Hemlocks

I haven't written about my precious hemlock trees in a while, and considering the title of this blog, it's overdue.

When the invasive insect plague started to destroy our hemlock groves and ecosystems, our government had plenty of time to react. However, they didn't do anything of any consequence to prevent what has almost certainly become the extinction of two major species of what are arguably our most beautiful eastern evergreens.

Until we develop some biological solution to the control and/or eradication of the introduced pest--the hemlock wooly adelgid--the only thing that can be done to save our Eastern and Carolina hemlocks is to treat them with an insecticide. These treatments (generally soil injected) target the infestations of adelgids that subsist by sucking dry the needles of these trees. This was never done on a wide basis because our society would rather construct and use weapons of mass destruction to slaughter other human beings than save an entire ecosystem.

However, in a few narrowly targeted places some groves and individual trees were treated by various arms of Federal, State, and local governments (and by private individuals). Many people have ventured out at their own expense to locate and treat large tracts of hemlock forests. The most concentrated efforts at doing this have been by the Department of the Interior, generally under the National Parks System. One can find hemlock trees in National Parks and in designated sites where the trees have been treated with either Merit or Safari brand insecticides. These treatments effectively kill off the infestations and provide the trees with several years of protection against the invasive bugs.

One place where you can see trees that have been treated are along the Blue Ridge Parkway. Wherever the Park Service has determined that the views warrant protecting a few stands, they have set aside some of their meager budget for these treatments. One such place is the trail that leads from the Linville Gorge visitors center down to the overlook above the falls. Some of these hemlocks are very old and impressive trees (they were once called the Redwoods of the East), and so some of them have been saved.

Following are a few photos I took of some treated hemlocks two years ago on a hike down to the Falls Overlook:


Hemlocks that have been treated are generally marked in some way. Sometimes with a daub of paint, with a brass tag, or both.

Composite photo of an old growth hemlock tree on the trail to the overlook. (Click to see at full size.)

Carole took this one of me standing beside one of the treated hemlocks.

An old growth hemlock that had succumbed to the infestation and which could not be saved and which was subsequently cut down to prevent it from falling on hikers walking by.

Journey Into Mystery

Yet another pre-hero Marvel comic book I picked up in the last couple of weeks. Classic Jack Kirby cover (maybe even inked by Ditko) and containing, of course, wonderful interior art by Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko.

Ditko Madness!

Two more purchases for my Ditko archives:


I landed this book in lower grade just this week. Strange Suspense Stories #20 from Charlton Comics, 1954. I think this is the earliest Steve Ditko comic that I currently own. During the time when he was heavily influenced by Joe Kubert's work, but developing that distinct Ditko style.

This is Amazing Adult Fantasy #14. Don't let the sub-title fool you. The stories were just plain silly, but the comic was illustrated by Steve Ditko from cover to cover. Generally each issue of Amazing Adult Fantasy contained three stories. As I recall, all of the books were drawn by Ditko, including the covers. This title followed the numbering and a name change from Amazing Adventures. One issue later (#15), it would change its title again, dropping the "Adult" to become merely Amazing Fantasy. That was the issue that introduced the Amazing Spider-Man by Steve Ditko. And there was never another issue of Amazing Fantasy, for the book then became The Amazing Spider-Man and the numbering started over with #1.

This is a very young Neil Young. Why is this photo here? Because I've always thought that Neil Young looked like he was drawn by Steve Ditko when Young was...well, young!

Time

Well, I've got some time off coming up. December is behind me and I can think about getting away for a few days and relaxing.

Thinking powerfully about heading for my favorite mountain range, the Black Mountains to spend a couple of days hiking. Of course it will depend on the weather--gets mighty cold up there in the highest range in the eastern USA.

The bulk of the Black Mountain range. Composite photo I made a couple of years ago. This area was once considered for National Park status. It's a pity it never happened. (Click to enlarge).

Cabin

Carole has six acres of land high in the North Carolina mountains not far from the southwestern VA/NC border. We like it up there. The land sits at close to 4,000 feet above sea level, which is pretty high for this state. We feel lucky to have such a piece of property.

