a Pig Pickin' was often the celebration following a successful Hawg Killin') involves cooking an entire hog in a hand dug pit over a period of about 8 to 12 hours for a large group of people. A variety of sides are prepared to go with the pig. Hash and Brunswick Stew are the most common ones, though there should be lots of loaves of white bread, corn bread, hushpuppies, red rice and other things of the Southern covered dish variety. If you have room left, coconut "wet" cake is a nice finish.

Adult beverages, most often beer, are frequently involved since the menfolk are the ones presiding over the cooking of the pig. This is an almost ceremonial task. No. Not almost. It's thinly veiled pagan ceremony. Shirtlessness and fire are involved.

It's called a "pickin" since the pig emerges from the pit in its entirety and the meat is shredded off the bone then served with the sauce.

Most pig pickin's are fun family affairs celebrating the food and offering a draw for a church or a politician. Somehow though, it's the pig pickin's that got out of hand that I most remember.

I remember one pig pickin' I attended back in college. It was to celebrate the eviction of the student tenants at this particular house on Blossom Street. There were many kegs. Much drunkenness and crazy dancing. Barefoot Harry was there. The cops were called. We gave them some pork and turned the music down.

My brother once attended a political pig pickin' near Charleston for Brantley Harvey that featured whole venisons sewn up in entire hog's skins then roasted in the pit.

Deerpiggins.

The entire idea is just Julio-Claudian in its excess. They were supposedly delicious. This truly is a food pornilicious concept.

I've been dying to try it ever since I heard of it.

Damn. I love a pig pickin'.

I went off-farm today to get fudge making supplies in town and to return my library books. It's been very hazy today and is now threatening rain. I love it when it rains after a hazy day. The shoots of steam rise up off the mountains like wisps of souls escaping the earth.

The forsythias and daffodils went into full bloom without me knowing. My own poor daffies are little munched upon bits of green just clearing the ground. Goats love landscaping. Nothing seems quite as tasty as something planted by Momma's hand and lovingly tended. My lemon balm is coming up. This is, at least, one plant that the goats won't touch, but I love very dearly. I love the smell it leaves on my hands when I touch it in passing.

I'm looking forward to my first cups of lemon balm tea. I ran out of all of my dried tea sometime in mid-winter. I'm a big tea drinker. I hope the tiny wild mint that came up so prolifically last summer comes back. It's odd, but each year we have different wild mints. One summer we has do much horsemint that I could barely keep up with drying it for teas and making mint sauce with it. That tiny mint was much better for teas than the big leafed horsemint. It hides, close to the ground, and sometimes the aroma will engulf you when you are working the ground, but if you try to find it, you can't. It's like a fairy mint.

Vi-vi's eye corrected itself. So I suppose it was just a spastic entropion brought on by some small injury. She's back in the field with everyone else now. Her time with me has gentled her and she is now following the kid pack up to the porch for snacks in the morning and evening. Since she would not take the bottle, I had to hold Maggie and Pearlie for her to nurse. Mother goats don't take too kindly to strange kids nursing them. But now, Vi-vi feels quite entitled to nurse on whosoever she pleases. She follows me at milking time because she knows I'll hold the other mothers so she can take a long drink. Because of this, she has shot up in growth.

I now am working on Blanche and Rose. They will need to come and spend some time on the porch as well. Then my entire little doe kid pack will be gentled. Blinkin's triplets do not have the instinctual love of tummy rubs that the purely dairy bred girls do. This is something they will need to be taught so that they will enjoy being milked when they are big girls.

With Vi-vi off of the porch, I spent all of yesterday cleaning and de-goatifying the back porch. It was a relief to not have a sick goat back there screaming at me for once. I spent the entire day cloroxing and scrubbing down all of the wood and cleaning the dog crates out.

Unfortunately, I came down this morning to find it once more splattered with goat vomit. It was Phoebe's turn to be sick. She and BossyToe like to sleep back there. Phoebe doesn't seem to have it too badly. I mixed some maalox in her bottle and gave it to her to settle her tummy. Then hosed off the porch this morning. Again. I am distressed to find that a google search of "goat vomit" brings my blog up as the fifth entry. At least Fias Co farms has me beat in that respect.

