Yet More Reasons Why I Live Here

and not there...

1) The dog races. It's hard to find a better way to spend a Saturday afternoon than munching ham sandwiches watching the sprint races on a warm, sunny blue-sky day. And where else but Alaska would sled dogs be treated as centerfolds? This morning found my SO pouring over the FDNM's cheesecake photo-spread of Hans Gatt's winning Yukon Quest team as if it were a Playboy magazine he had surreptitiously hidden beneath the bed.

2) Taco King. Yes, my blogmate has already noted this authentic (and authentically cheap) Mexican restaurant. It deserves mention again. Because after a day at the dog races, I then went on to savor a south-of-the-border dinner with a friend, prior to going to...

3) Fairbanks Shakespeare Theater's production of the The Tempest. Not only it is a treat to be able to go to productions in the Empress Theater (one of the very few old buildings still left in strip mall Squarebanks), but it is not hyperbole to say that FST is rare treasure, not just here, but anywhere in the US. Their sets are always minimal, clever and evocative, and their stagings (with one notable exception, at least for me, of Richard the III set unfortunately in Nazi Germany) witty, bright and polished. This run is no exception. Ariel deserves special mention for his fantastic body paint and green contact lenses, as does the incorporation of the band Good Daze to provide both the mood setting for Prospera's island, and some lively musical interludes throughout the play.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Its February, when the light returns, and it is not such a stretch to envision green trees, gardens and near 24-hour daylight. Everything looks good in February - except inside the house, where once again the returning sun illuminates the incredible scrim of wood ash, dog fur, and other detritus I have been nesting in these past four months. But even so, dogs, the Bard and a darn good adobada - how can it be anything but all good?

In Alaska, You Can Near Always Find a Coffee Hut

As those of you who are regulars here at FBH might have noticed, coffee and beer are among my two favorite pleasures in life.  Behold then, a sight that made my Grinchy heart grow by two sizes that day:

Ladies and gentlemen, possibly the world's northernmost coffee hut: Aarigaa Java in Barrow.

A Modern Proposal: For Preventing the Palins from Being (More of) a Burden to Their Country and Relatives

Clearly, as the strange phenomenon that is the national obsession with She Who Shall Not Be Named shows no signs of abatement, those of us who have not drunk the Kool-Aid should consider more drastic measures than the liberal application of reason, evidence and logic. 

The time has come for those of us Alaskans with a political memory going back far enough to remember the days before that someone swallowed up the reputation and image of this fine place to make sacrifices.  For the good of all of us, even those living in Wasilla, we need to make the ultimate sacrifice:

We must, friends, bring her back to Alaska, even if it means electing or appointing her to something.  We must 'take one for the team.'

In the former case, the only caveat, of course, is that it can't be a national position, i.e., a House or Senate seat.  The idea is to keep her, like that crazy second cousin with who thinks the post office is unconstitutional, occupied and far away from things like the cable news circuit and national political office.

We might form a political action committee, the "Bring Sarah Back" PAC, and begin fundraising immediately.  A movement starts with a few volunteers before it turns into a for-profit venture, and personally, I'd be willing to spend a few bucks and some sign waving afternoons if it meant a person could open up a newspaper or take a look at a online news site without being forced to translate English into English.  We could use the money we raise to pay for her 'speaking fees' (in-state engagements only, please.)

Personally, I favor reappointing her to the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.  I don't know that there really are any qualifications or requirements to be on it, which is a plus, and it pays very well:  $120,000 a year. And what we are buying, really, is peace of mind.

So what is to be?  State office or state appointment? 

If for no other reason, I urge you to support the BringSarahBackPAC so that when a person admits to being from Alaska, the non-Alaskan can think of only one thing to ask about: 

Polar bears.

You've Got Mail

Coming home from ingesting a Teriyaki cheese steak gut bomb (the second in as many days - the blogmate and I finally got together last night at IJ's for burgers and beer), I caught the tail end of Alaska News Nightly.

That little story about the 1,500 Palin emails finally released to MSNBC by the State, after - what - a good year and 1/2 of foot dragging? Now that was a precious thing to hear. It gave me the tiniest glimmer of hope that maybe this is the tail of the rope that will not so much hang her as finally shut her the hell up.

