Numbers 4 and 5

Getting that warmth today and probably tomorrow, fourth and fifth stage and some of the third. But i admit to cheating on stage 1 and and 2 and most of 3. (I don't write like Thoreau, but sometimes i think like him) Have two cords of firewood dumped in the yard to stack. Some to split. I am going to be a sore puppy tomorrow, but every one that goes onto the pile is one more step toward winter security. Seeing chickadees checking out the feeders now, too, so I am going to have to go get some seed. Partly sunny today. Funny, the years I drove boats, i lived in a place that was very rainy in the summer time. Often we would leave in the morning in fog or low overcast and rain. We used to describe the weather as partly thinning and partly thickening. The thing about places like that is, when you get a sunny day, it is glorious and you appreciate it so much. A bright day on the water, with myriad shades of green up the mountainsides and snow-capped peaks in the distance can take your breath away. Does it seem like i am sitting here at the computer procrastinating? To steal a phrase from my daughter who pulled it off in the perfect situation: I'll get back to you on that.

The picture is a visitor to the feeder last year, a hairy woodpecker.

It had to happen on the Equinox

Twelve hours of darkness, twelve hours of daylight and this morning for the first time this fall, the temperature below freezing.

Random metaphor at the Equinox

You've thrown a whole bunch of balls in the air. You know you have to catch them all, but while they are suspended there you cannot figure out which one to catch first.

It's sad, oh so SAD

Just when does this voyage of self discovery end? By all rights it should have been over by now but apparently it isn’t. I mean several years ago one night I was whining, I guess a little too much, about a divorce and a friend told me to shut up, it was all character building. I looked at him and said, I am 55 years old, this IS my character. That should have been it, but apparently the voyage goes on.

I have always liked Keith Olberman since I first saw him as a sports announcer on ESPN. When he showed up on MSNBC with a news show I made it a point to watch every chance I could. I like what I called news with attitude. I saw the show as unbiased and cutting edge. Then began the vicious attacks on Sarah Palin. And that was when the new discovery came. I am not a big fan of her politics, but I have enjoyed her rise to fame, have been astonished at the attacks on her and have gotten a little defensive about it. She may be a flawed politician, but she is OUR flawed politician. What amazed me was how nasty Olberman got and how petty, and how little he even tried to get at anything like truth. Several times I have had to turn it off. The discovery was that I saw him as unbiased because his biases are the same as mine. Until Sarah. So, now I have some growing to do. But, then, so does he.

The latest was the most outrageous, when he started criticizing her for having a tanning bed in the governor’s mansion. What exactly is the matter with that? Do we want our government people working 24 hours a day? Are they not allowed to find a way to relax? Nixon put a bowling alley in the White House. Eisenhower had a putting green on the lawn. Kennedy had his own recreation, which the press chose to ignore. Clinton with the same interests, was impeached for it. Is it so awful that Sarah Palin has a tanning bed? The governor before her bought that million dollar jet airplane.

Criticizing the tanning bed might have been tolerable, but then someone in state government suggested she might use it to fight depression. Olberman immediately jumped all over that, adding his own diagnosis to elevate the problem to clinical depression. What the aide should have explained and Olberman should have taken the time to find out was that just about anyone who lives in the north suffers some measure of depression.

It is called seasonal affective disorder (SAD) and it affects everyone in the north to some degree. It is caused by a lack of sunlight. When a person does not absorb enough sunshine, the pineal gland causes depression. More in some people less in others but most likely a little bit in everyone. In winter we get a little more than 5 hours of daylight on the shortest day where I live, less as you go north until north of the Arctic Circle whole days, weeks and months go by without a sunrise. I used to feel the effects of it until I learned more. What I do now is try to get outdoors for a while during the brightest part of the day and on top of that most of the lamps in the house hold full-spectrum color bulbs, which also helps. Fortunately the new mini fluorescents are full spectrum so I save a little on electricity, too. There are SAD lights available specifically for it but they are very expensive. When you drive to work in the dark and come home in the dark and stay indoors all day, you are very susceptible and need to do something about it. If Sarah Palin uses a tanning bed to help out, well, good for her. And by calling her clinically depressed, Olberman has managed to slander everyone in the world who lives north of 60.

Let’s see him bring it on north and broadcast his show from here for a couple of weeks around the Winter Solstice. Let him experience some of that depression and see if he goes clinical on us.

A bear moon

So far this year there have been a lot of bear encounters reported, including at least three serious attacks by grizzlies. And that doesn't count the college cross country guy who managed to outrun one or the guy who fought one to a standstill. The bears are out there, but at a distance, someone else's story, interesting but not personal. Yesterday morning that changed a little. As I turned into my street, i chanced to look up and a full moon was sneaking out of the clouds. When i looked down again, two eyes showed up reflected in the headlights. Slowing for the driveway i saw the animal pass me going the other way, a black bear cub. I quick looked around for others but didn't see any. I turned around and went back down the street to see if i could find it, but it had disappeared. But, now I had to go into my yard in the dark not knowing where the mother was. I drove way closer to the house than I usually do and forced the motion detector lights to turn on. Once I saw it was clear, I hightailed it for the house. Later in daylight i looked around but saw no sign a bear had been around the house.