For years we have thought about building a cabin there. Now we're looking more closely into the prospect. If it happens, it won't be a big place. We can't afford such. But we have constantly been on the lookout for the right design and the right floor plan. This weekend I think Carole saw the perfect house for us to build. She was up in Maggie Valley with one of her friends from work and she took some photos of a cabin there.

I agree with Carole's assessment. I think it's perfect and it should be within our budget.

Here are some pictures that she took:

The outside of the little cabin.

Looking up the small staircase to the upstairs loft bedroom.

Downstairs kitchen/dining/den. There was also a bathroom and a bedroom downstairs that Carole couldn't get photos of because the maintenance folk were cleaning them and she didn't want to disturb the maids.

The Idiots Never Get It

I've covered Phil Ochs here before. One of the men of our short-lived flirtation with revolution whom I sincerely admire. Yeah, I know he snapped and his life ended on a truly long and disturbing downhill slide, but for a while he was brilliant and courageous and worth hearing.

One of the songs that he wrote was "Love Me, I'm a Liberal". It sums up what he thought of the American liberal. And when I heard it all of my own thoughts and feelings toward liberals were given voice: they're a bunch of limp cowards who accomplish nothing save preserving the status quo at the expense of standing up and actually creating a just world.

A few months ago I stumbled upon a video of Mojo Nixon singing Mr. Ochs' tune for all the wrong reasons. Mojo Nixon is a right wing rat-shit who thought his cover of the old tune was quite clever. In fact, it was wrong on every level I could possibly imagine. The fact that this cover was disseminated proves that there are no ghosts, else Phil Ochs would have returned from the dead and ripped Mojo Nixon's guts out in front of the cameras recording this travesty. In an ideal Phil Ochs kind of world, Nixon and his neo-Fascist cohorts would be in reeducation camps or hanging from a gallows. It's too bad this could not come to pass.

Here are the lyrics of Ochs' "Love Me, I'm a Liberal" without the smarmy disgusting presence of right wing shithead Mojo Nixon:

I cried when they shot Medgar Evers
Tears ran down my spine
I cried when they shot Mr. Kennedy
As though I'd lost a father of mine
But Malcolm X got what was coming
He got what he asked for this time
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

I go to civil rights rallies
And I put down the old D.A.R.
I love Harry and Sidney and Sammy
I hope every colored boy becomes a star
But don't talk about revolution
That's going a little bit too far
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

I cheered when Humphrey was chosen
My faith in the system restored
I'm glad the commies were thrown out
of the A.F.L. C.I.O. board
I love Puerto Ricans and Negros
as long as they don't move next door
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

The people of old Mississippi
Should all hang their heads in shame
I can't understand how their minds work
What's the matter don't they watch Les Crain?
But if you ask me to bus my children
I hope the cops take down your name
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

I read New republic and Nation
I've learned to take every view
You know, I've memorized Lerner and Golden
I feel like I'm almost a Jew
But when it comes to times like Korea
There's no one more red, white and blue
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

I vote for the democratic party
They want the U.N. to be strong
I go to all the Pete Seeger concerts
He sure gets me singing those songs
I'll send all the money you ask for
But don't ask me to come on along
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

Once I was young and impulsive
I wore every conceivable pin
Even went to the socialist meetings
Learned all the old union hymns
But I've grown older and wiser
And that's why I'm turning you in
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal


And here is a song tribute to Phil Ochs by, ironically, a liberal. But at least the song is heartfelt and not spat out by a greedy, hateful, ignorant Libertarian shithead like Mojo Nixon:

Super Drag, the Insult Super Hero

Watch the continuing adventures of the biggest asshole ever to don a superhero costume:

Super Drag hears complaints from one of his early adversaries.

Super Drag is recruited by the Avenging Demolishers

My Sister's Christmas House

My sister Nancy and her husband Arnold live in a storybook kind of house. Nice beyond my own wildest dreams, I always get a kick out of seeing the place and exploring how she has decorated it. Nancy does Christmas major league. I lost count of the Christmas trees in the house. Many.

At any rate, here are photographs of her house, still decorated for Christmas as of her son's 40th birthday party which I attended there last night:

The house as I saw it on arrival.

