November 19, 2008

• How cold it is.

  Warning and disclaimer:  I will be writing today about matters that could possibly be interpreted by some as cause for complaint.  Therefore, some might think I’m complaining.  Get this straight:  I’m not complaining, even though complaining about the cold is a favorite Alaskan sport.  We do it competitively, to see who can come up with the best (i.e.: most horrific) cold stories; and we do it intentionally to discourage the discontented and disadvantaged folk from the rest of the world against deciding to come here and californicate our Alaska.

  Actually, it is not very cold today.  It is nine below zero, still in single digits and so not particularly life threatening for a person out there with adequate gear.  But it is cold enough.  It was cold enough that the freight train passing on the tracks half a mile away sounded as if it was coming through the front yard.  Koji thought it was.  He woke me about five this morning, barking at the alarming rumble of the train.  He hasn’t barked at a train since he was a puppy, except in cold weather when atmospheric compression enhances the transmission of sound waves.

  The sound of that train was my first clue that the temp had dropped another increment during the night.  The previous night, it had been slightly below zero, and through several hours yesterday morning, we had no temperature at all.  Zero point zero on the digital thermometer is as great a cause for humorous comment — “no temperature at all” — as is forty below, where Celsius and Fahrenheit scales cross and it makes no difference whether the temp is C or F.  Forty below has another distinction, as my Old Fart commented during his first winter here a couple of decades ago.  It makes zero seem warm.

  Besides being cold enough to make the distant sound of a passing train more immediate, it is cold enough today to motivate Doug to set up the electric heater under the computer desk.  motivate me to urge Doug to set up the electric heater under the computer desk.  One of the copper-wired outlets that Roger installed last month is on the wall behind this desk, just for that purpose.  Until the weather grows much colder, I won’t need my fingerless shooting gloves for work at the keyboard.

  I will reiterate:  I’m not complaining.  I am reporting.  It is with a sense of bemusement that this former California girl reports on things like typing in gloves and hauling a wok full of hot coals from the stove out to place under the car engine to get it started.  I do these tasks with a smile and a sense of gratitude, grateful for the gloves, the wok, the fire, and for Alaska itself.  I’m grateful not just for what Alaska has for me, but what it lacks.  There are, here in my valley, no scorpions, no gila monsters, rattlesnakes (nor any snake or lizard), black widow spiders, cockroaches, fleas, ticks, poison oak, poison ivy, killer bees, Lyme disease (yet), bubonic plague (yet), and no hundred-degree days.  I love it… but you’d hate it, believe me.

  It is with baffled bemusement that I read comments such as this one on my recent post about snowplow drivers:  “move to Texas it’s warmer here.” [sic] {and also sick}  That writer is not a reader.  She hasn’t — obviously hasn’t — paid much attention to what I have been blogging for the past six and a half years here, hasn’t clicked on my memoir links and read about my time in Texas, or surely she would not say something so stupid, right?  I lived in Texas.  I lived there fifty years ago when Alaska achieved statehood.  Not having been born in Texas, I was able to view with amused pity the chagrined sudden sense of inferiority expressed by Texans who realized they were no longer living in the biggest United State.  Apparently, to many Texans, size does matter.

  What matters to me is that Alaska is growing, in ways that have nothing to do with geographical area.  We did not re-elect recently convicted Ted Stevens.  It is official, although the old rascal’s narcissism will probably impel him to demand a recount.  If he thinks he can swing enough influence with the vote counters to swing the numbers his way, he surely will try.  I have no doubt about that.  What I have been wondering about now is whether there is much chance that Anchorage International Airport will get its old name back.  That would be nice.
  

  • 6:21 pm
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