Oh, no, SWANS!

Since she was old enough to understand them, my daughter and I have been going to movies together. Though we often disagree on interpretations, our tastes in general are alike. When you watch movies with someone for that long, you develop a string of communication, sometimes with nothing said. One thing we always agreed on was swans. We knew if we saw swans in a movie somebody was going to get kissed.

The minute swans appeared, there would be a hushed:

“Oh no, SWANS!”

“Ewwwww”

“Oh, yuck”

“Hide your eyes.”

Then it would degenerate into uncontrollable laughter at our insight into American film.

Why did that thought come up? The swans came back to the pond yesterday: three of them all clean and white swimming among the bronzed lily pads. They usually stay until freezeup.

I looked around, but, nope, nobody to kiss.

Blowin' in the wind

Watching the news as Hurricane Ike heads down on the southeast Texas coast. Weather is fascinating especially something huge like this. We can only hope those souls are tough enough and aware enough to survive it. A former dear friend of mine is directly in the path at this hour, though she lives farther northwest in Austin.

The insightful news heads are reporting the storm at this point is a cartegory 2 hurricane, saying it might go to category 3. Now get this: the upper limit for a category 2 is 111 mph winds. Sustained winds being reported right now are 110. You have to wonder how much worse that 1 mph makes it. That is the problem with categorizing anything, you impose strict limits that might under or overstate the actuality.

For example, the weather service calls it a storm at 63 knots and a hurricane at 64 knots. Here is an anecdote about what a difference that makes.

I wrote a story years ago about a storm that tore through the Aleutian Islands. One of the sources was Peggy Dyson who lives in Kodiak. Her husband Oscar was one of the original king crab fishermen. He made his millions and got out before it crashed. An orginial “Deadliest Catch” guy. In those days there was very little weather forecasting in the Bering Sea, so Peggy got a serious single sideband radio and called Oscar twice a day with a weather report. In time other fishermen began listening in, too. Then came the requests: “It’s our anniversary, could you send some flowers to my wife?” The weather service knew a gem when they heard one and eventually hired her and set her up as the broadcast station for weather in Alaska waters. No one on the ocean missed Peggy on 4125 at 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. and her call “Hello, all mariners.” There was something comforting just in her voice, She could forcast the most unimagineable bad weather in the same voice she might tell you the cat had kittens. (Not like these new talking heads who have to inject drama and outrage with inflection in every news story they report.)

So, for a storm story in the Aleutians, she seemed the perfect source. She told me basically what she knew and then came this anecdote. Now, you have to understand this storm actually blew the house (cabin) off a fishing boat. A fisherman who weathered it went in to see Peggy when he returned to Kodiak. And this was why. According to her, in a very angry voice he told her, “Damn it Peggy, we get 110 knot winds out there all the time. But you went and called it a hurricane and scared the hell out of everybody.”

Reflections redux

In the first posting here, I rambled on about the enjoyment i find commuting and seeing the critters along the way. Today I drove the last 10 miles of it and made photos here and there in an attempt to provide something beyond words to describe the view. As a writer, I have to admit that is something of a failing... after all who should need pictures if the writing effectively provides the necessary descriptions? What ever. Here are a few pictures of the road. It was an overcast day but beautiful in its own way.

Slideshow

Relief

It was so dark this morning coming home I almost missed him. Then a shadow of a man appeared hiking up the hill toward town and he was back. I hadn't seen the Solitary Man since the night the kid and the bear got into a fist fight near that trail. Then, too, that last time I saw him, he had his bedroll tied on top of his pack, so he could have been going somewhere. There has been a twinge of worry every morning driving by the trail and not seeing him. But that is one reason solitary men are solitary, they don't want anyone worrying about them. But as time passed since that night I have wondered about him often, even to the point of considering a hike through the woods where he lives to see if there were at least some sign he was alive. I would never recognize his face in person. I just haven't seen him up close. However the beard is recognizable and one night I saw a photograph of protestors outside the Republican convention and the one closest to the camera had a very similar beard. The caption said he was a minister from Alaska. The time frame was perfect, it could have been him. At any rate it was with some relief and a bit of comfort seeing him again, in the rain, hiking toward the town this morning.

We don't give a damn how they do it on the Outside

The national media is missing something in the assessment of Sarah Palin. They love to point out her lack of experience in foreign policy, national policy, just living in the big Outside, just about anything. People need to get to know this: It takes a certain kind of person to live in Alaska, at least outside metropolitan centers, someone who is independent, adaptable, savvy and innovative. We have a word for it, “skookum.” In the broadest sense it means strong enough to meet any situation and savvy enough to resolve the problem. The idea conflicts with modern consciousness. Take this for example. I have gotten so frustrated in first aid classes. What is the first thing they tell you to do? Call 911. Finally the frustration boiled over in one class. I said, “hey, I might be miles into the bush, or I might be out on the big ocean, don’t tell me to call 911.” For one thing there are no phones, for a second, no one is coming to help. Let’s talk about how to deal with the situation, not how to call for help. A hundred miles from anywhere, you better be able to take care of yourself. So, you learn to think that way, learn to get yourself out of situations.

