watching for widow makers

The wind has decreased markedly. The high temperature for the day, 66.38 F was recorded at midnight. It has been dropping slowly and steadily since then. Currently, we are at 54.32 F and should bottom out tonight at 36 F. I suspect that I will plug in one lamp in the well filter enclosure tonight in case it drops below expected. We’ve had 0.09 inches of rain since midnight, just enough to keep things wet.


It’s has been overcast with intermittent drizzle all day. Tomorrow is predicted to be sunny.

The woods now contain fewer “widow makers”. Many broken and dead branches have been blown to the ground. But the risk is still high as yesterday’s winds may have created some that haven’t fallen yet. So any trip near trees requires careful attention to the overhead.

I’ve seasoned a piece of top sirloin with garam masala to fix for tonight’s dinner. I’ll cut some sweet potatoes into wedges, coat them with olive oil, ginger, cinnamon, cardamom, and chili powder, and then bake them to serve with the steak.

I slept in until 0815 this morning. The dog didn’t demand I take her out any earlier. Those two days each week when I don’t have something scheduled really are welcome.

I just finished “The Jew Store,” by Stella Suberman. It’s a very interesting book. Her parents, immigrants from Russia to New York packed up their family and moved to Union City TN in the 1920’s to open a dry goods store. They became the only Jews in a southern town. Once I began reading the book, I discovered that her family lived one county east of the county my great aunt and uncle –from my maternal line, lived in. While I became a familiar with NW Tennessee only via family visits to Tiptonville, I was able to recognize some of the types of people they had to deal with. My mother’s aunt and uncle were upper crust folks in their town and county. My earliest memories of Tiptonville place it squarely in the “Old South.” Everyone I met referred to my aunt and uncle as “Miz Alice and Mr. Warner. I can recall seeing black citizens, mostly sharecroppers and domestics, step off the sidewalk when they neared my relatives. In many cases, the only real difference in the small towns that Mrs. Suberman knew and knows, and the one I knew was the newer technology. Everything else was pretty much untouched. That includes the restaurant at Reelfoot Lake.

My mother, an RN, who grew up in the boot heel of Missouri and escaped to St. Louis via an Army Nurse Cadet Corps scholarship, offered her by Jewish Hospital of St. Louis during WWII; left bigotry and racism that permeated the region behind her for the reality nursing demanded. That my biological father was first generation of a Russian Jewish family that settled in St. Louis, leads me into the book from another direction. My two grandmothers were all too similar to Mrs. Suberman’s aunt and many other women of that era. Bigotry and religious fervor tied into identity and too much concern about what outsiders might think have destroyed many families. Fortunately, my mother’s father showed the wisdom and compassion that Mrs. Suberman’s father displayed in her book.

My mother is a very strong woman. I’m grateful to her for teaching me early on that bigotry and exclusionary religious fervor have no place in our world. She taught me a lot more, as well but that’s another tale. She’s an exemplar of Brokaw’s “Greatest Generation."

Suffice it to say that this book took me more deeply into both sides of my heritage than I anticipated.

The hillside behind the house has a lot more yellow on display than yesterday. Despite the winds of yesterday there are still lots of leaves remaining on the trees.

The creek is at ca. the same depth and flow rate as yesterday. The image below is from about 1130 this morning.

Gloria’s trout pool is still full of good sized rainbow trout. They seemed to have found good places to hole up and escape being washed downstream by the last high water. It is amazing how big a fish can hide under an undercut bank.
 
 

The contrasting yellow back dropped by the dark gray-green of the hemlocks is a very pleasing view from the back deck or the office windows.

There are many squirrels, rabbits, and other small game this year to keep the dog busy sniffing every inch of the property she is allowed to reach. We try to keep her from crossing the creek during low water periods. There are too many free-running and feral dog packs that she need not encounter. She seems to know not to try crossing the creek in high water. She did it once and then took nearly an hour with me watching her from the opposite bank to find a place she felt suitable to cross. Still, we keep her from the creek as much as possible.


We often have hunting dogs turning up in the yard looking for food. They’ve been turned loose in North Carolina during bear hunts but often manage to get lost and wander here following bears. If they have collars with phone numbers we try to notify the owners to retrieve them. These are expensive dogs worth thousands in breeding fees. Many of them wear radio tracking collars with GPS units to ensure their safe return.

We hear tales of hikers on the Appalachian Trail removing the dogs’ collars and destroying them. As we understand it these are anti-hunting people. Regardless of one’s position about hunting, the dogs have no say in the matter. They are simply bred and trained to do what dogs have always done. It is cruel and unconscionable to prevent a dog’s retrieval or to cause it to become lost because of one’s personal views. I dislike using dogs to hunt bear. So I don’t. I also dislike creating stray dogs. Apparently these hikers have no problem causing a dog to become lost.

One of the dogs across the street was hit while chasing a truck today. The saga continues.