That was the subject line on a message to the local community email newsgroup last Saturday.  This list is a service of WACO, the Willow Area Community Organization.  It was used to announce community meetings and public events until several months ago when someone sent an email promoting a religious event.  In the wake of the outcry over that we all learned that the list was open to anyone with anything to tell the community, and a disclaimer was added to every outgoing message:  "This list is run as a service to the Willow Community.   Opinions expressed
or implied are those of the sender and not those of WACO, Inc." 

I hadn't checked my mail recently, so I scrolled down through several "re: Shots fired" messages before I got to the original message:

There were quite a few concerned and sympathetic replies, and this peevish one:

Then the original writer said she hadn't heard of any thefts or damage to McCain signs, and others wrote in to say that their Obama signs had been stolen and/or vandalized.  I haven't read the entire thread and don't intend to.  I was wondering how the peevish McCain supporter knew that the sign that got shot was for Obama.  Hmmm... seems suspicious.

The original writer responded that she had not known about any thefts of McCain signs, and that all of these acts were infringements of our freedom of speech.

The final salvo as of this afternoon is this from someone else:

Indeed it is, and it's a bit more than the usual level of rowdiness around here.

I have been annoyed with myself for months for being unable to find anything positive to say about candidates in the current campaigns.  In July, I placed two little buttons in my header:

This one was directed toward electing anyone but Uncle Ted Stevens, the distinguished gentleman convicted felon pictured below.

and

to encourage my fellow Alaskans to elect anyone this year except this guy:

McCain and Palin are dancing as fast as they can to disassociate themselves from convicted corrupt Senator Ted Stevens.  They have publicly asked him to resign.  I guess they are hoping to find an alternate Republican senatorial candidate with a chance at getting elected.  Senate rules don't prohibit convicted felons from serving, but the verdict against Stevens, guilty on all counts, reduces his chances of winning against Democratic candidate Mark Begich, even in Alaska, especially now that Steven's own chances of election have been diminished by Palin's embarrassing display of sarcasm and evasion.

During Stevens's trial, there has been a lot of speculation in the media here about what might happen if he won that case, or if he lost it.  One of the possibilities that came up -- I think it was in the event that the election came before a guilty verdict, he was re-elected and then either resigned or had to do jail time -- was that Palin would appoint herself to serve out Stevens's term in the Senate.  That's only a wee baby step more self-serving than Frank Murkowski's appointment of his daughter Lisa to serve out his Senate term when he got himself elected governor just before Palin's term.

I was already set to vote for Begich.  I have some disinterested curiosity about how the GOP, in Alaska and nationally, will choose to spin this little triumph of justice in their concern for not having the presidential election swirl down the tubes with Stevens.  Uncle Ted is still insisting that he is innocent.   He might have gotten away with that yesterday, but today the jury has said otherwise.

This morning I had written an eloquent post advocating informed voting.  It vanished when I tried to post it.

Roger the electrician arrived a few hours later than noonish yesterday, had to leave once to get a tool he hadn't brought and a few times to smoke cigarettes (no smoking in my house), and although his professional skills may be excellent, his people skills and mental health could stand some improvement.  I'm mentally numb from the day yesterday and physically exhausted from getting my furniture and household items out of Roger's way, trying to stay out of his way in the process, and from a little BIG winterization job Doug and I did this morning, covering our large front window with poly sheeting.

I haven't the time or energy to reconstruct this morning's work.  Retain your right to bitch about the government.  Inform yourselves about the candidates and issues, then vote.

Even before there was light on the horizon today, Doug and I started getting ready for a water run.  After we emptied the pitcher to fill the dog and cats' water and poured the last from a jug to make coffee, we were down to a single 2-gallon kitty litter jug of water, and that water in the kitty litter jugs is for washing, not for drinking.

 

I went out first, after suiting up for the cold.  It was too cold for just one little watch cap, so I wore two.  I got the 50-foot extension cord from the storage cabin, and strung it out from the end of another cord at the corner of the house, to the car at the end of the driveway, to plug in the engine block heater.  Then, when Doug went back to the bathroom, where the other extension cord plugs into a power strip whenever we need it in cold weather to make the car easier (or possible, in really cold weather) to start, each time he plugged it in, it tripped the power strip's circuit breaker.  The problem could be in the car's heater, or in the wiring, or  could simply be that it draws more power than the breaker is rated for.  I might find out later today.  Roger the electrician called yesterday and said he'd be here "noonish" today to work on our wiring.

As soon as the day began to dawn, Doug started carrying empty jugs out and I started trying to start the car.  It was balky, and I was glad for the manual choke installed by the previous owner.  Automatic chokes are one of the reasons cars don't start in cold weather.  Oil that turns from a lubricant to an adhesive at low temperatures is another reason.  It fired, sputtered, faltered and died a few times before it would keep running, and then it ran at about 200 RPM for a few minutes before I could rev it up any further without having it die.  At first, all the idiot lights were glowing red.  Finally, after I'd managed to rev it up to 1500 RPM, the last lights, brake fluid and parking brake, went out and the engine smoothed out.

We bumped and rattled out of the driveway on square tires -- radial tires tend to flatten out on the bottom side when parked, and retain that shape until they warm up -- and I drove around a block on this side of the highway, crossed over and drove around a block on the other side, checking out the old home place, noticing that it's still standing.  By then, the tires had rounded out and the frost on the inside of the windshield had softened enough that Doug could scrape it off without damaging the plastic scraper.

First thing I noticed after I pulled onto the highway was the mountain glowing deep pink in my rear view mirror.  Denali, AKA Mount McKinley, was catching morning light that hadn't made it this far yet.  The sun rose at the spring as Doug filled jugs and buckets and I sat with my hands curled in my pockets and my gloves lying on the defroster vent.  Traffic was normal for an early Sunday morning in winter.  While we were there, 21 vehicles passed headed north and seven went by headed south, all but one of the latter after sunrise.  While Doug was carrying full buckets up the path, our neighbor Al Fisher came from the north, filled one 4-gallon kitty litter jug, and headed back home again.  Of the 21 vehicles going northward, nine were either pickups with snowmachines in the back, or SUVs pulling snowmachines (AKA "snowmobiles") on trailers.  One vehicle going each way pulled an empty snowmachine trailer.  The trailer headed south was covered with snow, and the one headed north was clean.  The first vehicle that passed headed south, before sunrise, was a methane tanker truck, headed back empty from Fairbanks or someplace else up thataway.

Doug fell as he was bringing the last few jugs and buckets up to the car, slipped on the icy surface of the parking area.  He landed on both knees, an elbow and shoulder.   I offered to help him load the water in the hatch, but he said he could handle it.  When he'd finished up and belted himself into the shotgun seat, I pulled blissfully warm gloves onto similarly warm fingers, pulled out onto the highway, around the curve and over the hill toward home.  At the top of the hill, the sight of Denali was breathtaking.  The color had faded to a pale peachy pink, and atmospheric lensing made it loom taller than usual, twice as tall as the pink mountain had been when we were headed south.

Sunrise today was at 8:18, almost four hours ago.  In a bit over five hours, at 5:09, the sun will set.  By now, Doug says, the only pain is an occasional twinge in his knees.

That is the headline of an article in the editorial section of today's Anchorage Daily News.  The subhead says, "Palin's rise captivates us but the nation needs a steady hand."  Several paragraphs down in the story it says,

Gov. Palin's nomination clearly alters the landscape for Alaskans as we survey this race for the presidency -- but it does not overwhelm all other judgment. The election, after all is said and done, is not about Sarah Palin, and our sober view is that her running mate, Sen. John McCain, is the wrong choice for president at this critical time for our nation.

Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, brings far more promise to the office. In a time of grave economic crisis, he displays thoughtful analysis, enlists wise counsel and operates with a cool, steady hand. The same cannot be said of Sen. McCain.

adn.com

The newspaper's endorsement would make solid business sense, even if its editors/owners were not of the same opinion.  Letters to the editors have been overwhelmingly critical of Palin, and that started with Troopergate, even before she was picked by McCain.  Subscribers might cancel in droves if the paper endorsed McCain.

  Commentary on Palin is collected here.  A recent addition to that was written, apparently in all seriousness, by Anchorage's village idiot, Dan Fagan, a former (?) TV weatherman who has been the butt of endless popular public jokes.  On the one hand, I can't see how he has managed to stay in the spotlight, but on the other hand, I understand the popularity of comic relief.

