Blog Title: View from the Mountain

We have had many Thanksgivings here on the mountain.  For years in the nineties we drove down to Mount Airy, NC to have Thanksgiving with my mother. 

Often my wife would go down the day before to help.  She would often have much of the meal already done.

For a few years before she moved in with us in 2000, I would drive down and pick her up and bring her to the mountain.

No matter what, Thanksgiving was always a time to get together and do together.  Since our children have become adults, they always been involved in the preparation of the meal.

Last night as we were coming back from dinner, we started talking about stuffing.  I suggested that we needed to try oyster and sausage stuffing which I had one of the Thanksgivings that I enjoyed in New England.  That hardly got our of my mouth before it was shot down.

That immediately brought back memories of that first Thanksgiving on our Nova Scotia farm.  It was 1971. A number of us had just graduated from Harvard.   I had bought 140 acres and an old house and barn on the shores of the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia.  After graduation four of us had been working on rebuilding the house for several months.  We had made some great progress.

The house had been roofed, painted, insulated, wired, plumbed, and even had some walls.  We were still mostly sleeping on foam pads on the floor.  We had hot water, heat, and a kitchen with a dishwasher.  I had gotten a brick mason to build us a new chimney with a stone fireplace.

A number of friends from college came up to visit us that first Thanksgiving.  While most of us had spent a Thanksgiving or two away from home, it had always been in someone else's home.  This was to be our first Thanksgiving on our own.

There were a number of capable young ladies in the group, including my good friend Sally, still none had ever attempted a turkey on their own.  Then there were all these details like what to put in the stuffing, how to make the cranberry sauce, and what vegetables to have with our meal.

There was a lot of give and take, and we eventually had a magnificient meal that I am sure most of us still remember fondly.  One of our friends died a few years ago, she is certainly missed, but the rest of us are still doing Thanksgiving dinners.

Ours is going well.  We are not in any rush since I cooked country ham and eggs for breakfast.   The cranberry sauce is made.  This year our cranberries included some picked by Jon, one of the members of that original group.  The pumpkin pie is almost done.  The broccoli casserole is ready to bake, and the sweet potatoes are cooking.  The turkey is almost ready to go in the oven just as noon rolls around. I should have the remaining dirty dishes washed in another five minutes or so.  Then will break for a snack around one and then plan to have dinner around six this evening.

After dinner we will finish the Trivial Pursuit game that we started last night.  It is great to have our family around.  It is hard to say what I enjoy most, this year's celebration or the memories of the all the wonderful Thanksgving Days of the past.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving, enjoy either this year's or a great one from the past.

Perhaps that is a little harsh, but here on the coast our high temperature was almost twenty degress colder than the normal high.

Our low temperature actually got below freezing.

To put that in perspective in January 2007 for the whole month, we only had nineteen hours of below freezing temperatures.

I will admit that we were back over freezing by nine am, and that I actually know that these temperatures are not very cold.

Roanoke did not manage to get out of the thirties yesterday so I guess that I should not be complaining especially since Monday's forecast has the Carolina coast getting back to sixty degrees.

Also it is easy to think back to my days on the farm in Canada near Fredericton, New Brunswick.  We lived about twenty miles north of Fredericton in what was called a "snow belt."  We were significantly higher in altitude which meant our temperatures were usually four to eight degrees colder.

Yesterday Fredericton made it to twenty-six degrees Fahrenheit for a high temperature.  Their low was fourteen degrees.  I would guess our old farm probably had a low in the single digits.

The very first winter we spent in Roanoke was 1989.  That year snow came before Thanksgiving and stayed on the ground until Christmas.  It really made our ex-Canadian family feel at home having all that white stuff on the ground for such an extended period.

I cannot remember the snow being on the ground that long again since we have been in Roanoke.

I do know that a white Thanksgiving does not require a lot of driving to find especially this year.

I pulled this forecast for State College, Pa. when thinking of snowy east coast places.  It looks like they might have a good chance of seeing some snow on the ground at Thanksgiving.

So it is possible to feel not so bad about the cold weather.  You just have to find a place where the weather is colder. It helps to know someone there.  It is even better if you can call them up and start complaining about how cold you are.  To which they will obviously reply, "You have no idea what cold is."

