Meanwhile life outside goes on all around you

Some days it's difficult to organize a cohesive thought. We are bombarded with so much information it becomes difficult to sort out what is important and what isn’t or at least what deserves our focus. These flew across the field of vision today:

This photo also crossed that horizon: It's the real
Christopher Robin and Winnie-the Pooh circa
1926. For its influence see the link below.

A sandhill crane taking off from Creamer's field in Fairbanks.…

Chris Christie and Ted Cruz take critical potshots at Jimmy Carter who is facing terminal cancer …

My friend Tom Hale is recuperating from a serious stroke and giving his dear wife,  Mandy, fits but with a twinkle in his eyes and a wry smile on his lips …

That nutso white supremacist who tried to buy a North Dakota town and turn it into a bastion of racism and pseudo military resistance wants to name the town Trump …

A Navajo Code breaker walked two miles in a parade, helped along through the last half mile by two current Navajo Marines …

Some of my female friends swoon over actor Sam Elliot on his 71st birthday…

Indy car driver Justin Wilson dies after being hit by debris from a crash at a race track Sunday …

My friend Phil Munger who is driving off a divorce along the coast of the Lower States has started writing music again …

Danica Patrick is enjoying a vacation on a beach somewhere and showing off her yoga positions – that's hot…

German cruise lines pulled out of the Faroe Islands to protest the slaughter of pilot whales there …

A group from a satanic temple turned out to counter someone's protest of a Planned Parenthood establishment …

Facebook says I may know someone named Evan Christian …

Dan Buckwalter of Wasilla, Alaska is missing since Aug. 4 …

A soldier who helped with communications during the first Iditarod asked for help finding information and photos about that race and several people responded …

The National Women’s History Museum highlighted Sarah Winnemucca a Paiute author and the first Native American woman known to obtain a copyright to publish a book in English …

Republican presidential candidate Scott Walker announced a big point in his foreign policy: he wants to cancel the Chinese president's visit to the United States because of a dip in China's stock market …

Still no one seems to remember the name or has heard from the other senator from Alaska, though there was some mention that he was upset not to be included in festivities surrounding President Obama's visit to Alaska, the president he vilified and promised to stand up to during his election campaign …

Several people liked my post in Ocean People about a federal lawsuit against SeaWorld in San Diego …

Josh Duggar's brother in law wants "that pig out of our family"…

Several crews of Alaska firefighters are battling the wildfires in the Pacific Northwest, particularly Idaho and the Alaska Division of Forestry has sent 450 miles of hose to help in the effort …

A beautiful high school girl named Lilliana who is an intelligent and informed critic of SeaWorld and whale captives in general was blocked on Twitter by a humpback whale group she has never interacted with. Getting a name for herself …

Discovered another sign of seasons changing tonight – when you go out to water the garden at the regular time and the motion-activated lights come on …

A wolf hunt began around the perimeter of Denali National Park, targeting wolves that often move back and forth in and out of the park …

Kim Kardashian gets fat injections in her ass …

A huge storm is developing in the Bering Sea and warnings are up for heavy surf along western and southern shorelines. Those are the shorelines that are eroding badly …

Two giant panda cubs born at the National Zoo …

Mississippi is rated  the most religious state in the Union and also 48th in intelligence, just sayin' …

And then there’s this quote from Winston Churchill: asked to cut arts funding in favor of the war effort (World War II for you children), he asked, "then what are we fighting for?"…

There's a new store opening in Palmer called "The Frayed Knot." Looks like a crafts store heavy on the knitting …

Three Americans and a couple of others subdued a terrorist shooting up a train in Belgium. Today Fox Noise blamed the attacker on President Obama…

And, just for perspective, the first train robbery in the U.S. happened on this day in 1866 and while he isn't blamed outright for it, Obama did nothing to stop the robbery either …

Yahoo News listed the goofiest laws in every state. In Alaska it's illegal to give a moose beer. Who knew? …

There have been spectacular northern lights shows around here the past few nights and maybe it would be better to bundle up and go outside to stare at them than watch this screen any longer.

