Wolfmont and Honey Locust - Travel

Dire warning, indeed!

nospam@example.com (Tony Burton) — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 22:13:07 -0700

The last few days have been very busy. We are building a new home, as you already know if you have read much of this blog at all. And when a few days of lousy weather are followed by clear and sunny days, you can bet we take advantage of that to try to get as much done on the construction as we can.

Ultimately, the house is intended to look like a sort of medieval European manor house. We've been searching for an appropriate door, and finally we found a company near Alpharetta, Georgia, that makes the kind of door we want in a very low-maintenance version. We visited their showroom this past week to see firsthand what their products look like, and we were very pleased. We'll be getting our front doors from there, and they look VERY Middle Ages European. So much so, in fact, that I'm thinking of hiring a few serfs to hang about the place when it's done, just to give it color and so forth.

The drive back was through some beautiful mountain countryside, along Georgia Highway 140 through Canton and Waleska. It's one of my favorite drives at this time of year--actually, just about any time of year--and we stopped at one of our favorite spots to soak up a bit of the lovely scenery.

There it was: a clear and rushing mountain stream, cascading and tumbling over boulders, making beautiful watery music. The steep sides of the rocky gorge the stream had cut over thousands of years, were covered with rhododendron (alas, not in bloom) and mountain laurel. But there was a new element in the picture, a somewhat forbidding one.

Every fifty feet on the trees beside the roadway were signs. The signs read:

POSTED
NO TRESPASSING
Warning: This area infected with
Liquidambar styraciflua.

Keep Out!

Now, I could see that there were poison ivy plants growing along the edge of the defile, but there was no warning about the poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans). My wife and I, both interested in plants, looked at each other with puzzlement. She is more acquainted with the scientific names of plants than I, but this one seemed to be familiar to me even though I could not immediately place it.

"Do you remember what this is?" I asked her. "Is it a plant or a plant disease?"

Lara shook her head. "It sounds familiar, though." She shrugged. "We'll look it up when we get home."

After arriving at the homestead, we took one of the tree books from the shelf (yes, we did that instead of using Google!) and we found the answer immediately.

The area is infected with the (GASP!) Sweetgum trees!

Now, there is no danger from the sweetgum tree, unless you happen to step on one of its seed pods when barefoot. That would probably result in a little bit of an impromptu dance and perhaps some colorful language, but no lasting damage unless you happened to fall down while prancing about while holding one foot. Here is a picture of several of the seed pods, which are about the size of golf balls.

Lara and I discussed this, and the only conclusion to which we could come, was that the owners of the land had tired of people holding picnics on their lovely stream, afterward leaving behind lots of trash. So, they came up with this way of playing on the ignorance of most folks. And they weren't lying--there were several sweetgum trees growing all along the roadway. In fact, in the essence of irony, some of the signs were themselves tacked firmly to sweetgum trees.

But the warning of possibly contracting the dangerous "virus" Liquidambar styraciflua would probably discourage most people from traipsing through the woods to the stream. I can see it now...

Him: "Hey, honey, let's stop here and eat those sandwiches we brought along. The kids would love to wade in that creek."
Kids in chorus: "Yeah! Yeah! Wade in the creek!"
Her: "Oh, okay George. Pull over." She opens the door. "Oh, Lord! Honey, let's get out of here! That sign says this area is infected with some sort of disease or something!"
Him: "Huh?!?"
Her: "Get moving! We don't want the kids to get that... that... styrack flu or whatever it is! Lester just got over the chicken pox last week!"
They roar away in their minivan.

Nature can be a dangerous place, you know.

Meeting of the Minds

nospam@example.com (Tony Burton) — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 22:34:51 -0700

One of the first things I did this morning was read an email from my co-conspirator... no, wait... my partner in crime... hmmmm. From my fellow-author and friend, Allan Ansorge. Yeah, that's it. Anyway, Allan and his wife Jane were on their way from their home in Wisconsin to their digs in Florida, would be passing within a very few miles of my home, and would I like to join them for coffee or some such?

