Will the real Corn Pone Bill, please stand up. Our very measly savings is currently housed at Washington Mutual, so Bill and I are basking in the primacy of being in the middle of all of this. We don't own a home, we don't have substantial investments in mortgage-backed securities, but we do have savings accounts that put us solidly in that spray of shit hitting the fan.

Of course, we have much below the FDIC limit, but (and this makes me smiley and then chilly) if our money is difficult to access or if there's a delay in transfers or if the government pay out to insured depositors is slow or non-existent, well, let's just say Bill and I won't have any heat this winter. Okay, so that's a slight exaggeration, but the money earmarked for our beautiful wood burning stove is in that account. It IS that account. No money, no stove. Shades of the depression, I tell you!

    Last night I went to a Bee Society meeting in Freeport. That's not it's real name, I don't know it's real name. My mentor, Henry, did not impart to me all of the details.

By the way, Dr. Henry Najat, the beekeeper I'm apprenticing with is a 76-year old retired orthopedic surgeon, originally from Iran. There are a number of endearingly quirky things about him, not least of which is the way his English sort of hovers around the essence of a subject without concretely articulating it. I find this constant simile a relief. It means I don't have to be so exact.

Back to the meeting. The first thing that happens when we walk in is that a white-haired wiry man comes up to us and says, "Do you know what these are?" He's unscrewing the cap on a glass jar and shaking out two dark, bee-/wasp-like insects. He bounces them onto his palm and looks at them, then wrinkles his nose. "Starting to smell like death," he says. I smell nothing and wonder if they were alive a few minutes ago. Henry and I take our seats in the back row.

The program is on hygienic strains of bees and localized queen rearing. If you'd like an excited neophyte to tell you in alternately hushed and exuberant tones what these subjects are and why they're important, ask me about it next time you see me. I will save everyone else the details here.

After the program we eat, not just cookies and drinks either. There's pizza and meatballs and subs and pies—a regular old potluck dinner spread.

Oh, I forgot the president. He's the complete opposite of the man with the jar with two dead bees in it. He's sort of a cross between a more rotund Jon Stewart and my old boss. He's wearing a Hawaiian shirt and can't last two minutes without laughing. During the program he stands behind Henry and me and the guy with the bees in a jar and kneads Henry's shoulders or the Bee Jar Guy's shoulders as though to punctuate Stu's presentation, or maybe to communicate something I do not understand. At one point, in his excitement (or is it active listening?), he leans forward and kisses Henry on the top of his head. Henry is unmoved. He sits perfectly still, maybe he smiles. I'm not sure because I can't stand to turn my head and keep a straight face.

After dinner comes the round table. Very similar to show and tell at a quilt guild meeting, except there's very little show and a great deal of tell. So much, in fact, that one man goes on for at least twenty minutes, not just about his own bees, no, but all of his neighbors bees. As the round table goes on, I find that this is common enough.

One couple, complete beginners, started their first colony in the spring. It was a gift. The enthusiastic opinion of the president (he's been to their apiary) is that these bees are Africanized, crossbreeds imported from Texas. When you work them, they come at you like a football and won't leave you be. They called this, "darning your socks." I learned that the mark of an aggressive hive is that they go for your ankles, a particularly weak area in your suit.

Another couple had named their hives, Miles Davis, Felonious Monk, Thelma & Louise. They tag-teamed insults and jokes like pros. Seriously, I was wondering if they practiced their diffident, hilarious banter at home: "Felonious kept killing his queens, whatever that means."