I tried to get a good photo of this, but couldn't quite find a happy medium for the lighting. The cool part about it was that the gift box at the foot of the giant nutcracker soldier is filled with stars. It was a really nice touch.

Christmas tree in one of the front rooms.

If I had to choose, this was my favorite tree. It was in the formal dining room.

I reckon this was the main tree. In the den.

This was another cool tree. It's on a kind of landing over the front door. I don't even know how to gain access to that part of the house. But there are doors leading to that spot.


The snow-baby Christmas tree. This was also a really cool tree. Decorated entirely with ornaments known as "snow babies".

A mantle piece decoration. Very impressive.

A display of nutcrackers on the landing of the loft.

Another display that was hard to photograph. One of the coolest of the decorations, to my way of thinking. I got a kick out of just looking at it.

Looking down on the den from the upstairs loft.

There were lots of other Christmas decoration touches to the house which I didn't photograph. One of the thoughts that kept running through my mind last night was: "Man, I am so happy that I don't have to take this stuff down and pack it away."

But it sure was fun to see.

White Christmas Aftermath

Well, since we might not get any more snow this winter, I figured I should post a few shots of the minor little Christmas storm. It was nice. I'd never witnessed a white Christmas before. You guys who see them all of the time are probably jaded by it all. But we here in the deep South rarely see it. In fact, I think it had been almost fifty years since it had happened here in Charlotte.

The view outside our back door while the snow was still coming down the morning of December 26.

Looking out the front door around the same time.

December 27, getting ready to leave for work. Sun just rising, celestial bodies still visible in the sky.

The snow was already beginning to thin out, despite the cold. I think some of it was sublimating...just fading directly to gas.

Pat, one of my supervisors, spreading salt over the ice so that we laborers don't bust our asses getting to our vehicles.

Ward, one of my co-workers, taking some stuff to his vehicle, moving gingerly over a thin sheen of ice.

From Mr. Lennon and Mr. Ochs:

I know. The holiday is over. But let's not forget the words of reformed Ebenezer Scrooge: "I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach..."

Not all men are monsters:

John.

Phil.

Totally

I've seen some unintentionally gay comic book covers before, but this one is near the top of the heap!

"What do they want?" Indeed.

Lavender and Lace.

Resemblance

Recently I had the chance to see Benicio Del Toro's performance as Che Guevara in the film CHE, directed by Steven Soderbergh. It's quite a good movie and I can recommend it. Benicio Del Toro has become one of my favorite actors in the past ten years or so, and he did a wonderful job in this movie.

I know that it's the business of film producers to create imitations of reality. Or to create fantasies that seem real.

However, more than anything else, I was struck by his resemblance to the martyred revolutionary that he portrayed in the film. Nothing spells it out so well as photographs. Here are two:

Che Guevara

Del Toro as Guevra

Mr. Ditko and Mr. Kirby

December has been a good month for my burgeoning comic collection. One of the items I picked up was an EC science fiction comic. Way back when, I had a really good EC collection. Several hundred books strong. But, as with everything else I owned in my youth, I sold them off to survive or to pay medical bills. Since I'd had so many EC comics in my day I really had no terrible hunger to replace them. However, never say never.

When I was buying some old DC comics for a friend, I wanted to buy some more stuff from the dealer who was helping me out and write him a check with a nice round number on it. So I kept searching through his stock, looking for some more books to add to the stack. Finally, I noticed that he had a Weird Fantasy #11 which has a classic atomic bomb cover and was in really nice shape, so we came to an agreement on the price and I nabbed it. Will I buy more EC comics to go with this one? Yes.


Outside of doing my best to finish assembling all of the Steve Ditko created/written/illustrated issues of The Amazing Spider-Man (this being Amazing Fantasy 15 and Amazing Spider-Man 1-38), one of my collecting projects has been to buy up a set of all of Mr. Ditko's 1950s work for various titles. I've been really lucky this year in grabbing many of his early books, including a lot of the per-hero titles he did for Marvel Comics shortly before Mr. Ditko and Jack Kirby created and illustrated (and wrote) the various superheroes that would cement Marvel Comics as the preeminent publisher of comic books in the USA.
So here are just a few of those books that I was able to purchase in the closing month of 2010:

Journey Into Mystery #81. This was two issues from when Jack Kirby would create and introduce his superhero version of the character Thor, who is about to become the star of a major motion picture. Created wholly by Jack Kirby, no matter what else you may hear or read.