But, I'm grateful to welcome springtime to the mountains. As I drove down the mountain I saw many gardens had already been tilled and disced. A bunch of new comers were doing some early planting. They had plowed up their kudzu patch and were planting something there. I didn't have the heart to tell them that the kudzu would overtake their little garden in only another month or so. The plowing would only break the roots and make more kudzu. Goats can control it, but they would need pigs to eradicate it.

Ah, well. Let them dream of new potatoes.

It will soon be time for me to do much the same.

I just don't seem to have a life outside of them these days.

Today a a pretty much wasted day. I didn't rise until noon and then spent most of the day just keeping up with my milking and baby feeding. Not doing much of anything else.

Vi-vi is warming up nicely. I've been bringing her inside to take naps with me on the couch. She gets a bit fidgety when she has to wee so I know when to take her back outside again. But she curled up on top of me and napped for about an hour today.

She has entropion in her left eye. I've been putting ointment in it and rolling the eyelid back into position by hand in hopes that it will correct itself. The vet wants 250 dollars to fix it surgically. This is way more than Vi-vi is worth. Even if she were a full grown milker with excellent production, it would probably be more than her worth. So I can't really justify spending that sort of money on her. I looked up the various ways to treat this and will try some of those. Betsy has michel surgical clamps and I can use those without anesthesia to try to hold her eyelid in place. I looked up how to do it and it isn't that complicated. This condition happens to lambs and is inherited in sheep. They don't know if it is inheritable in goats.

A woman shared with me one of the local remedies for livestock eye problems. Put salt in the eye. Don't think so. 10% sterile saline with a bit of boric acid is as close as we'll get to that. You have to exercise some judgement with the suggestions they give up here. They used to give animals kerosene for whatever ailed them. My feeling is most of the successes were from self-limiting conditions.

"Little" Phoebe is a force to be reckoned with. She must weigh 35 pounds at this point. She likes to nurse rather energetically on my earlobes. She has picked up all of BossyToe's bad habits but unlike BossyToe...who is still small enough for me to pick up and heft back over the gate...Phoebe is so enormous that she's hard on my back.

So...not much today. I'm just sort of worn out with all the goat nursing. At least the pastures are starting to green up.

Jbeeky has asked that I blog about my former work as a psychic reader. And since it looks like a slow news day in Grassy Fork, I'm happy to oblige.

I was nearly late to the gig thanks to the complicated and uncomfortable costume I'd had to throw together at the last moment. Of course, I had a standard set of costumes that I wore to such gigs. I favored lots of flowy silk things and turbans with big dangly earrings. I'd once had to put together a sort of futuristic gypsy get up that was really popular.

My kit box banged against my knees as I impatiently waited for the escalator to get to the next floor of the big Dallas convention center. In it I had my light box, an electrified platform I'd made of Plexiglas, that made my crystals glow with an eerie blue light. I carried several sets of tarot cards that had been ritually purified by my sleeping with them after burying them in the earth for two weeks and then carefully wrapped in China silk. Just in case, I had my bag of runes that I'd carved into river rocks with my dremel, but it was the many pounds of quartz crystals that were really weighing me down.

The events company manager had called me in an angry panic.

"Juwanda the goddamn Root Woman has the Goddamn flu...or so she damn well says...and we already have the goddamn tiki hut up on site. I need you to get over here pronto and throw the goddamn bones looking like you belong in that goddamn tiki hut."

I hadn't actually met my competitor, Juwanda the Root Woman. I had seen her "medium" shot. That's what a head shot is called for psychics who are represented by an agency. I was, at that time, in talks with Juwanda's agent who was interested in representing me. Juwanda was a really large and beautiful black woman who dressed up as a Caribbean voodoo priestess. She looked great in her get-up.

"I don't throw the bones. I read cards and runes." I said calmly...knowing this would further send him into a rage, but also knowing the level of his desperation. Because, though I didn't know it entirely at the time, I was beginning to suspect that my true "gift" was an uncanny ability to sense the obvious.

And this was how I ended up strolling into this particular corporate special event looking like a Caribbean pirate's whore in blackface wearing a ratty black wig pulled from the Dallas Theatre Center's stock of wigs, a poofy long ribbon skirt and an obscene number of bangles. Every visible inch of my lily white skin...so perfect for my usual Celtic persona...had been liberally smeared with Light Egyptian Max Factor. It was clogging my pores and I hated wearing so much make-up. Freakin' blocked my aura. I was sure of it.