Our Friday night here on the Crystal Coast, one of our weathermen used the words "wickedly cold" to describe our coming weekend weather.  Having seen minus forty once in my life, I could only smile.

Actually the cold weather yesterday did not bother me a lot.  We were able to watch the 125th edition of "The Game" between Harvard and Yale" on televistion  As has been the case recently,the Harvard men nicely handled the New Haven gang.

It was the fortieth anniversary of Harvard's amazing 29-29 victory over Yale.  I was sitting in the student bleachers for that one.

Yesterday's game was as good as any football game that I have seen this year.  It even including a last minute goal line stand by the Harvard team.

I did celebrate by going out and buying a bottle of Grand Marnier.  Somehow it seemed appropriate.  It also delivered a nice warm feeling as I was sipping it after the Chinese take-out victory dinner.

One final thought on the weather.  I noticed some of the northern stations have temperatures warming towards the end of next week.  That is usually a positive sign for Virginia and North Carolina.

That is actually a very good thing since thinking of a white Thanksgiving in either SW Virginia or Coastal NC is too much even for an ex-Canadian.

When I graduated college in 1971, much to my parents surprise I announced that I did not want to go to law school.  I had found a farm of 140 acres on the Nova Scotia coast for only $6,000 US.  I ended up buying the farm. With the help of some college roommates, the pink house with hand hewn beams became a livable home.

One college friend and I decided to try to farm.  Instead of money for law school I got money for a John Deere tractor and some farm equipment.  We bought a few head of cattle and a little more land.  It was the beginning of an amazing journey.

The first summer we put in a huge garden. My Mother and my Aunt Molly came up that summer and helped us figure out canning and freezing.  We also butchered a steer and killed a hog that we had raised with some neighbors.  It was a crash course in learning how to do everything from grinding hamburger to drying onions.

There were some things we ended up deciding that were best done by professionals. Butchering a steer was one of them.  However, gardening was definitely something which was worthwhile.  Even in Canada we managed a great tomato crop and sweet corn.  They did not arrive until late August, but that made them even more welcome.

While going back to the land is not an option for most of our urban society, I expect we might see a mini-boom in people revisiting the idea.  There is nothing wrong with living on the land if you can manage it.  It is not an easy life style, and it is not a commitment anyone should make lightly.

After we left Nova Scotia, my wife and I ran a large scale cattle farm in New Brunswick.  Aside from chickens, turkey, and pork we grew most of our own food.  We had one dairy cow, a dozen chickens for eggs and almost 200 purebred Angus cattle.  We had a huge garden and two freezers.   For years my wife baked much of our bread and made our own butter.  We ate plenty of grass fattened beef, lots of canned green beans, as many potatoes as we could use.  We did not spend a lot of money on food.

After eleven years on the farm, we decided to trade that life in for a job with steady wages where there was no operating loan at 20% interest.  Today all I grow is a few tomatoes which are a major part of our food in the summer.  Almost all of our food comes from the grocery store.

That off the farm job enabled us to send our three children to college.  While I would like to be back growing most of our food, I am not sure it would save us a lot of money.

Even as the cost of living has gone up, food remains a great bargain.  One night recently we had grilled salmon for dinner.  The next night we split a steak.  The per person cost on each of those meals was less than $5.  I could be back on the land, and my cost for steak might be less but I would not have the variety of salmon.  Prepared food of course is a different story.

Food is not where our expenses are.  Cable television and the Internet now cost $150 per month or more.  That is the equivalent of one of those $5 meals each night of the month.  Our healthcare insurance even with a huge deductible is $550 per month and headed higher in January.  Adding property taxes, car and property insurance, and utilities creates a sum that makes food look like a true bargain.

Perhaps we could find a low tax spot where we could built a stone home with a steel roof, give up television and the Internet, stop driving, and forget about healthcare insurance.

That is not a very workable solution.

The reality is that we have to get back to the future whatever it is.  Going back to the land while it provides great food and plenty of exercise is not necessarily the solution for reducing costs in the modern world.

We have to figure out some new paradigms.  The Internet is perhaps not the problem.  It may even be part of the solution.  As we take the opportunity to work more at home because of the Internet, perhaps we also reduce our driving.  It is also likely that the Internet gives us a larger reach for our ideas and businesses.

