Inktrails from Alaska

Bad Advice

Karin Goodwin
2002

An estranged brother and sister, living in different cities, meet new loves of dubious value, while still involved in other relationships, also of dubious value. I’m not sure why the book is called Bad Advice, but since editors and publishers tend to choose titles for books, often overriding the author’s choice, the mismatch could be due to that.

It’s a funny book and the writing is fresh and entertaining. If I hadn’t already returned it to the library I’d post a quote for your enjoyment. However, just the way in which the sister meets her new boyfriend is pretty comical. She’s jogging in Arizona and mistakes him for a mugger (who turns out to be less innocent than she thought) and performs her self-defense so well she has to take him to the hospital. Except first they have to find a way to get to the road and a phone, that way being a distant cowboy with a very skittery horse. By the time they get to help, it’s a miracle everyone isn’t injured.

Though the plot twists in almost screwball comedy style, (in fact, it would make a great ensemble movie), the characters are well-drawn and wonderfully flawed. A private detective, lovers and ex-lovers, parents and a dog, a snowstorm and unexpected arrivals all wind up into a grand sorting-out of troubles. It’s a book with a good heart.

Grouch Marx, Master Detective

author: Ron Goulart
1998

I’m a bit of a Marxophile. So when I found a mystery novel series that starred Groucho as the “Master Dective” I knew I’d have to take a look.

It’s one thing to write a book starring Sherlock Holmes, who, even as a fictional character, died decades ago. You can resurrect Holmes, but you can’t bring him into modern times. Besides, much of the allure of a Holmes mystery is that it takes place in the Victorian era. People behaved differently then, which becomes interesting.

It’s another thing to write a book with a protagonist who is not fictional. In fact, one can see hours and hours of his movies and television shows if one wishes. There are people alive who knew Groucho. Apparently the author got permission from something called Groucho Marx Productions in order to write this series of books. It’s strange to see someone fictionalize a real person. Distortion of a movie star happens in biographies, in newspapers and magazines all the time. But to take an entirely real character and try to move him through a plot in a book is a dangerous undertaking, to say the least.

The setting is 1937 Hollywood, and while that might seem like the distant past to some of you, the fact is that cars, telephones and other modern devices make it far less foreign that Victorian England.

Goulart writes with a light hand and a good sense of humor. His Groucho is entertaining most of the time and there are some truly hilarious conversations and wisecracks. Groucho’s Watson is a script writer named Frank Denby, who meets Groucho when he’s hired to write a radio script for him. Denby has just met and fallen in love with a woman and Groucho responds with “Ah splendid. I’ll do my best to screw that up for you.”

Remembering that Goulart has written many books about comic strips helps put this book into perspective. It’s just a little bit deeper than a comic strip. It’s amusing, moves quickly, and entertains. I found myself having to translate what was written into a black and white movie in my head, and that helped. I have no doubt that Goulart had a similar movie in his head when he wrote the book.

The plot is adequate, but nearly gets lost in all the patter. A good book for an afternoon or two of escape. I haven’t read the next book in the series, but I probably will.

The Key Words

It is 11:44 pm as I watch a line of clouds turn pink, magenta and lavender, lined with gray against a pale, pale blue sky. It's getting close to solstice and we'll be watching the sun chase itself in circles soon.

Much like the sun chasing itself, search engines seem to have magic words that chase down my blog. I check the links to see where folks have come from, to see what they are looking for, which keywords they are using.

It's very entertaining. Kind of like looking in the phone book for funny names. I am sure at least one of these folks was googlewhacking. He or she did a search on "offenbach clapping horses." That's three words, more than googlewhacking generally allows, but still, it's very strange. Googlewhacking is going to Google, typing in two random words, two unrelated words, and trying to see if you can come up with just ONE website. I've done it about three times. It's not easy. Look up "googlewhack" on Google and you'll find out all about it.

Stories could be told about the people who are using search engines and who find and come to this site. What's behind the person who kept searching for something about "children born without a corpus collosum"? Did she (I just feel it had to be a she) ever find that someone could actually exist that way, or could possibly have been born that way? I know that experiments with epileptics have been done, cutting the corpus collosum to eliminate the seizures. Unfortunately this results in the left hand actually, truly and factually not knowing what the right hand is doing. Hmmm. Maybe people born this way, if there are any, become politicians.

How about "superwoman body paint?" Now that brings up an interesting image.

Someone found my site by looking for "planting Swedish aspens."

And then there are the usual people looking for porn. My post "All Wet" gets hits all the time from people searching for "wet" this and that. You can figure that out, no elaboration is needed.

For a while I was getting visited by people looking for "niche music." What the hell is "niche music?" Doesn't every type of music fill some sort of niche?