The events manager came up to me with a relieved look on his face. The clients were already starting to wander in. I saw a handwriting reader I'd worked with before and smiled at him. That was a sweet gig. All he had to do was walk around in his business suit with a pen and pad. The freak mime was there, the little ponce.

The events manager points toward the tiki hut and hands me a Styrofoam container.

"What's this?" I say as I open the container.

Inside are a collection of chicken bones left over from someone's lunch.

"It's the bones." He says, "Just throw the bones."

I firmly hand the Styrofoam lunch container back to him.

"I don't throw bones. I don't know how. And I'm certainly not throwing somebody's leftover lunch."

He slyly looked at me and said, "Come on...it's just an act, right?"

"Yeah, well, call somebody who does improv." I say and start to march out.

"Wait, wait! It's okay...just try to make it look more like Juwanda...just do whatever you have to!"

I knew there was no danger of me losing the 150 dollar an hour fee with the three hour minimum. Because I was there, in costume, and people were starting to line up. Again, my mysterious gift of the obvious.

The truth is, you do have to believe it to be any good at it. You have to wrap your mind around that New Age space and embrace it. When you do a reading for someone, or as I often did, hours of reading many people, you always have dead-on hits. Especially, if you are, as I am, a natural cold reader.

I was completely unaware of the concept of cold reading when I was working as an occasional psychic for hire. I'd fallen into it innocently enough. I was highly educated in the liberal arts like most followers of "new age" thought. Basically that meant that I had little to no experience in critical thinking. Unfortunately, most of the US public has little knowledge of critical thinking skills, making us an extremely gullible nation. It hurts us in a myriad of ways.

A friend in Atlanta taught me how to read tarot cards and as I did readings for people and moved about, word got around that I was very good at it. Before I knew it, I was being asked to do large special events readings. I had a code of ethics I followed. I took money from the large events companies. I never asked for anything from individual clients. I wasn't out to defraud anyone. I really believed I was doing something special.

And based on the number of people who broke down in tears in front of me, called me later to tell me about something that I'd "predicted" had come true, or just ran away frightened from my readings...I did seem to have something going on. I received constant validation and "proof" of my "gift". It's nice to be appreciated.

I think it's a very seductive trap. I think some people with my gift do take it one step further to become charlatans. Perhaps they hang on to the belief that it is something special that they have because it pays so well if you know how to market it. And if you look at it with the same searching eye that you use to look at the people you read for...well, then you wouldn't be able to do it anymore. I guess that's what happened to me. I looked at myself with the same eyes I used to gaze at others.

My gift isn't anything supernatural. I have the gift of paying attention. Of empathy. Of being aware of body language and seeing minute changes is behavior. It's a gift that might have benefited from a PhD in psychology. I know how to put people at ease and how to channel their own thoughts back into themselves. It's not anything special and it's something everyone can do. All you have to do is listen. Really, really listen without involving yourself in that process.

My conversion to skepticism came gradually. My attraction to "mysteries" became less conscious and I became more interested in the great and terrible beauty of the universe and truth. And that is something very tangible if you let it be so. I became more at ease with the fact that just because something can be proven empirically doesn't make it any less wonderful or fantastic. I started to educate myself in critical thinking, because I was tired of wasting money on things that didn't work and blindly believing everything I read. I read Carl Sagan, who so eloquently and poetically described science as the wondrous thing that it is and taught me how to look at claims and beliefs with healthy skepticism.

If I had to put a date on when the worm began to turn for me from new age to skepticism, I suppose it would be sometime during the dawn of August 17th, 1987. I had gathered with about twenty other dedicated "Rainbow Warriors" on a distant hilltop about an hour outside of Dallas. We had spent the night around camp fires drumming, chanting and smoking lots of marijuana. Nothing really happened that dawn.

Damn you! Harmonic Convergence!

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Yeah, baby...That's what I'm talkin' about!

My mother and uncle grew up during the Great Depression in Savannah, GA. They didn't have it too bad since my grandfather worked for the Southern Railroad and they ran a boarding house out of the old house on Jones Street up from Clary's. My grandfather kept a garden out on Hutchinson Island where he also trapped and raised rabbits. Still, it left my grandmother with an unfortunate case of OCD geared toward saving scraps of tin foil. I was always a little afraid as a child that upon opening the pantry door I would be crushed to death by the largest tin foil ball known to mankind.