Although I don't usually surf for news, preferring to get mine in the diluted pabulum form that is the News Miner (because I just can't shake the habit of a morning cuppa with news that I can hold in my hand), I had to go to MSNBC to check it out. The story more than satisfied.

Before I veer off into the outrage that engulfed me despite the fact that I should be totally numb to palinography, let me note the network's stroke of genius: its invite to channel our inner muckraker by combing through an online database of the Palin emails, and to help MSNBC reporters connect the dots of this travesty of governance that was the Palin administration. What a nifty way to recruit eyes to help sift the gold from the dross as more and more of these emails start flowing in.

That the State tried to buffle its way out of this public records request by claiming it would cost $15M didn't raise this blogger's eyebrows. As a veteran of many a public records request battle with the State, I know that little trick. I have had some fairly outrageous price tags thrown at me when I wanted records that weren't going to put a particular State Division in a very good light. I also famously once had a notebook hurled at me by [redacted], then head of the Division of [redacted], who shouted at me that from then on, he was instructing his employees to buy their own notebooks for meeting notes so they couldn't be obtained through a public records request.

Obviously Palin isn't the first state official to have the misbegotten notion that if state officials use "private" media to memorialize and communicate state business this makes them immune from the public right to know.

And that is where my outrage just refuses to be stifled. Are the Palins arrogant or ignorant, or some lethal combination of both? I just don't know, but I fear it is the latter - which is the most dangerous to our civil rights and democracy. Because who really buys (other than the Tea Partiers, the Fundys and other extreme right wing nuts) the Palin camp spin on this: that the emails merely reflect the spousal succor that Todd offered his wife in her tough job as Governor.

How stupid do they think we are? Of course, wives and husbands of people in public office are sounding boards and advisors, and yes, they do have a lot more information about what really happens during the execution of official duties and responsibilities than others outside that private circle. But that sure as hell aint the same thing as being in direct contact with employees of the Governor's Office and essentially conducting business the same as if one was the Governor. Which is how a whole lot of those released emails read.

Truthfully, I find the emails from Sarah trying to hide the fact that we Alaskans paid for electrical upgrades for her tanning bed amusing, and as with the Corrupt Bastards Club, a bit embarrassing. If I have said it once, I have said it a 1000 times: our corrupt politicians are sooo petty and cheap. Free wiring, dry-cleaning and flights for their brood, or maybe an electric massage chair and a large propane barby for the king salmon on the newly remodeled wrap around deck; these guys and gals (don't leave Bev Masek out of the mix) barely think beyond the double-wide.

Nope, I got a feeling these emails are going to be a lot like the Bill Allen secret videos. I suspect when its all digested and analyzed, they will reveal corruption and abuse of power. This time around its not a bunch of good ole boys guzzling beer, scratching their nuts and using potty mouth as they talk about who they are going to buy. But its the same vile brew of venality, self-aggrandizement and parochialism.

Sarah may have racked up a $150K tab on her campaign wardrobe, but all too soon I think its going to be clear the Empress has no clothes.

Fizzle in the Schizzle?

Some in our audience may be wondering if the Fiery Blazing Handbasket has winked out like the tail end of the Hale Bopp comet (or the Heaven's Gate cult), or sputtered to a quiet sizzle like the occasional dud firework at the New Year's Eve Sparktacular (none this year, it was a great show!).

Nope, I think we are just in the lull of mid-winter, with perhaps a dollop of battle fatigue thrown in. The constant onslaught from the Christian Right crazies (bible verses on gun sights, palinography, Pat Robertson's mouth - need we say more???), the mega-corporations, and the insanely twisted body politic that is running amok has stunned us into blog interrupted.

I can only speak for myself, but I know these winter months, I have been in hermitage. It's one I frequently share with the S.O. (who has come in from the vil to escape for awhile that milieu's own version of crazy). Other times, its only me, the chickens, a few odd tropical fish and the snoring (sometimes greenly farting) dogs.

Unlike some past winters, there's no winter doldrums. I have been out nearly every day enjoying the roseate light that is steadily increasing - snow shoeing, skiing, running or ski-joring. I have cooked up a storm (which has caused the S.O. to imitate a bear and put on a healthy layer of insulation, soon to be worked off as caribou-hunting time nears), and finished many an unfinished sewing project.

And I have been reading up a storm.

