Happy New Year Finland style

Photos show the sequential steps in the casting custom.

During one period in my life I spent some time with a woman from Finland and I am always reminded of her on New Year's Eve.
She had brought with her a charming Finnish tradion for this particular holiday.
First it took a bucket of snow. Then in a sort of ladle made specifically for this purpose she melted a small ingot of metal. I'm not sure what metal it was, but it melted fairly easily.
Once the metal had reached acceptable liquidity, a person dumped it into the bucket of snow.
The metal then solidified in random shapes. Once cooled enough to touch you picked it out of the snow and held it up to the light.
The image shadow that random sculpture threw onto the wall was to give you a hint of your fortunes in the year to come. Sometimes you had to tilt or rotate the metal until somethng recognizable became visible, but we always found something in it to apply to our own lives.
That has always seemed to be a grand way to welcome the new year and it also raises a pleasant memory every year. She is back in Finland now, and across the miles I hope she is performing this ritual tonight. I wish her a grand year in 2019 and thanks for the memory.

Here's a link to what the Finns call casting.

Was there a harmonic convergence I didn't know about?

Most of the snow off the roof now, bring on the rain.

Seriously, did I miss a harmonic convergence or some other cosmic disturbance?
Just the day before yesterday I was sitting on the porch feeling after more than two weeks I had finally reached a measure of comfort at the East Pole.
Then last night a weather forecast for the next few days. Up to 20 inches of snow and on top of that some rain and melting temperatures mixed in — spooking 40.
Normally that's not a big deal, but with almost three feet of heavily compacted snow on the roof, heavy rain soaked snow could be a problem. So my first day-long comfort quickly was traded for a day on the roof shoveling snow.
But it didn't end there. Both of my rechargeable headlamps decided not to accept a charge, leaving me literally in the dark. I found an older, regular one and it used up my last three AA batteries and they faded out before I was done reading myself to sleep. There are aternatives but most aren't very helpful when falling asleep is the goal.
Come the morning and there's an eerie quiet. I usually sleep with the radio on but no radio this morning. We all buy the old GE Superradio because they pull in weak signals and the batteries last forever. I've gone years without changing batteries. But, yup, dead batteries and I had put them in since I've been here this time,
So, after four hours on the roof, most of the snow is off it. I found enough D batteries to fire up the radio. Going to try some things with the headlamps when I start the genset later.
There is this, too, as I was climbing down from the roof, damaged shoulder aching, legs wobbly and breathing heavily, my clothes soaked through in spots, I looked over toward the outhouse. Appears to be about four feet of snow on the roof,
I will never sit in my chair on the porch and entertain thoughts of complacence again.

