Connections
Add to Technorati Favorites
Search
Login
Powered by Squarespace
National Debt Clock
Please Help Support Backcountry Notes

Paypal Button:

OR:

E-MAIL CONTACT FORM

About Me

028_25Ae.jpg

I am an ex-urbanite who escaped the city life and has lived for the past 29 years in a rural, mountainous area of southwestern Virginia that in colonial and early-American times was part of the "Backcountry." This is the true melting pot of the U.S.A., its culture and traditions dominated by "born fighting" Scotch-Irish immigrants and enhanced by German, Highland Scot, Dutch, Welsh, and yeoman English settlers. Having absorbed and inculcated the history, values and views of the Backcountry, I would like to share information and insights from the place where America began. - - Jay Henderson

"My weariness amazes me . . . ." - - Bob Dylan ("Mr. Tambourine Man").

 

“The law often allows what honor forbids.” - - Bernard-Joseph Saurin, French lawyer, poet, and playwright.

 

FRONT PAGE

                             Sometimes old news is the best news 

Wednesday
Jul282010

More Hummers

Our hummingbirds have been plentiful and active and so the other day I decided to shoot a few. With the digital camera, of course. In order to get in close enough, I used a non-digital 75-150 mm zoom lens from my 35mm kit, which limited the camera to manual controls and gave very little depth-of-field, so these aren't the greatest images, but they are genuine hummer shots.

 

Wednesday
Jul282010

Recipe: Nazarean Lamb Stew

I developed this recipe in 2002 while reading a book about the life of Jesus in the context of Nazareth two millennia ago. The author mentioned foods and spices that would have been available in that place and time and I was inspired to experiment with ingredients as authentic as possible -- this recipe is the result.

{To continue click HERE}

 

Nazarean Lamb Stew -- http://www.backcountrynotes.com/cooking/2010/7/28/nazarean-lamb-stew.html

Monday
Jul262010

Yet Again, Back To Ye Olde Rack

The Rack! My old friend . . . today marked the beginning of a new course of chemotherapy, this one incorporating Avastin. In the clinic at 11:00 a.m., on the rack at noon, done at 5:15 p.m. Fortunately, I was able to doze through most of it. Now watching for side effects -- nothing serious showed up during the infusion, and I'm hoping nothing does.

Avastin is a substance which works by preventing the construction of blood vessels. As a cancer colony grows, it builds its own support network, including a blood supply. Cut off the blood supply, and cancer cells, first, can't increase and, second, may die off. The downside is that Avastin works for all fast-growing cell networks building a blood supply, not merely cancer cells. Hence, certain side effects can be serious. We shall see. Hoping for the best.

The regimen is: one long infusion day, followed by three days of going to the clinic for followup injections. One cycle every 14 days, if I recall correctly (left all the literature downstairs).

Sunday
Jul252010

Endgame -- Week 7

On the positive side, I have managed to stay out of hospital confinement since June 12, almost two weeks. Not that I have stayed entirely out of the hospital -- there have been two trips to the ER, but neither of them required admission overnight. At home I remain extremely limited -- I can stand or walk for only five to ten minutes at a stretch, and often I require a wheelchair or walker; I can go up and down stairs, but not very often and the "up" trip is painful for the knees and hips.

Energy level is up, certainly, but not a lot. Being hooked to the TPN pump for 14 hours a day is a major pain but is the only alternative to starvation. I'm scheduled to start a new course of chemo on Monday with the immediate goal of arresting tumor growth. We're hoping for low side effects and good results.

Saturday
Jul242010

Hummers

Haeckel, "Trochilidae." Click on image for source information. I spent a pleasant hour on the side porch watching the hummingbirds. We host a colony of native ruby-throated hummingbirds every summer; they like to feed on the vine flowers which grow there. Typically we have 2 or 3 nests on the west side and another one on the east. It is nesting season, so the males busy themselves fighting over territorial boundaries while the females slip away for a sip of nectar as often as they can.

Big Girl didn't return this year -- I hadn't expected that she would, considering that she had dominated the west side yard for about 5 years. Big Girl was the biggest, boldest hummer I've ever seen -- it didn't matter what she spotted in her domain, be it shrew, cat, chipmunk, dog, or tortoise, she would hover eyeball-to-eyeball and cuss it out. Our big half-Maine-Coon-Cat Tom has side porch privileges because he won't climb down into the yard. It was my privilege to be present when he made the acquaintance of Big Girl one sunny July afternoon. He crouched and growled on the railing at a point 14 feet off the ground; Big Girl hovered about a yard from his nose, cussing incessantly for at least a minute. Tom dare not jump owing to the height and she seemed to know it. They were fun to watch.

Monday
Jul192010

Endgame -- Week 6

TPN setup. Bag on left contains nutrients, which are delivered to the veins by the battery-powered pump on the right.It has now been more than six weeks since I have eaten solid (i.e., real) food. No burgers, no chicken wings, no bagels, no salads . . . nothing except liquids, such as tea or broth. And lots of ice and water. Does ice qualify as a solid food?

