Yet another murmuration. Party. And so on.

Below is, in it's (somewhat erratically typed) entirety, the message I found in my in-box last Thursday, Tom having stayed up very very late sipping wine with JodyTheComputerGuyJugglerSpelunker.

By the time I got home yesterday, I was forced to park in one of the more-uh-cattle-intense parts of the pasture. Devender, Kabir, and the Oaxacans had worked all morning pouring a suddenly-available four yards of concrete for our shed extension, Tom had made chicken soup for a sick Oaxacan on the crew, and the party was well underway.

We had a fine time--friends old and new, the last of whom left sometime after 10 p.m. Tom allowed as to how he had decided that, at this event, he might let himself drink a bit too much, and, in retrospect, he did an excellent job. This tiny wedge of the universe has exceptional people on it--you've gotta love our low threshhold for entertainment...


This Friday @ about 4:15 Pm we are having a nonexclusive viewing of one of the Grand Phenonomona of the Greater Scottsboro Environs, The Great Sulpher Creek Murmuration.


For those of you unacquainted with such granduer a murmur is the pleural for a flock of blackbirds & a murmuration is a large flock of blackbirds,. starlings included,that participate in magnificantly wonderful aerial flockarity proir to roosting, in this case , in a large grove of bamboo.


The scene is greatly influenced by 2 or 3 Sharpshinned Hawks acting as "hosts" with the effect of enhancing the aerial dynamics of the flocks, and adding to the overall avian extravavagansa.


This will be a fine experience in the visual, spiritual, auditory,and for the less fortunate tactile, senses.Hats and not so fine shirts may be in order for the latter.Some olfactory sensual treats are an occasional, feature and should be appreciated for their organic & soil enriching qualities.


To avoid adding the gustatory to complete the sensory pentad light H'orderves will be served indoors.


Cocktails of appropriate variety & quality will be offered.Any contribution to this will by no means be considered offensive to your hosts.


Hosts of admirable social elegance & high energy would offer a well thought out culinary finale to the evening.Lacking these attributes, we suggest that such guests as are interested may consider a communial feed at the very good riverside catfish restaurant in Ashland City or some other ethnic restaurant in Nashville.


For those interested in the Sulpher Creek Farm that would like a tour, such will be very informally availiable at 3 pmish.


We are most recepive to any guests you may wish to bring.


We look foward to seeing you.


Tom & Brenda & Rachel

Early Morning Bus. Music. Books. Murmuration.

There is something clarifying about delivering daughter to Greyhound bus station at 4:30 in the morning--one is whisked nonstop downtown like a VIP on empty roads with blinking yellow lights to a glass box packed with humanity. A polite man in a white cowboy hat and bear-claw earrings offered me his seat, next to a woman hunched protectively over her boombox. We installed India beside an Amish boy and his black-bonneted mother at Gate Number Three, a door in a short row of four which all open onto the same small patch of sidewalk where the buses are nosed in.

Last night Tom and I were at Ann Patchett's new bookstore, Parnassus, to hear Barry Sulkin's guitar duo, Heavy Mellow. Definitely a Bells Bend invasion of Green Hills! We caught up on all the news--orchards, who (JimTheArtist and Heather) has moved into the neighborhood (Sandra's apartment and Ayla's little studio), who is buying property, easements for road and water access, and how many birders have visited the cranes in Hiawassee (two thousand). Tom ordered up several copies of the new Iliad translation to share with Mike and Jimmy. Though our shared peregrinations around the globe hardly constitute an odyssey. (And everyone's Penelope was along on the trip--none of us much into staying home to spin.)

India and Rachel threw a LastNightHome cocktail party--hot spiced rum cider (I think) and a viewing of the murmuration, our swirling flocks of blackbirds who circle, settle, flare back into the sky and eventually fall like tiny grenades into the bamboo to roost at dusk.

Like the birds, I plan (or maybe they don't actually plan--maybe they just do) to circle back, to the holidays in my case, and record a bit of the Farm doings over the last few weeks. But now--literally, alas--off for the root canal. Tooth Number Five.