Winnie-the-Pooh and the East Pole

Tomatoes or frost? The race is on

Black pansies.

Cherry tomatoes

Fireweed blossoms reached the top of the stalk around July 9 in this neighborhood. Folklore has it that means six weeks until snow on the ground. Well here we are in the August 20s and no snow even on the highest peaks out the front window. At the time some folks suggested the strange hot summer caused the fireweed to peak early and that probably is the case. And that is probably the reason there's no termination dust on the mountain yet. That snow on the high peaks has shown up earlier than this in the past and if there isn't any by Sept. 1, consider it an abnormal year.

The largest of at least three acorn squashes.

Another acorn

So in the garden there are small tomatoes and three fair sized acorn squash, growing but not ready to pick yet. Low temperatures are still in the high 40s or low 50s so no danger of a frost yet and there's plenty of sunshine during the day, but the hours of daylight are diminishing at 6 minutes a day. And, there has been snow and frost farther to the north, so it's coming. The question now is will these late bloomers grow to maturity or will the frost get them before they can?

A better beefsteak

Much as I want to see a winter with plenty of snow after last year's debacle, I am hoping it will hold off until I can pick at least a few tomatoes. We shall see.

If the state fair had a category
for ugliest tomato. I don't think
I will try beefsteak again.

In the meantime I pulled potatoes for the plants that were damaged by the excessive light and heat and got a bowl full of edible sized ones. There are still a dozen plants thriving so they can wait for a while to try for some real bakers.

The flowers are doing quite well. And the race is on.

Harvest

What a colossal waste of money

In a state that had to scratch everywhere to find money to meet the budget and eventually cut several services, some of them vital to the state's citizens, today Republicans in the Legislature voted to spend $450,000 to sue the governor saying he abused power initiating Medicaid expansion in Alaska. To top it off they hired an out-of-state law firm to handle the case.

And that expense is just the beginning. The administration likely will have to spend an equal or larger amount in defending the governor's action.

But not only is the suit challenging the governor, if successful it would also deny up to 40,000 Alaskans the medical care they need.

Additionally experts have said the governor was well within his power to expand Medicaid and so the suit likely will be thrown out somewhere in the process and the state will have spent close to a million dollars essentially throwing it down the drain. How many teachers' salaries could be paid with a million dollars, how many roads repaired?

Mind you this is not an original idea with our legislators. They are not intelligent enough to have thought it up themselves. No, this is an action right out of the American Legislative Exchange Council playbook. That's the organization sponsored by the Koch Bros. to bring their agenda to state legislatures. At one time there was a pledge ALEC asked the nation's state legislators to sign saying they would forward the Koch program to steal America from its citizens. They force the agenda into every state and many legislatures, particularly those with Republican majorities have passed a number of ALEC's recommendations. Remember a couple of years  ago when one of our astute legislators advanced a bill to ban Sharia law in Alaska? That was an ALEC proposal. And what would you bet that Outside law firm has a connection to ALEC and the Kochs as well?

These legislators need to be replaced. They are a lawsuit-crazy bunch who sue anybody who disagrees with them at the drop of a cliche. A few years ago Alaska joined the suit to stop Obmacare, environmental rules, wildlife management, any number of issues including same-sex marriage and those almost always fail, just like this one most likely will.

Meanwhile the rest of the state suffers under an extremely tight budget and legislators threaten to squeeze money from anywhere they can including the Permanent Fund. Who do these people think they represent, anyway?

Tracing the actual costs

Alaska's bond rating downgraded

State has $3.6 billion budget deficit

Alaska fisherman has an amazing encounter with porpoises

Three Dall porpoises play around the bow of a tour boat in 

Alaska's Prince William Sound.

During the past couple of weeks there have been two stories circulating on the Internet about whales tangled in garbage or fishing gear approaching boats as if to ask for help getting rid of it. In both cases folks were able to remove that tangling material.

