…the scenery never changes.

Yes, it’s that time of year again.  The big dog races have
begun.  Well, some of them have begun.  Lance Mackey won the Copper Basin 300 last week, a grueling race that climbs up and runs along the
south side of the Alaska Range.  This year’s race wasn’t as rough
as last year’s, when at the last minute mushers found out that the
amount of promised prize money had been reduced and trail conditions
were terrible. 

Even the full purse on this race isn’t fat enough to be profitable. The
take is largely in the form of bragging rights if one finishes
it.  It is always cold and the trail even at its best is tough,
with lots of climbing up and trying to keep the sled from running over
the dogs on the way down.  Dee Dee Jonrowe started the Copper this
year, training a team of young dogs for the Iditarod, but had to
scratch when her pups let her know they’d had enough of the trail.

The Kuskokwim 300 Sled Dog Race
out of Bethel was due to start Friday.  It was so cold — 23
degrees below zero F, with wind chill taking it down to more than fifty
below — that the start was postponed until today.

Today it was postponed again, with no certain time for the start. 
Mushers are on four-hour notice, so the very earliest it might start is
5 PM today.  If not, and the weather warms up overnight, it could start
tomorrow morning.

It’s cold and windy out in Bethel, but not as cold here (our part of
the state is just to the right of that label on the map) as it has been
for a couple of weeks.  Last time I looked at the thermometer, it
was 5.5 outside and 55.5 inside. 

Achieving a fifty-degree difference with our little woodstove is much
easier than the seventy- to eighty-degree difference we were struggling
to maintain recently.  Below fifty degrees, especially with the
drafts on the floors and off the walls, we’re not comfortable in
here.  Below forty degrees, my tropical houseplants are in
distress.  Now that outdoor temps are above zero, it’s less
stressful for everyone.

Of course, as usual, the warming trend came with snowfall and
wind.  Last night I listened to big clumps of snow being blown off
the branches of the trees and slamming into the walls and windows
here.  This morning, I looked out on a trackless expanse of blown,
packed and drifted white stuff.  I warned Doug before he looked
out that it was ugly.  I can see beauty out there, but I’m not the
one who has to shovel it.

After breakfast, he shoveled the entire roof.  After lunch, he
will brush the snow from my car, scrape the windows, and shovel the
driveway.  First, we make sure the roof won’t collapse on us, then
we prepare our escape route.  It won’t do any good to shovel the
driveway now anyway.  The snowplow hasn’t been around yet.

Sometime later, whenever he has the energy, Doug will shovel the foot
or so of snow off the roof of the little storage cabin next to the
house.  Right now, I need to go make lunch.

The photographer today was Doug, for all except the two photos in which
he appears.  I directed him to stand still for this one, because I
was struck by the frost in his beard and mustache, which doesn’t really
show very well in this shot.

I live in the Flow.  The Universe provides what I need.  It
hasn’t failed me yet, but it has fooled me sometimes.   There
have been a few occasions when I thought I’d gotten just what I’d
needed, but ended up not so sure about that.

The last time we did a water run, I wrote about the bucket that cracked
across the bottom and flooded the kitchen floor.   Last time I
went to Wasilla, Greyfox gave me the 23-liter water jug he’d salvaged
out of the dumpster.  That seemed like the perfect working of the
Flow, as if the Dumpster Deva knew just what I needed at just the right
time.

As it worked out, the Dumpster Deva was working for Greyfox this
time.  That “new” jug leaks.  It’s not leaking as fast as the
bucket did, but sometime before I go to bed I need to find a clean
container in which to dump that water before it overflows from the pan
I put under the jug.

The
big tomcat in the foreground here (Behind him is Hilary, our climber.)
is Potemkin, our new cat.  A few days ago, he was out there when I
opened the door, so I put warm water and fresh food out for him. 
He let me pick him up and hold him for a little while, and then made it
clear that he’d prefer to be down where the dishes are.  He drank
thirstily and ate as if he’d been starving.  The next day, he let
me hold him again. 

Doug saw him this morning, picked him up and brought him into the house.  Potemkin
is scruffy and scarred, but apparently not feral.  He uses the
litter box.  Under all that thick fur is a muscular form, and he
has extra toes, too, a snowshoe cat.

