What do Truman Capote and the Iditarod Sled Dog Race have in common?

On the eve of March every year thoughts of the Iditarod keep coming to mind. It always starts on the first Saturday of that month. Today being a thaw sort of day, I recalled the hasty retreat I beat out of the cabin where I wrote Last Great Race, and tore across the melting snow with all my stuff in a sled and five dogs pulling, hoping to beat breakup on the Susitna River. I had to cross it and if the river ice broke it meant about a 50-mile trek to the highway instead of seven.  In that sled was precious cargo – what I thought was the completed manuscript which I had slaved over for the previous three months in a 10 by 14 cabin high above the river.

The dogs and I managed to beat the ice by a couple of days and I pronounced to all who would listen that the  book was done, the first book about the Iditarod.  I gave it a few weeks to get it out of my mind and then settled in to see what I had done. I usually write through something all the way to the end before I go back and read it. That way I get my ideas down without stopping that flow to correct a spelling mistake and look up some random fact. I sat back and read through the manuscript and when I was finished it had reduced me almost to tears it was so bad. Even to an egotistical, idealistic, overconfident potential author, it was just simply bad. It put me into a depression until the following weekend when another adventure beckoned.

Frack this NIMBY

A few years ago I wandered back into journalism for lack of something better to do. It had been almost 20 years since I had worked in that milieu and a lot had changed. On one of my first nights there I came across the term NIMBY and had to ask what the hell is that. Rather condescendingly I was informed it meant "not in my back yard;" in this case it involved a bicycle/ski trail that many people wanted except for those who lived along the proposed route. I also learned that this was an acceptable term to use in a news story without explanation. You know, the Wall Street Journal at least used to explain what the prime rate is whenever it came up in a story even though probably everyone who read the Journal knew what that is.

Anyway I filed that away.  At the time I didn't associate it with the fact that Exxon had spilled a whole lot of oil in MBY and how it might apply in 2014, but it does.

Now comes fracking or hydraulic fracturing, a way to obtain petroleum by injecting a concoction of chemicals into the ground to create pressure that forces the gas to where it can be brought to the surface.  By the time it has become an issue, people were reporting tap water you could set on fire, petroleum odors from water, nests of earthquakes in areas where fracking is common, like Oklahoma, Ohio and Pennsylvania.  And like with every other attempt to gain profit from petroleum Exxon was right at the apex of those employing the procedure.

That was until this year when someone had the nerve of begin fracking near Houston, home of Exxon and other oil profiteers. More specifically the fracking began near the $5 million property owned by Exxon's CEO, Rex Tillerson. It seems a fracking company wants to build a water tower right next to the property and Tillerson joined a lawsuit to stop it.

Now being the head of the country's leading natural gas producer which draws a whole lot of its product from fracking near other people's property the company’s CEO couldn't possibly be objecting to the process itself, could he?  Of course not.  His objection in joining the suit is stated as the project will reduce the value of his property.  Fracking on its own self is harmless, right?  It is if you ignore contamination in the water table and the cancer risk. Still he can't object to that given the extent of Exxon's use of the process.

Long a proponent and defender of fracking, Tillerson reportedly has no involvement in the legal matter. That is a form of Exxon legal mumbo jumbo. A responsible member of the oil industry once told me the way Exxon does business is they come to work in the morning, figure out who could sue them and if they haven't been sued by the end of business it has been a good day. Of course they aren't going to allow their CEO to be named in a lawsuit that attacks fracking, but they will go after a company that is ruining the neighborhood around that CEO's property. It's NIMBY, just on a more ethereal scale.

Another aspect of this that is particularly bothersome is I have not seen one story about this in what is considered the mainstream press. It has shown up on several news sites on the Web but never have I seen it on any of the main news pages.

As far as it goes, Exxon and Tillerson should not be allowed to have it both ways. They can frack in your back yard, poison your water, expose you to cancer, create earthquakes, in fact frack anybody they want to, excluding, of course, Exxon and Tillerson themselves. In recent years adding the word "extreme" to things makes them sound more exciting, i.e. extreme sports. This takes NIMBY to a new level of extreme. 

