It hasn't gotten there yet.  The temperature scales cross at -40°, and it is only about -38° now.  It is already cold enough that our compact fluorescent porch and yard lights won't light.  If left on for a day or two, they might.  Several winters ago, one was left on for 36 hours before it finally started to glow.  It's crisp out there.  Wood splits easily, and if anyone was foolish enough to try to zip or unzip a plastic zipper, it would shed teeth.  My radial tires would take miles of bumpity bumping along before they'd round out after being parked overnight... if my car would start.  It hasn't run since the weekend before Thanksgiving. 

Such extreme cold is rare in this valley.  At higher elevations and latitudes, it's not that rare, but I have seen cold this deep only about ten or a dozen times in the 27 years I have lived here.  The coldest it has been in that time was off the scale, more than 55 below, and I really don't want to be that cold again.  At temps that low, oily lubricants become adhesives and some metal car parts such as hinges and door latches, are as brittle as plastic.

Greyfox experienced forty below for the first time in his life during his first winter here, twenty years ago.  Afterward, he said, "The best thing about forty below is that it makes zero seem warm."  I agree.  I wouldn't mind a nice warm zero day right about now.

Standing by the wood stove this morning , I slip out of pajama bottom, into underpants.  Cold silk long johns against my skin next, I hope the insulation they'll provide will more than balance the chill of slipping  into them.  I sit to put on thin over-the-calf sock liners, up over the silk to keep it from riding up when I slip on the merino wool long johns that have been warming on the stove.  Aah, the chill is gone.  Thus far, everything I have put on is white or off-white.  I find the heavyweight forest green Polar Fleece socks and slip them up over the bottom of the woolies, so they won't ride up when I pull on the jeans.

In long johns and pajama top, I dig in a drawer for an extra shirt to wear, then lay out 3 shirts to warm on the stove, and stand there warming my hands for a while.  A long-sleeve, long tailed dark blue cotton knit henley goes next to my skin, and gets tucked into the faded Gloria Vanderbilt bluejeans that come next.  After jeans come a pair of raggedy old black one-size-too-large sno-jogs, big enough for the bulky socks and felt innersoles.  Then come the rest of the shirts:  dark blue short sleeve cotton tee and long sleeve off-white wool blend henley. 

Now that I'm through putting shirts on over my head, I brush my hair, clip my phone's handset on the outer henley, put on the headset and a flowered bandanna over it to keep it and my hair in place.  The beloved little blue hat goes on over that.  Next goes a zippered black fleece hoodie, hood up over the hat, and I'm dressed.  No, I'm not going anywhere.  It is barely fifty degrees at eye level in here.  That's a safe temp for my tropical houseplants, which are all up high where the temp is relatively warm.  I turned on fans to move heat around and disrupt the thermocline, but it is still frigid and drafty at waist height and below.  We've done what we could to insulate and winterize this place, but it remains drafty.

That's Doug, suited up to go out and split firewood this morning.  He had to come back three times, to warm his hands and defog his glasses, before he was done splitting and ready to start carrying in the wood.

This weather is odd.  It's not so much the temperature, though that is a bit lower than average.  Early this week the barometric pressure was so high it made news by screwing up pilots' altimeters.  Our old aneroid barometer was reading just a hair shy of 31 inches of mercury then.  It has been creeping slowly downward all week, but still is above 30".  Even odder is the difference in temp between here and the lower end of the valley.  We seldom experience more than about a ten-degree difference, but they have been consistently 40-60 degrees warmer than us this week.  While Greyfox was reporting thawing temperatures and slick conditions, we've been sub-zero all week.

I have two chunks of firewood warming atop the stove, so it will ignite faster when I put it in.  The scent of roasting birch is pleasant.  I'm going to be adding some cooking smells to that soon.  I haven't decided yet what to cook.  I'm thinking it will be something with a long cooking time, maybe a pot of soup on the stove top and something in the oven, too.  Anything to make it more comfortable in here until tonight when I can justify climbing back into the top bunk where it's warmer.

