Somebody asked recently if the dog racing season is in full swing.  Sprint races have been going on at various tracks since there has been enough snow on the ground to float a sled. 

The first mid-distance race of the season was the Sheep Mountain... what is it, a 150?  I think... anyway it is a recent addition to the seasonal racing calendar and was held in mid-December.  Sheep Mountain Lodge is at a high enough elevation to be sure of snow by then.  Jessica Hendricks won it this year.

The Copper Basin 300 starts every year on the second Saturday in January.  This year, that was near the end of the month or so of super-chilly weather Alaska experienced, and the teams endured temperatures around minus fifty Fahrenheit.  Two-time Iditarod winner, current Iditarod Champion Lance Mackey, the first person ever to win both the Yukon Quest and Iditarod in the same season, and a cool guy, too, won that one this year.

As I mentioned yesterday, the weather warmed up and trails were so wet and mushy that the three mid-distance races scheduled for last weekend were postponed.  The Kuskokwim 300 got off to a late start on Sunday, and was won by Mitch Seavey. 

Still to come this month are the Tustumena 200 and Klondike 300.  The long-distance season starts this weekend, in Minnesota, with the John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon.  Next month comes Yukon Quest, the 1000 Mile International Sled Dog Race.  It runs from Canada to Alaska this year (other way 'round in alternate years), starting in Whitehorse, YT on Valentine's Day.  I will be blogging some highlights, but my daily race reports will not begin until the start of the Iditarod in March.

Have you ever dreamed of being in the Iditarod?  Well, to do it the total-immersion way, you need to breed and train a dog team and finish the requisite number (I don't know details like that because it's something I'll never try.) of qualifying races, pay your entry fee, etc.  But each year a fortunate bunch of regular people get to ride in the sleds with mushers at the Ceremonial Start in downtown Anchorage.  Tomorrow, around noon, Friday January 23, 2009, final bids begin in this year's Idita-Rider Auction.

Lance Mackey, above, is no longer available, nor is Dee Dee Jonrowe or Martin Buser, but there are still 53 mushers up for bids, including Mitch Seavey, above,

Sebastian Schnuelle

Ed Iten

and Aliy Zirkle

One interesting aspect of the Iditarod is the Iditarod Air Force.  They are an all-volunteer force of private pilots who donate their time and their aircraft for delivering tons of dog food and other supplies to the checkpoints before the start of the race.  During the race, they take the slow, sick or injured dogs back home after they have been dropped, and they provide transportation between checkpoints for race officials, veterinarians, reporters, photographers, etc.  Twenty-seven of them are signed up for this year.

If you are wondering what all that Heet gas line anti-freeze is for, it's not for the planes, and not to put in the sleds' tanks.  It is popular fuel for the cookers mushers carry in their sleds for melting snow to water the dogs and for cooking their food.  Kibble is only a small part of those athletes' diets.

Some notes on nomenclature:

These are sled dog races, not dog sled races.  The sleds are just along for the ride, to carry a few necessities and a lot of stuff required by official rules, and the runners give the musher a place to stand once in a while to rest his or her legs after miles of running, or to "pump" with one foot and lean this way or that to help steer behind the team.  The dogs do most of the work and it is the first nose over the finish line that wins.

Huskies... well we're a bit loose around here on what that term means.  Siberian Husky, as pictured here, is a recognized dog breed.  Each year's Iditarod usually includes at least one team of these beautiful dogs.  Alaskan huskies are a different breed, and not a recognized breed at all.  They are dogs of mixed ancestry, bred especially for the traits that make them good racers in snow. 

My dog Koji looks like an Alsatian, and his father was reportedly a collie, but his mother was an Alaskan "husky," and so is he.  Most mushers call their dogs huskies, no matter what they look like.  One notable exception is John Suter, who ran the Iditarod four times, from 1988 through 1991, finishing in the middle of the pack every time, with a team entirely made up of standard poodles.

Yeah, I guess the dog racing season is in full swing.  Keep looking for the parking sign, and watch out for yellow snow.

. . . and we must change with it."

Doug and I have been listening on NPR to the Inauguration ceremony, although, thus far, I have not heard any priests of Apollo, nor of any other God,  issuing any auguries.