Heck Yeah!

As I said, Allan is also an author, and one of the contributors to the Toys for Tots anthology, DYING IN A WINTER WONDERLAND. Allan also has a novel being released this summer through Echelon Press, entitled CROSSING THE CENTERLINE.

Although Allan and I had never met, we had exchanged numerous emails and a few phone calls while I was pulling things together for the anthology. I was very happy to have the chance to meet both him and his lovely lady, so we met at a convenient point at the Redbud Road exit from I-75 and from there proceeded to a nice little Mexican restaurant in Calhoun, El Nopal.

Allan is just as friendly and entertaining in person as I thought he would be from his emails, and his wife is equally charming. We had a great time at lunch talking about kids (we both have them), books, publishers and just stuff. Allan very generously paid for lunch for us all, and Jane was kind enough to take a picture of Allan and myself standing in front of El Nopal, looking writerly.

Actually, I think we look sort of tired, but maybe that's just me. Allan is the handsome one in the white sweatshirt. I'm the fuzzy one in gray.

They also had another passenger with them, a cute little dog whose name or breed never came up in conversation, but I believe she was either a poodle or a small spaniel of some sort.

Online learning with eduFire

nospam@example.com (Tony Burton) — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 12:55:55 -0700

Once upon a time, I was a full-time professional trainer, writing and delivering courses all over the place: at various locations in the United States, Canada, Germany, Jordan. I remember in late 2001, and for the year following, it was a lot harder to get people to fly to our class locations, so I ended up flying to the customer. It was the whole terrorist fear thing, I guess, plus the incredible hassle of flying and dealing with security. Then the costs associated with flying began to increase dramatically and it became cheaper to hire me to come and put on a class on-site, even when paying a premium, than to try to fly all the students to me.

It was about that time that a company I worked with started doing web seminars. And they were OK, I guess, though limited. At that time, online video was not common and a lot fewer people had broadband. The big thing, though, was that they saved money for both the client and for us: we didn't have to travel, and neither did they.

Of course, with broadband being much more widespread than it was then and with almost every computer boasting a webcam, it's easier now. And in case you are wondering where I was headed with this, it's that I am now teaching creative writing classes online, through an online educational platform called eduFire.

EduFire was originally conceived of strictly as a tutoring platform for languages. Toward that end, presently eduFire has instructors in forty-six languages, from languages as commonplace as English and Spanish to the more rare and esoteric Flemish and Nepali. Most of the language instructors are native speakers of the language they teach. Many of those taking language classes are preparing themselves for travel to other countries, and sometimes for business dealings as well.

Also, tutoring preparation for a variety of academic and professional exams is offered: ACT, SAT, TOEFL, GMAT and nine others. If you have taken such exams, you know how challenging they can be, and you can see the value of having someone to personally help you toward passing the exam.

EduFire offers both one-on-one sessions (tutoring) and one-to-many sessions (classes), in virtually all of these areas. The Creative Writing area is a new one, and falls generally within the "English" subject area, even though I'm not really teaching English in the conventional sense. Students and teachers on eduFire are from locations all over the world. In the last Creative Writing class I held, for example, there were students from Russia, England, Costa Rica, France, Italy and of course, the U.S.A. The classes or tutoring sessions are held using the screen, audio and in most cases, video as well. Students interact with the teacher and sometimes with each other during the class as well.

Sometimes classes in the language or area of study you want are not available locally. Or perhaps you don't have a schedule that will let you attend conventional classes in the middle of the day. If you are one of those people who would love to learn a foreign language, prepare for an upcoming exam or improve your creative writing skills, yet are not able to attend face-to-face classes for whatever reason, eduFire is a great place to check out. There is no cost to become a member, and once you are there you can join forums and groups without any cost as well, to get to know the various teachers as well as the other students. Many teachers allow you to take a short free session to get to know the teacher and his/her style of instruction.

Give yourself a nice gift for the New Year--learn something new or improve on what you already know. Is there any better investment than to invest in impoving yourself and broadening your own mind?