Life is good.  I'm happy.

Greyfox and I were conversing via his Bluetooth and my not-so-hi-tech headset this morning.  He was outside, retrieving cats' feeding dishes and other objects that had blown off his porch.  It's another windy day in Wasilla.

A sudden increase in the wind noise from his microphone signaled that he had stepped away from the relative shelter of his cabin.  It became evident which way he had gone when he started talking about what he was seeing in the dumpster.  He said there was a lot of interesting-looking stuff, and apparently, some other dumpster diver had already been there, tearing open trash bags.

Then I heard a few grunts of effort and sounds indicating physical exertion.  Greyfox explained that he was having to manipulate trash bags one-handed as he held the lid open with the other.  The wind was threatening to blow the lid shut on him.

Immediately, I was all, "Be careful, Darlin'!  Those lids are heavy," at the same time he was telling me that the lid was heavy.  We both started laughing, and went on talking over each other, speculating about the possible outcome of his having a dumpster slammed shut on him.

Occasionally, one or the other of us has the other on the line as a sort of remote ground support when we're engaged in some hazardous activity, such as when I'm shoveling snow from the roof here.  We've speculated in the past about having to explain to a 911 operator that we're reporting an emergency that has occurred fifty miles away.

Between grunts and guffaws, he told me, in the event of catastrophe, to log onto zoklet (a bb site where he moderates several forums) and report that he had died doing what he loved.  I said, "Yeah: 'He died as he lived -- dumpster diving.'"  That brought a guffaw from Doug, who had been giving me puzzled looks as he listened to my laughter on this end of the conversation.

  

22-year old musher Jake Berkowitz has won the Copper Basin 300 mid-distance sled dog race today.  Super-musher Lance Mackey has finished in (as yet unofficial) second place.

When Greyfox called last night, he said he had news.  He starts almost every conversation that way, as if he needs a reason to call.  His news was that some people had moved out, and among the food they discarded was a frozen burrito, which he'd had for dinner.

There was more to the story.  It was a young couple with little kids, a dog and some cats (one of the cats was 13 years old) that he'd been telling me little anecdotes about for the month or so that they had lived there.  They'd originally had difficulty scraping up their rent and security deposit, and had negotiated to move in still owing some of the deposit.

The family had been working throughout the day, packing their vehicle, cleaning the cabin, hauling out trash, etc.  The man had tracked down Greyfox, who was (sorta loosely) keeping an eye on the office at the time, to turn in his key.  All he said was that they had been unable to come up with the money for their rent, so they were moving out.

Greyfox had been impressed at how clean they had left the cabin.  This is generally a notable occurrence there at Felony Flats, where most tenants leave in the dead of night, often leaving behind a big mess and several months of unpaid rent.  Sometimes, they lock up the cabins and keep the keys, not telling anyone they're going.  For someone to voluntarily move out without accruing several months' back rent or being issued an eviction notice, is rare, indeed.

I asked Greyfox if the man had said whether they had anyplace to go, but he hadn't said anything about it.  I was concerned, because as far as either of us knows, there is no homeless shelter in the Valley, and even in Anchorage there's no shelter that would allow pets.  The woman had been particularly attached to the old cat, having had it for much of her own life.

I was quiet so long that Greyfox asked, "Are you still there?"  I stumbled over my words, trying to express my concern, my wondering what the family would do, where they might stay, the temperatures dropping from teens above to way below zero that night....

He was quiet for a moment, then he said, "...and this was my good news, that I'd gotten a burrito tonight."

I missed most of it last year, with pancreatitis hitting me hard during the Yukon Quest.  Observers might have gotten the impression that I had suddenly lost interest in the sport of dog mushing, but I was just severely under the weather.  This year, in keeping with my personal tradition / habit / vice, I have plans to swing to the other extreme and be more involved than ever before.  This will be facilitated, in part, by Facebook connections to many mushers, as well as other fans like me - or fans unlike me:  they're facebook friends, so I don't necessarily know anything much about them.