While we have talked for years about an Internet driven economy, this latest economic downturn might well be the spark for homegrown Internet businesses.  Perhaps removing the commuting time from daily life also makes room for that large garden once again.

The next year should definitely be an interesting one.

It seems to be a little early for the real changing of the seasons, but here I am once again abandoning my shorts for blue jeans.

On Saturday I busied myself with a last attack on some of the grunge that had gotten on the vinyl spindles around our upper deck.

The temperature was in the mid-seventies so wearing shorts and playing in the water was no problem. I also managed to wash both our vehicles.  Even after dark I turned on the light by our dock and scrubbed a place that was under a cooler that I had taken off our skiff earlier in the afternoon.

Yesterday, Sunday, was cooler but still not unpleasant.  We probably managed to get into the sixties but there was a persistent wind that kept most people off the beaches.  I did take some video of a large kite being flown near the western regional access on Emerald Isle.

Aside from the annoying wind noise from the built-in microphone, it was a fair representation of the day along the beach.

Just as the leaves in the picture show the last of fall colors here along the Carolina coat, the note from one of my college roommates who now lives in New Jersey that he has raked his yard indicates that winter is on the way whether we like it or not.

Yesterday, areas of the North Carolina mountains got a few inches of snow.  The canary in the cage for me on the weather front is always western Canada.  When they are persistently cold and start showing snow, I know we will be annoyed along the coast with outbreaks of what seems like cold weather to us.

With Edmonton staying in the thirties today and showing some very cold weather later in the week, I suspect we are going to have to wait a while for some relief from these chilly temperatures.

I was hoping for some more temperatures in the mid to upper sixties this week so I could do some more fishing.   I seem to be a fair weather fisherman right now.  Joining the guys dressed in thermal waders along the beach yesterday did not appeal to me at all.

I did enjoy a nice afternoon bike ride yesterday, but sitting here in my office enjoying the warming sun coming through the window makes enjoying the Carolina blue skies from the inside an appealing idea.

There is always an adjustment period between the seasons.  Here on the coast the adjustment is not very serious.  My shoe wardrobe goes from sandals to tennis shoes with tennis shoes being my winter footwear.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I should also admit that for much of the time on the coast shoes are just plain optional. 

I can remember the first winter that I spent in New Brunswick just north of Fredericton.  I finally ended up with two types of extreme weather boots, one had changeable felt boot liners and the other happened to be Army surplus boots designed for the Korean war.  They had felt encased in rubber.

Even in Roanoke, Virginia I used some interesting footwear when we had our spells of ice and messy snow.  If I had needed to be outside longer, I would not have been able to get by with sneakers when shoveling my driveway.  I often wore my felt lined boots when clearing any serious snow in Roanoke.

Fortunately I have escaped the snows of my youth.  I no longer consider late fall a race again the first snows which could bury for months any tool carelessly left on the ground.

I will have to remember to dig my coat out, I might need it a time or two more than last winter.

It was only yesterday evening that I was confirming the suggestions of rainy weather. I was awake a few minutes this morning around 5 am. 

The rains had not yet arrived, but it was pouring by the time I got out of bed just before 7 am. 

A couple of hours later we already had two inches of rain.  It is still raining as noon passes.  Somehow the gloomy damp weather is appropriate as I survey the landscape of our country.

Jobs are disappearing faster than they can be reported.  Real estate buyers are in shorter supply than American auto makers who are not ready to go out of business without a handout.

In the last year in Roanoke, we have seen our local hardware go out of business and a new restaurant fold near Lewis Gale Hospital.  Keagy Village seems to be struggling to find more than a few tenants.

Along the coast, the streets seem a little more empty than usual for the time of year.  We have seen a couple of restaurants close and few businesses fold, but actually that is not what worries me.

Businesses always come and go.  Usually the best ones survive unless something strange happen. 

What worries me is that people are losing confidence in the future.  I actually do not want to get back to the "good old days."  Mostly because that is a place in people's minds that almost by definition cannot be reached.

I want to get to the future as soon as possible.  What do I see for the future?

I see people living in smaller, more energy efficient homes and driving far more fuel efficient cars.  I would like to think we can come up with a way for more competition for things like Internet access which even today is a necessity not a luxury.  I hate being held ransom by the cable companies.

Somehow places like Roanoke County have to figure out how to stop taxing people to death.  Otherwise people will move to lower tax areas.

