… UD prepares for her first day of teaching.

With power restored to Garrett Park, Les UDs left their hotel yesterday afternoon. They spent the early evening hours raking leaves and dragging limbs off the lawn.

The fox was at the top of UD‘s half acre exploring a mass of branches that fell across the open green near the deer and mourning dove encampments. Moving the branches will take some doing, and UD‘s not ready for the task.

The task of thought – dark, poetic thought – is like the elegant wary predatory movement of a fox… Now here, now here, and now here in the dark head, thought like a nocturnal animal’s body feels out what’s hidden there amid vast silent clearings. This twig, that leaf. The poetic body comes about its own business, brings sly hot perception to its own cold mental darkness, and the poem – like the dark snow under the fox’s paw – is printed.

So we’re in a hotel again tonight.

The sky over the Rockville Pike is a mild blue with thin clouds, but the stands of trees among the malls are still shaking.

Lots of stuff on our lawn and in our forest to bring inside. We’ve made a reservation at a hotel for tomorrow – in case power goes out in Garrett Park. People walk along Rokeby Avenue carrying bags full of paper towels. We worry about trees falling on our house.

Mr UD was at the computer, following developments in Libya.

UD was putting on sneakers, getting ready to take a short, post-operative stroll through her azaleas.

Suddenly their house loudly began to shake. LOUDLY. As if it were about to collapse on them.

Les UDs raced out of the house; they heard shouts up and down the street.

I checked my roof for a massive tree that might have fallen on it, but I knew I wouldn’t see that. No tree could make our house do what it just did, vibrate violently in every corner for over a minute.

Earthquake. 6.0 magnitude, epicenter Mineral Virginia.

Very scary. I’ve never been in an earthquake before.

Out on the street, on a beautiful late summer day, I stopped some kids who’d been in the park nearby.

“Yeah! Everything started to move! We saw a window in a house across the street and it was moving!”

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La Kid was alone in an elevator at the Congressional Quarterly offices in downtown Washington.

“It shook from side to side. I thought It must be broken in some way. Then I got to my floor and the door opened and the earthquake was over and I was greeted by a scene of all my co-workers freaking out totally… They evacuated the building and told us we could take the rest of the day off.”

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Photos from the DC quake.

We just hired this guy, and now he’s won the IZA Prize in Labor Economics.

Mr UD and I are driving home from our recent hiking trip in the Virginia mountains.

We’re maybe forty miles from home when we come to a massive roadworks project which blocks all car traffic. Large signs instruct you to get out of your car, walk to a nearby field of 747s, and fly one home.

Mr UD and I begin walking. I’m thinking I do remember reading somewhere that anyone can fly a 747.

The two of us get to the massive plane, and Mr UD’s game, he’s being a guy, he’s walking up the steps to the cockpit (Do 747s have cockpit steps?)… But I can tell he’s reluctant.

Suddenly I say: “Stop. That’s enough. There’s NO way you’re flying this plane. It’s not good for your health. It’s not safe. No.”

Somewhat sheepishly, Mr UD descends the steps.

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When I woke up, I told Mr UD the dream. I expected him to laugh. He didn’t laugh.

“It’s true,” he said, his voice a bit slurred by sleepiness. “All you have to do to fly a 747 is press a button. I mean, it has to be programmed and all.”

“Oh yeah?” I countered. “A field of 747s. Tons of people are taking off at the same time. How do you avoid hitting them?”

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(For new readers: UD is recovering from surgery and taking Percocet.)

… and wants to say two things:

1. Your comments and emails – and poems! – have cheered her up immensely. Thank you.

2. When doctors want to show you affection, they squeeze your toes. UD finds this custom adorable.

More later.

… here, she goes in for some surgery tomorrow. She thanks her readers for their kind wishes.

She should be fine, but she’ll be out of it for a day or two.

UD‘s notorious for posting every day. But I very much doubt I’ll be able to post tomorrow.

I mean, maybe I can post tomorrow… But my subject matter is unlikely to be very universityesque.

More like Wow …. Look ……… My own …. personal …. handheld …. morphine dispenser …

Anyway, ne quittez pas.

… basks on the balcony; hummingbirds buzz the feeders. Time for Les UDs to head back down to the flatlands. They go home today.

