It’s been a few years since I’ve posted. At times I’ve felt that I had nothing to say anymore, but that’s not exactly so. Or, that if I did, nobody was listening. But it’s probably closer to the mark that yes, I did have something to say, but if I said it I’d hurt the feelings of people I care about.
I wouldn’t make a very good journalist.
A lot has happened in the past (five? six?) years since I last posted, a lot of water over the dam locally, nationally and now internationally.
I’ll be back here eventually. Thanks for your patience.
This will work if you’re a Gilbert & Sullivan fan, or if you’re familiar with the song from The Pirates of Penzance, “I am the Very Model of a Modern Major General” (even if you don’t remember where it came from).
As for the biblical philology stuff, I used to hang around people who did this, so yeah, it’s funny if you’re into that stuff too. In fact, it’s hilarious.
Laugh. Or not. The back button is at the upper left.
Eight degrees below zero this morning (that’s Fahrenheit; it’s -22 to those of you in the Celsius countries). Northwest wind and sea smoke and the mailboat cancelled all runs today.
Facebook is lit up with people wondering what happened to global warming.
It’s winter, folks. It’s supposed to get cold. The summers in the Arctic are what could become the problem: what’s melted and what’s not. Today, nothing’s melted; everything up there is good and frozen as it’s supposed to be, and some of it’s blowing this way.
Here is a lesson from the British on how to understand the phenomenon. Study it. It could keep you out of jail.
Never mind the Seahawks and the Broncos. Bring on the Germans and the Greeks! Monty Python takes a thoughtful look at football (the European kind, but you’ll get the idea).
It’s for those of us trying to find meaning in the Super Bowl frenzy, but can’t, quite. Until now.
Am I the only one who remembers the cartoon Bloom County? or the TV show Hill Street Blues? or 1984, for that matter (the book by George Orwell or the year)?
Like most of us, then or now, Binkley and Portnoy in the cartoon below are looking back at the previous year and pondering the year to come. Nineteen eighty-four had been on the way, ominously, since 1948 when Orwell published the book and, for lack of a better title, transposed ’48 into ’84. It worked for a while, seemingly far into the future, but the title lost its impact when the year finally came and nothing much happened except for Reagan getting re-elected. The book remains however one of the best prophecies against totalitarian government because what lurks within its pages can certainly happen—and already has in various countries.
The final line in the cartoon, “Let’s…be careful out there,” refers to Sgt. Phil Esterhaus’s daily benediction to his cops on Hill Street after he’d brief them and give assignments at the beginning of each episode. The actor, Michael Conrad, died mid-season 1983 and was written out of the show in a death that made his character’s legend live on bravely in the hearts of his cops.
But the “Let’s be careful out there” can also refer to the oncoming of 1984, a year of foreboding and altogether too much hype. As it turned out, it could have been a lot worse.
In another story, currently in progress, the doc is a young woman from an island off the coast of Maine, who finds Alaska somewhat her element, only more so. Bigger. Farther. Colder, and darker. She was too little back in the early ’90s to stay up with Mom and Dad and watch the TV show, and she has no idea what I’m talking about.
Darkness. Yes, that’s partly what it’s about this time of year, especially nearer to the Arctic Circle. Stay indoors under the fluorescent lights of the hospital and you’ll never know the difference, but your brain will burn out. Get out under the stars, under the moon, light a bonfire, a Swedish torch, make a snow lantern and email a photo of it to Sarah and Dick. Do something out in the cold and feel alive. After tonight Spring is on the way.
Light. That’s what it’s really about. Better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness. The menorah gets lit, the Advent candles too. Jesus is the light of the world, we remind ourselves at Christmas. God said, “Let there be light!” And there was light.
The earlier years of Northern Exposure gave us some of the best TV around, and no doubt the series aided Alaska’s tourism. Great character development, great story lines, great scenery, fun-loving Tlingit people.
Here in the video Chris, the part-time philosopher and full-time disc-jockey at KBHR Radio, hosts the turning of the season from darkness into light. It’s makeshift, it’s a fire warden’s nightmare, but it’s a party.
Plug in the Christmas tree lights and have an eggnog. Spring is on the way.
Happy Thanksgiving to all. It’s a day of tradition, usually involving turkey, but also lobster stew (it’s on the porch keeping cool since yesterday), and family members arriving in the middle of a storm (some years it’s a day later—why is there always a Thanksgiving storm?).
Jeri is getting our turkey ready and I’ve been advised to stay out of the kitchen. Christina is making a pie. Marya flew in from Alaska yesterday and is still in bed. Andrew and Tor up and about, keeping Rosie the dog and Little Sal the cat happy. Heather out on the west coast in the other Portland. I’m tending to a Thanksgiving tradition here at the computer, namely a youtube video.
This one does involve turkeys, and although it seemed like a good idea at the time, it all kinda went downhill once the turkeys were released into the wild. Famous last quote: “As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.”
God bless us, every one, and keep us from vengeful turkeys.
I may get in trouble for this, but it’ll be with all the right people.
Today I got a belated Fathers Day present—a flag decal, and I rushed right out and pasted it on the back window of my Ford Ranger truck. Nothing more patriotic than that.
No, it’s not a U.S. flag decal, there are already enough of those around; but it’s one that Sarah Palin would be proud of nevertheless, and she may even have one of these on a GMC Yukon Denali, right alongside Old Glory.
Daughter Number One moved to Anchorage, Alaska a few weeks ago and sent me this sticker of the Alaska state flag—a simple and elegant design, with the Big Dipper and North Star. Pasting it on the truck I felt like a kid again, when my parents received their copy of the Readers Digest, probably back in ’68 or so, when the magazines were stuffed with U.S. flag decals and sent to an appreciative public. Not knowing any of the politics behind this (at the innocent age of 12) I rushed out (as I did today, less innocently, at 57) and pasted their decal on the side window of my dad’s 1961 Peugeot 404, the very car I learned to drive in. Ah, memories.
This would have been a whole lot more patriotic (in 1968, to support the war effort) if the car had been a Chevy or a Ford (and not a Peugeot), but Dad had got a deal on the Peugeot, and this was decades before the French fell out of grace by not wanting to bomb Iraq with us. A second time.
Come to think of it, it was the French not wanting to bomb Vietnam anymore that got us into war in the in the first place, back in the ’60s. Remember? French Indo-China?
Which leads to my second topic—to prove I’m not rambling—a song about pasting a flag decal (that had fallen out of a Readers Digest) onto the windshield of one’s car (back in 1968 or so, and probably it was a Chevy) along with the patriotism, and a theology, involved in that act.
by John Prine: “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore”
(They’re already overcrowded from yer dirty little war / Now Jesus don’t like killin’ no matter what the reasons for / and your flag decal won’t get you into Heaven anymore).
If I get in trouble for this it’ll be worth it. And I got more of this stuff, too.
This week has been a wreck with bombings, manhunts, lockdowns, factory explosions, the Senate caving to the NRA. I have behaved myself and not posted anything, but this cartoon just landed in front of me and it goes up without delay.
The tax deadline doesn’t line up with Good Friday this year, but …
But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all. Nor do you understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.” — John 11:49-50
From Offshore 