Life here isn't about the fun

At a little more than two weeks here, today, finally, I sat in a chair on the deck and realized I am comfortable and have life pretty much under control.
This has been one of the toughest times I've had getting here. To begin with there's lots of snow but it's the consistency of sugar and any time you spin the snowmachine track you dig down to dirt. I've been stuck so many times on my trail I lost count. I didn't get the machine up to the house until the day before yesterday. That meant I hauled almost all of my supplies up the hill in small sled sometimes pulling it up with a long rope hand over hand.
It's all been complicated by some pressure I put on myself offering this children's captain's bed I have to my daughter for my grandson. I said I'd try to get it to her by Christmas. I feel fortunate I made it up to the cabin at all by Christmas. Moving the bed  involved putting new runners on a rusty old steel freight sled and a different hitch for it on the snowmachine. Oh, I should mention it also involved lowering the bed from a loft 8 feet to the main floor,  by myself.
Back-tracing steps for a moment I did finally get the machine up the hill two days ago. The next day, yesterday it took me more than two hours to get it turned around and facing back down the hill. That simple process involved a lot of shoveling and two separate hitch-ups with a come-along. So a while later I am eating dinner and watching a video of Miami Vice and I hear a strange noise. I went outside to look and there's a guy and his snowmachine halfway up the trail to my house stuck and swearing to the stars, much like I had done over the past three weeks on that trail. I finally walked up, said he saw my light and just wanted to say a neighborly hello. For the moment I was livid about my dinner plus my trail being destroyed. I loaned him a shovel and went back to my dinner.
But, out here you can't do that.It got the better of me and I pulled on my gear, picked up another shovel and went down there to help. It took awhile but we finally got his big old machine out of there and him on his way home leaving me with a trail to repair today.
The trail repair went fairly quickly and I made it down and back up with little problem. Even brought the 40 lb propane tank I had left out near the main trail, closer to the house.
Then lowering the bed out of the loft went as easily is could be imagined. I changed the hitch on the snowmachine and that's when I sat on the porch, feeling satisfied, After more than two weeks, life was under control.
My thoughts went to an online exchange with a friend a couple of days earlier. I told her I was pretty much exhausted every day, and didn't much feel like conversation. She said she hoped soon I would get past this part and be able to have some fun. For some reason that sounded strange to me and today sitting in my Adirondack chair on my deck in 20-degree weather, what's the fun? And that's the crux of it: I don't do this for fun. I do this as a lifestyle choice. I can recall wanting to live like this in my imagination as an 8-year-old scouring the back wood lot with opera glasses pretending I was a forest ranger. So, for at least part of the year I am living it. It's not fun, I don't do it for entertainment I do it because this is the way I want to live. It's not easy, as a matter fact it can be incredibly hard as these past couple of weeks illustrated, Yet it is very satisfying and almost every day leaves me with some sense of accomplishment. Fun isn't the object. Living on my own terms, that's the object and this time it only took almost three weeks to get here.

Evolution of a Little Drummer Boy

   

 Isn't it one of life's minor irritations when some mediocre talent performs a favorite song and destroys it with individual flourishes?
   

Think of the "Star Spangled Banner." If you watch enough sports events sooner or later you will encounter some singer attempting to add a personal touch to the song and doing it badly. It's the national anthem for crying out loud, sing it the regular way.
    For some of us anyway, the same thoughts hold true for Christmas carols. I was raised Lutheran, not that I stuck with it, but the music stuck with me. Lutherans don't have any music newer than 200 years old. Something from the same century might as well have been rock and roll. I mentioned to a devout Christian friend one time how I only like the traditional carols. Her response was,"Yeah, we have the best music."
    I don't even want silver bells, or jingle bells, or even a white Christmas, I don't care if mommy kisses Santa Clause or if there is a red-nosed reindeer. Give me "Silent Night," (but not used to sell diapers in a Pampers commercial); "The First Noel," "Hark the Herald Angels Sing;" and oh so many others. And if you don't know where to go to hear them the way they should be sung, look no further than the Mormon Tabernacle Choir as a place to start. The Mormons do carols right. There is a version out there of "Oh Holy Night," with a soprano soloist who will give you goose bumps.
    However, looking further, now here comes the change of direction. Few new songs enter the category of traditional. The first one I knew about was "The Little Drummer Boy." It was written by the American classical music composer and teacher Katherine Kennicott Davis in 1941, first recorded in 1951 by the Trapp Family Singers, according to Wikipedia.
TRAPP FAMILY SINGERS
  
 There is some disagreement but let's go with that. It is a for-sure new carol by carol standards given many of them are hundreds of years old and this one is little more than 70. The first I heard it or even heard of it was when we had to sing it in a high school chorus in the 1950s. It had become popular at that time due to a 1958 recording by the Harry Simeone Chorale.
     This is it with the original tune entrenched.
HARRY SIMEONE  CHORALE

    Fortunately no recording I know of exists from our school Christmas concert. (Yes, children there was a time before camcorders, and smart phones (camcorder?)).
     Over the next few years it became a part of the repertoire of any self-respecting musicians who wanted to do traditional religious Christmas music.
     However, looking further, now here comes the change of direction. It didn't take too long before the Mormons discovered it and like they do with so many songs, just about made it their own.
MORMON TABERNCLE CHOIR
     
     Further yet,the song evolved, or at least the singers did. Over the next couple of decades, I heard several versions, some OK, some so messed up I had to turn them off.
     Then three or four years ago I came across a version by a group called Pentatonix, four men and a women. Honestly it knocked my socks off, not a good thing at this time of year in Alaska. They held true to the origin but the way they melded their diverse voices into a harmony of respect for the original was impressive. This is that version.
PENTATONIX

    And then as we used to say in the 60s "far out." Let a couple more years go by until last year, when I heard a totally new version. Who would ever have thought to feature drums in a performance of "The Little Drummer Boy?" Loud ones. Well these guys did and it's dramatic. Still they maintained the reverence for the origial song, just presented it a little more dramatically. You might want to adjust your volume level, lower if you don't like loud drumming, but higher if you like the full effect of good drumming.
FOR KING AND COUNTRY

    How far out can the progression go? Who knows, but I expect a new version one of these years. I know a couple of people who really detest "The Little Drummer Boy. Maybe one of these selections will appeal to them more. If not, as far as I am concerned you can drive your sleigh over the river and through the woods on a carpet of white Christmas to ring silver bells while Mama kisses Santa Claus. (Oh, the temptation was strong to add a little to that last one.) Merry Christmas.

What's wrong with this picture?

It's been 32 years since I built this cabin. Until that time the biggest construction project I had attempted was a dog house. I worked the simple design out on graph paper, went over it with a couple of friends who were more experienced, bought my package and came out here by myself to build it. Some folks I met out here helped me, but I still made mistakes. I moved in during February 1986.
     Now here we are in 2018, 32 years later. Today I was cleaning out places that hadn't been cleaned out in a long time. I came across a kit for that white shelf which I hadn't thought about in years. So, I put it up to hold the errant spices that roll around the counter on a regular basis. It was during the installation that I discovered a mistake I had made all those years ago in the winter of 1985-86.
     Have you figured it out yet? It may take a fine carpenter's eye to spot it.
     Here's a hint: The shelf is level. When I discovered it, I recalled the soul search I did when I realized the problem back then and finally decided rather that tear everything out and start over, I decided I'd live with my mistake. So far so good.
     Got it yet? Well in my novice attempt at house bulding I made the worst of all mistakes. You see, the shelf is level, yes, but the cabin is not. For 32 years this thing has stood with a floor sloping to the North, along with anything attached to it including the floor cabinets.
     When I went back to the boats that spring I told my boss about it.  Being an old Alaska hand himself,  he said, "I built my house in Fairbanks and there's nothing square or level in it. Been there 25 years." I can say something like that now, too.

We will rebuild

This is video from my security camera of the first minute of the earthquake. It wasn't snowing, that's snow being shaken out of the trees near the house.

By now everyone who wants to has learned about the earthquake Alaska experienced a couple of weeks ago. Now comes some time to reflect. First, this was my initial response to the national media reporting the quake. I have seen "horrible," "terrifying" and "massive," today. CNN even said it left people in a panic. Please stop the hyperbole. Yes we had an earthquake today, and yes it was big and closer to a big population center than usual, but it is one of more than 34,000 earthquakes in the state this year. It was the strongest one I have felt in my 45 years here. But it was not horrifying, not terrifying, not massive and I saw no panic except the usual run for cover at the first shake. We are Alaskans, we are used to it, most of us are at least somewhat prepared for it and we roll with it. After the shaking stops we stand up, dust ourselves off and start the cleanup. We don't need an excitable press making it sound worse than it is. And, please, we have nowhere to store thoughts and prayers.

      With an initial survey complete in my mind I went on facebook with this: Holy crap that was a big earthquake.