Last month, Colleen Robertia won the Gin Gin 200, Ryan Redington won the Alaska Excursions 120, and Lance Mackey won the Sheep Mountain 150. 

Coming up this weekend is the Copper Basin 300, from Paxson Lodge to the Chistochina Village Hall checkpoint, to the The Hub in Glennallen, to the Tolsona Lodge, to Wolverine Lodge, to the Sourdough Creek Bunkhouse, to Meier's Lake Lodge, to the finish line at Paxson Lodge.  (map here)

The season's peak, the long-distance races begin next month with Yukon Quest, and then in March, the Iditarod.  I expect to be offering my armchair view -- actually, it's an ergonomic office chair here at the computer desk, but... you know what I mean.

Hang on, and hush, you muskies.

My experimental kitchen turned out another masterpiece last night.  It would have been perfect (in my far from humble opinion) if I hadn't forgotten the dash of salt that would have banished any merest hint of blandness from the custard.

I confess that I never met a carbohydrate I didn't like.  I especially appreciate carbs when they come in a gooey and/or sweet form, with a bit of crunch for contrast.  I spent many years becoming a proficient baker.  The pinnacle of that pursuit came in the 1980s, when my croissants won the Grand Champion purple rosette at the Alaska State Fair.

There was then a large serving of poignant irony in my discovery, a couple of decades later, that wheat was a causative agent of much of the illness that had been impairing my comfort and function for most of my life.  It didn't take me long to figure out that while there are many alternative flours to be used in baking, there is no real substitute for wheat in fine pastry.

Finally abandoning the attempt to duplicate a tender, flaky pie crust, I worked up a quick and easy alternative that provides an acceptable grainy crunch with much less work than classic pastry.  Perhaps its most splendid redeeming feature is that it can be made with flours ground from beans and rice.  I derive great ironic humorous joy from pouring milky custard goodness into a shell of protein-rich soul food.

My basic pie crust recipe has remained stable for several years, varying only in the particular flours used, and the kind of vegetable oil:

These are stirred together with a fork in the pan in which the pie is to be baked.  Then I pour over the top of the flour mixture an emulsion whipped up with that same fork:

Stir these together with the fork until all flour is moistened.  The grainy/oily mixture can then be distributed and pressed onto the sides and bottom of the pan with the fork, compacted and smoothed with the back of a spoon.

My basic custard recipe starts with 3 eggs, slightly beaten, then combined with 2 cups of milk and a small amount of salt.  Sometimes I use no sweetener, if my other additions are sweet enough.  If I'm adding something tart, I add some honey, about 1/4 cup or less.  To taste buds accustomed to (perverted by) a commonly sweet diet, this would not be very sweet, but it is sweet enough for me.

Several years ago, after having been free of refined carbs for a nice healthy while, I made the mistake of trying a new sweetener, sucralose (Splenda). At first it was so cloyingly sweet that half a packet was more than enough for a sweet cup of tea.  Just as toying with a new drug often precipitates a rapid slide back into regular use of one's drug of choice, before long I was tearing open the packets and dumping the powder straight onto my tongue.

Not long after that, I was back on sugar, corn syrup, and, worst of all for my health, wheat.  The natural sugars in the fruit I eat, and honey I use in baking, does not have that effect on me.  Them, I can use in moderation.  Since last February, when an attack of pancreatitis laid me low and showed me the error of my ways, I have somewhat reduced my neuro-muscular disability, and substantially improved the asthma that had been severely limiting my physical activity.

I also lost about 100 pounds in the first six months, all while eating as much as I wanted of some delicious foods, including a varied succession of experimental nutritious pies.  Last night's success combined chopped dried apricots (a dozen or fifteen or so), half a cup of pepitas (raw pumpkin seeds), and 1/4 cup rolled oats, scattered in the crust before the custard was poured in, and baked for about 40 minutes at 325°F.