The president himself, in the quotation above, and in much of the rest of his speech, did allude to what's coming, but I don't suppose there was any divination involved there.  It doesn't take a seer to see the magnitude of the work to come.

Elizabeth Alexander, in speaking of the pioneer spirit, spoke one of the most memorable (to me) lines of the day:  "I know there's something better up ahead."

I woke today at 7:11 Alaska time, 11:11 in Washington, DC.  The radio woke me as it was switched on.  Doug had turned it on when his friends in the chat room he frequents began discussing what they were watching on TV.  You may know, if you are not a newcomer to my site, that we only use our TV sets as monitors for video games and video players.  When we moved in here, there was an antenna on a mast outside, and it received several broadcast channels until one winter a heavy snow load brought it down.  On consideration, Doug and I concluded that we were better off without it.

My visual glimpses of today's hoopla are relayed second or third hand, from the radio personalities on the scene (who mentioned the colors of clothing worn by various political figures, and that there was someone in the Reflecting Pool) and, through Doug, from the internet chatters seeing it on TV.  Doug hasn't relayed much of the discussion, just a few highlights such as this:

He also mentioned that, while Obama was talking about harnessing the power of the sun, suddenly the sunlight was glinting off the flag pin on his lapel.

My usually blasé son, whose primary male role model was a man with flat affect, has been uncharacteristically involved in the politics this year and enthusiastic about Barack Obama.  Since election day, at odd random moments, he would pause and with awe in his voice, say, "President-elect Barack Obama."  Today, after the speeches and prayers, when we moved back into our usual activities, he paused, and with that same awed voice, said, "President Barack Obama."

Ask someone who "we" are, and listen to the answers.  One can learn a lot about people that way.  When I am asked which side I'm on, I often don't have an answer -- or, rather, the truest response would be, "neither, or both," and nobody who would ask such a question wants to hear that answer.

It is evident from reading my memoirs that for much of my life I wasn't on my side.  I identified with my captors, acted against my own best interests, and did myself harm in numerous ways.  That's what guilt and shame will do to a person.  But I digress, as I am apt to do when I'm circling around a topic, trying to zero in on what I want to say.

Being on neither side, or being on both sides at once, seems to be my current state of being -- back and forth between being myself, alone, observing, and being in the middle of it all, recognizing the relative merits of opposing positions on whatever issue is in contention.

This is progress, I suppose.  I set out to transcend judgment and separation.  I came from the normal state, formed by culture, of needing to be on the "right" side, and judging the "other" to be "wrong".  One thing I know unequivocally about my progress is that I am generally happier and more at peace now than I was before I began this quest.

Being an activist in politics, or for any cause such as promoting human rights or preserving the environment, is a precarious walk through a minefield for someone with my purpose of attaining and sustaining unity consciousness.  This does not mean I am ready to be (or need to be) any less the activist.  It means, primarily, that I must distinguish between the cause and the characters, or between "the sinners and the sins."  This requires mindfulness.

If mindfulness is a virtue, it proves the old adage, "Virtue is its own reward."  Mindful is a wonderful way to be.  It is beyond pain and aside from anxiety.  A mindful one knows neither fear nor regret.  Mindfulness is more fun than sex.  Mindful sex is more fun, too.

When fully mindful, one is ONE with all that is.

It is not difficult to be mindful.  It is effortless.

How to sustain Unity Consciousness
(video with Sperry Andrews)

Don't try mindfulness for yourself.   Don't try it at all.
 

"Try not.  Do... or do not. There is no try."
                                                    --Yoda

Just do it, for itself, yourself, ourselves, us, we... there is no they.  We are all ONE.

I had expected it to freeze last night, but when I got up today it was raining and I thought I'd been wrong about the freeze.  That lasted until I stepped out the door on the way to the store this morning and heard Doug scraping ice off the car windows.  I did my flat-footed, bow-legged Eskimo walk over paths with the traction of greasy ball bearings and helped him scrape away a pebbled layer of ice before we hit the road.

Everything was slick:  paths through the yard, driveway, back roads, highway, parking lots.  People discuss the weather as we always have, but this time we're a little sheepish about complaining of the warmth and rain after having bitched for weeks about the sub-zero temperatures.