The stories reminded me of another a friend told me several years ago. Mike Lopez seined for salmon for years in Alaska's Prince William Sound. Like most fishermen now and then he would find marine mammals tangled in his gear. One such encounter happened to another friend. When his crew hauled their net, a sea otter came up with the salmon to be dumped unceremoniously onto the deck. According to that friend the otter regained its feet, snarled and then backed the whole crew against the house before finding the gunwale and jumping overboard.

Mike's story is even better.  In seining, you lay your net out behind the boat, but unlike gillnetting where fish get stuck in the net itself, the seine is closed first in a circle at the top and tightly at the bottom and then the fish are hoisted onto the boat. There isn't a whole lot of bycatch in that kind of fishing.

So the way Mike told it, he and his crew had set their net out but before they closed it six Dall porpoises swam inside the area and became entangled in the netting. This is not a good situation for fishermen or for porpoises. Mike saw the porpoises thrashing around in the water, fighting the net, attempting to free themselves.

He took a skiff and drove it along the net until he reached the first porpoise. He approached the animal carefully trying not to look threatening. When he was close enough he caught a piece of the netting and immediately the porpoise stopped thrashing. According to Mike it floated docilely on the surface and allowed him to remove the net. That porpoise swam away from the net by remained close by.

Mike looked down the line and to his amazement all of the other porpoises had stopped their movements. The way he described it, they too floated on the surface as if patiently waiting for him  to free them as well.  He was able to pull himself along the cork line to each porpoise in turn while the others waited for him to untangle them too. In time he set all six free with no apparent injury. 

Thinking back on it now, in telling the story he never once mentioned what damage they might have done to his seine, only that he was happy he was able to free them. Seines aren't cheap and if in addition to the cost of repairs or replacement Mike lost a few days fishing during the short salmon seine season, that adventure could have cost him a considerable amount of money.

Still in the telling it was about the porpoises, not the money and six porpoises survived what could easily have been a deadly encounter.

Boaters save whale with garbage tangled in its mouth  (With video)

Whale rescued from fishing gear  (With video)

In search of the evasive muse

Some time ago on a night when I was having a glass of wine or two and surfing the net and feeling a bit lonely, I put an ad up on a meeting site saying I was seeking a muse. I thought I might meet someone interesting. I received a few responses but not very many. After all how many people on one of those sites want to talk with a 72-year-old man? The thing of it was, not one of them even mentioned "muse." I traded a few emails with a couple of them but it never went any further than that.

More recently I was chatting with a friend and mentioned the search that night. She asked me which of the nine of them I was looking for and suggested next time (like there is ever going to be a next time) I say which of the nine muses I am seeking. First of all, there are nine of them? I really need to look things up more often. I had the idea of muse correct, but not the specifics. It turns out there are nine of them. They are listed in the piece below that I lifted from infoplease. 

The Nine Muses

The Nine Muses were Greek goddesses who ruled over the arts and sciences and offered inspiration in those subjects. They were the daughters of Zeus, lord of all gods, and Mnemosyne, who represented memory. Memory was important for the Muses because in ancient times, when there were no books, poets had to carry their work in their memories.

Copied from Infoplease.

Calliope was the muse of epic poetry. 

Clio was the muse of history. 

Erato was the muse of love poetry. 

Euterpe was the muse of music.

Melpomene was the muse of tragedy. 

Polyhymnia was the muse of sacred poetry. 

Terpsichore was the muse of dance. 

Thalia was the muse of comedy. 

Urania was the muse of astronomy.

So, those are the nine. Now here is a broader definition of them from The Encyclopedia of Goddesses and Heroines by my friend Patricia Monaghan:

Musae  Daughters of Mnemosyne, the Muses were born near Mount

Olympus in a place they later made a danc­ing ground.  There they were raised by the hunter Crotus, who was transported after death into the sky as Sagittarius.  Usually there were nine Musae: Clio, ruler of history, depicted with an open scroll or a chest of books; Euterpe, the flute‑playing lyric Muse; festive Thalia who wore the comic mask and wreaths of ivy; Melpomene, who wore vine leaves and the mask of tragedy; Terpsichore, who carried a lyre and ruled choral song as well as dance; Erato, ruler of erotic poetry and nurse of Pan; Polyhymnia, whose name means “many hymns” and who inspired them; Urania, globe‑bearing Muse of astronomy; and Calliope, ruler of epic poetry, shown with tablet and pencil.