When I noticed the water on the floor this time, I
immediately suspected a leak in the new old jug, and put a pad of
newspaper under it while I went back to climb up and access the
inaccessible storage area where I keep my gardening supplies.  I
could see that the jug was too large to fit into a dishpan, so I went
for a plant flat knowing that it would fit. 

This worked to Greyfox’s advantage because while digging out the flat
to catch the leak, I found the electric timer he needs so that he can
set his engine block heater to come on when he needs it, instead of
having to get up hours early to plug it in or leave it plugged in all
night and waste energy.  I had looked for it in all the other
likely places, so I suspected it was up there with the plant stuff but
hesitated to climb up there after it.  As long as I was up there
anyway to stem the flood, I searched for and found the timer for
him.  Sneaky entity, that Dumpster Deva.

Doug wasn’t eager to take pictures on the water run.   I
almost just let it slide when he said he didn’t want to take his gloves
off.  That was understandable and justifiable, given the frigid
temperature.  I suggested that he try it with his gloves on, and
that he did.  I also kept my gloves on for the two I took of him,
and it wasn’t easy.  My gloves had gotten wet and the water had
frozen, so I had ice-sheathed fingertips with which to trip the shutter.

By the time I had gotten all the jugs and buckets filled, my fingers
and toes were numb with cold.  Everything else was okay.  I
had worn five layers on top and just as many on the bottom.  One
of those bottom layers was the down filling in my snow pants. 
Movement was somewhat restricted, but I was well-insulated.

The gloves can’t be that thick, because I need to be able to use my
hands.  The mukluks are warm, but I think I compromised my
circulation kneeling there and sitting back on my heels when I lifted
the buckets out of the waterhole.  In the car after we were done,
I changed into warm dry gloves and the feeling returned to my fingers
painfully enough to assure me that they were still alive.

All but one of my toes similarly came back to life on the drive home in
the heated car.  The large toe on my left foot was still not
sending me any neural signals, so I hurried into the house, got out of
the mukluks and massaged the toe until it started hurting. 
Sometimes I wonder, in such situations, if it might not be preferable
to just break off the frozen parts, they hurt so when they warm up.

After we were
all packed up and ready to go, I captured the shot of the hatch falling
on Doug, probably not a great event to be documenting, but it is a
regular occurrence in winter when the hydraulic thingamabobs that hold
it up are too cold to work properly.

Some glib person decided it would be more politic to call it “Healthy
Weight Week,” but every one of the several-a-day radio magazine or
call-in shows I have been hearing on the subject this week has used the
word, “obesity,” at least five times as frequently as that phrase,
“healthy weight.”  Some of the speakers pay lip service to the
positive spin by talking about the advantages in maintaining a
“healthy” weight, but every one of them frames those “benefits” in
negative terms such as avoiding diabetes and heart disease.  They
say that obesity now outweighs smoking as the greatest risk factor for
fatal disease.

I have been subjected to an endless auditory parade of ignorance. 
The callers call in hoping to have their understandable ignorance
relieved by the “experts” and “authorities,” and often what they get is
evasion, obfuscation, misinformation or more ignorance. 
Personally I feel it is better to know that you’re ignorant than to
think you got the straight skinny from an expert, when in fact what you
got was bullshit.  I can’t help wondering how the caller to Talk of the Nation
felt when, at the end of a show early this week, she asked the
government expert from NIH what he thought of the glycemic index and he
stammered momentarily and then mentioned the laboratory test they use
to diagnose diabetes and went on to say that they don’t use the
“glycemic index” for such diagnoses.

Well, duh!  This is just a little quirk of mine, I suppose, but I
would prefer to hear an honest confession of ignorance than such
self-serving tap dancing.  I hope one of this dude’s underlings
clued him in, but the bureaucracy being what it is I think it far more
likely that several of the underlings just had a good laugh in the
break room at the boss’s expense. The glycemic index isn’t a diagnostic
tool.  I’m sure the caller knew that, and was either testing the
government baboon or was sincerely seeking some information. 

