On the serious side of things.

To date, I’ve avoided political discussion on my blog. Today however, I am making a minor exception. As most of you should know, Canadians are voting in a federal election tomorrow. In my opinion, other than by paying our taxes or serving in the military, voting is one of the most patriotic things we can do as citizens. To be sure that I’m fully informed before casting my ballot tomorrow, I’ve spent some time comparing party platforms by way of the internet and party websites. This has been helpful and informative, both in assisting me to make my choice and happily, in giving me some light-hearted blog fodder. I bring this up, not to criticise any particular party or out of any partisan bias, but simply out of curiosity and desire for reader feedback on a serious matter in federal politics:

Punctuation and grammar

in a federal election campaign!

Here are some screen shots clipped straight from party websites:

The Green Party of Canada believes in punctuating headlines. And sentence fragments.

The Conservative Party of Canada agrees (occasionally).

The New Democratic Party of Canada does without such punctuation and prefers contractions usually reserved for colloquial speech

(who'll??)
while the Bloc Québécois is thrilled to have you reading their website, en français!

The Liberal Party of Canada challenges you to comment on these grammatical styles.
Please, have at 'er!

(Or perhaps that should be: Blogger invites comments. Now!)

Happy Vernal Equinox!

Today in Northern Town marks a day, like everywhere else in the world, in which day length is equal to the length of night. (This is actually not quite true: day is longer by about 14 minutes. The wikipedia entry I linked to has a good explanation for this.)

Today the sun is up and doing its best to shine through an ice fog that settled over our town during the night. The fog creates a lovely bright hazy effect, causing the sunlight to scatter and refract more than usual on an otherwise cloudless day. Combined with the normal reflection of light from our ever-present snow, sun glasses are needed even if one is facing away from the sun.

Although our calendars mark today as the first day of spring, all you bright readers out there surely realize that the timing of spring will vary according to latitude, as well as altitude. This means that although the fruit trees are in full bloom down on Vancouver Island, up here in Northern Town, it is winter as usual; our spring won’t come for a few more months. Break-up probably won’t happen on the rivers until the end of May and the beginning of June will see the first flowers begin to bloom, pushing through occasional clumps of snow left melting in the shadows.

This morning it was -39C without a bit of wind to blow away the ice fog. Our forecast predicts a warmer weekend, with highs of about -20C. Community members are glad as there is a carnival happening in one of the nearby hamlets (in celebration of the spring equinox, as best I can determine) and participants won’t be nearly as cold as they might have been as they enjoy the weekend’s events.

ManNorth and I won’t be heading to Western Hamlet to watch the sled dog races, snow mobile races nor to join in a potluck or dance a jig at the community dance. We’ll wait for Northern Town’s own celebration to come in a few weeks’ time when we’ll likely watch some of the sled dog races down on the river.

Yesterday I had a meeting in this nearby hamlet and after the meeting was done, joined a co-worker who wanted to visit a relative who lived there. We were treated to freshly cooked whitefish (luk zheii) and I ate baked fish eggs, or ik’in, for the first time. Unlike caviar, they weren’t “fishy” tasting at all and were so rich that only a few fork-fulls filled me up for the rest of the evening. (Of course, the homemade donut I was also served helped too!)

I had a rather embarrassing experience just before the meeting when I used the women’s washroom facility after our long drive along an ice road to Western Hamlet. I didn’t think to look before it was too late and when I needed it, I couldn’t find the toilet paper, and so made use of a box of tissues that was sitting on the tank of the toilet. Unfortunately, a handful of tissues emerged with the pull of a single tissue and having inadvertently handled them all, I wasn’t about to try to put any back. All of them were added to the toilet whereupon I discovered that the toilet wouldn’t flush. I took the back off the tank, thinking that perhaps the handle had disconnected from something and discovered that the tank was almost completely empty.
I moved to the sink to wash up and realized that not only was there no water for the toilet, there was also none running from the faucet. As there were no warning signs up on the door to the washroom, I thought that the facility manager should be advised of the problem and so although embarrassed about leaving behind obvious evidence of use and not being able to wash my hands, I sought out the manager (who is also a council member) I had just met for the first time minutes before. I explained the problem and then was mortified to discover that the building “has no water”, and that this was known to the general public and it was expected that I knew this too. I also learned later that even if the water had been on, no one in Western Hamlet flushes toilet paper or tissues and that the wastebasket next to the toilet should be an obvious clue to this. (There was no wastebasket in the washroom I used.)

Sigh.

The reason I attended this meeting was simply to introduce myself to the council members. Although not for the reasons I’d intended, at least now I know that they’ll remember me.

I'll never look at a cough drop the same way again

Perhaps it's just me and my strange associations, but doesn't anyone else out there also think that the Vicks drops showering down all over the unsuspecting world in the current Vicks television commercial look an awful lot like Oobleck?

(As in Bartholomew and the Oobleck.)