The reason for this incredible un-diet is simple -- the cancer has blocked my digestive tract just below the stomach, so well that nothing can get through to be digested. Everything I consume in the usual way has to exit through a gastric tube. Noplace else to go, except back up the throat. Uck. Something has to go in, to maintain a certain moisture level, and ice water fits the bill very well.

Okay, so how about nutrition? Intravenous feeding, by a means called "tpn". I have a device installed in my left arm, a "pick line," which goes into a vein. The pick line is hooked up to a special IV pump which is attached to a bag of artificial food. The pump runs for 14 hours (!!!) -- overnight, since this is done at home -- to provide one day's worth of nutrition. So, to stay alive, I spend 98 hours per week hooked up to the pump contraption.

Fortunately, I can sleep through many of the 14 hours, and I can move around and do things -- like type this article -- during some of the remaining hours.

The 10 hours of freedom from the tpn pump have become precious time. Not that I can go far or do much -- one hour of a "normal" activity wears me out -- but at least I can do it without dragging the pump apparatus around. 

I'm working on being able to go up and down the stairs more than once a day.  

Short of a miracle, there's no cure coming this round -- but I'll be damned if I'll lie around waiting for the final move.

I met with the oncologist today and, assuming (hoping/wishing) that there are no further problems during this week, then I will resume chemotherapy on Monday. Different regime than before -- Avastin plus other stuff -- and with no real prospect of a "cure."  A hold-back is probable; shrinking the size of tumors is probable; along with an outside chance of enough shrinkage to re-open digestion. A long shot, but seems worth taking.

Sunday
Jul182010

Tar Balls of Virginia Beach

When we were kids, our family moved to Norfolk, Virginia, and beginning in 1956 we frequently visited Virginia Beach, building sandcastles and chasing sand fleas in the surf. From time to time we would find tar balls on the beach -- not many, and usually they turned up following a storm. The typical tar ball was about the size of a tennis ball. They were well-rounded with an outer layer heavy with sand.

At the time, their origin was a mystery -- none of the available adults knew the source of the tar balls. The usual response to my inquiries was, "throw that nasty thing back into the surf." It was many years later -- long after I had seen the last of the Virginia Beach tar balls -- that I discovered their origin.

The tar balls of Virginia Beach were relics of the early years of  World War II.  In 1942, a largely-hidden marine war took place off the shores of the Carolinas and Virginia as German U-boats lay in wait for unprotected merchant shipping northbound from the Gulf of Mexico. Merchant vessels carried all manner of strategic war materials from New Orleans and other Gulf ports -- foods, grains, meats, manufactured products, cotton, leather, and -- of critical importance -- petroleum and petroleum products. New England and old England alike were dependent on heating oil and coal from the American South.

Germany knew how vulnerable England was and directed its U-boats to attack merchant shipping across the Atlantic even to the shores of America. It was a well-kept secret that this gambit came very close to defeating Great Britain as the U-boat attacks choked off supplies of food and fuel.

In America, the government's response to the U-boat attacks was to go with denial and minimize the impact. Instead of raising alarm and taking all possible precautions, the Roosevelt administration opted for keeping the station as secret as possible. Thus there was no blackout of Virginia Beach and the lights glowing along the beachfront provided a well-illuminated backdrop against which U-boat captains could detect ships.

Many of the merchant vessels sunk off the Virginia and Carolina beaches were tankers taking petroleum from Texas and Louisiana to refineries in New Jersey and points north and northeast. Sometimes tankers went down with their cargo intact and when they burned the heavier, asphaltic components survived and went to the bottom still in the ship's hold. Over a period of years, the heavy petroleum fractions leaked from the wrecks and dispersed over the sea bottom, forming balls of petroleum tar. Currents eventually took some of these ashore where we found them in the Virginia Beach sands.

It seems likely that tar balls from the BP leak will continue washing ashore onto Gulf of Mexico beaches for years and even decades to come, to be found by curious children whose parents will tell them to "throw that nasty thing back into the surf."

Tuesday
Jul132010

Endgame -- Week 5

Just got home yesterday from a five-day stint at the hospital. Apparent necessity for another stay at the facility -- "lower left lobe pneumonia." Took me down fast last Wednesday. Several days in the Clinch Valley Medical Center ICU were not bad -- a nice facility, if you must be in one -- but presently I have no Internet access away from home desktop, so I just disappear from the radar.

Sunday
Jul042010

Celebrate Independence Day

John PennToday is American Independence Day, the fourth day of July. By sheer fate, it happens that I am descended in direct line from a Signer -- nothing I did to merit, mind you, simply worked out that way.  John Penn was a substitute delegate from North Carolina who is counted among the many largely unheralded who took up the quill to manifest assent to liberty.
Genealogical poppycock to the contrary, I am aware of no provable relationship between John Penn and William Penn of Pennsylvania. John Penn was a son of a well-to-do (but not to the point of gentry) Virginia farmer named Moses Penn. John died young, soon after the Revolution had been won, and is buried on the grounds of the Guilford Courthouse (NC) National Military Park.
So every Fourth of July I lift a glass of something -- tea, this year -- and toast the memory of John Penn. May you have a glorious Fourth!
trumbull-declaration-of-independence%20rs.jpg
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. . . .
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.