And isn't it nice to know without being told to, they have begun to frack themselves?

EcoWatch: Exxon CEO Joins Lawsuit Against Fracking Project 

Save this date

The month of two sunrises is over. The sun came over the mountain today, so bright in fact that I couldn't get it to register even with Photoshop help. But you can see the sunlight on the snow in the trees for the proof,

And while we are on the subject of the grand scheme of geography, climate and weather, this chart  from the Media Matters website showed up today.
While the deniers pound desks on the East Coast of the United States, claiming the harsh winter is proof climate change is a hoax, it turns out that worldwide January was the fourth warmest on record. In the perspective of the globe, only one small area had colder than normal temperatures and unfortunately it happened to the science deniers on the House and Senate science committees and Fox noise.  So, here we go again. Ignorance is political justification.

A wonderful, beautiful, very good, satisfying day

OK, I have tried to find a way to express the very good day I had yesterday but it all looks so self-serving and maybe a bit too personal.  Here is what I finally came up with using an old idea developed by someone else.

Ordering a gift after finding out your points-redeeming credit card account can be linked to your Amazon account and you can get stuff for free:   $ zero.

Finding out you owe the IRS a pittance instead of thousands: $51

Finding out you are  going to be a grandfather: PRICELESS!

Bird watching

Sun came out over new snow today so Walter and I spent some good time in the yard.  Big breakthrough today.

Every time I have ever started a snowmachine when he was around he shied away from it, and often went to the door to be let inside.

Today with a little cajoling he followed me and even ran ahead of it sometimes.

I need to get him used to it because we are going to head for the East Pole soon. I would not make him run the whole trail behind it; I plan to haul him on a sled inside his carrier, but getting him to associate the machine with good times will help when we go for real.

We went out the back yard, down the power line right of way and out onto the street for just a minute and then back home and he stayed right with me all the way.  Well, except I had to grab him when we came to the street because he is not afraid of passing vehicles yet.

After we came home we watched the chickadees at the feeders for a while. Walter even took an interest in them.

A day in the sun with Walter

An actor dies; what about the other 37,999 drug overdoses every year

So one celebrity dies of a heroin overdose and all of a sudden the media discovers lots of people who are addicts and some of them even die. They report the news with concerned looks on their faces so phony you can see why they failed as actors and had to go into broadcasting. Heard one news head say the public is just discovering the heroin problem. Bulldust. It is the media who are recently discovering it. After years of only sporadic reporting, now one movie actor dies and all of a sudden OMG there is heroin in America.

They register surprise that it is in Vermont. a typical attitude toward any place in the country that has trees and isn't New York City.  People, it is everywhere.  It is in Barrow, Alaska, on the Arctic coast, the northernmost city in the United States, for crying out loud.

The death of Philip Seymour Hoffman from a drug overdose brought out waves of sympathy and remembrance, particularly from the entertainment industry. Just like when Cory Monteith died last year the overwhelming attitude was about the loss, the sympathetic recollections of their fights with drugs and wishing they could have done more to stop that seemingly inevitable decline until death ended it.

Overall, even with the rest of us, the overwhelming reaction was sympathy and attempts at understanding, the sense of loss and almost deifying the dead. Law enforcement reacted quickly as well, making four arrests a couple of days after Hoffman's death including one person believed to be the actor's supplier.

Don't worry, be happy, Big Mouth Billy Bass is watching out for you

Billy Bass on guard at the East Pole.

It actually works.   Huffington Post had a story today headlined "Big Mouth Billy Bass scares off would-be burglar."

You know what that is, right? That fake mount of a fish that sings an obnoxious version of "Don't Worry Be Happy" or "Take Me to the River" every time someone passes its motion sensor.

My son gave me one as  gift when he was much younger and at first I wondered what the heck I was going to do with that.

Then I saw an episode of the TV crime show "CSI." This was in the days when Gil Grissom was still heading that fictional crime lab. He took someone home to his apartment in this episode and when they entered his hallway there came one of those songs, shocking his guest and he explained he used it as a cheap motion detector.