Their visit yesterday to White House Farm was spectacular, especially their walk through the haunted old white house itself, its flooring gone through generations of Shenandoah River floods, but the beauty of its fireplaces and windows still there, under the dust, after 250 years. Chris Anderson, the foundation’s executive director, narrated the history of the house (it has seen, among other things, Stonewall Jackson burn the adjacent White House Bridge in 1862, blocking the progress of Union forces), and talked about the foundation’s plans to restore it.

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Large prints of Thomas Jefferson and John James Audubon on the upper landing of the farmhouse reflect the new owner’s engagements in the civic and natural worlds.

We met the owner, Scott Plein, as we walked through the house to its open kitchen; he sat at a table set beside long windows that overlooked sunflowers and karst ponds and heirloom tomato plants and black cattle. The whole property is surrounded – sheltered; made somehow beautifully self-contained by – the vast Appalachian range.

The place was a perfect utopia of yellows and blues. The blue of the sky and the range, the yellow of the sun and the cornfields. It was dreamy – a dream of river and land and harvest and house. The wind rippled the soybeans and made a green ocean.

… means waking to the hoots of the Great Horned Owl.

Hoo hoo huh-hoo. Hooo… Hoo.

We’re still in Shenandoah, spending mornings underground with stalactites and evenings high up in Skyland. Last night’s sunset was so spectacular that we took our beach chairs out of the trunk, planted them at the Jewell Hollow Overlook, and sat there for an hour.

(Found here.)

This wasn’t only about the last moments of a small bright orange sun behind a mountain; it was about the vast wash of blue and pink and white as the sky settled down at half past eight. We were alone except for a man with an easel a few yards out on a path in front of us.

Painting a sunset in the mountains is about as trite, I figure, as sharing a kiss in front of the same sunset. But who’s gonna stop us?

UD‘s nature adventure gets better and better. From our balcony, we just watched a flock of turkey – complete with poults – cross from Open Field Stage Left to Open Field Stage Right. Slowly. One even gobbled.

… Hawksbill Greenway in Luray, Virginia this afternoon, we saw a green heron skimming along the creek, and then a black-crowned night heron, sitting on a stone (just like this), watching for fish.

That was our second walk of the day. Earlier, we followed the Shenandoah River around White House Farm — and this was one of the most beautiful rural walks I’ve ever taken. It’s got everything – blue mountains, a rolling river, a quiet winding road with just-shorn sheep and old white houses whose porches overlook the Shenandoah. There are acres of apple trees, long green fields of corn … and White House Farm itself, which dominates the view and is (if you’ve looked at its picture) a pastoral symphony.

When’s the last time you found a NOTHING FOUND page this lovely? It’s the farm building behind the main house, photographed in the early evening, the sun settling deep on the hills…

Yesterday afternoon, a small black bear loped across Skyline Drive in front of Les UDs, who put on their brakes and watched him.

The bear watched Les UDs. Then the bear loped away.

We proceeded to park at Big Meadows Lodge and hike a bit and call La Kid back in DC to report the bear.

Mr UD insisted they eat at the dining room in the Lodge. Totally not UD‘s aesthetic (the open woody look is fine, but note the stiff-backed regimented chairs… and the curtains.. ), and she knew the food would be bland, but marriage is about compromise.

UD has fallen behind on a number of university stories, but she will now pull herself together and do a little blogging.

Christa, our innkeeper, has hung mucho hummingbird feeders along our deck. As I stood out there a moment ago, one of the birds – weird, thrumming, gold-green – buzzed my head, wondering if it contained sugar water. I shooed it away before it could put a beak in my ear.

Below the deck Christa has planted blowsy stands of pink hibiscus… I’m seeing hydrangea in there too… Down the hill a butterfly garden with plenty of purple buddleja vibrates.

The sun is hot, but there’s a breeze outside. And inside. In our room, where we’re resting up after breakfast, a quiet ceiling fan rotates.

Very peaceful, in other words. Even the black bears, according to Christa, keep to themselves.

The view? Wave after wave of bluegreen mountains.

… has died. Both immunologists, they worked together at the National Institutes of Health in the 1960s (UD‘s father spent his whole career at NIH).

I can’t find papers they co-authored, but they cited each other a lot. Benacerraf’s name, for instance, shows up as the last reference in this paper (UD‘s father is Herbert J. Rapp), “Heterogeneity of Rabbit IgM Antibody as Detected by C′1a Fixation.”