Journey Into Mystery #80. Lots of Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko art.

One of the amazing things about Ditko is that he was often given the task of creating an entire book that was, essentially, an illustrated anthology. This book was a prime example of what he would do in his struggle to support himself in an industry not known for paying a living wage. This comic book is almost entirely illustrated by Ditko, with only a single one-page story on the last page possibly not being by him. His signature isn't on it, but it's possible that he did the layouts. But the other five stories in the comic are all by Mr. Ditko. And even though Charlton Comics (the publisher of this title) was not known for paying a fair page rate, Steve Ditko did not spare any effort to breathe life into each of the tales here.

Return?

Sometimes Carole and I travel somewhere that we both like, but which we both feel that there will be little or no chance of ever returning. One spot that remains foremost in my mind of such a place is Shired Island, a county park in Florida.


One thing about Florida is that, despite the rampant development and explosion of urban sprawl in much of the state, there are still tracts of rural land where Mankind has been slow to exploit or destroy the natural ebb and flow of Nature. I like visiting these spots in Florida. You can drive along two-lane roads lined with forests, or surrounded by swamps and marsh. These places bear no sign of damage other than that simple road cutting through the bush, or marked by an occasional house or farm, perhaps a single sandy track leading off through the pine scrub and palmetto.

Back in the Spring of 2009 we took our travel trailer down to the central west coast of Florida to hit some of the first magnitude springs we'd never seen. Unfortunately for us, our visit coincided with a tremendous flood along the Suwanee River which inundated many of those springs and caused them to go "black"--that is, the crystal clear spring flows were blotted out by the dark, tannin-rich waters of the Suwanee, rendering them invisible and impossible to swim.

After one of our spring trips was wrecked by the flood, we went on a day-long journey to explore other areas. We had been hearing of a spot called Shired Island from other folk we'd met while snorkeling and canoeing. So we got out our maps and hooked up the Tom Tom and decided to find this place. And we did. It was, as they say, out in the Boonies. It was, for us, a little slice of peace and quiet.


Classic rural Florida, the park is stranded out at the very end of a long two-lane road that fires itself out through the scrubland and down toward a point of palm-dotted shore where the Gulf of Mexico nibbles away at the state of Florida. We found what we'd been hearing about: a county-run park with more to it than we had been expecting. There at the end of the road we found a very small campground that provides each site with a covered and raised picnic pad and even hookups for your RV or travel trailer. There right on the beach you can park your trailer and look out on the Gulf and watch the waves or just sit and listen to the crush of water against the sand.

We both found the isolation of the place to be soothing. Both of us would love to return there with our little Casita in tow, our canoe on the truck, and with the time on our hands to sit and enjoy the place. But it's one of those spots that we quite like and which the realities of Life have likely dictated that we'll never see again.

Maybe so, maybe not.


Addendum: Apparently Forbes Magazine listed Shired Island Beach as the single most polluted beach in the USA.

Pre-Christmas Celebration

We had our holiday celebration on Friday instead of Saturday. This was because Carole had to work on Saturday so it was our only chance to go to Carole's mom's place to get together with her and have a nice dinner and exchange presents. As we do every Christmas Eve, we also watched the George C. Scott version of A CHRISTMAS CAROL. I know everyone has their favorite movie version of that story, but to my way of thinking, none of the others come anywhere near touching the effectiveness of the one with George C. Scott, Edward Woodward, David Warner, and Susannah York.

I think that version was originally made for TV, which is even more astonishing to me as it was so highly produced and polished. I never get tired of watching it and it never fails to bring tears to my eyes (for all the right reasons).

This was a particularly fun Christmas for us. It was the first time I've ever felt financially secure enough to buy something really frivolous for Carole. As I consider any jewelery purchase to be completely and totally frivolous, that has never been something I've ever felt comfortable about buying. At least no jewelry that's expensive. This year, though, flush with cash from various writing projects, I did just that, and paid cash for a nice ring for Carole. It felt good to be able to do that.

