Category Archives: Uncategorized

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Sunshine awards! – again.

sunshine-award

Last winter sometime, I can’t recall exactly when, I was nominated for the sunshine blog award. I dutifully filled in the questions and attempted to nominate some folks. Well, I was nominated again. It was a couple of weeks ago now, I think. In spite of our tiny dark-roast / light-roast holy war fought over twitter to a stalemate, author L.B. Scott , a shining pillar of civility and good-nature, has nominated me again. At first I was going to skip it. After all, I’m busy with writing, work, new projects, and I haven’t been blogging much anyhow. However, I’ve been goaded into it. So, without further ado, here are my responses to the Sunshine Blogger interview – with more questions and a small handful of nominations on the bottom.

1.) What is your favorite book?

Do I really have to pick? Okay, I will – The Silmarillion. Yes, really. I love it. Harry Potter (a close 2nd through 8th) is also a favorite. Ironically, these two books haven’t really informed my writing voice as much as you might expect. I’d love to write a successful high fantasy in the vein of Tolkien, with all the rich language, culture, history, and world, and I’ve tried, but I have yet to make the story ring true. Maybe some day.

2.) Did you go to College? What was your Major?

I went to College for Computer Science. I wanted to make video games. Looking back on it, what I really wanted to do was write video-game story lines. Now I do databases and reporting, but that pays the bills way better than fantasy-land wannabe writer.

3.) What Hogwarts house have you been sorted into?

Ravenclaw.

4.) What was the first chapter book you read?

I’ll go with my side of the mountain. It was a young adult book about a kid who runs off into the Catskills to live off the land. That’s the first one I read and enjoyed. Xanth book 1 was what got me reading.

5. What is the silliest nickname you’ve received?

I win the award on this one. Nable. Like Naval, but with a b instead of a v. When I was a kid a friend of mine decided I liked Naval oranges, which I did, except he thought it was Nable and not naval, so he called me Nable. That name stuck for years. I still associate myself with that name, though I no longer use it.

6.) Where do you want to escape to?

Home. I already live in Alaska and on the edge of a swamp surrounded by forest and wild animals and stuff. Although, the backwoods of Vermont sound nice too.

7.) Take me on your ideal date

No. I’m married, but I’ll take my wife on an ideal date. We would take a long walk on an unseasonably warm fall night to lie on the side of the hill and gaze at the stars while we talk and wait for the northern lights to flicker to life.

8.) What was your favorite game to play as a child?

I don’t remember, that was like 30 years ago. I can say that I didn’t like playing with toys that didn’t have many moving parts. So, I spent a lot of time playing with Lego. It was all about the build for me.

9.) If you could own any animal and not deal with the consequences (ie: it won’t eat you, it now eats grass) what would own and why?

To be perfectly honest, I flat wouldn’t. Maybe a cat – a nice one, but I have a hard enough time taking care of myself and kids, let alone another critter that needs truckloads of grass to remain happy and not dead. Now, if we were counting trees as animals? I’d like to have a full-sized English oak in my front yard. I’d feed him, and water him and name him Bruce. You know, Bruce the oak.

10.) Your favorite TV show?

Firefly. Why? Is it just the cliché nerd-fav? no. I love it because it never had time to start sucking. Plust the dialogue is OUTSTANDING. Listen to it. Then compare it to something like, hell, I don’t know, Grimm. Don’t get me wrong, Grimm is one of my most guilty pleasures, but the dialogue is mostly weak – except some of the stuff you get from Monroe and Rosalie, I have a strong suspicion there is some improvisation going on there.

11.) If you could do anything knowing you would not fail, what would you do? Why?

Easy. I’d quit my day job and become a full-time writer. I love writing and while I’d still be beholden to a publisher, agent, audience, I still have a larger measure of control over what I’m doing than just about any other job. Anyhow, it’s what I want to do, so there it is.

Alright, so I answered the questions, now it’s your turn:

1.) Why do you blog?

2.) Have you ever seen a ghost?

3.) What is the most amazing place you’ve ever been?

4.) Would you rather spend 3 weeks in 90F+ weather or 3 weeks at -30F?

5.) What is your dream job?

6.) If you could wake up one morning and play an instrument proficiently, any instrument, what would it be?

7.) Light Roast or Dark Roast? You have to take a side, even if you don’t drink coffee.

8.) Apple or PC?

9.) What is the most recent book you read?

10.) What is your favorite thing to do?