I cut my pies into narrow wedges, getting about ten or twelve from a 9" pie.  They provide welcome variety in a diet that sometimes (when I see the variety of wheat-based delicacies eaten by others) seems restrictive.  Along with my sugarless gluten-free muffins, with variations of which I also experiment at each new batch, the pies keep me carbohydrated without pain, weight gain, allergic illness, or guilt.

I had a slice of apricot, pepita, oatmeal custard pie for breakfast, and I have leftover turkey that needs to be eaten for lunch, but I can, without harm, have another slice or two of pie today, and I shall.  You can bet on it.

Through all the years in which I had gainful employment, I was usually working when (and often where) other people were playing, partying, or taking their leisure.  From my teens into my thirties, I worked in food service and the entertainment industry, where a weekend off was out of the question.  Even managers seldom got a day off on a weekend, and I moved up to my first managerial position because the owner of a drive-in restaurant where I was cooking wanted someone to manage the place so that he could take weekends off.

When I moved into social service work, my first job was a 48-hour shift at a free clinic, from 8 AM Saturday to 8 AM Monday, standing in by myself for a weekday staff of six, troubleshooting and picking up the pieces after others' weekend excesses.

After I became self-employed, doing psychic readings, the pattern continued and took on a few extra wrinkles.  I traveled to arts fairs and music festivals to set up my little booth and do my gig.  I was engaged for office parties and other events, to entertain the guests.  The timing of the bulk of my work then wasn't the only way I was out of step with my culture.  My choice not to set a price on my work put me out of step with most of my peers, who charged set fees up front for their services, while I told my clients to pay me whatever they thought the information was worth, after they heard it.

That was in adulthood, but I was outpacing my cohort and/or my family, being left behind, or being excluded, even before I started school.  Kids didn't seem to care whether my peculiarities represented a strength, such as my being extraordinarily flexible ("double-jointed) and able to read and do simple arithmetic before kindergarten; a weakness, such as my falling down a lot and frequent absences due to illness; or simply a difference, such as my being the only freckled redhead in my class. 

As I grew older, instead of my falling closer into step with my peers, other differences developed or were revealed.  We moved around a lot.  This gave me a broader range of experiences and greater geographical awareness, and made me ever the new kid in school.  I loved to read and found friendly librarians willing to allow me into the restricted stacks, so I knew more about many topics than others my age did.  My father, before his death when I was seven, was a machinist by trade and amateur mechanic and boat-builder.  He taught me basic skills that even my mother lacked.  None of my elementary school classmates - least of all the girls - could adjust a carburetor (most couldn't spell it, either) or fix a vapor-locked fuel pump.  None of them had to, but I did, because Mama couldn't afford to pay a mechanic.

I don't know which of my oddities aroused the most hostility in my classmates.  The ones that got the most comments were my California speech patterns (living in Kansas, then in Texas), the long absences, and the times I became suddenly and violently ill in class and had to be taken to the nurse's office to await evacuation.  The "sickie" and "pukey" nicknames, however, didn't get any more mileage than the, "egghead," or "brain" ones, and none of them had longer legs than Carrot Top or just plain, Red.

I went through a brief phase of trying to conform, motivated by loneliness and encouraged by my mother to "fit in."  I might have been even more determined to fit in if she had not wanted me to.  I was rebelling against her even before my father died.  I was a risk taker, thrill seeker and adolescent rebel to degrees beyond any of my peers.  I was about ten when I concluded that I would never be accepted and could not change myself sufficiently to be acceptable.  I then turned my energies to pursuing what interested me.  Some of these things were intellectual pursuits, a varied collection of enthusiasms for a diverse set of subjects I, then and now, would study avidly.