The Kid and I are preparing to go to the spring for water.  It's cold out -- single digits Fahrenheit -- so I hope the car will start.  I'm going now to find out.

I'll admit it:  I have been avoiding Xanga, barely blogging, and hardly surfing around here at all.  I have also gone entire days here at home without turning on my radio (and if you know me, you know I don't watch TV), or pulling up Google News.  Yesterday, I checked my email and found that it had been four days and almost a thousand messages since the last time I'd downloaded the lot from my ISP.

Greyfox and I have both made a conscious effort to talk about things other than politics and the economy in our precious cell minutes each night.  Regardless, we end up, almost against our will, discussing absurd current events and the corruption of those in power.

After a couple of days of deliberate avoidance, this morning I absent-mindedly asked Doug to turn on the radio while he was up off the couch stoking the wood stove.
[...elipsis:  That reminded me that I haven't checked the fire since Doug went to bed, so I got up and stoked the stove.  We have just come through our first sub-zero night of this winter -- yes it is winter here, already -- and the temp is still in single digits this morning.]
I'm glad I did come out of my seclusion for a bit, although I intend to turn the nattering thing off when I'm done here.  I have enough dread and panic impinging on my empathic consciousness, without having the stories behind them pouring in through my ears.

A sampling of things I heard and peripheral matters I found when I went online to learn more:

Imprisioned Chinese dissident Hu Jia won this year's Sakharov Prize for Freedom from the European Parliament, in the face of threats from China, after the Nobel Committee picked a safer choice.  You can find kudos and praise for him, as well as some heart-rending stuff about his ill health and his family's forced relocation and house arrest, just about anywhere you look.  I found some frequently overlooked aspects of his situation at The Peking Duck.

If you are a country music fan, you probably know about Jett Williams, Hank's posthumous natural daughter.  I hadn't known anything about her until today.  The radio bit piqued my curiosity, and I found a bit more from the Library of Congress and Wikipedia.

Please don't trounce me for my ignorance, but until I heard today that Barack Obama is being attacked for having attended a Bilderberg Conference, I was only vaguely aware of what Bilderberg is or does.

Realistically, our next president will probably be either John McCain or Barack Obama.  I hope it will be Obama.  There are some other choices, even besides the perennial Ralph Nader.  The Green Party's ticket includes two descendants of African slaves, former U.S. Representative from Georgia Cynthia McKinney [what Wikipedia has on her] and Hip-Hop journalist Rosa Clemente [her Wikipedia article here].  The environment is only part of the Green platform.  It would be interesting to see them get a chance to work toward a better planet.  They certainly couldn't do any worse than what we've gone through for the past eight years.  I wonder what percentage of the voting public hasn't ever heard of McKinney and Clemente.

Cynthia McKinney

Rosa Clemente

I had a harder time on the trip to Wasilla than I had the times recently when Doug went with me.  Now that we have to keep a fire going, for the rest of the winter, one of us needs to stay home except when the excursions are brief.  When he went with me, I only had to walk into one supermarket and get into the motorized crip cart, and then walk back to the car.  Doug did all the reaching and lifting, and did the running for whatever we needed from anywhere other than the one big store.

By the time I got home yesterday, I was too tired to fix my dinner, so I ate cheese and crackers -- chevrai and rye crisp.  It was yummy, but I'd have gone for something hot if I'd had the energy.  Doug nuked and ate the sweet and sour pork I'd picked up for him at the Orient Express deli in Carr's. 

Being so fatigued meant I was too tired to sleep well, so I was awake off and on through the night.  With a little recovery time, I can get back to sleeping all night, and then I can repair the other fatigue effects.  I do get tired of this damned disease.

On the up-side, Greyfox and I had breakfast together and got in some laughs, offended a few eavesdroppers in the restaurant with our political talk, and just enjoyed being together for a while.  He had found in the dumpster a good sweater that fits Doug, and a big baggy pair of warm fleece athletic pants that cannot actually be said to fit me, but they have a drawstring waist and I am wearing them.

I'll be back when I can hold my head up without so much effort.