My January favorites thus far:

• Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party; Max Blumenthal
• The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power; Jeff Sharlet
  
• Going Rouge - Sarah Palin, an American Nightmare; edited by Richard Kim & Betsy Reed (and an Xmas present from my blog mate & her S.O.)
  
• Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town; Nick Reding
  

Next on the list is Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army.

So, I expect that as the days lengthen and we head back up the seasonal bi-polar curve, 'Dweller and I should be revving back up in the blogging department - until then....

It's potluck.

Finally Forty

Just last week Flic and I were pondering the unthinkable:  a winter in Squarebanks without a single instance of 40 below.  I went so far as to proclaim that, "Yep.  It ain't gonna happen."  All the while realizing that such behavior was inviting a major jinx.

Sure enough, we had a day yesterday, the first minus forty this winter.  However, unlike years past, this cold snap didn't hang on long here.  It's already up to the minus 20s (ordinarily a warm spell in mid-winter) today.

Burning Man

Those who went before us were wise...especially about things outside the realm of the every day.

They knew the power of fire, and they never hesitated to use it. Its force is something I believe we tend not to think about too much in these days of other powers - like those that drive cell phones and computers, TVs and radios.

But when it comes down to dealing with evil, fire trumps all.

Many in life are lucky and pass their days without exposure to resident evil. Those who haven't encountered it may not truly understand its slyness. Evil's stalking grounds are more commonly the banal of everyday life: the chance encounter in a coffee shop, or a new colleague at work who seems really quite charming, until the mask is lifted. It excels at catching the unsuspecting off-guard, because while it is the expected companion of heinous crimes against individuals and against humanity, it is not expected to sit down at the dinner table in a quaint little restaurant. Sometimes resident evil is initially confused with abnormality, or a social or emotional dysfunction, possibly because it is pretty hard to get one's head around the fact that there truly does exist pure evil, even in neon-lit, box store-rich Squarebanks. And it's not always wielding an axe or a gun or some other very obvious and tangible instrument of evil.

For too long I left things in my house, stashed under my bed of all places, that carried the stink and contamination of the resident evil that had found purchase at one point in my life. Although these items had lain dormant all of that time, recently they came to life.

It was time to purify; throwing them out was insufficient, they were covered with the slimy slug trail evil leaves in its wake. Fire was the only route to protection.

Sure, burning at solstice is a cliche. But those ancients dealt a lot more with unseen forces than we think we do in this oh so modern and brightly lit time. Although often I think I would have preferred to give the whole experience a miss, most times I am grateful for what happened. Not only did I come out of it much stronger, but I gained awareness of the spirits and forces that are very much alive and cruising in our world. When science became a religion in the 20th century, its gospel of rational thought brought to us a dangerous myopia. It diminishes our abilities to discern that there is so much more walking these lands than what can be tidily explained by science.

It was a darn good fire, one of the best and the brightest I have ever tended.

Grassroots? More Like Astroturf.

Normally, in a more sophisticated part of the world, politicians attempting to pull a fast one would know better than to admit they were trying to use state money to do so.  But this being the state that once thought Sarah Palin was an improvement over Murkowski v.1, the fine folks in Juneau are not savvy enough to up and lie about what they are doing.  I suppose we have yet another thing to be thankful for heading into Christmas.

For about $1.5 million, the Alaska Legislature is looking for a good p.r. agency to gin up a 'grassroots movement' to oppose endangered species listings.  As reported over the AP wire, via the News-Minus this morn:

"'The (PR firm's) main role will be taking information from the conference and other information gathering efforts and trying to initiate a grass-roots movement, for lack of a better term, for going to Congress and asking for some reform changes,' said Eddie Grasser, a legislative employee who is organizing the PR effort."

How on earth is a government-funded public relations campaign even remotely grassroots? This is the sort of chicanery normally engaged in by megacorporations like the Artists Formerly Known as Monsanto or King Coal.  Grassroots does not, generally speaking, begin with a bunch of politicians appropriating state money for a p.r. firm to create a movement.   

In the Realm of the Unintentionally Humorous

Once again, work has consumed at least half my brain; the remainder being assaulted by the liberal application of beer (and hopefully some of Flic's eggnog in the coming days.)