That's where the idea light bulb went off for me. Immediately I saw a use for my son's gift only not the way the fictional Grissom did.

You see, at the East Pole in summer there is always the possibility of a bear encounter. I have had one close call with four of them and some other sightings. The biggest worry I have is, considering the bears are basically nocturnal and of course that's when I sleep, meeting one on the porch in the middle of the night.  That's where Billy Bass comes in.

The next time I went out there I mounted the fish outside on the front wall, where the easiest access from the ground to the porch is.  I put it about mid-thigh high so even a cub might set it off and give me a little warning when an intruder came around. And, besides alerting me, it's quite possible the noise would spook an animal as well.

I mean, I doubt even a bear could stand the sound of Billy Bass singing "don't worry, be happy" for very long.

Huffington Post: Billy Bass scares off would-be burglar

The month of two sunrises

Morning (southeast)

Afternoon (southwest)

Around here the month of February is the month of two sunrises.  The house is in the shadow on the north side of a 6,000-foot mountain.  That's high enough given Alaska's position relative to earth and sun to block the solar rays from ever shining on the house from late November until late January.

When it first appears again it rises and shines for a while over the lower mountains to the east of the tall one, then disappears until the next morning. But now, in early February, it rises twice, shining over the low mountains to the east, then disappearing behind Pioneer Peak and then rising again over the mountains to the west.  As a result, two sunrises.

Too bad it can't be more like the movie "Groundhog Day" where the protagonist wakes up over and over on the same day and gets to relive his life based on what he learned the previous times he lived that day. There are several days I wouldn’t mind a do-over, or at least a start-over.

It's not quite so fanciful here, but has some of the same effect. After a winter without sun and the accompanying mood swings, seeing bright sunlight in the morning creates a renewed optimism only to have it dashed in the dimness of mid day, but then have it renewed again in late afternoon. Morning chores seem to get done easier in the brightness of the first sunrise.  A good nap during the dimness of midday works well before taking the dog out to play under the second sun.  All in all not a bad cycle, but it doesn't last.  Soon enough the sun will make it over the top of the mountain and then we head into those days of 19 hours of potential sunlight every day. It's already pretty close to the peak.

So for now only a few more days to enjoy the double sunrise and take advantage of it. The sun will be above the peak soon and with only about 35 days until the equinox when garden planning begins and the sun will be another kind of issue.

Laziness leads to a lifetime of cooking

Roasted salmon on saffron couscous
and ratattouille with a fresh bean salad
and herb vinaigrette dressing. More
about that later.

During my enlistment with Boy Scouts I learned very quickly if a guy could cook to the point where other people liked it, he could avoid a whole lot of more arduous tasks. While other kids hunted up firewood or tried to scrub pots clean in icy cold streams, all I did was cook a quick camp meal.

My biscuits baked in a reflector oven made of tinfoil did not have that rock hard  bottom so many had.  My meats were evenly cooked, not burned on the outside and raw in the middle. It became automatic when chores were assigned at the beginning of a camp out. Tim, you cook.  All Right!

That skill served me well again in college where to make it through I had to work for my board in a dormitory kitchen, and it almost got me fired. As quickly as I could I weaseled my way from dishwasher to cook's helper to cook. Eventually I worked my way to breakfast cook. It took some experimenting, but attempting to make breakfast palatable almost led to my downfall. Anyone who has eaten in a dormitory will remember rubbery fried eggs, yolks as tough as a bad steak. The way we did it was we made the eggs on a grill in the back kitchen and put the eggs into a pan to be served from a steam table. What made the eggs hard was not the original frying. What happened was they kept cooking while they waited on that steam table for someone to serve them. 

By communicating with the servers I found I could lower the time on the steam table by linking supply to demand. Also, I didn't cook them all the way done. I left them a little undercooked. That way they completed the cooking process on the steam table and the result was fried eggs with soft yolks. The new problem was, word got around and more people started eating breakfast.