Ribs had a shady reputation as poor folks food. It was one of the few cuts of meat you could afford to buy during the Depression. But still, even after my uncle became a kazillionaire designing mines in the African Congo and being an aircraft magnate in South America, he remained stubbornly in love with the humble rib. I remember the long letters he wrote my mother always telling of how they cooked ribs in such far away places as Ankara and Morocco. The man never saw a rib he didn't like. He had to have them everywhere he traveled.

So...Tuesday, Betsy and I met over at Wanda's B.B.Q. Garden and Cafe to sample these legendary ribs and some of Wanda's other offerings.

I'd seen the BBQ garden across from the Cosby Elementary school on Cosby Highway next to the House of Douglas Bakery, but had never gotten around to trying it out. So when Betsy told me about these ribs...well, what can I say. It's in my gene pool.

The cafe is basically an old soda fountain/bakery set-up with booths and tables. Some funky art and lots of potted plants. It's a nice place to go during the cold winter months. It reminds me of some of my old haunts in the Virginia Highlands area of Atlanta. Back before VH became so precious.

But the really wonderful space at the BBQ Garden is the patio. Wanda built a large screened in dining area with a stage for the Bluegrass performers that frequent the garden during the high season months. It's very "down home". Plastic tablecloths and food served on disposable plates. The day was warm so we ate out there. But you know me. I'm more interested in what's on the plates than the plates themselves.


We took Betsy's daughter Dori along with us and she ordered the ribs. Everyone had to put up with me sampling their food. Anyone who eats out with me knows this is not unusual. I was born with a silver stealth fork in everyone else's plate.

I had the pulled pork plate with garlic green beans and sweet corn. I must say that those green beans are quite possibly the best green beans I've ever had. They were crisp french beans drenched in butter and garlic. Very yummy and will sneakily make you think you are staying on your diet. The pulled pork was served on a tomato basil roll. It was really wonderful and I didn't even ask for some mustard to convert it to Lowcountry style. ('cause you know where I stand on that side of the great war of the bbq sauces!)

Betsy had the pulled chicken also on a tomato basil roll. Her sides were french fries and the baked beans. Betsy loves Wanda's baked beans.

We also ordered the amazing onion rings pictured. Yes...they were every bit as good as they look.



I'd say the stand outs from the excursion were the BBQ Pork Ribs, which are amazing. The garlic green beans and those amazing onion rings. All of the food was delicious, but those were my three favorites. I'm told that her corn fritters are to die for. I have no reason to doubt this since it sounds like she makes them just like I make mine. The menu is best described as down home eclectic. Every once in a while your eye will be drawn from the expected BBQ joint fair to something like "jasmine rice"(the only sort of rice I eat at home), or those garlic green beans or that tomato basil roll. The prices are very reasonable with the most expensive item, the barbecue sampler, being 12.95. The median range is in the 6 to 8 dollar range. The place looks extremely kid friendly with lots of finger food available and paper towels.

If you are traveling down I-40 between Asheville and Knoxville, it's a nice side trek to get off on the Foothills Parkway then turn right onto Cosby Highway. The BBQ Garden is on the left just a few miles up the road.

I stayed for a while after our meal to talk to Wanda. I really like her. She's a bit of a character and I'm all about characters. She came to this area from Baltimore back in the 70's when Gatlinburg was still sort of a sleepy mountain town with a growing tourist trade. I'm not surprised she has food in her blood, being from Baltimore which is one of my favorite food obsessed cities. She's been working around restaurants all of her life. She doesn't follow any specific philosophy of barbecue, preferring to "do her own thing" so to speak. And it does seem to be working for her.

I was fascinated by her description of living here then, in a sort of hippie tent camp for three years, outside in all weathers when the winters were still very cold here. They used to have to go to town and pay a few bucks at the old bath house to take showers.

She mentions that her kids would sometimes ask why they couldn't go camping.

She'd say, in that husky Mercedes McCambridge voice, "Hell, NO. I did that for three damn years!"

Go see Wanda. Eat her food. You'll like her. You'll like her food.