Another example: On a sailing trip things go wrong and it is one of the Murphy’s law corollaries the farther offshore you go, the bigger the problem. I sailed with a good friend once and learned a way to think from him. When something went wrong, he always had a plan to fix it. But, even more, when the fix didn’t work, he already had the next plan. And if that one didn’t work, he had another. I think we might have gotten six deep into that process once. The point is, while we were making the fix, he was already thinking about what we could do if it didn’t work. Since then I have learned to think that way also. And you have to learn to fix your own dumb mistakes.

Here’s one. One night sailing, the binnacle light went out. That’s the one that illuminates the compass. So two experienced boat guys and basic mechanics, in our brightness we taped a flashlight to the binnacle next to the compass so we could see to steer. And on we sailed. Next night, 24 hours later and on the same watch, I looked at my friend and said, “You don’t suppose that flashlight affects the compass, do you?” OMG. Our mouths dropped open. What we finally decided to do was one guy stared at the compass, while the other carefully removed the tape, then pulled the flashlight away quickly. That way the guy watching could see how far the compass swung. 5 degrees. Between Cape Flattery off Seattle and Hawaii, 1 degree off and you miss the whole Hawaiian archipelago by 80 miles. You wouldn’t even see it! But knowing we were 5 degrees off course for 24 hours we could adjust the course and make up for it and all came out good.

You have to be self-sufficient, you have to know how to meet a situation. You don't call for help. You solve it and move on, It is that innate Alaska, maybe, sense of survival. With her experience Sarah Palin has it and it is doubtful many Outsiders understand it, let alone appreciate it as an attribute. Skookum. Explain that inside the Beltway.

On the wings of a dust brown crane

A wedge of sandhill cranes flew over the road this morning all of us on our way home. As light came through the clouds, it highlighted the first yellows showing up among the green leaves. That nip in the air meant something for sure. The state fair is over, kids are back in school and oh boy are we in an election season.

In case somebody isn’t paying attention our governor has been nominated for vice president. A little more than two years ago she was mayor of the town next to this one, an Alaska version of a valley girl (the Matanuska Valley). The rap on her is she doesn’t have the experience for the job, but a lot of people didn’t think she had the experience to be governor either, and now she works with something like an 80 percent approval rating. Some people rise to the occasion and she seems to be one of them. The big thing in her favor is she is an outsider. She beat three former governors on the way to winning that election, including the incumbent, who came in third in his own party’s primary. Now she is up there on the national stage, a woman who had to quick get a passport last year to go visit Alaska troops in the Middle East because she had never been overseas before, and drawing all kinds of focus on the north. We could do without that, but nothing’s going to stop it. I have to admit I am pretty darned proud. I disagree with so many of the things she stands for, but I like her, and I just have to smile every time I see her there on TV with all those famous, politically powerful people and holding her own, her family with her.

The media sniping had to be expected. Sometimes my own profession embarrasses me. She stepped into that spotlight and I suppose expected it, but how hard the press tries to find some dirt amazes even me. A coworker this morning said it was awful how she paraded her family in front of everyone in her drive for public office. But, to my mind that is part of it, everyone brings the family along and my guess is the family is well prepared for it. They may be reluctant but the smiles from most of them showed they were happy to be there and proud of Mom and what she was doing. Pretty common knowledge the governor’s daughter is pregnant, and her being there also offended this person. But my thought is, this is a family, they are going to support each other and not hide their problems, but instead show the world how they deal with things like this and that is up front and honest, not try to hide it. That is support. I don’t suppose many people do, but I felt some sympathy for the boyfriend. Try to imagine this from a male point of view. You finally achieve every boy’s dream and have sex. A mistake is made and you find yourself dealing with a pregnancy. That can be traumatic enough. But then imagine your mistake ON THE FRONT PAGE OF EVERY NEWSPAPER IN THE WORLD.

I sent a note to my son at college warning him this was yet another reason to practice safe sex.

There is another person in that family to keep an eye on and she is the little scamp Piper, the governor’s youngest daughter. You may have seen her during the speech licking her fingers and then damping down a cowlick in her baby brother’s hair. There was a great picture made of her during the festivities surrounding the governor’s inauguration here. She was standing in front of her mother in a cute little dress, arms folded across her chest, something of a scowl across her mouth and her eyes cast wickedly to the side as if wondering, “now how am I going to work this to my advantage.” The Secret Service is going to have their hands full with that one. Could there be a movie in it?

All in all, except for being somewhat under the microscope, not a bad day to be an Alaskan, and watching those sandhill cranes heading south on the winds of change.