At least in those ancient days, college food service made money on breakfast. On a meal ticket you paid for breakfast, but it was the lowest attended meal of the day, week, month, year.  The savings added up. Now all of a sudden there were lines for breakfast. A fellow who lived down the hall from me told me he only went to breakfast when he knew I was cooking. During that period, our regular kitchen supervisor was replaced by a woman from another dorm. She watched me carefully finally almost screamed at me, "those eggs aren't done!" I explained my process to her.  "Well, that's not how we did it at Sims (the dorm she came from)," she said.

And I told her, "This isn't Sims.  Our people like breakfast." I found out later she tried to have me fired partly for insubordination and partly (at least rumored) because too many people were coming to breakfast and the kitchen was losing money.

Later in life, my skill again served me when I started messing about on boats, particularly on longer voyages. On one extended voyage to Hawaii, there was another fellow who loved involved breakfasts and I liked major dinners, so we split the chore along that line.

Through 24 days at sea we were frustrated constantly by head winds and had to tack often to maintain our course. The result was the trip took a lot longer than expected. By the third week we began to ration a little just to be careful.  Early that week we caught a couple of albacore and I started substituting, alternating one night of albacore, with one night of regular food. Eventually it grew to two nights of albacore and one night of regular food. The only break we got was one day catching a mahi mahi. We had some sourdough starter on board so I made a breading of that and crushed croutons and fried it.  A 10-pound fish disappeared in minutes.

The next night I pulled out an albacore filet and noticed something I hadn't before. Looked at from the end, the filet resembled a pork chop.   Sooooo. I cut the filet that way, not into slabs but what resembled a chop cut off a pork loin. The result was perfectly shaped pork chops. I opened a couple of pork flavor Ramen noodles packs and seasoned the meat with the Ramen flavor packs.

When it was ready I called them to the table and as was my habit I went up and took the helm while everyone ate. From below the first thing I heard was: "Oh man, where did you find pork chops?"  Just wait, I thought.

The noise from below subsided as the eating began.

And then came the cry of realization, "Oh crap, this is TUNA!"

I laughed quietly to myself and then brought the boat back on course after losing focus for a moment.

I have no secrets to my success unless it is the old adage "keep it simple, stupid." Simple and basic usually provides the best, generally accepted meals and are much more difficult to mess up.

At times I have gone to recipe books and that is what that picture at the top is all about. I mean, who the hell would even have just the ingredients mentioned in the title, let alone all the other little tidbits probably called for in the recipe.

 A few years ago a dear friend of mine named Lael Morgan set out on a round the world voyage with her husband.  They got as far as Juneau, Alaska, where she left the boat and him. The result of that voyage was a cookbook Lael wrote which she called "Cooking on your knees."  It appears some publisher changed the name to "Woman's guide to boating and cooking."

I loved the premise.  Look in any cookbook designed for boats and try to find one recipe that you can make while you are pounding through 20-foot seas with the boat heeled to a 35 degree angle while eggs and pans fly by your head at irregular intervals. And, that's not to mention all the exotic ingredients no one could find on any self-respecting boat to begin with. Those recipes might work on a yacht tied securely to land where you could run up to the nearest gourmet shop, but beyond that, well, just NO.  That picture at the top is an example from a boating magazine. On a real boat you might have the fish and a pack of Ramen Noodles.

Now, here's one of mine

In a skillet fry some sliced potatoes. in butter  Once they are almost crisp, pile in whatever vegetables you can find.  Broccoli and cauliflower work great for this. You actually steam the vegetables in the vapor rising from the potatoes. When the vegetables are just about done, cover with any cheese you like. I've used everything from Kraft singles to shredded parmesan.  Could throw in some pepper or some garlic.  And onions; I almost forgot onions, as many as you can stand and cook them in the butter with the potatoes. If your skillet will handle it, put it in the oven just to melt the cheese, otherwise let it melt on the stove top. It's known in lower boating circles as Medium Famous Orca Jones vegetable mess. Rib sticking food and one pot.

And why is it when the sun finally shines on the downhill slope to spring, thoughts of the big ocean intrude into the mind.