“Glycemic index” is a way of expressing how effective a given food
substance is at raising blood sugar.  The “old school” of fat
doctors either haven’t familiarized themselves with it or don’t
“believe in” it, or both.  As far as they are concerned weight
gain or loss depends entirely on how many calories you absorb versus
how many calories you burn.  It’s the one-size-fits-all diet
approach, and every one of their patients who fails is assumed to have
cheated on the diet or exercise or lied in reporting them.  Until
this week, I had thought that this theory was thoroughly discredited,
but like the idea that the earth was flat and the sun traveled from one
edge to the other each day before going to bed for the night, the idea
hangs on and many fat doctors haven’t learned anything about the
neurochemistry of hunger and appetite or the relative glycemic
qualities of various types of calories.

This damned disease I have, myalgic encephalomyelopathy / chronic
fatigue immunodysfunction syndrome, has as one of its effects (Is it a
sign or symptom?) fluctuating body weight.  At various times I
have dropped between fifty and ninety pounds in a few months without
any effort on my part to restrict calories or to exercise.  I
didn’t change how much I eat
or my activity level.  All that changed in some of those events
was my taste in foods, and in one case I deliberately cut out sugar and
several foods to which I am allergic and was addicted.  I’d start
eating and drinking a different range of foods, and the weight would
melt away.  Weight gain, for more “normal” people, is just as
inexplicable and unpredictable by the old caloric model, but makes
sense to some extent when viewed from the neurochemical and glycemic
perspective.

Not every one of the authorities being interviewed about America’s fat
epidemic this week has been an ignorant and reactionary baboon.  I
have learned a few things that have helped fill in some of the blanks,
explaining, for example, why I hit a plateau after losing about 20% of
my body weight when I kicked the sugar addiction, and then started
slowly gaining some of that weight back.  It’s the “set point,” or
settling point, the body’s tendency to seek equilibrium and “recover”
what it has “lost.”  Sometimes, the body-mind split is a real
drag.  Other times, though, I just view it as a challenge, another
obstacle to overcome, another puzzle to unravel.

The first pic was taken four days ago by Annjannette Petree.  It
shows the eruption cloud, presumably colored by a setting sun.

Yesterday’s flyover by the Alaska Volcano Observatory showed the new lava dome and a cloud of steam lit by the glow from within.

Then, this morning around 8 AM there was a new explosive eruption and
there are currently ashfall advisories for the Kenai Peninsula. 
In case you’re wondering, that’s a couple of hundred miles from
here.  Unless the wind shifts again, we’re okay.  We are not
completely out of water yet.  However, given the uncertain
weather, a forecast for deeper cold (It’s already in the teens below
zero.) and possible ashfall, we are loading up the car right now for a
trip to the spring.

She thought it was food poisoning, but it turned out to be a bowel
obstruction.  Thanks to the race veterinarians, help from her race
competitors, and a med-evac helicopter, Lynda survived.  As long
as I have known her, she has worked hard and creatively to sustain
herself and her dogs.  She has many friends and fans, but no big,
deep-pockets sponsorship.  Now, having no insurance, she is tens
of thousands of dollars in debt.  She plans to hold a fundraiser
when she’s out of the hospital, and her friends have established a fund
for her in our local credit union.

You can read the details and learn how you can help at adn.com.

Doug was in here, standing by the woodstove a few moments ago,
warming up before climbing back to the roof to continue shoveling
snow. We were listening to NPR, a discussion on Talk of the
Nation of Martin Luther King’s life, work, and its impact on people
today. I wasn’t giving the discussion my full attention, and
barely noticed the segue when the program broke for a rundown of news
headlines.

The talk about civil rights gently gave way to the news of the election
of Michelle Bachelet in Chile and Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf in Liberia, the
first female heads of state for each of their nations. My mind was
still exploring the implications and ramifications of that story when
the newsreader’s next words broke in on my thoughts. I jumped and
yipped, “Ouch!”

Doug asked, “What?”

“Abrupt topic shift,” I replied. Apparently without even taking a
breath, the man had gone from reporting on these historic events to a
brief story about the Golden Globe Awards.

My reaction drew a laugh out of Doug. He tagged it: “conceptual whiplash.”