I have a really wonderful Food Porn Friday for you today. Betsy aka "The Goat Yoda" and I began our eatery tour this past Tuesday, starting at Wanda's wonderful Barbecue Garden and Cafe.

Unfortunately, the Canon Craptastic A40 is holding these amazing barbecue photos hostage for the moment. I think I have a barbecue ribs shot in there that blogger may censor. Please don't flag my blog when I finally get it up. It's very explicit. A "money shot". Very wet and drippy with sauce.

The idiot battery problem has reared its ugly head.

So I call Canon and try to find out what they will charge me to fix Craptastic. I explain the problem and politely mention that I have a Nikon used during the Vietnam war that still works great and I was sort of hoping to get more than five years out of the Craptastic. She tells me, for a digital, that the Craptastic is positively ancient and is probably just wearing out.

Then she tells me they have a program called the Craptastic Upgrade Program that I qualify for. Basically, I send them 125 bucks and they send me the New Improved Craptastic A610. It's to reward my loyalty for staying with the Craptastic brand.

I say, "Sweet!"

So, as soon as I have the bucks, all I have to do is call Canon and give them my phone number and they will have the new camera to me in two days. Cool. So now I only have to supercharge some batteries that can keep the Craptastic going for the five minutes it will take me to retrieve the food porn shots I took on Tuesday.

So we will hopefully have a Food Porn article on Saturday. Cross your fingers.

In other news. Didi is up and running, but Violette is back on the porch. No biggie...she has an eye infection and I want to get her a little more friendly. She has a shot lump that needed some attention and I'm giving her antibiotics for the eye and the shot lump. Her nose looks funny again. But I think that's just scar tissue. She may end up having a disturbingly human looking nose. I hope she grows out of it. It's sort of creeping me out.

Vi-vi is in so many ways the type of goat I want to breed here. Polled (no horns), pretty spotted coat, sturdy, good keeper. She is the only one who is obviously Beacon's get based on her outrageous spots. Unfortunately she seems to have inherited Beacon's tendency to get shot lumps. These are infections that pop up after you give a goat a shot. Basically it just means she has overly sensitive skin that gets infections easily. That is not something I want.

So, the plan is to go ahead and let her dirty old uncle Leonard have at her when it is time to breed her and see if we can get Leonard's good, hardy skin back in the mix without losing Beacon's outrageous spots. Her two sisters, who are probably Leonard's (yes, you can get a mixed "litter" if somebody goes in for sloppy seconds), do not have this skin thing going.

But for now, little Violette is on the back porch. She has an unfortunate voice. See Bat Boy? Vi-vi sounds like you would imagine Bat Boy sounding. I'm not kidding. That's exactly what she sounds like. And she won't shut up.

Did you know they made a musical of "Bat Boy"? That is just something I've got to see. Or at least get the soundtrack to. I hope it's gloriously bad. Damn. I love a bad musical. Just doesn't get much better than that.

Yesterday was a tough day.

Didi continued to slide downhill. She started to get a bit better after having a really rough night. I gave her some oral penicillin and anti-toxin to kill all of her gut bacteria then started to rebuild her stomach flora with syringes of yogurt. Started her on antibiotic shots and kept up the anti-toxin shots. Then it started all over again. Last night around ten I called the Goat Yoda.

I'm frustrated and tired. Betsy brings over a sack full of additional meds to start her on and some banamine for her pain. This goat is not one of the stoic ones. If I hadn't brought her up here, she would have just gone off and died.

And, in the middle of all this, I'm still trying to get a small portion of my work done. But the goat nursing has worn me out. At one point, I go to let the cockers in after they've eaten. I'm bleary and cranky. My lupus is hurting me and my head is fuzzy.

I go out on the porch and I hear myself call it, without thinking, as I've called it so many times over the past five years. I know there isn't an answer to this question as I feel the words sounding into the twilight.

"And so, where's Aegis!" I holler.

I tear up as I gaze over to the hill where his grave is, answering myself.

I keep running into photos of him while I'm pulling stuff for websites. He's so gloriously young and alive. I just can't wrap my brain around him not being here anymore. BossyToe and Phoebe are running my ass ragged and he would have been the one who would have taken care of them. Damn that dog loved a baby goat.

He was the one dog I had that really did something to help. He took care of me. Every animal on this place relies on me to take care of them, the cockers are needy little bastards and I just miss my big yella fella.