Sometimes there were fewer than nine Musae.  Three were symbolic: Melete (“practicing”), Mneme (“remembering”), and Aoide (“singing”).  When there was only one Muse, she could be called by any of the names of the nine.  The group had many alternative names, derived from places sa­cred to them.  They were called Cas­talides for a spring called Castilia on Mount Parnassus; a minor goddess lived there and endowed people with inspiration, from which Parnassus remains a symbol of achievement in the arts.  (Apollonius of Rhodes; Athanassakis; Farnell; Hesiod; Ovid Met.)

The upshot of it all is that there isn't one muse who covers it all as far as writing is concerned. There are three who cover varieties of poetry; one for history; one for comedy; and one for drama, but none for the Great American Novel, or the Greek version either for that matter.

So what is the frustrated fiction writer to do? Go on without a muse? Apparently there is no other way, leaving the writer where he is supposed to be anyway, alone in a room with only his own thoughts and a blank screen and not even a mythological goddess to help out. But they did have an effect. Patricia Monaghan and I used to communicate often and one of the subjects we discussed more than once was procrastination. And, here she is, almost two years after her death, still contributing to my procrastinating as I look through her book for an answer that has nothing to do with the writing I am supposed to be doing. And then as much as we encouraged each other I wonder if unconsciously I am attempting to connect with a woman who at one time served as a muse in this writer's life or at least was a writer whom I admired and whose criticism and encouragement meant a great deal and who is no longer available.

And so we plod on alone callously accepting no excuse for the inertia perhaps now understanding there are nine of them out there avoiding contact, but in a way providing an ethereal connection with a previous inspiration.

Another conversation with Patricia

The Encyclopedia of Goddesses and Heroines
infoplease

Harvest

Potatoes, onions, lettuce, spinach and zucchinis.

Trophy class zucchini.

Not much to say about it, but delivered some groceries to my daughter's house today. I warned her ahead of time to call some friends because I was bringing it big time.

How does your Alaska garden grow?

They grow so fast, don't they?

By rights those two trees should be in this 2008 photo to
the left of center.

See the two trunks to the left of
the four-wheeler? Follow them up.

Here's an

odd list of events at and along the trails around the East Pole over the weekend.

To begin with here is a post the cellular gods allowed me to put on Facebook Friday night after a day and a half of "no service:" Deep woods, East Pole, deck stained, water hauled, firewood split, prime lamb chops, home grown zucchini, Genesee beer and all 5 seasons of Ally McBeal LOL"

That's a pretty satisfying day at the pole. It was between the dinner and Ally McBeal, I was having that Genesee beer on the dry half of the newly finished deck, and staring sort of blankly off into the woods when out of the wall of green in front of me, two trees emerged into focus. Neither tree of itself was anything other than ordinary, just one of two growing in a forest full of them. Sharper focus for a moment, and I said right out loud, "where the hell did those come from?"  They grew on straight trunks, now at least 20 feet tall,  fully leafed out and within spitting distance of where I was sitting. And … I had never seen them before in almost 30 years of staring off that porch. Amazing how you can overlook what's right before your eyes.

The trip in had been about as good as it gets, at least until I reached my own side trail. Someone with a 'dozer had gone over the trail and put the blade down here and there knocking down moguls, filling trenches, even opening drainage in the places where water collects fairly deeply. The only standing water I saw was less than 10 feet long and was mostly liquid mud. To get an idea, normally I drive the trail in first and second gear; this time I drove it mostly in second and third and even kicked it into fourth a couple of times. That's flying on this trail. The trouble developed when I missed my own trail which is fairly obscured and I like it that way; it doesn't let people on the main trail know my cabin is up there and given how much time it spends empty, that's a good thing.

