The fresco is titled The End of the World, Apocalypse, created by Luca Signorelli from 1499 through 1502, in Orvieto Cathedral, San Brizio Chapel, Orvieto, Italy.

The Snowville logo http://www.snowvillecreamery.com/

Great Buddha,
   lap filling with these
      flowers of snow.

   ---Kikaku

It would imply the regeneration of mankind, if they were to become elevated enough to truly worship sticks and stones.

   ---Henry David Thoreau

A vigorous five-mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world.

   ---Paul Dudley White, M.D.

It's been a pretty interesting couple of days, as local Krogers patrons registered concern about a single product lots of people seem to like.  Snowville Creamery's milk can cost twice as much as other brands, depending on sale situations, but people are devoted.  For an old dude like me it's reminiscent of childhood days, not so much of glass bottles the milkman brought to our doorstep---and which we washed out and returned for refill each day.  It's because of the cream on top, something I never thought I'd experience again!  Mom preferred we shake up the bottles before the first pour, but sometimes I couldn't resist stealing all the cream onto a bowl of Wheaties.  Yum!  It really was Breakfast of Champions then!
 
So Thursday and Friday there was a flurry of activity as word got out that for some reason Kroger's had reduced Snowville's shelf area and hiked the price by a buck.  As people all over Southeast Ohio called, emailed, and went into the Athens store to contact management, various stories began to emerge.  What we learned, if we didn't know already, farm and pharm are hotly competitive...and what the grocer's got and the doctor prescribes are similarly fought over.  Lots of people are involved and it's complicated. 
 
For instance, it's not unusual in the aisles of Krogers or in the doctor's waiting room to observe a salesperson pitching away to a department supervisor or the receptionist through the little window.  I'll never forget sitting in Dr. Rothstein's one afternoon, and watching this woman push the latest mood-altering capsule.  She was inviting the whole crew out to dinner---"someplace special this time"---and then pointed to her clothes which, she said, were specially designed to match the gay colors of the pill.  Can you imagine the money involved to deck out the Merck sales force in this wardrobe, plus dinners at the resort?  Wonder who pays for all that.

The same goes at the supermarket, as sales people try to convince employees to change around the displays of their products.  It's high pressure, and you can watch it out in the open, "free" market all you want to.  Receptionists and Krogers folks, to their credit, look embarrassed and nervous while this stuff goes on.  They don't want to make a mistake that their supervisors will get angry about, but they have a whole load of work to do---and it's hard to get rid of these corporate reps. 
 
In Krogers this has been especially true since the store has been expanded and redesigned here.  Now we need hiking boots for the spaciousness, and lots of patience as we trek around looking for where the products are from day to day.  PLUS food prices are soaring at the same time!  So maybe all of this motivated so many of us to get busy about Snowville.  It appears it was over within a single day or 2...but quite possibly it was accomplished from inside Krogers as well as from our action.
 
From what I hear, and maybe I'd better keep the source anonymous, there are not only salespeople pressuring for shelf space changes.  There also are Kroger regional supervisors in the Athens store a lot to oversee the remodeling.  They need to make sure the fussy preferences of agribusiness are taken care of, including setups at the end of aisles and displays that will keep you trudging around the store buying lots more stuff than you came in there for.  And of course there's the Kroger line of items...like Krogers milk.  So the Krogers dairy guy gets a supervisor from out of town telling him he's never heard of Snowville.  What's that!  We got Krogers milk on sale, stick Snowville out of reach and raise the price. 
 
So the dairy super has to do it, and then the regional manager leaves the store and goes back to the big city.  What happens next, and this is just hearsay mind you, is the local Krogers then put everything back the way it was.  Those of us who visited the store during the last couple days came back with different reports of what was going on, depending on what level of the process we happened to observe.  When I went in Thursday afternoon, the milk was still hidden away on the top shelf next to Krogers on-sale brand and marked at $3.99 a half gallon.  But when I scanned it, it came up $2.99.  I mentioned the discrepancy to the clerk and he just smiled. 
 
By yesterday afternoon, Snowville still was on the top shelf next to the sale but priced back to $2.99---and much more product had arrived which was featured prominently at the natural foods section where it used to be.  So maybe if the regional guy comes back to check it out, he'll still find Snowville stashed high up and nowhere---and perhaps he won't notice the big display elsewhere in the store.  Please remember I'm making this up and I'm not representing Kroger policy, but we are aware our local store manager is very interested in local produce and commerce.  He knows Athens people strongly support local initiatives, and never more so than in the face of something like the big box just down the road.  Seamans and The Farmacy know this too, and so these stores feature local stuff---because we'll go there to get it instead of to the box.  These stores are doing everything they can to stay alive.
 