11.) You have 1 weekend to visit any major city in the world – which one?

To take the ‘award’ All you have to do is answer the questions, make up 11 new ones and pass on the joy to up to 11 others. If you have a blog and have read this, consider yourself nominated too. Answer the questions. I’d also like to call out a few folks specifically.

https://officialgabrielpenn.wordpress.com/

https://dreamsandletters.wordpress.com/

https://wyrmflight.wordpress.com/

 

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The Wild West is all Wrong

LastLightofDay

Everyone’s seen at least bits and pieces of a western. You’ve got gunslingers and bandits, train robberies and shootouts. I’m not a historian, so I couldn’t tell you what the real wild west was like, but I live in a place that people still take for the wild west. I was out doing some shopping last night and this thought hit me, it’s fictionalish, and I couldn’t quite turn it into flash fiction, but here it is:

It’s a little late in the evening, but I need to hit the grocery story for a beer and breakfast for the kids. On my way along the two-lane country road, a huge jacked up truck crawls right up to my bumper. I check my speed it’s fifty-five, a few above the speed limit. He blasts his horn and roars past belching black smoke. Back of the bed is adorned with a pair of flags, the confederate battle flag on one side and a yellow flag with a snake in the middle on the right hand side. I slow a bit so he doesn’t clip me as he rolls into my lane a little too soon. Then he brake-checks me. I dive to the right and slam on my brakes. He floors it, tearing off into the dark.

I’m alright, my heart rate is up a bit, but the car’s not hurt and I’m still on the road. It happens all the time. Driving along, minding my own business and someone takes it upon themselves to bully the guy driving the beat up minivan. There isn’t anyone to deter or check the behavior. Doesn’t matter how dangerous it is. The people here just won’t pay for police, so there aren’t any. The truth is, I know this guy though he doesn’t know me. He’ll keep doing it until he spins out of control on that little road. That truck will flip three times and roll over on to a sedan with a small family in it. Three people will be dead, including the driver of the truck. When the dust settles, all of his friends will talk about what a good person he was and all of the good things he did and what a terrible freak accident it was. There won’t be a word paid to the unacceptable behavior this young man and the absolute disregard he has for the health and safety of other people.

By the time I get to the store, I’m already ready to be home, but I can’t remember all of the things I’m supposed to get, I’m too stressed out. There’s an overweight man at the check out counter, he’s wearing a cowboy hat and a t-shirt that reads ‘You can have your hope and change, I’m keeping my guns and money.’ He’s sporting a tough expression and has a .45 strapped to his hip. Turns out I know this guy too, but he doesn’t know who I am. His gun may be conspicuous, but it’s a naive gesture at best. He’s never shot a living thing in his life, doesn’t have the stomach for it. What’s really going on is that he’s afraid, he’s bought into the fear that someone, who he’s helped to arm, will roll into his rural grocery store and start shooting people up. The irony is that the man isn’t involved in illegal activities, he’s cautious, he’ll never see a shootout, no, he’ll die of a heart attack. Something he’s always assumed won’t happen to him, he’s too tough for that sort of nonsense.

I move past the register by the customer service desk. The manager is standing there looking every bit the part of a zombie. Even though I make eye-contact, he doesn’t acknowledge my presence. He doesn’t know me, but it turns out I know him. He was the valedictorian of his class who had decided to take a year off to save up. In that year he broke his arm and had reconstructive surgery. All of the money he had saved up went to pay for his hand. Another year went by and more expenses came, there was no savings for college, then another and another, and he met a young woman, and decided to put it off. Some twenty years later, here he is, divorced twice and working a job he hates.

Finally, I remember what I came for, it was in the freezer section. The girl stocking back there looked up, and then turned away to go do something else. She’s cute, perhaps 19, lots of curves, but fit. I remember her from twenty years ago, just after high school. Tonight she’s going to go back to the apartment she shares with a couple of friends where she’ll drink too much. She’s going to have sex with one of those guys. Later, she’ll giggle uncomfortably as she explains to another girlfriend of hers that she accidentally had sex with a guy, and that she didn’t really want to. She’ll never call it for what it is, rape. Her friend won’t ever call it that either. After all, she’s a flirt, she must have been asking for it. Everyone believes that.