I was gratified to find someone searching for "set in Antwerp," which led them to my review of The Shovel and the Loom. I hope to add more book reviews soon.

All in all I wonder what words I could use to make more people find and read my blog? Is there a set of words that people search for more than any others. Well, aside from "sex" and "fuck" and all the varied mispellings and codings of that sort of thing.

What do people really want to find?

A Very Serious Subject

There are so many rant blogs around that I've tried to do my best to be constructive rather than destructive, mature rather than reactionary, well-spoken rather than sprinkling swear words and mean names everywhere just for effect. However, there is one very serious subject that tries my patience. Iced tea.

What money-grubbing IDIOT decided that iced tea needed to be packaged into a syrup the same way soft drinks are? Now when I order iced tea on a hot day what do I get? Something that is vaguely colored like iced tea, but tastes like old dishwater with a dash of shoe polish in it. With a lovely plastic aftertaste.

Restaurants used to have large urns where they brewed a giant batch of tea every morning. This was real tea. It woke up your taste buds, had a nice, sharp tang, and turned a special color if you put real lemon in it, you know, that sort of opaque tan?

Just to fuck with our heads, the soft drink companies have installed some of these urns in some restaurants, and if you look behind them, there is a plastic tube going to a plastic bag full of that reddish brown substance, made in a laboratory, no doubt, that is supposed to be "tea." Hey, this "tea" tastes like the real thing the way cherry popsicles taste like real cherries. I bet it is untouched by human hands. Chemical tea made by robots. Or monkeys. No, monkeys would do a better job. If monkeys chewed up tea leaves and spit them into those plastic bags the "tea" would taste better.

This fake tea tastes so bad that I would rather drink DIET PEPSI. And I'm telling you, if you want something nasty, try drinking diet soda. The aftertaste will kick you across the room. It makes me want to get out a putty knife and scrape my tongue. The fact that some people can drink that stuff and get so used to it that they think it tastes good is a tribute to our adaptability as human beings. It's why we aren't monkeys chewing up tea leaves in some lab somewhere.

Iced tea made from instant tastes 700 monkeys better than the soft drink fake tea. The fake tea has become so predominant that I actually bought some powdered instant just to have around in case I couldn't find any real tea. At home I brew tea and then ice it, and that's the way you do it. Or you make sun tea. But one thing you don't do is put some kind of pig poo in a plastic bag and call it tea.

It has been really hot lately, and midday I was roasting in my teaching room on the second floor. I had a break so I ran out to get some iced tea. I wracked my brains, trying to think of where I could find some real tea. Wendy's used to brew their own, so I drove over there. Sure enough, their drive-up menu read: Fresh Brewed Iced Tea. Just to be sure, I asked the voice in the nearly unintelligible microphone box. "Do you brew your own tea?" "No, I don't think so," the girlish voice replied. "It says 'Fresh Brewed Iced Tea' on your sign, " I replied. "No, it comes out of a plastic bag," she said. "Good by!" I said and drove off.

Finally I remembered I had had some good iced tea at an oriental noodle house in town. I zoomed over there and ordered a large iced tea to go. But instead of picking up her pitcher of iced tea and filling my cup, she took the cup into the back.... I took one sip after I had take it out to the car and guess what? Fake fucking tea! At a Japanese restaurant! They brew the tea for the sit-down customers but sell that fake stuff if you want it to go. I was shocked. Don't oriental people value good tea? I always thought they did. It was a terrible disillusionment.

Now I don't know where I can get real iced tea anymore. From what I can tell, most people hate this fake tea as much as I do. It's not convenient, it's totally inconvenient because it's inedible. Restaurants ought to know better.

Iced tea is a very serious subject. On a hot day, it is even more serious. Nothing makes you cool off better than a nice, tall, cold iced tea. If only I had one.

The Buzz is Back

A few weeks ago I saw my first mosquito for the year. The first ones we call the Big Dumb Ones. These guys bumble around and seem to land on you only by mistake. They are huge, easy to feel and easy to swat. Half the time the go flapping past you and don’t even pay any attention to you. The birds must love them. What easy catchings!

I was out all afternoon on Sunday at a barbeque and the mosquitoes were still the Big Dumb Ones but they were not so dumb. They were hitting us pretty good, and we all looked out for each other. If you saw someone with a mosquito on his forehead you either told him and he slapped himself in the head or you just went up and slapped him yourself. Such is the community spirit that no one gets upset if even a total stranger turns around and gives you a light whack; we all know it’s a friendly mosquito-squishing and we generally say “Thank you!”

