pantoum's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE GREAT PEPPER FLOOD OF 2004 (No. 226 � Tuesday � 16 August 2005 � 11 PM) I am looking at a book entitled My South: A People, A Place, A World of Its Own and trying to convince myself to go to bed, but thunder is rolling across the sky and lightning is flashing in electric spasms and, just like when I was a kid, here I sit mesmerized by it all and I just don�t want to go to sleep and miss anything. Got up at 5 this morning in the mountains after a long weekend with Pottergrrl�I�ve put 958 miles on my car since noon Thursday�and drove straight to work this AM. The sun rising over the mountains was a beautiful sight (and, yes, I am guilty of holding my camera up to the window and snapping pictures as I tried to stay in my lane). This is a description I particularly like, especially after a very loud hoot owl awakened Pottergrrl and me last night with its mournful, beautiful calling: My South is a tree comforting me. Its ivory velvet blooms emitting fragrances of exotic places. Lemon verbena fondly familiar from sea islands to grand plantations. Standing through centuries of hurricanes and sultry evenings silhouetted by the Carolina moon.�Carol Furtwangler I like these too: Scuppernong wine, Frogmore Stew. � Pottergrrl is reading the first 193 pages of my novel right now (gotta print out the rest) and I am a little freaked out about this. I have tried very hard to capture the nuances of growing up Southern in my book, tried to describe my experiences accurately, but only my writing group and Filmgrrl and Zulu have read the draft so far and, well, I want her to think it�s brilliant. She and I were driving through a rural mountain county Monday afternoon on our way to a river with nice white-water rapids so we could wade in the cold water and we saw a big sign that read �Jesus Christ is Lord of Haywood County.� We, of course, took pictures. Pottergrrl told me that "black people disappear from that town (Cruso), or at least that�s what mountain people say." Ironically, the town�s motto, which is painted on the town limits sign, is �a town of friendly people� (And BTW, a second sign used to hang below that one, which listed its population; it read �and one old grump.�) This is an agricultural community in North Cackylacky, so we drove past migrant workers picking tomatoes in the fields, just as we drove by migrant workers picking peaches in South Cackylacky earlier that day. The flood after last year�s hurricane destroyed Haywood County�s pepper crop, and peppers floated all over town and littered the sidewalks after the water subsided. Then a second hurricane one week later destroyed the tomatoes, and tomato vines hung from trees like nooses. � (Wednesday � 17 August 2005 � 9:45 AM) Well damn, I never even caught up enough to post that yesterday! The dean changed how we have to submit our line-item budget (due Friday) and I am in a mad rush to complete the work. Bad timing because my sister Penelope arrives for a visit at 3:30 today and leaves tomorrow afternoon. That leaves me this morning, Thursday afternoon and evening, and Friday to redo a year�s worth of budget figures. This ought to be fun. So I�ll end with this sentence of the day, compliments of the WRAL TV website: A Durham man will go on trial on Oct. 31 for killing his wife nearly three years after her disappearance. Took him three years to track her down, eh? She sure was a wily one. 9:49 a.m. - 2005-08-17 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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