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.

 

There's a Witch in the Woods!

Red Squirrel; Deb Marshall photo

One winter, many many winters ago, three wild turkeys came to visit us – or to check out the area under the wart rail where I feed the winter birds, to be precise.  They sashayed through twice in two days, and we never saw them again. The cats were alarmed, the dogs were terrorized, and we never thought anything about it again, except to think it was odd that the turkeys that live in the woods behind us never showed up to scavenge seeds the sloppy winter birds toss on the ground.

During the winter we get a variety of birds eating the seed we put out: chickadees, cardinals, bluejays, mourning doves, nuthatches, some grosbeaks, some little black ones with bright yellow beaks, and some slim swift red squirrels and some fat fat grey squirrels. Crows get into the compost bin and keep it mixed about during the winter and on very rare occasions they’ll come snag a few nuts or fly off with the suet block.

But this year, we’ve also had turkeys. For awhile they’d straggle here in twos or threes; but for the past couple of months they arrive either in a group of four, or a herd of 17. Any motion they see in the house as we try to sneak up on the windows to peer out at them, strange prehistoric-looking things that they are, sends them racing back over the marsh towards the woods, or sometimes flying in crashing bumbling self-imposed terror into the trees on the far side of the field. After awhile, they come back out of the woods, and we’ll see them slipping and sliding about on the ice, from time to time popping their heads up over the wart decking, looking amazingly like an ostrich, to see if anything alarming is about.

Oddly, they’re scared if we open a door or look out the windows, but are very slow to move if we arrive by car while they’re noshing. One morning Catman in his lordliness stalked and herded the entire flock of 17 out of our yard and into the neighbors’, then sat at the edge of the driveway and glared at them long enough that they didn’t come back until much later that day. Another day before the deep snow, after filling their crops they all hunkered down along the edge of the driveway and took mud baths and naps. And they seem to have made a truce with a couple of the fat squirrels, who will get down on the driveway amongst them and share the feed I toss out , and with the other birds, who pretty much ignore them as they fly to the wart rail to eat, dropping extra goodies for them onto the snowbank below.

We look forward to seeing them. And you know – up close, in the sun, a turkey’s bland plumage is absolutely gorgeous, flashing streaks of blue and purple and green and gold in those otherwise dull black and brown feathers.  But for the past month, instead of coming daily, sometimes the turkeys disappear for several days at a time. And I’ve noticed something odd: on the days the turkeys are here, there are no mourning doves – none at all that day. And on the days the mourning doves are here, there are no turkeys – also none at all that day. Some weeks one or the other will be gone for days, but never at the same time.

Curious, I thought. So I started counting them, and discovered that there are exactly as many mourning doves as there are turkeys. This is very very curious – most years, we have only four or five mourning doves, but this year, we get a group of four, or a herd of 17. 

Hmmm, I thought, again. This has been a strange winter. And a hard one for birds and squirrels and turkeys, because the over-abundance of chipmunks this summer hauled off all the wild foods these critters would normally be eating – the chipmunks squirreled it away or ate it before they went to their winter nests. The deer are also having a hard time this year, because the little rodents stole all the apples and windfalls, too.

But why the interesting correlations between dove herds and turkey herds? This could be coincidence if it happened once or twice, but it happens every day.

No worries: I have a theory. It seems obvious that there’s a witch in the woods who’s turning turkeys into mourning doves, and mourning doves into turkeys. 

And I think I know who the witch is.

Besides that turkeys have been appearing at my house in ever-ascending numbers, the only other different thing that happened this past year – well, the only strange thing that happened locally, anyway – is that out-back naybah Eddie Bear sold his very strange and interesting house, which lies up the hill and through the woods in the direction the turkeys flee towards, to a Polish poet. And Eddie Bear’s house is one that would fascinate a witch – or a poet. It’s a house that is nowhere the same: many stairways, including one that descends into a cave-like space; hidden pathways for cats (and the poet got a couple of those familiars last summer, who spend a lot of time in the grape arbor that spans one of the several high-up decks); doors of odd shapes, some that one needs to stoop to get through; windows of many sizes and shapes and styles. No front door – in fact, no front of the house.  And a fascinating layout of rooms, on many different levels. It’s a house of uncountable storeys, and probably uncountable stories, too.

