Does It Snow on the Far Side of Hell?

Bird walking; Deb Marshall photo

Last day of February – finally. The world’s gone to hell and is still traveling beyond; and still the snow continues to fall.

Last week I thought, “we’ve only got another week of February, it shouldn’t be wicked cold anymore, I can put away the true winter coat.” So I did. Then I got it back out again Monday. I think I won’t put it away again for a couple of weeks, at least.

The true-winter coat is one of two we bought in Montreal, maybe 30 years ago now. It’s mid-thigh length, has a collar lined with fleece that rises to mid-ear, a flap over that that rises to just below the nose and snaps shut holding the collar up high; has an inside sleeve as well as an outside sleeve that has lots of snaps to hold it tight. There’s a fleece-lined hood that can be pulled up and tightened down with a cord that has a toggle-catch on it, the whole of the upper chest area is lined with fleece, and the rest of it, quilted inside and with a cord-toggle inside waist belt, is made of wind-proof nylon with layers of polyester between the layers. The front is closed with a zipper topped by an overlapping flap that snaps shut. It’s long enough that when you sit on the cold car seat, it stays under you. I don’t get cold in it. It’s lovely. I’ve seen nothing that comes close to it here in the States in decades, or maybe ever.

It was 4 degrees yesterday late morning when I left for the Upper Valley, which is always warmer than here, "here" being in the midst of the snow belt in NH. When I got to the Upper Valley, it was a toasty 9 degrees. All I can say about yesterday is that at least the wind wasn’t still blowing. But by the time I left yesterday evening, it was only 4 degrees, and snowing. Fill in the rest of this paragraph with a series of deep, depressing, sighs.

We’re down to the last few days of cordwood, and beginning the semi-annual argument about whether it’s more sensible to save that small piece of a cord for emergencies in March, a month that often dumps a surprise few days or even weeks of heavy snow or freezing rain on us that brings down power lines and cuts off heat and lights for days; or burn it now because the alternative is using the furnace and burning more oil, putting us over the limit of price-guaranteed oil we signed up for in warmer and more hopeful days. I, the life-long New Hampshirite, say conserve it – the amount of oil we won’t burn if we use it now is negligible, and it could save us from several freezing days if we lose electricity, and thus the ability to run the furnace, in untrustworthy March; the Husband, a city boy from Cincinnati,  would rather take a chance – he thinks of March as a warm month when snow melts, flowers bloom, and we get gentle rains – and burn it now. I’m right, he’s wrong, but he’s home working during the day and I’m usually away during the day, so you can imagine how that will play out. I conceded two days of burning on the last few horribly cold days.

Last Friday night, I got home late – after 10 pm – and was exhausted but still had computer work I had to do. So I got myself into my jammies and bathrobe and slippers and hunkered down with the computer. The Husband was up late for himself, but went to bed at midnight.

Around 2 am I came awake with a start because I’d drifted off sitting at the computer. Went down cellar to clean out the cats’ poop boxes, doled out a midnight cat-snack, went into the bathroom to brush my teeth, and looked out the window to discover a giant fire in the back field on the edge of the woods. The flames were shooting 6 feet into the air and higher, and there was a line of them at least 10 feet long. I freaked out – mind racing: had there been a strange winter lightning strike that I didn’t hear, maybe mistaking it for snow sliding off the roof? Had some local kids been messing about in the woods and lost control of a campfire? 

What should I do first – call the fire department, haul the Husband out of bed, find the cats and corral them someplace they can’t get out of while I get the cars out of the garage that was uncomfortably too close to the fire, put on clothes and go take a close look to see how far it extends into the woods first…as I raced around doing nothing but hyper-ventilating.

Suddenly it occurred to me – that fire was in the spot and was about the size of the burn pile the Husband had been piling up for two years. He wouldn’t really start a giant fire then go to bed without waiting for it to burn down to a safe glow, going out to check it before bed, and not mentioning it to me, would he? Would he??!! History told me – yes, yes he would!