With breakfast in hand, I wander over to the liquor store, pick up my six pack and hit the check-out. The woman I’m staring at is wearing a grimace her acne is as bad as I’ve ever seen and she’s rail thin. She looks as though she’s pushing sixty, but no, she’s no older than I am. I’m staring at the woman, she has a familiar face. Then it hits me I knew her back when too, she doesn’t remember me though. She left home just after high-school and started experimenting with drugs. At first it was just pot, truth be told though she was doing enough of that back before graduation. She wanted more experiences, acid, coke, then meth, and now heroin. It’s left her as no more than a skeletal representation of what a person should look like.

When I leave the store, I drop the six pack in the back of the van with the little sack of groceries. I’ll retreat to my little house in the woods, lock my doors and hope that someone doesn’t break in in the middle of the night. This here, this is the wild west, it is and was, and it’s not good, and if this is how people want it, it’s not a place we can take much pride in.

photo credit: Last light of the day via photopin (license)

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It’s hot out there

forest-fire-432870_1280

There it is again. You could make an argument that it sounds about like any other prop-driven aircraft, excepting the DC-6 has a low throbbing growl, perhaps owing to the weight 3,000 gallons of fire retardant it’s hauling. In some respects that sound should be reassuring. It means that someone is looking out for us, yet it’s thoroughly disturbing, because you only hear them when there’s a fire nearby.

Fire season comes every summer. Around here the worst of it usually seems to be in the springtime when folks are trying to clear away brush and the tinder-dry trees have yet to get a few good rain-showers. Further north, it tends to be worse later, in large part, because of increased lightening activity and much hotter, drier conditions.

As I listen to the fading hum of the aircraft engines, I start to wonder. Is this the year? I mean, it could be. Everything is green and we’re hardly in to May. In spite of repeteted threats, the daily appearance of ominous looking clouds have failed to do more than spit a few drops of rain for the last several months. Is this the year of the fire?

I’ve lived in Alaska for over 35 years, and I can’t recall ever having had spring this early. As a child I can remember hunting easter eggs in calf-deep snow. I may have been short and it was the granular dessicated snow of late winter that has a way of working it’s way into the top of your shoe and causing ankle freeze, but it was still snow. This year, my kids didn’t have an Easter egg hunt, but if they had, it would have been in above-freezing weather without snow under the swelling buds of the birches.

For years we’ve been hearing the phrase ‘early fire-season’. It’s been said routinely enough now I reckon it’s safe to just call it normal. Every one of those years I’ve heard it, I’ve wondered if wild fire will devastate the Anchorage hillside, reaching even into mid-town, displacing tens of thousands of residents. Perhaps, it will be Wasilla instead, burning through the sprawling suburban neighborhoods and even across Lake Lucille where flaming ash could alight on Sarah Palin’s house, causing even her to eat her words on climate change.

I don’t know, but what I do know is that every year, the feeling of danger is lurking just at the edge of my conscience. Sometimes it’s just general discomfort. This year, it’s a little worse. As I drove home listening to a report of the evacuation of Fort McMurray, Alberta, a northern city with a population of 80,000, I saw a jaw-clenching sight from the highway. A column of smoke, much too close to home, rising from the patch of land between the Knik arm and the Talkeetna mountians. It was not the smoke of a controlled burn. It was a wide band heralding the arrival of a potentially dangerous wild-fire.

As I thought of those people in Canada, with so little time to gather their most precious belongings and head for safe ground, I wonder, is this going to be my lot this year too? What will we do with the animals? If I have only 45 minutes to evacuate what to I take? Where will I go? How will many thousands of people evacuate on only three routes, two of which are only two-lane highways.

It also begs the question, how the hell did we get here? March used to be a bitterly cold bitch of a month. The past few years have been pretty damn mild, really. I understand that it’s an El Nino year, a year where warm ocean currents poke much further north than usual, but I’ve been through those before. They’ve been nothing like this. Is this what we can expect from climate change? Is this the shape of things to come? Will the fires continue to close in our our Alaskan urban centers until disaster? I expect the answer is yes. In spite of all caution and tireless heroics of our wildland fire crews, we could very well find ourselves watching as any one of the most populated areas of our state burns.

I know, perhaps this is all a doomsday scenario, after all the story is hardly a 3rd line note in the local news outlets, failing even to beat out an electronic-device sniffing dog, but as I sit and watch the thermometer outside my window with disbelief, listen to yet another DC-6 rumble overhead, and wait for the golden sky to turn hues of pink and orange, I wonder just how unrealistic it is. After-all, green trees before the end of April? Who ever heard of such a thing?