Snow Day in Oxford, Mississippi

Oxford had one of its rare snows; I post the short video by Scot Burton, that records the events with scenes from the Ole Miss campus and Oxford.  Enjoy.

I Present the Indigo Bunting

An Indigo Bunting showed up at my bird feeder today.  What an amazingly beautiful creature. 

The House Finch

House Finch

Above is a photo of a House Finch.  Interesting history on this bird, they are an 'introduced'  species in the eastern USA.  However, not from Europe or Asia, they are native to the western USA and were introduced in New York state in the 1940s and quickly spread from east to west.  They reached Mississippi by the 1980s and are now common here. Pretty little birds that are a frequent visitor to my feeder here in Oxford.

Rabbit Back On The Menu Boys

I think it was Annie Dillard who described Mother Nature as 'the big chomp.'  Her point was Mother Nature is brutal and death is everywhere.  It is not a bunch of tree huggers and Indians playing love flutes, with rainbows over head; it is war, creatures trying to eat other creatures.  It is Man that brings order and protects beauty.  Anyroad, this is not about that, this post is about my cat Piscín, one of my Manx lads.  He bagged Big Game today; Rabbit is back on the menu boys.   He shared it with his brother too; for a cat, he is a gentleman (when it suits him, i.e. he was full).

Piscín and his kill this morning

Ancestors

The past is never dead. It's not even past.

 William Faulkner

As the world swirls around me, the words of William Faulkner come to mind.  They are very true yet so few people seem to realise it.   Here in my native South I hear conversations going on around me that could have happened 150 years ago.  Interesting times and getting more interesting by the moment.

The Sky Did Not Fall

I've been news-fasting for the last few days.  The annoying hum and din of the talking heads was beginning to irritate in the extreme.  A sidebar, but, why are do all the women on Fox News dress like hookers?  And could they possibly get their war paint any more garish? 

I see the Sky has not fallen.   I assume the Republicans caved again, as they always do. Does modern medicine perform testicle transplants?  If so the Republican National Committee should investigate as they sorely need some masculinity. Be rough finding donors true, but if enough money changed paws I expect you might find some wino that would sell you one of his.

In the South the Republicans are known as the Stupid Party and the Democrats are known as the Evil Party.  Or to paraphrase Huey P Long....  one wants to eat you from the top down and the other from the bottom up.

Think I'll wear a polo shirt to mass this morn. I feel casual. 

10 Inches of Snow In Oxford Mississippi

Thought you all, especially my friends in Ireland, N Ireland, and Scotland, would enjoy this one. Oxford is a special place, please enjoy this video of our recent snow.

Oxford, Mississippi, Snow of 9 & 10 January

the wood beside my house

this is looking out from the McCain Compound... up the road that leads to my house. We had 8 inches of snow out this way.

Oxford Mississippi White Christmas

My two Manx Cats, Piscín and Pangúr, woke me up around 4 o'clock this morning, saying, 'Papa, you need to come look at this.' And, what was it? But a White Christmas. Very lovely. This photo taken this morning. Lovely white snow.

Barry R McCain's BBC Interview

William Roulston (left) and Barry R McCain

Dr William Roulston interviews me on the BBC Northern Ireland program, A Kist o Wurds. The interview details and how to hear it both on computer and the radio broadcast schedule are found at this link: BBC Northern Ireland

Many thanks to the BBC setting up this interview. They had to rent a studio on the Ole Miss Campus to do the interview.

White Throated Sparrow

Here in the wooded hills of north Mississippi the White Throated Sparrows have returned. For all you Latin speakers, that is the Zonotrichia albicollis. It is my favourte bird. Not sure exactly why it is. It has the most unique song, which I enjoy hearing. They are very easy to bait, if you can mimic their song they will come up and check you out.

During the Autumn, Winter and Spring you can find them in hedgerows and thickets. You will know they are there by plaintive song. When evening comes and they gather to roost in dense thickets, their silvery flocking call is almost as evocative as their song. I associate them with falling leaves and the coming of Winter. They will visit a feeder, but often they are hard to spot and usually you will know they are around you by their song only. A very groovy bird. I noticed a few of them last week and it is very nice to see them back.