Problem is sometimes I can't find it either. Missed it this time and headed into the woods from a different spot. I didn't get 30 feet before I had the four-wheeler high-centered on a fallen log – lengthwise – machine AND trailer. Worse, the soft forest floor gave no traction and the wheels just flung what ground they could touch all over the place. I always carry a come-along and it took a while but I freed both vehicles and headed up the trail, with a new lesson learned. I had carried some of that braided climbers' rope. Never again. Unlike other ropes, this stuff stretches, not exactly a feature you want when trying to pull something out of the muck. It took three reattachments before I pulled the machine out of there.

But that was behind me as I sat on the porch with the beer contemplating the new trees. When I was out in July, I noticed a large number of songbirds flitting around through the brush. Sitting there, none came by. But I saw several large dragonflies. Given how thickly leaves had grown this year I began to wonder if somehow in the process of climate change we had slipped backward in the evolutionary process and I was seeing the beginnings of primordial swamp. Who hasn't seen a rendering of that period that doesn't include a huge dragonfly?

About then I went for another beer, sticking my hand into a cooler at a perfect temperature. After the revelation about the small cooler and melting ice last trip, I brought a larger cooler. In addition I bought block ice and a block of dry ice. At the cabin I opened the cooler to check if anything had been broken and leaked bouncing along the trail. The Eggbeaters were in a soft milk-carton container; that was what I worried about most. It was fine. Put the container at the bottom of the cooler next to the dry ice, pleased at the temperature. Next day, retrieving the carton I was a little dismayed to find it had frozen. It had actually gotten colder in the cooler. Of course, that was a function of the dry ice, but I know how I am going to do things in that regard in the future.

There is this, too. About three weeks ago there was a magnitude 4 earthquake and the epicenter location given by the warning center was put into the same words I use to give people a general location of the cabin. It survived a 7.6 less than 100 miles away a few years ago, but even a 4 right underneath was cause for some concern. I shouldn't have worried; not so much as a picture frame was out of place.

Next day was just about as mellow, all I did was split firewood, read and take naps and listen to the Saturday shows on public radio. Then the rain started, just about at sunset and it rained all night and all the next day. Of course, it was another trail day. I wrapped everything in plastic or at least garbage bags and packed the trailer, found a rain poncho my son wore when he was about 10, put on my XTRATUFS, sat down on a wet four-wheeler seat and headed for home.

Along the way I came across another sign life in the woods is changing. It's normal procedure when you find something in the trail that has obviously fallen off someone else's outfit, you put it out of the way but in a place where it will be obvious so whoever lost it will see the next time they come by. It's one of those civilities that come with living in the woods. So, I am cruising along this trail shiny and slick from the rain, slipping and sliding and look up to see a collapsed baby stroller hanging from a tree branch? A baby stroller? Who the hell brings a baby stroller into the deep woods? And how do you lose one?

Continuing along, dodging ruts, falling into others and skidding all over the place on the slick, wet muddy surface I made my way toward the trailhead, my mind sometimes elsewhere. That was until I found myself crabbing sideways almost perpendicular to the trail, front wheels in one rut, rear wheels in a different one and aimed at the high bank at the side of the trail. How did that happen? Well, behind me, the trailer had decided to take a different set of ruts altogether. When I'd come around a curve I headed for the outside of the trail whereas the trailer and taken a straighter path into a deep rut throwing me sideways in the process. Fortunately with the trailer confined to its ruts, I could back it up without the usual jackknife and then turn the four-wheeler in the correct direction and haul on out of there.

Best of the grouse pictures, rain, 
shaky hand, iPhone.

Farther on, I came across probably a couple dozen spruce grouse waddling along the trail and even stopped to take a picture, but with the iPhone they all came out  fuzzy, so, sorry.

In the heaviest rain so far, I reached the car and put the muddy load into it, ran trailer and four-wheeler onto the big trailer and headed home, hoping this rain was hitting the garden I had been ignoring for the past four days.

Oh, and Ally McBeal? Never even made it through the first season.

The July 2015 trip to the East Pole during which lessons were learned