Supporting a firefighter's funeral

Norris spent Friday and Saturday setting up and operating a temporary special communications unit to support the funeral for a North Carolina firefighter who died trying to save his own family from a fire in their home last week.  The funeral was in a remote, mountainous area of the southwest part of the state where existing communications were very limited.  When a firefighter dies, outside fire departments usually take over running emergency calls for the grieving fire department, and help to plan the ceremony.  In this case, firefighters from Asheville and neighboring counties stepped in to help with the logistics and communications needed to stage the funeral and handle the large crowd that was expected.  Norris assisted the Asheville FD in setting up a communications capability near where the funeral was to be held.

A mobile tower was erected to set up a radio repeater site, and satellite communications were established for telephone and data services in an area where there was no cell service and very little coverage from the NC Statewide Radio system.  The funeral service was conducted on Saturday without any significant communications problems.  There were at least 45 fire vehicles in the procession.

The area where the communications trucks were deployed was next to a fire station that was used as a staging area for units that were part of the ceremony. Below is a cell phone video Norris made of pipers and drummers from the Asheville and Charlotte FDs rehearsing Amazing Grace at the fire station just before the funeral.

The Asheville musicians are wearing the blue tartan kilts. One of their own members designed the tartan, using the fire department's patch colors.  The fabric was woven and the kilts custom made in Scotland. There are more than two colors of tartan in the video because there were also musicians from other fire departments.  Click on this web page to see where the Asheville FD tartan is officially recorded with the Scottish Register of Tartans:
http://www.tartanregister.gov.uk/tartanDetails.aspx?ref=10866

See this link for a news story on the tragic death of Firefighter Brad McCoy:
http://www.citizen-times.com/story/news/local/2014/11/29/funeral-held-macon-county-firefighter/19676085/

A celebration. The end of a successful search

On Sunday, Norris and I were invited to share in the Folk Heritage Committee's celebratory dinner. These are the people who work so hard to put on the Shindig on the Green musical entertainment in the summertime in Asheville.  They held the dinner at one of the many wedding-oriented barn venues - this one on the other side of the French Broad River about a half hour from us. You can see that it has a casual atmosphere.

My Mountain Jam Circle colleague Alice is in the lower part of the photo. I took this for Ann, our other member who was not able to attend.  The food was good and it was a fun crowd to be part of because, well, they just can't help themselves....

We were treated to a regular bluegrass jam after we ate. There are some locally famous faces in that photo - the music was a delight.

Yesterday when all our snow from Saturday was gone, we decided to see if we could figure out what happened to our feeder. The one we pictured with the birds on it had been raided by a bear a few years ago, and the only damage was to the perches, which were replaced by the manufacturer at no cost to us.  We climbed the stairs and followed the old logging road behind our house, and while I continued to climb, when he drew even with the back of our house, Norris stood and stared back down toward the house and bird feeding area from a spot maybe 200 feet away. 

He finally turned around to look up the slope and there it was....

 

or at least parts of it.  Unlike that previous time with the smaller feeder, this feeder was looking pretty badly beat up. I came back and we scanned the area Norris had just been staring at - and maybe 40 feet down the slope, closer to the house, were two more of the main parts.  But no part of this feeder is salvageable.

 This is really really hard plastic.

 We are totally amazed at what the bear's teeth and claws can do.

 But even more, how and why does a bear carry something as big as this feeder so far before breaking it open to munch on the contents?  I did an image search for bear and bird feeder, but you don't see the bears walking around with the feeders.  I'm still trying to picture how it went up our steep slope on four paws with it, left the cap and a few of the squirrel-proofing parts under one tree, then kept going and left the rest under a different tree.

The weather is warm and sunny now, and there are no bird feeders outside at our house.

Winter Too Early?

On Friday, we had our windows cleaned by a local service. One man using our well water, processed through a "deionizer" on the company truck pumped through a very long hose, stood at ground level and reached all the way to the peak - all told close to four stories up. I didn't get a picture of him working on the top windows. The whole job took him maybe two hours at the most.  He was assisted for the interior washing - he had to use a ladder inside since the deionized water can't just run down the walls inside. 

We think we're happy with the job they did - it must be an improvement - but we haven't been able to tell how clean and streak-free the glass is because on Friday, we did not have much sunshine. I took a few photos of our fall views.

 

 We really do enjoy our tree-top windows.

The leaf colors were pretty on Friday, but it rained all afternoon.  I took the pictures because, as predicted, sometime after midnight, the rain changed to snow.  Norris took these yesterday morning -

 

Please note the birds on the feeder in the picture just above, because on Friday evening, while we were in the studio with Moki, we heard a very strange noise.  We went outside with a flashlight and found this (photo taken yesterday morning)

That's our other bird feeder hook, minus a very nice (and rather expensive) squirrel proof feeder, bent over to the ground.  The squirrel baffle is actually visible - its the smooth gray mass sticking out of the snow in the upper left corner.  Norris went out looking for the feeder, but the bear (and it had to be a bear to bend the pole like that) had removed it somewhere else to break into the sunflower seeds.  We had stopped feeding the birds the last few years because of the bears, but this  year we had not seen a single one. There's a house under construction on our side of the ridge that had discouraged them. 

Norris came in and said that's the end of our feeding the birds.  But then he saw all the birds frantically looking around in the snow for food, so the second feeder went back on its hook.

We remembered to bring it in last night. We were evidently revisited by the bear - that hook was also found bent like the first, but there was nothing tasty at the top this time.  Norris' footprints from his missing feeder search yesterday along with all the clumps of snow falling from the trees have obscurred the bear's tracks from last night's visit that might give us a hint where to look for that feeder.  One that was stolen a couple of years ago disappeared without a trace.