But at least Freaky Didi is on the mend now. She was hungry this morning and ate some alfalfa. She's bright eyed and asking to leave the porch. I may stob her out in the sun for a while. She's skeletaly thin from her ordeal, but it looks like she will survive this bout.

Life goes on. I have a backlog of three days worth of farm and house work to catch up on. It's a glorious day today. The sort of day I would have packed Aegis up in the jeep to take for his first swim of the season. We would have taken the balls and the ball thrower and he would have dived into the sparkling water of the creek with more joy than a being has a right to feel. It was what we were doing exactly a year ago.

God. I just miss him so damn much.

Well, I'm back in goat vomit land.

I came home from today's excursion to find Didi, one of the new Nubian does, upchucking in the pasture and fairly unsteady on her feet. Didi and Sonya were really undernourished when Betsy picked them up. They got much better at Betsy's but they still have a ways to go before they are as strong as the rest of my ruffians.

Every goat who comes on the property goes through this. There is something on my property that is very sick-making for goats. They eat it once, get dreadfully ill, then never eat it again. At least, that has been the pattern thus far. Each time, I lead the miserable goat up to the house, get them as warm as possible, give maalox and anti-toxin and wait the damn thing out. Usually when they turn the corner they start drinking lots of water. Sometimes they throw that up, but it's a sign that they are on the mend. So far, Violette had the worst case so far. But Didi is one very sick goat.

I'm worried for her. She's just not as strong as the rest. And she's really uncomfortable. Goats have a very low tolerance for pain and discomfort.

Speaking of goat vomit....

I was watching a piece on ABC News tonight, which I still watch despite the loss of my beloved Peter Jennings, and saw the segment on "Purity Balls".

Being the screaming liberal that I am, my dander immediately started to rise. Not for the reason you think, though. Yes, I agree that it probably leads to STDs and teen pregnancy for those girls who don't get the benefit of sex education along with their "purity" vow. And yes, I'm a bit miffed that so much government funding is going into a program with an 86 percent failure rate. But I think it's sweet, the whole father/daughter dance thing. It's just about as sweet as it can be.

No, what I'm pissed about is that the entire thing is completely draconian because none of these abstinence warriors are bright enough to figure that they are missing half...perhaps more than half...of the idiot equation.

Where the hell is all the government funding for the "Chivalry Ball", I ask you?

Ideally, this would be a year long ordeal consisting of ball room dance, etiquette classes, poetry and a firm grounding in the elements of honor, respect and morality in dealing with the "fairer sex". Young men would be put through a Miss Manners boot camp to emerge as young gentlemen who fully understood that they open doors, walk on the left side of their date, use the silverware furthest from their plate first and absolutely, unequivocally know that "no" means "no". At the end of this year, they attend a formal dance escorting their sainted mothers and swear to them that they will never treat any woman with anything but the utmost respect.

I'm hoping that the ball room dance classes will eliminate any need for the use of electrodes anywhere in this indoctrination. I'm not absolutely sure of this, but that's my thinking.

I'm just saying, if you insist on doing this abstinence thing despite the fact that it simply doesn't work...at least get it right.

That's the only way purity is ever going to have any balls.

I got off the farm today for the first time in a long time. Sometimes it seems like I stay up here on the mountain for weeks at a time. I'm not completely isolated, since I do get around up in Grassy and visit with folks. Scott comes by to visit. But it's nice to get in the jeep and drive around.

I took the Foothills Parkway to cross over to Cosby to return Betsy's disbudding iron, now that I have fully gotten my fill of torturing baby goats. It's nice to visit Betsy and all of her familiar critters. I sort of know all of her goats by name if not by sight entirely now. I got to watch her disbud two bucklings and a little Nubian doe. The little doe was Patti's grand-daughter. Patti came to my farm as a hospice case. She was a great goat. She was the first goat I ever had to put down. We knew it was necessary and it was coming, but it was still really hard to say goodbye to her. I remembered the coldness of that day and the icy feel of my rifle as I tried to steady the gun through my tears. Patti's eyes, large and luminous, telling me she couldn't go on like that.

It was nice to see those silver gray ears decorating a new kid. Life goes on.