Later in the year, when the Mean Little Ones come out, life outside (heck, even inside) becomes even more interesting. The Mean Little Ones are like kamikaze biters. They zoom in on you and attack you at lightspeed. And there are zillions of them. You get a permanent case of “It’s ON me” and spend a lot of time slapping yourself, jumping suddenly, waving arms, shaking head and generally acting wacky. Any little tickle can cause an Alaskan to twitch, shake, jump or whack herself, resulting in a populace that looks like it’s in the grip of mass epilepsy. It’s not epilepsy, it’s bugilepsy.

Last night as I walked the dog I heard The Buzz. Actually, it’s more of a hum. Far less subtle than the Taos Hum, it’s the voices of trillions of mosquitoes singing in the trees. Everywhere, for miles and miles, thousands of miles, there are mosquitoes zzzzzz-zing. It all blends together into one huge hum.

The buzz has come early this year. Oh, and I’m now seeing hornets and yellow jackets. Oh boy, here we go.

Last winter it didn’t stay cold enough long enough. Construction workers are finding that the ground isn’t even frozen, in fact, they found it unfrozen in April, which is almost unheard of. This is good news for construction work, and bad news when it comes to bug populations. It’s going to be a humdinger of a year, literally.

The Shovel and the Loom

by Carl Friedman
Translation by Jeannette K. Ringold
1993 in the Dutch
1996 in English
Persea Books, NY

The first thing you must know is that Carl Friedman is a woman. I was confused at the beginning of the novel because the gender of the protagonist isn’t mentioned and since the author had a male name, I assumed (with ingrown sexism natural even to us women) that the person working in a florist shop making funeral wreathes, who also worked as a dishwasher plagued by cockroaches, and who studied Philosophy was a young man.

It’s not until sometime in the second chapter that our hero is revealed as a woman, when she applies for a job as a nanny with an Hasidic family, and is chided for wearing pants. As I read and realized this, I gave a sigh of relief, thinking, “She’s just like me, does everything. She’s capable.”

The Shovel and the Loom is a small book, but a very good one. By turns it is very funny, and very interesting, including philosophical conversations between the twenty-year-old Chaya and her elderly friend Mr. Apfelschnitt, and wonderful interactions with a three-year-old who would love to be a duck, and who quacks quietly as they walk through the park. We learn about Chaya’s parents, who are both Holocaust survivors and who are dealing with the legacy of the war in their own separate ways. Each time we meet them, another small fact is revealed about their character, the kind of thing that makes the reader have to stop and think.

Set in Antwerp, the book was originally written in Dutch. I very highly recommend it.

Catching Up

I am quite pleased to have been able to import all the posts from my old blog in one swell foop, thanks to a php script some kind soul put out for others to use. It took some trial and error and the help of cyber friends to figure out all the arcane doodling that needed to be done but in the end everything came out just fine. Maybe not perfect, but good enough for me.

If you hadn't been to the old blog (which had self-destroyed its own database and no one at my hosting company cared to help--I'll be switching host companies soon--they doubled their rates and hired techs who don't help you, go figure) have fun browsing all the old posts.

Getting My Hands Dirty

I have almost all day to myself because of summer student drop-off. If only it weren't 20 miles to buy a big bag of potting soil!

A mom waiting for her daughter to come out of her voice lesson chatted with me in the hallway about Spring. We were inpecting the birch tree that grows outside the window. She told me her grandma used to say that after the birch and aspen leaves were the size of squirrel ears it was safe to put plants outside overnight or plant things in the ground. The leaves are now bigger than that, about the size of teddy bear ears. I figure it's safe to go nuts planting things.

I've already started. Last weekend Scott and I liberated a whole bunch of his sad, root-bound houseplants from their too-small pots, and did the old muscial pots deal where everyone switches into a bigger pot. The ficus tree got its own, brand-new pot since it was the Big Brother. All the little brother and sister plants had to use the hand-me-down pots. Good thing we can't hear them talking. They'd have been saying "I don't wwwaaaaaannnnnnaaaa be in thaaat pot!"

He tells me that none of them got transplant shock and that the only one that looks weird is a spider plant that had root-rot anyway. Feh. There are a zillion more spider plants where that one came from. I'm satisfied we did well by the ones we transplanted.

My windbreaker pocket is full of seeds from last year's flowers. While checking out what the old flower gardens at his place looked like after the snow melted off, I discovered an amazing thing: the dianthus survived and is even now growing back! You wouldn't expect a plant that I grew in Albuquerque and Oregon to thrive in the arctic, but there you go, life is full of surprises! Every bed has dianthus with green and growing leaves! You understand folks, it was fifty below last winter, right?

I'm an inveterate seed picker, and will stake out public flower beds in the summer, finding the flowers I like the best and then trying to snag some seeds from them in the fall before the maintenance guys pull them out and throw them away.