Other enthusiasms were more athletic.  Other kids clipped playing cards to their bike forks to simulate motor sounds as they rode in packs from home to school or the park.  At nine to ten years of age, I set up bicycle jumps, did solitary stunts years before BMX or mountain bikes came on the market, and mangled my heavy Schwinn.  When I was eleven, I got a pogo stick for Christmas.  Before the day was out, I was bored with bouncing along the sidewalk.  I started going up and down stairs, then onto and down off a waist-high retaining wall.  A couple of years later, I got a hula hoop.  Despite days, weeks, months, YEARS of effort, I could never get the hang of it.  I won limbo contests, and fell down on the dance floor with a painful dislocation from doing the Twist.

Early on, both my parents called me, "contrary," when I'd refuse a command or just do something my own way.  My father said that if I drowned, they'd have to search upstream for my body.  He said it with obvious pride, and I suppose that helped to console me for not fitting in.  Beyond some adolescent rebellion against my stupid, narrow-minded, fear-ridden mother (I characterize her thus in complete sincerity and with love.), I don't recall ever having made a choice in a certain way just for the sake of being different.  I played down my differences for many years.  Then I grew a spine and began learning to accept myself as I am.

Now, if I'm in a crowded theater and happen to be the first one to get a joke, I might feel a bit of discomfort, but not embarrassment, when my lone voice rings out in guffaws.  And, I am somewhat comforted when the rest of the audience gets it and joins in the laughter.  There is a warm feeling that comes from the herd instinct after all.  I think I'd rather shop on two feet, but I appreciate the existence of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and find that the convenience of a shopping scooter matters more to me than the varied reactions of those who see me riding it.  It is not particularly distressing that I don't have the financial ability to be as much of an early adopter as I'd like to be.

I'm gimping along to the beat of a different drum, even from the other members of a family that's out-of-step with the norm.  My husband and I, who more or less adore each other, maintain separate households and are not comfortable in each other's homes, because of such differences.  I like my hi-low-tech fringe lifestyle out here, and can't abide city life.  Greyfox needs to be near to civilization.

This whole topic came to mind because my son's overlong diurnal cycle now has him going to sleep earlier than I, so that I have to be up several times each night to stoke the fire.  He sleeps hard, I sleep light.  When he is awake, he tends the stove, but for the next week or so, he will be asleep for at least some of the same hours I'm sleeping, until he cycles back around to being wakeful at night and lets me off the fire watch. 

Occasionally, I can't help noticing how far out of step I am with the culture I am nominally a part of, but I don't care.  Once scary and painful, it is no longer a source of distress.  I'm comfortable in my skin, at ease in my mind, imperfect as I am, as long as I keep working toward being the best me I can be.

The
Three
Wise
Men
The myth du jour, the latest things to shake out of Santa Claus's pockets, are Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthasar.

A few years ago, in mid-December Greyfox phoned me to read me some funny stuff from Dave Barry's syndicated column.  The first words he read were something about the Bible telling us that the Three Wise Men... and there I interrupted him to say that the Bible doesn't say anything about any three wise men.

Greyfox was undaunted.  He's used to my interruptions and even if he weren't, it can be devilishly hard to deter a man with NPD (narcissistic personality disorder) when he's intent on anything.  He dismissed my cavil and insisted that the facts didn't matter, then he went on and read me some funny stuff about men being lousy gift givers.  I think there could have been a touch of defensiveness there.  Gift giving has been a touchy subject between us for as long as we have been together, the Old Fart having gifted me with numerous wildly inappropriate and unwelcome items, including crayfish pickled in formaldehyde.

But I digress.  Here's the straight skinny on Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, straight from snopes.com:

As Santa Claus and his reindeer are to the secular celebration of Christmas, so the three wise men and the creche are to the religious celebration. Even most of the non-religious (or non-Christian) among us recognize the symbolism of the nativity scene: it depicts the biblical account of three wise men from the east who rode atop camels and followed a star to Bethlehem, bearing gifts for the newborn Christ child who lay in a manger.

The truth is, the Bible contains virtually none of these details. They have all been added over the years from sources outside the Bible.

Mathew 2:1 tells us:

    Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem . . .

That's it. Matthew doesn't say how many wise men came from the east, doesn't mention their names, and doesn't provide any details about how they made their journey.

It has generally been assumed that the wise men (or magi) were three in number because Matthew 2:11 makes mention of three gifts: " . . . they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense and myrrh." The number of wise men is not specified in the Bible, however, and some Eastern religions have claimed up to twelve of them made the journey to Bethlehem. The names of the wise men, Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, do not come from the Bible and did not appear in Christian literature until over five hundred years after the birth of Jesus. Nothing in the Bible says the wise men rode camels (or any other animal); they may have made their journey from the east on foot for all we know. And despite the familiar lyrics of the Christmas carol "We Three Kings," no biblical source depicts the three wise men as kings. (They were most likely learned men, perhaps astrologers.)

However many wise men there were, and however they got to Bethlehem, the Bible tells us they arrived just after the birth and found the baby Jesus in a manger, right?

 Not quite. Matthew 2:11 states:

    And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him . . .

The wise men came "into the house," not the stable, and they saw a "young child," not a newborn. This passage indicates that the wise men didn't arrive until quite some time after Jesus' birth. (According to Luke 2, it was shepherds, not wise men, who visited the infant Jesus in the manger.)

 To sum up: we are told by the Bible that wise men came from the east, that they followed a star to Bethlehem to find the Christ child, and that they brought him gold, and frankincense, and myrrh. We must look to sources outside the Bible to find the origins of any of the other familiar details, however.

[Originally posted 17 December, 2004, for the first Countdown to Christmas]

Have a joyous Christmas, everyone.

Festivus, called a "holiday for the rest of us," reportedly arose in reaction against the commercialization of Christmas.  Traditional Festivus decor is spare:  a simple, low-maintenance aluminum Festivus pole.  Celebrations include food, drink, feats of strength, and airing of grievances.  This sounds like my mother's family's gatherings, wherever and whenever they occurred.

Festivus might have remained forever confined to one family and their close friends and neighbors, but one member of that family was a writer on the Seinfeld sitcom.  Writer Dan O'Keefe said his, "father discovered the holiday in a book published in 1966."

In an interview published by the New York Time on December 19, 2004, the O'Keefes, elder and younger, said,

"It was entirely more peculiar than on the show," the younger Mr. O'Keefe said from the set of the sitcom "Listen Up," where he is now a writer. There was never a pole, but there were airings of grievances into a tape recorder and wrestling matches between Daniel and his two brothers, among other rites.

"There was a clock in a bag," said Mr. O'Keefe, 36, adding that he does not know what it symbolized.

"Most of the Festivi had a theme," he said. "One was, `Is there a light at the end of the tunnel?' Another was, `Too easily made glad?' "

His father, a former editor at Reader's Digest, said the first Festivus took place in February 1966, before any of his children were born, as a celebration of the anniversary of his first date with his wife, Deborah. The word "Festivus" just popped into his head, he said from his home in Chappaqua, N.Y.

The holiday evolved during the 1970's, when the elder Mr. O'Keefe began doing research for his book "Stolen Lightning" (Vintage 1983), a work of sociology that explores the ways people use cults, astrology and the paranormal as a defense against social pressures.

SOURCE

---

HumanLight

HumanLight is a secular humanist celebration.  My son pointed out to me that it could not be a "holiday" because the root of "holiday" is "holy."  He's correct.  "Holy" does hold connotations related to Divinity, and secular humanists are "good without God."

The celebration was created in 2001 by Joe Fox and Gary Brill, as a positive expression of humanist ideals, including reason, hope, compassion, and a deep concern for human rights and freedoms, human needs and interests.

I do not doubt that secular humanists enjoy gathering to celebrate those ideals, but I cannot help thinking that another factor entered into their motivation for setting up their celebration to coincide with Christmas, Yule, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Hogmanay, Dwali, and other Winter Solstice festivities:  the importuning of envious children, wanting to get in on the gifts.