I’m on to you, Poet! I’ve read some of your poems, and they read like spells - conjuring, repeating, distilling, twisting, reappearing, unfurling, slithering, exploding, rushing, stalking, dripping, flying... 

You aren’t fooling me!

Szczesliwy poeta czarownicy!

Hunkering Down

Deb Marshall photo

The snow has already started.

It’s been lowering all day, not a sparkle of sun through the grey cloudy sky, and the birds and turkeys and squirrels spent a lot of time gobbling the extra seed I put out because the next two days are going to be hard on them. Extra sunflower seeds, extra nuts, plenty of suet balls and cracked corn: the wart was busy all morning and afternoon, like any good diner.

I couldn’t seem to wake up today, and spent most of it lying on the couch, bundled in afghans, with a book propped on my chest that miraculously stayed upright and didn’t fall and bop me on the nose every time I fell asleep, which was often – I think I read the same paragraph 15 times.

And then suddenly, it seemed, it was almost dark out; on the radio, dire warnings about inches of snow – feet, that is – to expect , and the Husband was hauling  in extra loads of wood hoping to bring in enough to feed the woodstove for tonight and two more days. I rousted myself, and began the things we do before a big storm that is likely to knock out electricity for awhile: make sure the teapot and pan on the woodstove are topped up with water, fill all the pitchers and water bottles in the house so there will be plenty of drinking water, fill buckets with water to leave in the tub for toilet flushing, make sure all the dishes are washed. Plug in cell phones so batteries are at peak, check the batteries in lanterns, bring out the candles that got put away after the last storm.  Decide what we’re going to eat for the next few days, make a little extra for supper so there are leftovers, and boil the chicken that’s producing this week’s soup stock tonight, rather than waiting until tomorrow. That giant pot’s out on the wart cooling off before I stick it in the frig overnight, and so far the snow isn’t building up on its hot surface. 

And then – turn on some lights and memorize which ones are on, so that if the electricity does go out we can shut them off before heading to bed, so they don’t burn all night if the electricity comes back on. Should we take showers tonight while we can? Does anyone in the family need to come here to sleep, just in case? 

We have a fine house for over-wintering a storm: we heat with a woodstove, and there’s a big futon in the room that the woodstove lives in, and a chair that converts into a bed in the next room. We have plenty of food in the freezers and on shelves in cellar and pantry, and this early in the winter the basket under the dining table still has several squashes and pumpkins waiting to be eaten, and there are baskets of onions and potatoes and garlic in the pantry. Like all canny New Englanders, we keep baggies of ice cubes in the freezers to prove that the food hasn’t thawed out during a power outage (if the cubes melted and refroze flat, toss the food); there are always extra candles stored away, and extra batteries, and a couple of lanterns and a radio that run on crank power.  We can even light our gas stove burners with a match, so we can cook; and the woodstove heats soup beautifully.

So we’re hunkered down. With any luck, this storm will turn into a big piffle and life will go on as usual, the Sunday paper will arrive, the computers will be able to access the internet, the cats and I will still have cabin fever and be cranky, hard to please, and napping a lot. The Buddha on the front porch is up to his chin in snow, which is a couple of inches higher than earlier today; the deck is all white.  The snow shovels are within reaching distance of the doors. It’ll be interesting to see what the world looks like tomorrow morning. 

But in the meantime, hunkering down isn’t all bad. The lights seem to shine a little brighter when we aren’t sure how long they’ll be on; the water in my glass tastes a little fresher, more satisfying. After I fill it, I stand for a few moments on the tiles that surround the woodstove, letting the heat from the tiles soak through my socks, warming my feet. 

It could be worse.