I couldn’t figure out why I hadn’t noticed it when I got home, or while I was sitting at the computer working next to a window that looks out on the field. But still, I had to take action, and still I wasn’t sure what to do first – haul the Husband’s sorry ass out of bed, put clothes on and find ice cleats so I could safely go out and take a look, figure out how to get a metal shovel out of the iced-and-snowed-in garden shed in case I needed to shovel snow on the fire to control it, call the fire department, get the cars out of the too-close garage and head them out towards the road for rapid exit if necessary, haul the Husband out of bed and kill him…

All this while I was racing around the house cursing loudly and banging doors and closets and trying to locate the cats and wondering why my loud cussing wasn’t getting the Husband up. Catman and I went out onto the back porch to see if the wind was blowing making it very dangerous, or if just staying up and monitoring it would be sufficient. And repeating to myself, over and over, “Relax. Relax. Relax.”

OK, there’s a short-handled metal snow shovel meant to be stashed in a car for digging out of snowbanks in slip-sliding emergencies, I could use that if necessary. I could kill the Husband in the morning – if I hauled his sorry ass out of bed at what was now 3 am, he’d have a headache for the next 3 days, maybe not worth the satisfaction, and I could always haul him out if the wind changed and stuff became dangerous (deep snow still covers the ground, so without wind blowing sparks at the garage or up a tree, the fire wouldn’t go too far). As satisfying as it would be to call the fire department and let him deal with that fall-out, I should save it for a change in the wind and a threat about what’s going to happen the next time he does something so monumentally stupid.  

By 5 am, the flames had died back to only about 3 feet high. I decided it would be safe to lie down on the futon in the room we call the chapel, which has lots of windows that look out onto the field; I wouldn’t unfold the futon so I wouldn't get comfortable enough to accidentally fall asleep, but I could rouse myself every 15 minutes to take a good look at the blaze, and could be out the door in seconds if need be. And I could spend the time trying to relax all the tight muscles, and memorizing the nasty things I planned to say to the Husband in the morning. There were a lot of them.

By 7 am I decided it was safe to go to bed. I fell asleep – and at 8:30 Catman was bouncing around my head yowing for breakfast. By then, the Husband was up.

“Imagine my surprise,” I started in my most pissed-off voice, “when I looked out the window at 2 am and discovered a giant fire burning in the back yard…” I began.

“I know!” the Husband cut me off. “I’d tried to start the burn pile at 5 yesterday afternoon, and it wouldn’t catch, there was too much snow on it! At 7 I decided it just wasn’t going to burn, and gave up.”

I glared at him. “And you didn’t think it would be a good idea to go out and do a close inspection before you went to bed last night – or at least mention it to me??” I growled. I snarled. 

“I looked before I went to bed – there wasn’t a sign of a flame. I figured there was no reason mention it.”

“Well, now you know better,” I snapped. “I was moments from calling the fire department!”

I groused and grumbled some more, but pretty much had to swallow most of what I had to say. I did manage to get the phrase “monumental stupidity” out before I gave it up. Grrr. Grrr.

No harm, no foul. Except that my stomach was upset all day, and the next day, I woke up with an incredibly deep, aching, stomach-turning muscle strain that lasted 3 days - and through 3 acupuncture treatments - which I assume resulted from tension and lying uncomfortably on that side on the not-folded-out futon, staring out the windows for hours. The timing was right.

I should have hauled his sorry ass out of bed. The headache wouldn’t have bothered me as much.

O February! We will not miss you!

For the blog, 28 February 2019

Beastrreau; Charley Freiberg photo

From the Edge of Darkness 17: About Wiley

It’s still February.

It’s still February, it’s still snowing, people are still shooting other people for no good reason, our lawmakers are still flaming idiots and the right-hand division is still a mob of ball-less, pandering expletives, and our so-called President is hard at work making himself Emperor.  And every move he makes is so – so – so totally bizarre and so fantastical, that my brain, at least, has fried. I don’t have any more room in it to think about solutions. I’ve begun to think there aren’t any.

And just to frost the cake, so to speak, ‘way too many newspapers have decided they have to stop running the comic strip Non Sequitur, because Wiley included a thought – in pretty much illegible scribble – that most of us are thinking several times every day. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. 

Yes, he used a good old Anglo-Saxon word that isn’t considered appropriate in modern US newsprint, or at least, not under most circumstances. But honestly – The Husband and I fished out the offending strip and couldn’t see what others saw. Then we checked the Internet to discover exactly what we were supposed to be seeing, and where it was located. We screwed up our eyes. We twisted our heads. We turned the sheet upside down. We stood on our heads. 

We still couldn’t read it. With a lot of imagination and encouragement from some folks with clearly more twisted minds than we have, we could kinda, sorta, maybe make out parts of the offending words, but, jeez, ya know? Our frickin’ (another version of the offending Anglo-Saxon word) President boasted about grabbing women’s pussies, for god’s sake, and we blast that everywhere. Wishing him the next step done to himself by himself isn’t, at this point, under these circumstances, so terribly awful – or surprising. Especially since to actually read Wiley’s wish you have to do horrible things to your face and do some damage to your sight. If no one had mentioned it on-line, probably only about 10 people in the country, possessors of some sort of code-breaking super-powers, would have seen it. As it is, those 10 people might be able to read it, but the rest of us are just pretending we can.

What is an editor to do? If the world was what it was, only a little more than two years ago, they’d have no options, they’d have to dump the strip, I suppose. If the world was what it was, it’s very unlikely any comic strip writer would have written those words for a strip that goes into regular newspapers. If the world was what it was, we wouldn’t all be so continually, totally angry that we’d be thinking those words ourselves, every single day.

But the world isn’t what it was, and probably never will be again. If those words had been really legible, or even easily legible, I wouldn’t be writing this – Wiley would have screwed up badly and would have deserved what he got. Truth is, though, that had those words been easily legible, what he would have gotten in response would have been a blank space where that  Sunday strip should have run and a lot of calls from irate editors demanding an apology and a guarantee that he not do anything of the sort ever, ever, ever again. And then they’d continue publishing his strip.

They would have continued publishing it because it is, hands-down, one of the most, if not the most, intelligent, articulate, thoughtful strips being written today. And the artwork is good – bonus! Not having it in the daily paper is a huge, and in many ways disturbing, mistake.

The Boston Globe is still publishing the strip, I was happy to see on Sunday. And it can be read on Go Comic’s website.  But that’s not really the point.

The point is that we’ve become too adamant about tossing the baby out with the bathwater. Wiley was wrong – and maybe it was a mistake, or maybe it was a foolish, calculated risk that blew up in his face: his explanations make it unclear – but for years past, and into the future, Non Sequitur has been, and will continue to be, one of the best, one that makes us aware of ourselves and our own errors in thought and assumption, and has made relatively rare political commentary in a gentle, smart, non-confrontational way. We lose much more by not seeing it daily than anyone has from seeing its one big, goofy mistake.

I don’t know what I’d do if I were a newspaper editor. I’ve been an editor, so I know how this particular situation would feel like a sneaky ploy, pretty unforgivable, and something that would leave me unsure about the validity and safety of future strips. But here’s the other thing – this one weird strip of Wiley’s, because of its design, could have something hidden in it, but his daily strips couldn’t. And as an editor, I’d have to balance-balance-balance this decision, not an easy thing to do, not an easy decision to make. If Non Sequitur were a comic strip that aimed to amuse and only that, I’d probably dump it in a moment. But it’s not – it’s thought-provoking, enlightening, and at its core, editorializing.  

If I were an editor, I’d keep printing it. I might move it to the editorial page. I’d surely write something about my decision. Or I might just keep running it, with no commentary.

Because Wiley’s sin, in today’s world, with every other truly dangerous and scary thing  that’s going on that we have no control over, is venial, and easily forgivable. And the good he does very much out-weighs his oopsie. 

And, besides, I think the same thing. Pretty much every single day.