At the spring, it was obvious that previous users had spread sand, ashes, etc., for traction, but the freezing rain had buried it under a slick layer, just like it had glazed over the gravel strewn on the packed snow layer in the parking lot at Camp Caswell.  We were prepared, with a half bucket of ashes saved from home.

The pallet beside the waterhole was slicker than Doug realized, and he did another pratfall, coming down hard on his elbow.

It is evident here, to those who are familiar with the usual appearance of the spring, how much the ice has built up around it.

When the water was in the hatch, before we got back into Blur for the trip home, I asked Doug to get a shot of me.  He tends to wait for me to pose, and I tend to talk and move and encourage him to catch something natural and candid.  We got several great laughs out of it, but no very good photographs.

It's raining here, again, inside and out.  I thought it would dip below freezing last night, but the temp apparently stayed at 34°F all night.  Yesterday, I set up space heaters in the bathroom and in the back work-and-storage room, to dry out things that had been under the holes in the roof when the ice up there melted.  Pans are now in place under drips in every room, seven pans in all, in four rooms and the hallway.

We are waiting for full daylight before heading out to Camp Caswell for some small grocery purchases.  The store is open already, but I'd rather wait until I can see where I'm going and what's coming at me.  Getting out to the highway could be a challenge.  Yesterday, after I took the shot of the icy street where we live --

 

-- the grader came by with a scarifier blade, flattening out the ruts and scoring the ice to improve traction.  After the rain, it's a polished surface again, slicker than before,  now lacking the meager traction provided by the irregularities the grader removed.

The grader left a chunky, heavy, icy berm across the driveway.  Doug and I went out around sunset and shoveled it.  On one of his first trips across the road with a full sleigh shovel, to dump the berm from this side of the road onto the the far side of the berm on the other side, he stepped in a soft spot on that berm, and fell on his butt.  I said, "Where's my camera when I need it?"  He agreed to wait there until I went inside and came back with the camera.  He's always ready to take a break from work.

Once we get out to the highway, it shouldn't be slick.  We will take along the few water jugs we have emptied since our run a few days ago, to top up the supply.  If I don't forget, I'll take the camera.  I just told Doug to help me remember it.  Then I can show you how the spring looks after three weeks of deep cold and a week of rain.

 

Sunrise today:  9:58; sunset:  4:23 - 6 hours, 25 minutes of daylight.

The high temperature last night during the windstorm was an incredible 50°F.  I have seen rain in December here, but never in January, and only very rarely temperatures above freezing in January.  This is supposed to be winter!

This morning, it was about 40°F when I went out to take pictures of the storm's aftermath.  I didn't need a jacket or gloves, just put on my little blue hat and grabbed the camera.  Even my fair-weather Fuji had no problems with the day's temperature.

I could feel warmth on my skin from the sun.  That is really weird.  Usually it is mid-February before the sun is anything but a cold light low in the sky.  It's still low down to the treetops in the south, but it gives perceptible heat.  That's something I will need to think about.  I had always thought the lack of heat in the winter sunlight was an effect of atmospheric absorption, and presumably we still have as much atmosphere as ever.  Maybe it's the ozone hole... like I said, I'll have to give this some thought, maybe ask some questions where someone might have answers.

front yard, above; back yard, below
 

When I signed off Xanga last night, I was expecting a power outage.  The lights had flickered, browned out and gone black for a few seconds several times.  It happened a few more times after that, but not for more than a few seconds at a time.  About 11 PM, the phone and internet service went dead, and Doug says they came back on at 7:55.  A nine-hour phone outage is unprecedented here since I got my phone in 1985.

I feel sympathy for you people who are living in the remnants of that Arctic high pressure system we had here for three weeks.  You can be glad it warmed up some as it traveled your way.  I have been trying to recall details of a book I read several decades ago, Ice: The Ultimate Disaster, that predicted, based on computer simulations of climate change, that global warming would bring wild swings of extreme temperatures, and, ultimately, a new Ice Age.  I may try and find it, for a refresher read.  It's still in my library, I think.

Is it still January?  Am I still in Alaska?

This is nuts!  The temperature has gone up five degrees in about ten minutes.  Now it is reading 46.7 F.

It has been raining off and on for days, and now the wind has come up... a Chinook... in January!?!

During the recent 3-week cold spell, it was dead calm all the time.  It is almost never windy here, and never noisy-windy like this, with things flapping and thumping.