I am not only drawing a breath, but a line, before my topic shift here.

The two kittens we call the Darnits, Alice and her brother Bobo, were
interested in the new snow yesterday. I followed them out there
with the camera.

Short-legged, fluffy Alice plowed along through the snow, picking up a lot of it in her fur.

Bobo followed her only as far as the outhouse, where he found a dry
spot and perched on it, out of the wet cold white stuff. Alice
jumped around, scattering the light powdery stuff. She pawed at
the fluffy snow, nosed it, explored it.

Bobo seemed more interested in just getting out of it.

After Bobo came in, Alice was still out there, communing with the white stuff.

I had to look it up to be sure that “testy” means, as I thought it did, “irritable.”

UPDATED (below)

Did you know that, “under the weather,” meaning ill or indisposed,
originates from the same subculture as the phrase, “cold enough to
freeze the balls off a brass monkey,” among the seafaring men of the
age of tall ships?  I was unable to verify this with online
dictionaries, but have it on good authority that “under the weather,”
means belowdecks, presumably too ill from seasickness or a hangover to
hoist a mainsail or belay anything.

That “brass monkey” phrase, in case you missed my previous blog on the
subject, refers to a perforated brass plate that was bolted to the deck
beside the cannons.  Cannonballs fit into its round holes,
allowing them to be stacked up in pyramidal formation until the plate,
the brass monkey, contracted from excess cold and popped the balls
off.  Around here right now, the cannonballs are rolling freely
all over the decks.  To continue the  metaphor, I think that
one of our cannons is loose, too.

I have been medically advised to stay indoors during cold
weather.  I follow that advice when there’s no compelling reason
to go out.  I don’t enjoy getting cold except when I’m taking a
break from a sauna.  I willingly dart out for brief forays into
the frigid air occasionally to capture some exceptional light, to
snatch up the stupid kitten Bobo when he’s too cold to remember to come
inside, to grab the steel bowl of ice to thaw it on the woodstove or to
put the warmed water back out for the feral cats.  Other than
that, it usually takes an emergency (or important prior commitment) to
get me out of here at twenty below zero or colder.

Greyfox was having a personal emergency yesterday.  He worked
himself into a frenzy over the gun show he is doing this weekend. 
Two weeks ago he ordered some new stock including blow guns he hoped to
sell at this show.  Every day for a week or more, he has called to
find out if there was a pick-up notice in the mail.  He used to
phone the post office to ask them if he had any parcels in, but they
now refuse to jump and fetch for him.  Doug and I don’t check our
mail every day in such weather, except when Greyfox is expecting
something.

Doug had been going out each day as soon as he awoke.  His
schedule now has him going down in the morning and getting up after
dark.  He had checked Thursday’s mail, but Greyfox was desperate
to know yesterday whether he could pick up his new merchandise before
the post office closed for the day.  Doug was asleep, so I walked
to the mailbox about three blocks away.  Koji was desperate (as
usual) to check his pmail, so I took him with me.  I walked slowly
by necessity.  I stopped about midway on the way out to catch my
breath, took a break by the mailboxes (no pick-up notice) until my feet
started to freeze and Koji started to whimper and pull toward
home. 

On the way back I needed two rest stops.  By the time I was back
in the warmth here my legs were so rigid with muscle spasms that I
couldn’t bend them enough to take off my mukluks for a couple of
hours.  My diaphragm was sore from the effort of breathing and is
still sore today.  Please understand, I’m not complaining, I’m
just reporting.  I wouldn’t mention this crap at all except for
the facts that this is reality, this is my journal, and there are
others who read my blogs for whom these reports constitute a sort of
support for their own challenges. 

Someone recently naively suggested that I see if my doctor could give
me something to “help” me sleep.  Allow me to forestall any
similarly thoughtless advice by assuring you that I manage my pain and
other aspects of my disability with as little “help” from drugs as
feasible.  It’s a conscious choice I’ve made.  My medical
providers frequently offer me symptomatic relief which could result in
kidney failure or addiction, and I decline.  I’ve learned a few
things in my lifetime.  One of them is a preference for small
trouble now rather than big trouble later.

Anyhow, to wrap up the story of Greyfox’s self-induced tizzy, he phoned
last evening to vent, scream, bitch and moan about everything from the
weather and this respiratory crud we all have to the cluttered
condition of his cabin and his having to wear, “ugly, mismatched,”
clothes this weekend because he hadn’t done his laundry.   I
try, at such times, to convince him to calm down.  I remind him
that stress isn’t what happens to us, but is our response to what
happens.  I don’t want him to let that NPD tendency to exaggerate
every ailment, failure or frustration escalate into a stroke, heart
attack or destructive rage.  I suppose, if that is what he wants
then I’ll just have to accept it.

Meanwhile,
I need to stay focused on feeding the fire frequently.  It’s a
small stove and the high-tech thermostatically-controlled draft (a
spring in there expands or contracts with the rise or fall of ambient
temperature) makes it burn a lot of wood when it is this cold. 
Just before Doug went to bed, he went out and split firewood, then came
in and filled the woodbox (It’s that small rectangular thing at lower
left.).  Then he went back out and brought in three more armloads
of wood, saying, “There, that ought to last until I’m up again.”

I took that picture then.  The stack isn’t that high any
more.  I put some of it into the stove, and Koji and the cats have
knocked some of it down so that it covers a lot more of the floor now.

You may have heard about our volcano on national newscasts yesterday or
today.  I  heard about it on All Things Considered last
night.  The latest explosive eruption was just after midnight
today.  NOAA and the National Weather Service have gotten into the
act now, and there are more reports coming from them on the ash cloud
than there are volcanic activity reports from AVO.  The winds are
supposed to shift late Sunday, carrying the ash northward.  If
that happens, we could be experiencing some ashfall.

AVO takes about two days to get their latest pictures posted.  The first two below were taken on January 12.  The realtime webcams on Augustine Island and at Homer across Cook Inlet aren’t showing much now because of clouds/fog/ash.

ADDENDUM:
Is “forestall” too obscure a word?  Did I fail to make myself
clear?  Have I not explained that I figure my body will go to
sleep when it really needs to?

After I saw what melatonin did to Greyfox, I knew that I’d made the
right decision when I chose not to try it based simply on what I had
read about it.  He has stopped using it, too.  The paragraph
below uses the word, “include,” which means there are more.  I
know of more, but these are quite enough for me.  Some of these
things I have already as a result of my unbalanced biochemistry. 
I don’t desire to make any of them any more severe, thank you very much.

Adverse reactions associated with
melatonin include stomach discomfort, morning grogginess, daytime
“hangover,” feeling of a “heavy head,” depression, psychotic episodes
(in combination with fluoxetine), headache, lethargy, fragmented
disorientation, amnesia, inhibition of fertility, increased seizure
activity, suppression of male sexual drive, hypothermia, retinal
damage, gynecomastia and low sperm count. Typically, these reports are
related to high doses. However, adverse effects have been reported and
can occur with low doses as well.

(Source:  PDRHealth.com )

Volcano update–

Mount Augustine surprised the volcanologists with a new explosive
eruption last night after they had downgraded it to “orange”, so at 4
AM they upgraded it back to red.  Now there is an ashfall advisory
for the lower Kenai Peninsula area, and expectations for more eruptions.

SuSu update–

Feeling wretched:  slow of thought, clumsy, aching body, and
nagging feelings that there are things I should be doing but I just can’t.  Just another ordinary day, but colder than most.

The consensus among my readers tends toward the judgement that the
American Mania quiz doesn’t represent them.  Upon reflection, I
think it might have been constructed to generate discussion and to get
attention for the author and his latest work.  He is making the
rounds of talk shows promoting the book right now, so that’s not too
fantastic a surmise.  One alternative is that the author himself
is all caught up in the cultural mania and hasn’t noticed that there
are many people around him not participating.

Can it be true?

Am I just too laid back to be living in America?

I took this quiz based on Peter Whybrow’s new book.

It told me:  “In America, you can’t be that relaxed.  Take the quiz again.”

I took it again, giving the same answers and getting the same
results.  Some of the questions didn’t apply to me because I don’t
have a cell phone, I live too far from town to eat a lot of fast food
and am too poor and physically disabled to shop as a recreation.

I took that into account and fudged some of my answers.  Still, I
got a weird result.  It asked me, “Are you living in a
monastery?”  No, stupid, I’m living in Alaska.  We don’t give
a dam how they do it Outside.

Even so, I appreciate Whybrow’s take on our cultural mania.  He’s
a neuroscientist, head of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and
Human Behavior at UCLA.  He has written a book on The Hibernation
Response, which I have on hold at the public library.  That should
be a good read.

The level of concern for Mount Augustine was downgraded to orange
today.  The volcano appears to have relieved its pressure and
subsided.

AVO posted a new
set of pics, and I picked out a good before-and-after pair. 
First, Jan.10, the day before the explosive eruption, with steam
venting from the peak and trailing down the mountainside.

Then, Jan. 11, venting steam and ash, and showing signs of mudflow and rock and snow slides on the slopes.

Meanwhile, the temperature here has fallen to about ten below
zero.  It’s barely fifty in here, up at eye level where the
thermometer hangs, with a wicked cold draft coming off the window
behind the computer desk.   If I’m going to spend much time at the
keyboard, I need to find my fingerless gloves.  I think I’ll go
over by the woodstove.  I can operate the PS2 controller with my
hands  under the blankets.

Photos above and at left, Augustine, January 4, 2006 courtesy of Alaska Volcano Observatory

Last month, the Augustine Volcano near the mouth of Cook Inlet was upgraded to the “orange” level of concern, meaning that it was rumbling, shaking and venting steam. 

Over the following weeks, local media presented the usual public
service messages advising us on volcano safety precautions and
responses.  I made sure I knew where the particle masks are, and
thought briefly about buying a tarp to cover the car in case of
ashfall.  Then I realized that the same roll of poly sheeting I
used for winterizing the windows has enough left on it to protect our
car’s paint and glass from the corrosive effects of ash.  I’m as
ready as I’ll ever be for ashfall.

Today, Mount Augustine erupted, earning a new upgrade to red. 
The ash cloud is blowing away from us at this time, and they say that
no populated areas are endangered.  Unless the wind shifts our
way, we are in no danger from this eruption.

Photo at right, Augustine, March 27, 1986 courtesy of Alaska Volcano Observatory.


Almost twenty years ago, Augustine erupted and sent a cloud of ash over
us several times off and on throughout the tail end of that
winter.  If you’ve experienced a solar eclipse, you have some idea
what it looks like when an ash cloud blows over you.

The ash fell along with snow sometimes, and sometimes between
snowfalls.  Between ashfalls, there were clean white
snowfalls.  As we shoveled the snow from our driveway, the sides
of the cut looked like a layer cake, with strips ranging from light
gray to dark brown between the white layers.

Ash is heavier than snow, so it’s more important to get it shoveled off
the roof quickly.  It is harmful to lungs if we breathe it, so
wearing particle masks is important when outdoors, for example while
shoveling it off the roof.  Keeping the corrosive stuff off skin
and clothing, and out of our eyes is also important.  We’ve got
goggles and a Tyvek coverall for that.

I know people who take no ash precautions at all.  But I also know
people who run around in shorts and sandals in subzero
temperatures.  Every winter, I hear news stories of people who die
of hypothermia or lose body parts to frostbite.  Every time
there’s ashfall, there are stories about people getting in trouble with
it.  I won’t drive the car while there’s ash in the air, because
it destroys the engine if it gets sucked into it.  At the very
least it will clog the air filter and choke off the engine.

The state volcanologists expect this series of eruptions to continue
indefinitely.  If the wind shifts and sends some ash our way, you
will surely hear about it from me.  We are still living with the
ash that fell in ’86 and that we got when Mount Spurr erupted in 1992,
and from many historic and prehistoric eruptions.  The ash mixes
with the fine glacial silt on the ground and gets kicked into the air
whenever the winds blow in dry weather.  It gives me a hearty
appreciation for plain old mud that stays on the ground.

They are overflying the volcano today.  When I have current pics
of the eruption, I’ll post some choice ones, or you can get updates at:
Alaska Volcano Observatory