But when I've had the wherewithal, I've been shopping for gifts which is something of a challenge here in Greater Redneckia.  The selection is spotty, particularly if you are looking for clothes other than outdoor gear or the offerings over at Little Wasilla.  We really don't have a downtown like a major city, and no, Virginia, even Anchorage really isn't a major city.   But I digress.

We do have a lot places to purchase guns.  Two of the grocery chains (WallyWorld and Fred Meyers) stock them along with plantains and womens' underthings.  (Safeway, however, does not.  Funny that.)  The outdoors gear shops stock them.  And then there are the local gunsmiths.  Face it, one area in which a consumer has robust options in Squarebanks is in the selection and purchase of firearms.  

Which worked out great, because I'd settled on a .22 for the S.O. this year.  Unfortunately, the big chains use the model I chose as a loss leaders, so it is not stocked by the local businesses (gunsmiths) which frustrated my plan to shop local.  But Frontier Outfitters had a few in stock and that settled it. 

I was not prepared, however, for the humor that is the form one fills out to purchase a gun.  (I've been given guns, but never purchased one.) Is the form meant to prevent the sale of a gun to a criminal, or is it just to aid in tracking them down after they've done something wrong?  Questions I had to answer:

•  Are you a fugitive from justice? 
• Have you ever used or possessed illegal drugs such as marijuana, etc? 
• Are you an illegal alien?
• Have you ever renounced your U.S. citizenship?

High silliness.  

'Tis the Season

For decorating the tree. For me, Christmas starts just about a week before Thanksgiving. I don't subscribe to the Walmart way of looking at the world, which is to say that Christmas stuff should go on display after the goblins of Halloween have been put away. Well, I do confess to lighting my Xmas lights around my front door and along the driveway right about the end of October, but that is mostly due to practicality...a way to see the moose waiting in ambush when I schlep home in the dark at 4:00 PM.

But, even without the Big Box store way of things, I have always felt that living in Fairbanks is pretty much like being in Narnia under the White Witch- where it was always winter - except that we do have Christmas. And we have a lot of Christmas.

Although for quite a number of years I put up a classic Alaska tree (all the better to showcase one's ornaments) - of late I have been buying the excellent (and relatively cheap) trees at Alaska Feed. Except that this source of cheap trees is no longer known to just a few, and if one wants to get a half-way decent tree, one has to rush off and select it sometime in the first week of December. This year, I did wait til three days ago, but the trees were getting picked over.

So, perforce, my tree is up and in the process of being decorated. It's an exhausting task - necessitating many pauses and rests in the easy chair by the fire - with a cup of real* eggnog at my elbow and three snoring dogs at my feet.

Come to think of it, maybe its all the eggnog refreshment stops that are exhausting, not so much the stringing of the lights and the placement of the Christmas pickle (no explanation of this needed for readers of German heritage), the sparkly Christmas stars, the cat-in-the-jack box, or, my most treasured ornament: the squid ball (a clear glass ball filled with squid beaks sold in Point Aransas as a fund raiser for the local sea life lab).

Every year, I sort of drag my feet initially about getting a tree, but each time after I haul out the Christmas totes and unpack the many boxes of ornaments collected over the years (each with its own story) its worth it. And taking the time to load the tree so full of these memories that it practically tips over (it doesn't help that I never seem to be able to get the darn thing straight in the tree strand), is wholly enjoyable. It never fails but that I come across a little chotka that jiggles loose some long-forgotten episode of a Christmas past.

Some seasoned readers of this blog may remember the Tannenbomb of last year - where my tree croaked brown dead less than a week after purchase. Ah, this year I babied this conifer. Whisked it out of the store and into the pre-heated, toasty cab of my truck. Practically constructed a hermetically sealed corridor from truck to front door so there never was opportunity for freezing shock. Sawed off a hefty chunk of its stump, and plumped it into molasses-laden water. This time, I did it up right, and I am pleased to report the tree is drinking thirstily - having sucked up a gallon of water since last night.

Now, its back to work. Time to hang the stuffed cow-in-a-parka ornament....

*not the sugar-ladened stuff sold in the dairy section of Freddie's. Nope, this one is one dozen raw eggs, a pound of powdered sugar, two quarts of heavy cream and at least a fifth of whiskey or rum to "cook" those eggs, or more like, the imbiber.