Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - Foscue Creek Park, Demopolis AL
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Green chair, on the peninsula behind LD, site 42, Foscue Creek Park, Demopolis AL, December 15, 2007
So what's with the green chair?
This green chair has been with me a long time. It is one of a pair of these wonderful aluminum folding chairs I inherited from my mom so I've had them over 20 years now and I can't remember how long mom had them; quite a while, probably since the late '50. Here's an article, Unseating a summer icon: One of the most popular chairs ever manufactured is vanishing from the American landscape, in the August 14, 2001 Chicago Tribune lamenting the passage of the ubiquitous folding lawn chair from the scene, pushed out by the chair-in-a-bag.
Maybe I should give the green chair a bag.
Let's give the green chair a ride
This green chair has already shown up in a couple of pictures on this journal. Let's see if it continues to show up. Give the old girl a little publicity on this trip. Kind of in the vein of the traveling pink flamingo (for those who remember those gags) but this time traveling with LD.
My morning walk yielded a few good photos
This morning I took an extra long walk just about sunrise on this partly cloudy morning. I took a record (for me) 100 pictures in varying early morning light as the clouds came and went. Hopefully I got a few good ones. We'll soon see. Meanwhile oatmeal beckons.
A while later: It looks like I got a few good pictures out of the 100 I took this morning. I seem to get one keeper in twenty shots - a 5% return. Interestingly, the first shot of a series is usually the best of the bunch. Taking a few more to bracket things and refine the composition and so on generally doesn't help a bit. That first intuitive sighting is usually better than the thought through one that follows.
Darn, it looks like we're in for a bit of rain here in Demopolis AL
Demopolis AL weather at weather.gov
Night camp
Site 42 - Foscue Creek Campground, Demopolis AL
- This is a well maintained US Army Corps of Engineers campground with level paved sites, most with full hookups
- Many sites overlook the water of the inlets off Demopolis Lake on the Tombigbee River
- There is good biking on the park roads
- The campground is pretty full Thanksgiving week and is generally booked solid the weekend of the Demopolis Christmas on the River festival in early December.
- Poor Verizon cell phone service - access is via Extended Network, roaming
- No Verizon EVDO service - access is via the Extended Network and service varies is slow but reliable
- Only 3 miles to Wal-Mart and other services in Demopolis AL
- Find other references to Foscue Creek
- List the nights I've camped here
- Check the weather
- Reserve a site
- Get a map
Teosinte and the Improbability of Maize
The ancestors of wheat, rice, millet, and barley look like their domesticated descendants; because they are both edible and highly productive, one can easily imagine how the idea of planting them for food came up. Maize can't reproduce itself, because its kernals are securely wrapped in the husk, so Indians must have developed it from some other species. But there are no wild species that resemble maize. Its closest genetic relative is a mountain grass called teosinte that looks strikingly different - for one thing, it "ears" are smaller than baby corn served in Chinese restaurants. No one eats teosinte, because it produces too little grain to be worth harvesting. In creating modern maize from this unpromising plant, Indians performed a feat so improbable that archaeologists and biologists have argued for decades over how it was achieved. Coupled with squash, beans, and avocados, maize provided Mesoamerica with a balanced diet, one arguably more nutritious than its Middle Eastern or Asian equivalent.