In a county which hardly has any sidewalks, it is hard to justify the high taxes.  We obviously need more efficient government.

I can remember when the high tech industry decided that giving people pay raises every year was a bad idea.  It was  a wrenching change in expectations, but maybe it is something we need to consider in government.

A certain job function may only be worth so many dollars.  Perhaps if governments start thinking that way, it might take the pressure off of firing older employees.

I would love to see an economy where people get jobs based on their ability to learn and do great things for their employers.  Of course we need to take health care out of the equation.  As long as employees appear to be in a high risk health group, other qualifications will never be considered.

To make all the changes, it would help if we can start honoring academic achievement once again.

I have heard people say we need to train people for the companies that are hiring.  I never bought that argument mostly because I think it is impossible.

What we need to do more than anything is to train people to learn quickly and easily.  Students need to be exposed to as much as possible.

I even think it is stupid to teach kids to only use one type of computer.  Think of it, there is no easier way to make kids better learners than to let them use three kinds of computers to accomplish the same thing.

It would almost be a game for the kids.

Yesterday we took a short drive down to Beaufort, NC.  It happens to be one of our favorite places to visit.

Walking the docks in Beaufort is a good way to see what is moving on American's waterway, the Intracoastal Waterway.

It is always a changing cast of characters and boats.  Here in coastal North Carolina, boats heading north or south are as much a sign of the seasons as Crab Pot Christmas Trees.

Beaufort has been a special place of ours for a long time.  Just when I think there is nothing more to say about Beaufort, I manage to come up with another article.  Even the renewal of Beaufort is an interesting story.

It is amazing that a town as old as Beaufort could reinvent itself so successfully.

I am beginning to think that reinventing oneself is going to become a critical skill in these tough times.  With a radically changing job market and ever more demanding skill sets for jobs, there is little choice.

Yet picking the right path in unsteady times is never easy.  It is a stress that many people deal with every day.

Finding jobs that you do not create yourself is becoming more and more of a challenge.

Perhaps the unsettled nature of the world around us is why the escape to Beaufort is such a welcome adventure.

Where else could you lose yourself in watching someone else dock a sailboat?

I posted a video of just that on Youtube (watching in high quality is suggested if you have the bandwidth) and on MobileMe for Mac lovers.

If we could just find answers as easily as the sailboat docked, we would have very easy lives.

Speaking of finding answers easily, check out the calendar of events here on the coast.

You certainly do not have to be sitting on bags of money to be happy.  My guess is that a fair number of folks with lots of money do not enjoy their lives as much as some of the rest of us.

I just finished a post for Crystal Coast Living about the great day which I just had.  I did some real estate work this morning and finished some publicity that I was doing for Toys for Tots.  The electronic village website we have for Carteret County has let us run some information about Toys for Tots in one of their ad slots which rotate as you refresh your browser.

After that busy morning, I ran out to get some bait for a fishing trip which a friend and I had planned for today.

We got out on the water about 1:15 pm and were back at home around 5 pm.  We did not do a lot of traveling.  We hardly got the motor warmed up getting to our fishing hole.

We caught fish and chatted a little about stuff that does not matter a whole lot. Mostly we just enjoyed the beautiful weather and the great scenery It was nice way to unwind from election week.

As I maintain, if you can fish wearing only shorts and a tee shirt in November, then you are pretty close to paradise.

 Just as the sun was setting we cruised into Bluewater Cove. 

I managed to have some very fresh fish for dinner. Fish that fresh are exceptionally tasty.

Maybe being outside all afternoon in the great weather helped me slide in a early evening nap.  Fortunately I did not sleep but for a few minutes.

It was a nice sleep on the sofa in my office. With a cool breeze coming in the window, it was easy to dream that I was still out on the White Oak River fishing.  There is nothing wrong with a fishing dream.

I think my contentment has a lot to do with my appreciation of how lucky I am to be able to fish and relax in such beautiful surroundings.

There are a lot of places where people have already pulled their boats out of the water.  Today, here on the Southern Outer Banks, the temperature approached eighty degrees.  Even the water temperature in the river is still 63.

While the real estate business might be as slow as it has been in a while, the fishing is pretty good, and the weather is hard to beat.

And with those small things, I am going to sleep tonight very content.  Lots of money would likely get in the way of my good night's sleep.