I met the remaining two Nubians from the group that came in with Didi and Sonya. Betsy was right. They are two years old and very stunted and small for Nubians. I'd be afraid they wouldn't survive kidding the big kids my boys seem to produce. Betsy will probably find pet homes for them. They were very sweet...just really small.

I was distressed by the condition of the forests surrounding the Foothills Parkway. The park needs to do a controlled burn or something. The beetles have killed all the jack pines and they have fallen everywhere. It's not so noticeable during the rest of the year. The dead pines lay thick on the forest floor waiting to go up like a tinderbox. A fire up there would be disastrous.
There aren't a whole lot of ways out of the communities in the valley between that Parkway and the big mountain range it looks to in the south.

I'm sure there are reasons they haven't done a controlled burn there. It looks like it would be a problem. They've had those burns get out of control before. It would probably make the Parkway pretty ugly for a while and the tourists really love to drive up there and take photos. I took my camera with me but the haze was too thick today for good photography. Some days are like that here.

I can't worry about it too much, but it's an accident...a bad accident...waiting to happen.

I stopped off at Carver's and treated myself to a fried apple pie. Sometimes you just need one. You know?

The youngest of this year's crop of kids joined us on Friday. Betsy came over with two new Nubian does, Sonya and Didi, and brought Phoebe as well. Phoebe's mom, Harper, was supposed to come along, but is still recovering from an udder injury.

Phoebe is a bit young to be leaving her mom, but I said to bring her along. If I couldn't get her to take a bottle, I could always take her back. And there is the size of "Li'l" Phoebe. At one month, she's the size of a two month old. She's frankly enormous. Harper herself is rather outsized and both of my boys seem to throw really big kids. So Phoebe got a double dose of the really big goat gene.

She's the color of cream shot with espresso and has a coffee colored stripe down her back. When I was a child, my nanny would bring me a cup of hot milk in the morning with a little bit of coffee in it so I could feel like part of the family who were busy drinking coffee and getting ready for work. Phoebe is that color. You can see from her picture that she has adorable goat lips.

Phoebe spent her first night on earth curled up with Betsy's daughter, Dori. Dori says she whispered her name in the way baby goats do sometimes. Now that I've met her, I must say it suits her. And it appeals to me since it is another name for Artemis, meaning "the bright one."

Her sweet and easy personality has quickly won me over. After only a few tries, she was eagerly slugging down bottles of milk. Despite her size, she's fairly well behaved in the house. Bridey and BossyToe have been largely banned from freely roaming the indoors due to their tendency to jump on the furniture...including furniture not built for jumping on. Phoebe placidly follows me around and will curl up on the floor at my feet. She comes when called. We did her disbudding this morning and she was very laid back about the procedure and quickly forgave me for hurting her. She seems to have transferred her affections fairly easily over to me and doesn't seem to miss her mom much at all. She is bonding well with BossyToe and hopefully will not become too corrupted by my current bad girl.

I've been very busy with farm work the past few days. This morning I woke to a dusting of snow. I realized while I stared out from my balcony how the snow seemed to fall upwards, driven by the winds coming up the cliff from the holler. It really did look like a snow globe.

Scott came by to visit Friday and Saturday. Saturday, I saw his truck drive up and he seemed to be taking a long time coming inside. I went out to grab a stick of firewood and find out whatever he was doing out there.

The wind was howling and making the windchimes sound with loud music.

Scott was standing in the yard facing the wind. His face turned upwards and his arms outstretched. The wind had blown his shirt up exposing his belly. His hair, almost always perfectly in place, was flying away from his face. The expression on his face was like that of a Renaissance saint in sculpture.

A more pure example of a religious experience, I have never witnessed.

It's why we live on these high places.

It's March and the time when all gay farm girls' fancies turn to poultry, baby chicks and the oncoming spring. I can't tell you how neat it is to come downstairs in the morning to hear the first cheeps coming from the incubator. Those fuzzy little sweet biddies with their promise of eggs and all things egg related.

When I was last at the Co-op in Newport, I checked out the bulletin board as I usually do. And saw the notice of when the chicks were going to arrive. I'm currently henless at the moment. I did get a bit disheartened by the predation issue here and just let my flock go. But I know what an idiot sucker I am for baby poultry. They are even going to have guinea keets for sale. I've been very desirous of getting guineas. Their eggs supposedly make the best french toast on earth. But now that I'm down to only two geese in the poultry department, I'm starting to miss all the fresh eggs.