The power keeps going off and on, resetting the computer.  I should probably shut it down and go read a book... by flashlight any minute now, I suppose.

I'm over at Old Hat's pajama party in my flannel jammies with the trapdoor in back, with my dog Koji at my side because I'm shy at parties.

Mirravin suggested a game of truth or dare.  I'm in, but I can't make up my mind whether to take a dare or tell the truth.  You tell me.

Here's some truth for Mirravin, who asked me about my "most hilarious hospital visit."

I have been offered an opportunity to send a message, "to a world leader, past or present," and I chose you.  Don't let it go to your head, sir.  It's nothing personal.  I suppose that many of the others who respond to this challenge will address the man who is about to be inaugurated as President of the United States of America.  Since I couldn't think of anything to say to Barack Obama, (a world leader who is nowhere near pure Aryan, by the way), I needed to think of someone else on whom to inflict this missive.    I had a wide field from which to choose, and I picked you because there is a situation now in Palestine that reminds me of you daily, every time I listen to the news.

Does it please you to learn that you are so remembered, that your political legacy affects the African continent into the next millennium, over sixty years after your own death, and nearly seventy-five years after Hindenburg's death, when you added his power to that which you already possessed?  Don't let that go to your head, either, sir.  You might not be so pleased to learn just how your political legacy has worked out in this instance. . . and then again, perhaps it would amuse you.

Some say your foreign policy was aimed toward gaining lebensraum, territory, for Aryan Germany, while others say you were motivated more by a desire to exact revenge on the victors who had ganged up on Germany in the Great War to End All Wars.  I think you might have had other, more personal, motivation and had found it expedient to use the restoration of Germany's prestige and power and the conquest of territory, as motivators to gain the support of your people.  If I could question you, I would ask about that, but this is a one way channel and I should just get on with telling you what I have to say.

Remember the Jews?  How could you forget?  Targeting them gained you much support from the many German people who owed money to Jewish bankers.  Seizing their property enriched your treasury.  Your propaganda people turned them into a useful scapegoat and rallying point, which consolidated your power among your countrymen.

Unfortunate, wasn't it, that the British put up so much resistance, much more than Poland or France, for example, and that just when it seemed you might possibly defeat the British Empire, the upstart Americans dropped their Isolationist policies after your Japanese allies bombed their territory.  Yes, I suppose you had some second thoughts, then, about the Tripartite Treaty.  Anyhow, you lost the war, didn't you?  But you probably can't guess how matters ended up for the Jews.

With so many of them dead and others displaced, they won a lot of sympathy and were given a patch of Lebensraum in Palestine for their own, if they could manage to defend it from the Palestinians they displaced.  I suppose that the British and Americans who supported the idea considered that patch of desert as being of little value.  Something had to be done about the Jews, and this was what the Zionists wanted, so. . . .

To the Jews, of course, their new Land of Israel was just a portion of the land that their God had given them, His Chosen People.  To the Palestinians, it was their ancestral homeland, and "home" is a powerful concept, about as much so as Lebensraum, wouldn't you say?  Through powerful friends and abundant aid, and their own fervent determination to preserve their home in The Promised Land, the Israelis have hung on and grown militarily strong, but their displaced Palestinian neighbors have never given up on getting their homeland back.

Carrying on enmities that stretch back throughout known history, those two Semitic peoples continue fighting over that fruitful and history laden piece of Earth. In this present go-'round, the one precipitated by the Endlösung der jüdischen Frage that blew up in your face, sometimes their conflict has cooled to occasional guerrilla attacks or terror bombings, and sometimes it heats up into major warfare.  Currently, a little strip of disputed land is being pounded to bits by Israeli bombs and shells, to such an extent that pity for the Palestinians has been aroused in the hearts of some of Israel's traditional allies.

I have even heard some people talking about Jews in ways similar to those in which you used to talk about them.  I wonder how you'd feel about all this, if you were still capable of feeling anything at all.

Some (perhaps) interesting additional reading I found incidentally while fact-checking this entry:

Hitler and Evolution
Understanding Obama:  the Making of a Führer
Adolf Hitler Motivation (astrology)

Just in case I did not make it obvious enough with the link in my first paragraph, this entry is in response to the second topic of 2009 for Featured Grownups: