My Teeny-Tiny Internet

I'm not known for my online habits or TV watching. I do know who is in the World Series this year, mostly because of a friend who is a diehard and rather rattled Yankees fan. Sorry, man. These things happen.

Other than distantly following that contest, I don't look at sports results. I began to think recently about how little time I spend on Web sites of most sorts, less still on social media: dipping into Facebook daily for about 1/4 hour. I don't use Snapchat, TikTok, or Instagram; I read the news (and play Wordle) via The New York Times, visit the BBC, check the weather at NOAA, look at some space-news sites. I think my regular haunts could be counted on my hands and still have fingers remaining. For long-form story, I read my print edition of The Atlantic but also check their site.

What else do I follow? Sites related to my hobbies: working on cars, reloading ammo, building scale models. I participate in a couple of forums related to these activities, as if it's still the BBS era of the 1990s. Most of my time online relates to doing things with my hands or brain.

As for influencers? I don't follow any. Not a one. Too much is about consumer culture, fast fashion, pop culture. I recall a woman in the DC Metro, in a long pink sequined dress and matching phone on a selfie-stick, narrating her life loudly, amid eyerolls of others on the platform, as she waited for a train. She wanted so badly to be famous. I felt sorry for her.

She and a million others.

Instead of chasing that ephemera, my influencers are are folks known for their work in old media, like writers Willa Cather, Wendell Berry, Virginia Woolf, Edward Abbey, Terry Tempest Williams. Filmmakers like Werner Herzog. Thinkers like Locke, Jefferson, Nietzsche, and Lao Tzu.

I keep wondering what our world would be like, in this era of shallow and reactive thinking and blind partisan rage, if we all spent more quiet time with our intellectual ancestors or with folks who are not constantly shouting in anger? What if sought out folks online who helped us learn new things or improve what we know already? What if we only looked at carefully curated resources, slowly and methodically?

In short, what if we made our Internet use tiny? What if we focused our attention on those things that most influenced our daily lives, including our passion projects? I began thinking about this a long time back, but on Inishmore, Ireland this summer, I saw folks who joyfully live slowly. They don't seem to miss much. Internet access and obsessing over celebrities does not appear to be the focus of their lives. Granted, we talked to mostly middle-aged Irish, but they are a sagacious, thoughtful lot. That they can stay on an island and recast their economy around tourism without ruining the place astounds me.

Can we do the same with our islands online? I've a sense that making Internet use reflective, rather than reflexive, might lead us back to some semblance of a reasoned life. In a season of fear related to America's election, that's the best answer I can give: make your Internet small again. 

Revel in the Joy of Missing Out. Join the Slow Living movement.

Image: Inishmore Ireland

You CAN Grow Apples Here

This year marked the second when we harvested apples from the four trees in our little orchard. The fruit was small, sometimes lightly speckled with cedar rust, after peeling more useful for cooking than eating fresh, but still. We have enjoyed half a bushel of apples for each of the last two years. Ours come in very early, in late June and July, in the midst of some of our hottest, most humid weather.

The conventional wisdom in Central VA involves it being too far east into the Piedmont for apple trees: bugs, humidity, and ever-warmer winters are not good for the fruit. All true, yet somehow three of our four trees have produced well. We found three things have helped. 

I've written here about pruning and also controlling Eastern Tent Caterpillars. Yet that's only half the battle. The most important change we made involved a timely application of an organic spray of copper sulfate. The product reminds of chemistry-set ingredients from my childhood, and it does need to be applied properly.  

Lately I've used Bomide's Captain Jack brand, simply because it's what I can find locally.  You don't want to drink the stuff or let it puddle where animals might sample it. After an early-morning application with a sprayer attached to a garden hose, I kept our dogs and chickens out of the orchard from all day. 

Organics are not without human-and-animal risks, yet copper sulfate proves far less harmful to you or wildlife than something like Captan. I did use it once, before we had animals near the trees. No longer.

You'll want to do some reading, but if you try to grow apples in a damp and warm climate, you will mostly likely need a fungicide applied once or twice after the tree stops blooming. 

We got enough fruit to experiment with spiced apple rings (wonderful) and our usual batch of canned apple sauce (also delicious).

It's apple season! Get picking!

Image courtesy of The Virginia Apple Board.