Of course, once they start laying real good, you end up scouring ancient cookbooks for those egg rich recipes from the days when everyone had a home flock. You will find eggs in places you never expected. And it's true. An egg in the mix of almost anything makes it taste better, fry up better, or just add an extra bit of protein to the diet. And you have all these dozens of eggs that you hate to just feed back to the hens or give to the dogs.

Have I mentioned that I have a freakishly low cholesterol level? I'm not sure if I mentioned that before I moved to an agrarian lifestyle that I had a freakishly high one. In all of my years of city living I was a devoted member of the 200 + club. And I didn't really eat many eggs then.

Today's Food Porn Friday is all about getting rid of absurd quantities of chicken ovum in the most delicious ways possible.

When the eggs really start to add up, my favorite big egg user is home-made pasta.

Basically all pasta is flour and eggs. It's super easy to make and once you get used to it, it's a fairly easy thing to make. Semolina flour is preferred as a base flour. Bread flour mixed with a bit of cornmeal is a good substitute. Home-made pasta keeps well in the fridge for about a week. I usually make a larger batch than the recipe given so to have enough for a few meals. The more whole grains you use in the pasta, the better it is for you. Fiber makes a great "diet" food and is much more filling than a straight white flour pasta.

The equipment for making pasta by hand is very affordable. A hand cranked pasta machine will run you about 30 bucks at the kitchen supply. Atlas is the preferred brand and you can get all sorts of attachments for doing different shapes. Mine has angel hair and linguine and those are my favorite two textures. It will also roll out very thin sheets of pasta dough for making your own ravioli and gnocchi. I mix my dough in a food processor, but if you want to get real "old school" about it, you can do it by hand making a well in the middle of your flour and gradually incorporating the eggs.

I realized today that I had a small part of trying to illustrate how complicated kinships here are, right here on the farm.

My herd sires, Leonard and Beacon are half-brothers sharing a sire.

BossyToe and Bridey are half-sisters sharing Leonard as their sire.

BossyToe and two of the Triplets are half-sisters and the Triplets are BossyToe's aunties since BossyToe's mom was also the Triplets' mom's daughter. Violette's sire is obviously Beacon, so she is merely BossyToe's auntie.

It is about at this point that my head starts pounding. What do you call a sister/aunt anyway?

It does get confusing when I try to explain how Friend Scott is related to everyone. So, in interest of brevity, I just refer to everyone as "cousin". It's so much easier than saying "great-aunt once removed bar sinister with ice cream on top." And it certainly stops the headache I get from trying to actually track back to get that term.

You would think it would be pretty easy for me since I come from a family with multiple generations of DAR and SAR members carrying up to 20 bars on their DAR pins. I spent many hours in the South Carolina State Archives as a college student doing research for my mother. By the time I hit twenty, I was swinging through the branches of my family tree like a agile little genealogy monkey. But it is much harder here.

Betsy likes to say that it's "line-breeding" when it works and "in-breeding" when it doesn't. This is a fairly familiar concept in livestock husbandry. "Line-breeding" involves breeding related livestock to extract the best physical/temperamental traits from a particular line of animals. "In-breeding" is when that goes horribly awry and you end up with a kid with one eye in the middle of its forehead.

It is a bit tricky honestly discussing in-breeding in these small Appalachian communities. It is a pervasive negative stereotype. People automatically assume incest is prevalent. It happens here, but no more so than in any other insular hyper-religious community. More common is intermarriage between cousins. Scott's parents were first cousins who did not discover their family relationship until after they married. Since the Appalachian folk have a history of moving around, this is quite common. And the gene pool was a great deal smaller in days gone by. As recently as 20 years ago, some of the folk here lived their entire lives without ever visiting the closest town only 20 miles away.

So Scott has many double cousins.

I think the lesson of line-breeding here applies in many cases. Those huge, lovely sloe-eyes that you see once in a while that always seem to be laughing. Their amazing determination and resourcefulness. I can't say they have bred much for temperament here...they are all as stubborn, thin-skinned and feisty as their Scots/Irish ancestors. But most of the time they are the soul of kindness.

But when you start to see those pretty sloe-eyes...it's usually a sign that it's time to change the herd sire. It's not going to get much prettier than that, and it could get a good deal uglier.