Perhaps the star of the round table was Victor, an impishly goodlooking man about as tall as I am, but with two gold teeth right up front. He was Russian, and it was difficult to understand him. He began with recounting his long battle with a neighbor's boyfriend (one of two) over first his chickens and then his bees. This was punctuated with lots of "ohs" and chuckles in the crowd. But Victor's crowning moment was when he showed off his device for imparting colloidal silver into water. It's a split silver spoon wired with a positive and negative charge to two batteries in a pack. You electrify it for five minutes (no more!), then use the water in your sugar syrup for winter feeding your bees. The reasoning is that during the plague there was a connection between those who remained healthy and those who ate with actual silverware. So although it was unclear what diseases this method might actually guard against, Victor said that this was his disease prevention method last winter and that all of his hives came through stronger than ever. This is an incredible claim, one that's hard to believe, but if true would really be amazing. No harsh chemicals, just colloidal silver? Brilliant.

When Henry's turn came around he made me stand up, and introduced me. When the meeting broke up a very normal-looking middle-aged man walked up to me and welcomed me to the beekeeping world. This was kind, but then the conversation took an odd turn.

Man: "Welcome to beekeeping. I'm sure you'll love it."

Me: "Thank you. I've been interested in beekeeping since I was young, but never had the opportunity to pursue it until now."

Man: "Yes, you have to be settled somewhere pretty permanently before you can take it up seriously."

Me: "mmm. When did you start beekeeping?"

Man: "I started in 1991, but moved in 1993, so that was the end of that. When I took it up again I went to a beekeeping meeting in Harvard and thought, 'Why are there so many women here?' But then I thought bees make food...and women like food. And I thought bees are good for gardens...that grow food...and women like food and gardens. And bees make wax...and women love candles.

Me (ever the pleaser): "...good for sewing too."

At this point his wife walks up, yes, this man is in fact married, and then the guy with two dead bees in a jar walks up with his persistent question, "Do you know what these are?" This was our opportunity, so Henry and I exited.

Apartment update:

1. It won't be done by Cheese Days.

2. It has most of its trim (including shelves in the linen closet)

3. There are some lights and some doors and some outlets.

4. It still needs kitchen cabinets, bathroom fixtures, a floor, heat, appliances. Bill and I stopped taking pictures after that first round. The radiant heating installation project was too depressing for pictures, and that malaise has pretty much continued throughout. Ho hum.

    Oh turnips. It turns out digging up turnips isn't very hard. It also turns out that purple top white globe turnips can become enormous, nearly the size of my head. It's true, too, that if you pick said turnips in the beginning of August, then leave them in your cold room for five weeks, they become soft and maggot-infested and very very reproachful of you for not eating them. I think Tess would appreciate their sad decline. She's into macabre crap like that, sacrifices at the altar of human neglect. Oh Tess.

    So, looks like there is a big, fat, old-tymie bank scare. HOT DAMN! I feel my woodsy, appalachian inner-child ready to spring forth in its full corn-pone poverty regalia.

All of you suckers who didn't already move to the country and plant a garden (and already canned 30 quarts of tomatoes for the winter) are simply fucked. You are not invited to my farm.

The rest of you can start buying excellent, hand-made ceramics from Etsy.com, probably made in some Central Park West pizza oven by an ex-Merril Lynch mid-level bond analyst.

I've been interested in both wind generation and electric cars for a while, so then lately I found out about Smart Garages.

The idea here is that the conventional, carbon positive grid has to be regulated so that generation closely matches demand. A grid supplied by renewable power, like from wind and solar, can't be regulated the same way: either the sun is up, or it isn't, and either the wind is blowing or it isn't. Meanwhile, an electric (or plug-in hybrid) car will probably be plugged in most of the night -- and most of the day if you've got a Smart Garage at work. The power regulation equipment on the car could be controlled remotely to draw less power to make up for periods of low supply from solar and wind. The coolest thing here is that off-grid projects could benefit from this system too: an electric vehicle is basically a large battery system on a chassis, batteries that wind or solar generator would need anyway. A Smart Garage system would just make those batteries more useful by putting them to work while generating resources are abundant and the batteries aren't needed. Indeed, small off-grid sites (or small grids -- systems of a few buildings and a few small generators) will probably have to prove the technology before anyone takes it seriously.