My very tiny family. Carole, Andy, and Faye.

Me and Carole. (Don't ask about the high waters.)

What passed for our Christmas tree this year.

My pre-dinner snack. Port wine cheese, salami, sausage balls, and moscato wine. We went through three bottles of wine.

Carole opens the ring. She was very happy.

Gale Norton was Scum

The main difference between Democrats and Republicans is that genuine environmental protections and anti-pollution environmental regulations are actually promoted and pushed when Democrats are in charge. When Republicans control the government, the thing you can count on is environmental rape and allowing corporations to do as they please.

I was very pleased to read this today.

Not only was new wilderness discouraged during the illegitimate Bush administration, the horrid skank in charge of the Interior and our parks, forests, and wild lands was actually a Libertarian sack of shit who thought of Nature as just something to exploit. Well, now that illegitimate so-called "President" is gone and his pet monster in the Interior is also history. May they both rot.

A monster as ugly on the outside as it is on the inside.

I always thought Gale Norton looked like a Ferengi, who were designed by the Trek folk to be the ultimate capitalist/Libertarian scum. It was fitting that Gale Norton resemble these filthy intergalactic worms.

Gale Norton was scum.

Pre-hero Marvels

"Pre-hero Marvels". Now there's a totally esoteric term that only a die-hard comic book fan could decipher.

What it refers to are comic books published by the firm known as Marvel Comics before they started doing super-hero books. Until roughly 1961, with the publication of the FANTASTIC FOUR #1, Marvel was earning its place on the newsstand shelves by putting out science-fiction, fantasy, horror, western, and quasi-romance comics. Superhero comics, which had been very popular some years before, had fallen into the doldrums and Marvel wasn't publishing any superhero titles. That was reserved almost exclusively for DC Comics which was still doing okay with its long-time mainstays Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, etc.

But calling them "pre-hero Marvels" isn't even quite correct itself. For Marvel Comics wasn't--technically speaking--even called Marvel Comics in the very early 1960s. It had first appeared as a company called Timely Comics, then became Atlas Comics during most of the 1950s. After that, it went through a series of varying corporate names until, finally, settling on Marvel Comics when they returned to publishing superhero tales.

When I was a kid I enjoyed the pre-hero Marvel titles. It wasn't because of the stories, really, which were derivative in nature and which were also pretty much retreads every issue. The stories were largely either straight up monster tales pitting a regular guy against a huge monster who was either supernatural or an alien or a mutant. The regular guy would always defeat the giant monster by the end of the story. Some stories were riffs on old pulp tales that had been copied, the comic book editor fairly sure that the offended writer was either dead or wasn't reading comic books.

So it wasn't the stories themselves, really, that attracted me.

What floored me then, as now, was the artwork. And most of the artwork for those late 50s and very early 60s Marvel monster comics was created almost exclusively by Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko with occasional stories being done by the likes of Don Heck and Dick Ayers. All during the early history of Timely/Atlas/Marvel, the editor-in-chief (Stan Lee) would corral one or two artists upon whom he came to depend as the workhorses that kept the company in the black and Lee with gainful employment. This was his main task--making sure his uncle (who owned the company) was happy enough with the bottom line to keep the presses going and Lee's paycheck regular. This was not easy to do, and the company had come close to being closed down several times. It was only Lee's ability to keep an ear to the ground to detect what was popular enough to sell on the stands that provided Marvel with the impetus to remain profitable.

So for a number of years, Marvel's bread-and-butter were the sci-fi, fantasy, and horror titles being produced solidly and with great imagination by Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. These books, since they were the ones printed just prior to Marvel's breakout superhero titles, are known today as the "pre-hero Marvels".

Since I loved them as a kid, they satisfy my need to have items of nostalgia around me as I get older. Plus, I think they're good investment quality collectibles. And I've been picking them up as I can over the past months.

Here, then, are two of my recent purchases:

Amazing Adventures #2. This title later went on to become Amazing Adult Fantasy, which went on to become the Amazing Spider-Man.

Amazing Adventures #6. The final Silver Age appearance of Dr. Droom, who was, arguably, Marvel's first superhero.