Summer Tanagers in North Mississippi

well lads and lassies, wonderful news, there is a Summer Tanager family nesting on our land. Strikingly pretty birds, the male is bright red and the female a sort of greenish yellow. I've seen then for over a month now, always together, in the bird path, on the ground among the sunflower seeds I put out.

Red Wasps

Life in Oxford, Mississippi and the battles that rage in my garden.


the wee beast himself














Above you see the Red Wasp, particularly numerous around the McCain Compound. His Latin name Polistes carolina. He has a wonderful skill which I have observed many times this summer. He will kill and eat a tomato worm.


the crimminal, infamous, Tomato worm

It is like this you see, anyone or thing that will kill and eat a Tomato Worm is OK in my book. Several tomato worms can ruin a garden in a matter of days, almost as bad a deer.

Tomato worms are huge evil beast and how the red wasp can consume one and then fly off is one of God's great mysteries, yet they do it as I've seen the lads at work.

I'd just like to say well done to them all.

Peregrine Falcon

Every day I see at least two Peregrine falcons circling my house. They are works of art, one of the Creators finer pieces. Lethal mind you; they are machines of death. You should see the squirrels and song birds make themselves scarce when the Peregrines patrol.

This morning on my way into Oxford town for supplies I saw one dead in the road. That's bad. As well as being beautiful, they are also very useful to Man. (I still think that sort of relationship good). They kill a lot of the things that plague farm and yard alike.

There seems to be a good supply of Peregrines around Oxford, still I hope the one I saw in the road was not one of two I often see over my house. It was only about a mile from my house where I saw the unfortunate bird.

Indigo Buntings

Well, today, as I was sitting in my backyard, I saw a Indigo Bunting. A lovely, beautiful little bird, that we are graced with every summer. It is electric blue, much more blue than a 'blue bird'.

The humming birds are doing their annual wars. Anyone that feeds them knows of what I speak. The amazing aerial combat they launch into at this stage in summer. I've had them pass not more than inches from my head going a ba-zillion miles per hour.

Manx Cats

This is Piscín, one of my two Manx cats. He found me. He was a runaway from a house were His Highness was not appreciated. To add insult, the previous owner had named him, a Manx, Pancho. Now I tell you, that is not a proper name for a Manx. Ideally the name should be in Gaelic of course. The breed comes from the Isle of Man, a island between Ireland and northern England, and one of the three Gaelic homelands. I've been there, lovely place. They rule themselves, are part of the Crown, but not part of the UK, so an odd status, like the Channel Island. It is a magical place, full of beautiful glens, moors, mountains, and lovely people, and Manx Cats.

Manx cats are odd fellows, their behaviour almost dog like. The better ones will fetch things for you, will carry things around in their mouth, etc., they love to go on walks with their owners, especially in the woods. The are keen vermin catches, un-matched. Mine take a steady toll on the vole and mouse population around my house. The other day Piscín killed a bona fide rat. Not a cotton rat, but a full blown nasty bugger of a rat. He killed it with one vicious bite to the back of its neck... clean, neat, professional.

Piscín is also adept at killing snakes. This is a vendetta, when he was younger he was bitten by a cotton mouth moccasin. His wee paw blew up to the size of a good summer sausage, he came close to death, but survived. Since that experience he presents me with four or five very dead poisonous snakes each year. What a cat.

Wine With Grits

Last night I had grits with my supper. Now, we are grits eaters in this house, my two sons, wife, myself, all enjoy the bejeepers out of them. You can tell you are a very bona fide Southern family when you discuss which wine to have with grits. BTW... we chose a young, Spanish, red to go with the meal. They whole supper was comprised of grits, Southern style link sausage, tomatoes, and onions. The tomatoes homegrown, organic even; you slice them and serve with sliced raw sweet onions, absolutely lovely.

We often eat very traditional meals and enjoy grits in a variety of ways. The boys like them with a nice load of extra sharp, white Cheddar cheese in them. This done in addition to the butter already in them. I've had people over at my house to eat that tell me that I served them their first ever grits. I find that shocking myself, one wonders about the deplorable state of culture in this post modern consumer age, when you can find people born in the South that have never eaten grits.