We should be grateful to all the people who got involved, even though maybe Krogers was handling the whole thing anyway.  We certainly didn't do any harm...and it's helpful to remember this kind of thing is going on all the time with different products.  Of course our local entrepreneurs don't have the clout of these big companies, so we should be proud of who cared about this situation.  Bob Sheak even provided a model for a letter or email to Kroger headquarters.  Susan Gwinn gave support, as did Jennifer Simon of the Chamber of Commerce.  Mary Beth Lohse represented Sierra Club and Michelle Ajamian visited the store for AthensGrow.  The Warmkes up at Blue Rock Station offered help, as did Kathy Jacobson at Broadwell Hill.  And of course there was our anonymous correspondent from inside the store itself.  And maybe many people we don't know about.  So...it's 6:00 and I think a perfect time for a bowl of cereal---with cream off the top. 

Lose your mind and come to your senses.

   ---Fritz Perls

It gets late early out there.

   ---Yogi Berra

A mystical experience is not any more unique than a modern experiment in physics.  On the other hand, it is not less sophisticated, either....The complexity and efficiency of the physicist's technical apparatus is matched, if not surpassed, by that of the mystic's consciousness....A page from a journal of modern experimental physics will be as mysterious to the uninitiated as a Tibetan mandala.  Both are records of inquiries into the nature of the universe.

   ---Fritjof Capra

I stepped out my front door this early morning and started down the driveway.  Head lowered in thought, time to fetch the Sunday paper in the box down by the road, when I heard the first spring song of a wood thrush in our woods.  He must have come back yesterday.  I notice the juncos are packing up and moving out to the North woods for the summer.  I looked around and the world was transformed.  There hadn't been much rain yesterday, but it was slow and steady...and enough to bring on the first real burst of new leaves.  The daffodils are mostly done, tulips in full blast, and redbud coming on at its usual leisurely pace.  I'm sure there's plenty more wild flower action in the forest and by the creeks.  But that thrush's song lifted my spirits to a healing high.

I just had read an email from my sister, describing her early retirement from administration in local public health in our hometown.  The job had become more than tedious, with constant and increasing mandates "to do more and more with less and less."  It had become dangerous to one's health, life-threatening.  Retirement at 59, with 32 years of service...and she listed 3 others in community and environmental health who did the same thing in a matter of months.  No double-dipping for these people, they've had it.  How many others who chose careers of public service, before Reagan declared government work a waste of money and Gingrich labeled its workers bureaucrats to be gotten rid of, have done the same thing over the last decade?  How many thousands, tens of thousands, from the top ranks of the CIA through the military and into the social agencies?  Every level of government affected by budget cuts and increased paperwork to prove accountability.

I met one the other night.  His name is Rick Sahli, and he's an environmental attorney in Columbus.  He was on a panel at OU discussing the Legal Dimensions of Environmental Justice.  Beginning in 1983, he worked in the Ohio Attorney General's office on environmental law, and 5 years later became the Deputy Director of the Ohio EPA.  On the strong foundation of a promising and socially helpful career, he watched, in 1991, the new Republican governor, George Voinovich, transform the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency into a corporate advocacy group.  Voinovich may have repented somewhat by now, but back then he was just following the neocon agenda.  Mr. Sahli resigned and since then has devoted his skills and service to grassroots organizers---mostly neighborhood folks being terrorized by industrial waste and toxins.   http://home.columbus.rr.com/sahlilaw/

How can it be we've become a country in which people opposed to government and its services are touted as patriots?  I was thinking these things before the wood thrush roused me from my doldrums.  Besides, I've been suffering a bad cold that came on yesterday.  I haven't been sick a day in the past year, but it seems when I catch "what's going around" these days I start getting death thoughts.  I know I'm an old man now, but what happened to the kind of sickness that can be diagnosed?  Each time I get something now I think this may be the Big One---the virus nobody can treat, the flu resistant to all our antibiotics.  At one point yesterday I started coughing---this dry, unproductive hack---and I found myself preparing to give up the ghost.  Overnight it loosened up, but then I had that drowning feeling of pneumonia.  Oh well, one thing you learn is that when death comes it probably won't be so bad.  You just have to let it happen.

Whittier said, "And where the shadows deepest fell, the wood thrush rang his silver bell."  Ah yes, Whittier had the same thing happen.  Anybody with a middle name of Greenleaf must have wandered the forest paths too.  Isn't it wonderful how a bird can reach into your soul and stir your hope once more?  This one got me to look around and see new life coming again.  This old beautiful planet that has been so forgiving of us, that she still comes back no matter how reckless we've been.  It's certainly especially true in this part of Appalachia, where we mine for coal and love our gasoline toys.  And where, nevertheless, Spring is more lovely than anywhere on Earth.