I'll be filling up window boxes and starting some flowers from seed very soon. Darn, I'd do it today but for the fact that last weekend I gave all my potting soil to Scott! Oh well.

The raspberry vines are coming out and getting some leaves on them. There's a patch right by my front door and it's one of the main perks of living here. I get to eat a handful of raspberries every day during the summer.

Here in the rural areas there isn't any garbage pickup, rather, you go drop your garbage off at the transfer station. From there, the big trucks come and take it to the dump. Everything goes to the transfer station, whether it's functioning or not. People throw away the darndest things! At some transfer stations they've installed a carport roof as a shelter from the elements so folks can leave usable items under it for others to pick up. So far at the transfer station (often called The Mall by some of us, since it's almost like going shopping) I have picked up a couple brand new, very nice wool sweaters, two Macintosh computers (two Classics, one had a music composition program on it, very serendipitous for me), a beautiful, small bookcase of solid cherry, various kitchen utensils, and dishes, a blender (the kind that has twenty buttons, going from "stir" to "mutilate"), a toaster, plant pots and more.

Folks building things like storage sheds or tree houses can often find the bulk of their building materials at The Mall. Industrial stuff ends up there just as much as other stuff, and there is a toxic disposal box where people put the remainders of their unused house and wall paint, which can be handy if you need to paint a fence or something.

One thing you won't find at The Mall is a new bag of potting soil. SIGH. I guess getting my seeds in the soil will just have to wait for tomorrow.

May Weather Update

Somehow May 1, International Worker's Day got right past me. It's already May 3, two days until Cinco de Mayo, which almost no one up here celebrates. Spring, however, is here in full force and everyone celebrates that!

As I write this at 11:17pm the sky is still blue. It's deep twilight outside. Night is now a matter of it being less light, not dark. It's dark enough to see some stars around 2am. At 4am it is getting pretty light.

On June 21 a bunch of us will go to the top of Ester Dome and watch the sun run around in circles. Midnight Sun Festival is a big deal here in Fairbanks, with citywide celebrations going on. Our band, the Tanana Highlanders, and many others, will play a set on one of the downtown stages, and there will be a parade, an antique car show, street fair, and general genial partying.

The daffodils are coming up in yards around town, the rhubarb is poking up in my front yard, and I'm planning my gardening projects. It rained today for the first time since last year, which means most of the snow is gone. There are huge expanses of brown everywhere, but some yards have magically greened up, and the forests are all spring green with leaves the size of squirrel ears. It won't be long until most of the hideous garbage that surrounds lots of cabins and trailers is masked by alders, willows, and birch and aspens. Thank God!

We've had unseasonably warm weather, up to 70 degrees and maybe more, breaking several records. The mosquitoes are out, but still not too pesty, and I haven't seen any hornets yet.

Breakup was quick and final this year. The rivers are running in the Fairbanks area, a bit of flooding, as usual, in Salcha, but for the most part it's been an extremely DRY breakup. I barely got my shoes muddy! I didn't even have to put on rubber boots, which really means a lot! Our driveway, and most of the dirt roads I've been on are dry, dry dry. We skipped Mud Season.

All this dryness is good in one way, but bad in another. One fire from last year wintered over under the snow and started up again already. Several more have been put out quickly, but if we get thunderstorms again we could be in deep smoke. Again. Please, I hope that doesn't happen, I don't want to spend the summer wearing a gas mask again.

Sure, six million acres burned last year, an area roughly the size of Massachusetts. Or was it Connecticut? Whatever. Some small New England state that we could probably fit ten of inside Alaska. Yep, six million acres is nothing. Unfortunately we could burn six million more, say Pennsylvania this time. Alaska is two and a half times the size of Texas. So imagine you burn Texas up entirely, not once, but two times and then go try to burn it again? That's how much land is here. Hmmmm, makes you think...

However, so far we haven't burned up and I hope we won't. I've got flower garden plans and bird watching and picnicking plans and playing with the dog plans. Not to mention fishing and biking. Plus riding around in antique cars and trucks, and going to all the festivals here that happen every summer.

Spring is here and the trees are just full of birds singing their brains out, and squirrels teasing the dog like crazy. There's one who runs up to our front window and just stands there chattering at Sofie. Makes her insane. Whenever I open the door she doesn't just bust out all happy to go walking. Instead she slinks out, sleek and predatory in full coyote mode, and freezes, ready to pounce just in case that arrogant squirrel should happen to be within reach.

She's finally stopped looking for snow to pee on. For a while there, when breakup first started, she wouldn't go unless there was snow to go on, because that's what she was used to for the last six months!

Pretty soon everything will be so green it will be hard to believe that it was ever all white.