     All that said, We assessed the damage. For my place in Palmer, well, two picture frames. I was more worried about the cabin at the East Pole, but when I opened the door a couple of days ago, I was greeted by a green flashlight on the floor. So it goes. My friend Joe May who lives about 20 miles west of the East Pole some pictures on the wall were knocked akilter and he swears that his old cabin with its round base logs rolled back and forth and is not exactly where it was before the quake. Most tragic where two ceramic mugs a friend had made for him bounced off a shelf and broke. He was lamenting that online a day or so later and from some hidden shadow in my brain I recalled reading about Japanese artisans who repair such items with gold. Being far better read than I am, Joe recalled the name of the process and allowed as how he had a little gold in the house. As the saying goes, the rest is history or to say it properly. 
Joe May HIS STORY.
The rest of this is his account of the adventure:
KITSUGI
The sound of breaking glass and crockery during an earthquake is both terrifying and heartbreaking. 

Keepsakes that harbor memories...on the floor...in a hundred pieces.
"GONE!! GONE!! GONE!!" An experience here shared by many I'm sure.
Pondering the box of broken bits the next day the gloom began to lift when I recalled reading of a Japanese method of mending broken pottery. Half art and half practicality, 'kitsugi", using lacquer and gold to knit the pieces together, is a slow and tedious process requiring tree resin and flour gold...things which I have not....but I did have slow epoxy and cinter mica that could work and look the same.
A piece so "reborn", according to tradition, takes on a special significance lending it a nobility not possessed by the original...speaks to the infrangibility of memories. Something to believe in....
The one cup, in half a dozen pieces, was a simple glue job. The other was another story. A handful of shards, chips, and jagged fragments.
Hours of fitting, grinding, and repositioning tiny pieces culminated in a fair reconstruction...and a big sigh...and I swear, to faint applause coming from a cloud bank over this old cabin. "Audra??".
Audra Forsgren, late mistress, cook, and greeter at Ophir checkpoint, a stop on the 1979 Iditarod long ago hand made and gifted me a pair of ceramic cups as a remembrance of "First Team to Ophir' that year. One of the few reminders of the races and the dogs that I've kept through the years.
In hindsight, I think I needed to rescue these more for Audra than for myself. Now they have a uniqueness like no others in the world. ..and a place farther back on the shelf.
I'M BACK
    I hope no one takes offense at the lighter note here. There were some very serious losses, houses that collapsed, homes termed unlivable without repairs, schools damaged, public buildings, fortunately no serious injuries. And,atta-boys and -girls to all the emergency responders, the road builders, the inspectors and engineers and anyone else who epitomized the strength and resilience of Alaskans and got all the rest of us back to somewhat normal, mostly within 72 hours.

This inertia is getting me nowhere

.    That's a phrase I think is original. Only think because someone could have had the idea and maybe I heard it or read it somewhere. But for now I'm claiming it. I never felt it was anything in particular but a sailing buddy liked it and uses it occasionally, as do I.
     Like today for instance, this is when you would think and maybe say it. During a period of exhausting physical labor, like pulling a sled loaded heavily with supplies up a hill.
Every so often you have to stop and take a breath,maybe sit on the load for a minute or two. Then you look around the woods,is anythng moving?
     Where is the moose whose tracks you crossed about 20 feet back. Where is that owl you see every morning fly by in the early dawn light? Asleep hidden in the branches somewhere. Then there is Sherry, our first date a hundred years ago and I spilled a milkshake. Oh yes, Denali came out last night barely visible in the faded blues and grays and whites of civil twilight. The eyelids begin to droop and if you were indoors, you'd probably crawl off for a nap somewhere. Only you aren't somewhere warm. You are out in the woods and temperature is around positive 15 and you need to get these groceries up the hill before the eggs freeze and break.
     That's when you say it: "This inertia is getting me nowhere." Right out loud for all the forest creatures to hear, but mostly to wake yourself out of it so you can trudge another 50 feet or so uphill until the breath comes up short, the legs ache, you wish you had eaten a bigger breafast, but most of all, it offers another break, another drift off into the bliss of inertia.
     And maybe 50 feet at a time, sometimes less, sometimes more, especially in the flat areas, you finally reach that destination, pack away all that you brought up the hill, especially that little steak you left out to thaw for dinner, a just reward for all you've accomplished, but, after a short nap. You deserve it, after all you got where you were going despite all that inertia.