They are the perfect accompaniment for any meal, breakfast, dinner, or supper. Easy to prepare, just ignore the directions on the package, those are always wrong. Add more water than suggested and cook for at least 30 minutes and let them rest abit, and you will have them done correctly. Serve them with cheese, a littler cream cheese and sharp cheddar, which you put in after they cook, allow that to melt, then serve. Always put several dashes of Louisiana hot sauce in the grits. You will become a grits eater in no time.

Mississippians speaking Gaelic

Mississippians speaking Gaelic…

… when pigs fly, you say. You don’t normally associate Mississippi with the Irish speaking world. I mean the words Mississippi and Gaeilge do not often appear in the same sentence. But history is full of odd misconceptions, like horns and wings on Viking helmets (they had none). Early Mississippi was settled by an assortment of mixed Celts, Irish, Hebrideans, west Highlanders, Scots-Irish, etc., and Gaelic was a language heard often in Mississippi in antebellum days.

In the mid 1840s John Claiborne, a prominent Mississippi attorney and member of the US Congress, wrote in his journal, ‘there is yet living in Greene (County) some of the original immigrants who speak nothing but the Gallic.’ By this he meant the Gaelic language. There was even a need for Gaelic speaking post masters in Mississippi in those days. The Greene County comment was of great interest to me personally, as the first McCains to enter Mississippi were in this community described by John Claiborne.

It is interesting to see Gaelic in use in Mississippi into the 1840s and 1850s. My own grandfather, who was born in 1890, used certain Gaelic works in his speech: brogan (bróga) for shoe, or slew (slua) to mean a lot of something. I found a humorous comment about language made by an English Crown official that visited the Marsh Creek Settlement in the Pennsylvania Colony, where the McCains were living in the 1740s. The Crown official complained that these settlers spoke ‘bad English and bad Irish.’ That was my immigrant, Hugh McKean, he was speaking about and it was his son, Hance Hamilton McCain, who brought my
wing on the family into Mississippi.

Now you would think that by the 21st Century we Mississippi McCains would have lost our Gaelic, wouldn’t you? Not so. Last fall you would have heard a curious conversation in Oxford, Mississippi, from two men heading into the Ajax Pub. My cousin, Rankin Sherling, a native Greenwood, his mother a McCain, and I met at the Pub to have a visit. Rankin is working on his Phd in Irish history at Queens University, Ontario, Canada and was just back from Donegal, where he had been studying Ulster Irish. My Irish is fair to middlin’ these days, and despite my caigheán oifigiúil and his bona fide Ulster dialect, we managed to greet and speak in Irish to each other there in the middle of Oxford,Mississippi. So pigs do fly.

29 June 2009, Life In Oxford

Life In Oxford Mississippi

We have had some very hot days in Oxford recently. My home thermometer has been hitting 98 F for the last few days and the weather station at our wee airport very near that. But, late yesterday a front, or what passes for one this time of year, came through. We had a thunderstorm and some rain. This morning I woke to a stunning (this time of year) 64 F at my house. I opened the doors and drank coffee outside with my two Manx cats, Piscín and Pangur.

The air cool, the sunlight filtering through the trees. A slight breeze in the air.

I live only 5 miles from Ole Miss, a little less from The Square, yet woods are all around me. Such is the way of what is still a small Southern town. As I sat outside, drinking coffee, I heard a local rooster and a wild turkey exchange threatening cries to each other.

Quality lads and lassies.

April Freeze in Oxford

April freeze in Oxford, Mississippi and my tomatoes.

Well, the Weathermen assured me there would be no frost last night. The official low was circa 36 degrees Fahrenheit. However, I live in a hollow. For those of you not familiar with Southern terms, a hollow (said 'holler'), is a bowl shaped geographic feature, surrounded by some hills. Low hills in my case.

There is a phenomenon with cool air pouring into low areas and you get a drop in the temperature in that one small area. And so it was last night.

The Weather Channel was beaming a low of 36 to 38... but when I read my thermometer when I got up in the morning, I saw a 31.8. Yikes, I did not cover my tomatoes as I believed the Weather Channel.

Casualties are two dead and two wounded tomato plants. And I remind myself, the Weather Channel is now owned by NBC and that is to say they are not to be trusted anymore.