I woke up from a dream about climbing a mountain with Claire and her mother, Nancy, neither of whom are on the trip. And then I started the day in the pouring rain, waiting for the buses to show up and take us across Iowa.

Though I'm totally convinced about the redemptive powers of biking for the environment, there are no illusions in my mind about this thing, Ragbrai in general, being anything like environmentally sustainable or good. Don't get me wrong - this is quite fin so far, but these bikers aren't the carbon vegans that I'm used to biking with.

The short list of other discoveriies: people who are bothered by trains at night are philistines and wimps, public swimming pools are somehow both completely gross and completely great.

Now on to the first day of riding.

After a weekend of family togetherness in Florida, and three days of work in Chicago (a lot for me now-a-days), I got to spend all of 28 hours at home before setting out on a week-long bile trip across Iowa: RAGBRAI. It's 6 days of 70 mile days, this year starting in Missouri Valley, and ending up on Le Claire, where we're staying tonight. I've been training for this for the last 3 months, making this the first time I've ever put my mind AND body toward anything like a sport. George says thatvall we have to do is survive through Monday, and we'll be fine. Given my history of athsma and sloth,survival may be more if a question for me than for him.

Though I went to college near here, I don't think I've ever been on the Iowa side of the quad cities before. What I can tell on the dark and rain is about what I expected: sprawl, a Target, and a drive-through Bible Chapel.

We set out tomorrw for MV at 6:30am (not 6:29, not 6:31, thank you ma'am), and the fun begins.

    Right after writing the previous post, Bill called me outside. "Come, come...quick," he whispered. There must be some interesting wild life just outside the door. What could it be? I followed him out the front door where there was a loud buzzing and immediately saw the swarm of bees congregating in the knot of the old maple tree just South of our porch. Who-a. My just-acquired bee knowledge (for those of you who don't know, I've apprenticed myself to a local beekeeper) told me the majority had already alighted in the knot and were checking it to see if it would make a good home. There at the bottom of that mass of bodies, a well-equipped beekeeper would find the queen. Still, there was a great, loud cloud of bees heralding their arrival and the sight was terrific. We tried to take a picture but we weren't close enough to do it real justice.

The interesting thing about a swarm of bees is that they pose no real danger to people or any other beings (unless they've picked your house walls as their resting place, in which case you'll unfortunately have to poison them). They're young bees, maybe they've only been out of the hive a couple of times. Before they leave, they gorge themselves on honey, nectar, pollen, which gives them plenty of reserves for the task of setting up a new colony, but it also makes them drowsy and docile. You wouldn't think so looking at that great mass of activity, but I suppose it's relative. Also, they're extremely vulnerable. They've left with the old queen, and the original colony has a healthy, well-laying new queen already hatched or on the way. This means the old queen may not be laying as well as she once did and it may be difficult for her to repopulate this separatist colony.

I am a little worried for these bees. We had a colony living in the same knot last year and they didn't survive the winter. Perhaps it was Colony Collapse Disorder, but I think it's more likely that the winter was too long and they either froze or starved. Probably starved. I hope this colony makes it through this winter. We'd be glad to have a steady hive around for reliable pollenation. Plus, it just makes me feel good to see so many live bees at once, when so many are in peril.

I'm curious, too, where did they come from? A swarm seldom travels far from their home colony. Where is their origin? Do we have another, more successful hive on the property, one that can last the winter? Oh, this makes me happy.

    Maybe at least a month and a half ago, Bill finally made dandelion wine from the dandelions we(mostly Allison) tirelessly picked around the property. He mixed them with raisins and sugar and now they're adding a lovely fermenting scent to the cold room. But it isn't a particularly pretty sight, sort of muddy and lumpy and grayed-out yellow. But don't let that turn you off from giving it a whirl when you come visit. When it's done, it should be a tasty, light white wine. Fingers crossed!