I keep waiting for the part in the commercial where the Oobleck-Vicks Drops finally land in big gloopy sticky messes, trapping everyone where they are until finally King Derwin says he's sorry for trying to mess with the weather and it all mysteriously evaporates.

It'd be hard to sell a product that way. I guess the folks at Vicks edited that part out.

Hrrm. They want me to put WHAT on my face?

Cheese and chocolates weren't the only things finding their way to the North household in time for Valentine's day. ManNorth thoughtfully bought me two bars of lanolin soap. In spite of them being pink, I'll certainly use them as the cold of Northern Town and Northern Region has a way of drying out the skin and lanolin soap will be wondeful for remoisturising. My nose is thankful.

We wondered a bit though, about one of two samples included in the shipping box:

Dry skin? Smear some sheep placenta on it. That'll do the trick!

(With apologies to my veggie or vegan readers.)

I cardiovascular organ you

I gave you my heart, as a sign of my love

And I thought that you’d keep it from harm.

But you put it to work, in a flask in your lab

And I find, to my growing alarm,

That you’re growing another, and more after that,

In a regular cardiac farm!

But then, when I saw them, in sterilized jars

Neatly ordered, in columns and rows,

I thought that, perhaps for the first time in history

Anyone looking now knows

And can see, with the placement of every new heart,

How much greater my love for you grows.

-Digital Cuttlefish

ManNorth's valentine treats

(He ordered them weeks ago and they arrived early.

We've since eaten all three tins of chocolate

and are doing our best with the cheese.)

Hey! It's a lookout!

On Saturday ManNorth and I went on a small adventure that gave me a chance to check a few “firsts” off my list. Here’s a smattering of them, along with some photographic evidence.

1. I travelled the farthest north I’ve ever been.

2. I both melted and added to the ice of a winter ice road. (Hey, when one’s had too much coffee and there isn’t an appropriate facility for hundreds of miles around, what else is one going to do?) No, there’s no photographic evidence of that. Here’s another section of the road instead.
3. I crossed a section of Canada’s northern tree line and was surprised at how abruptly it ended. See the trees on the closest two hills on the right? There’s only one on the next hill and then nothing but tundra. 4. I drove on, walked on, ate and drank the Beaufort Sea (also known as the Arctic Ocean). (Drinking occurred after I hacked off a piece of ice from a pressure ridge, had it freeze to my tongue and then melt. It wasn’t as salty as I thought it would be. Eating was accomplished by chewing some of the ice.) 5. I climbed on a pressure ridge made of sea ice and marvelled at how much it looked like a frozen wave. (The formation of the ridge necessitated relocating a portion of the winter road onto the southern side of the ridge. You can see the old section of the road on the left side of the photo below.)
6. I saw my first pingo 7. ..and then I saw a whole bunch of them. 8. I discovered that although groceries are expensive in Northern Town, prices aren’t bad compared to those of Northern Hamlet. 9. I was asked, quite loudly and enthusiastically, if I was “Spikin?!?” by a happy woman wearing beautifully beaded sealskin boots on our way into the Northern Store in Northern Hamlet. “No,” I answered rather confusedly, although I wondered if perhaps we were or should be.

Big Red even experienced a few firsts, one of which she was quite familiar with, although never this far north:
1. She was the farthest north she’d ever been.
2. She got to drive on the Arctic Ocean. 3. She got stuck the farthest north she’s ever been and for a truck that has been stuck pretty much any where she goes, this wasn’t a particular surprise, although we’d hoped she’d forgo the thrill of it in Northern Hamlet.
(She capitalized on the opportunity to get stuck while making a sharp turn from Northern Hamlet back down a steep and narrow slope onto the ice road. In spite of her winter tires, they wouldn’t grip enough to back out of the snow bank she was close to sliding into, which she’d ended up in because her turning radius was too big, she has only rear wheel drive and the steeply angled road was made of ice. Before we could pull out the tire chains, two friendly and bemused locals helped her & us out, with a friendly tip to ManNorth that the trick of winter driving here is to avoid the snow banks. I completely forgot to take a picture to the very great appreciation of ManNorth who had been the one behind the wheel.)

One of the men helping us out informed us that a local hunter had just taken a polar bear quite close to town a few days ago, making it a total of three bears successfully hunted by the community this winter. He chuckled and said that it was lucky to take a bear so easily without having to go far and that it was good that someone was having fun in the cold. (Not the bear, of course.)

Last but not least, here’s my favourite story from our weekend adventure:
While driving around doing the secretive-touristy thing through Northern Hamlet (which involves looking like lost tourists while wandering around and hiding one’s camera while taking photos on the sly), we found a road that seemed to be taking us to one of the nearby pingos. I was keen to get a closer look and was pleased when the road abruptly ended at the edge of a small pond with a pingo perfectly framed between two low hills. Tourists who come this far north are sure to visit at least one of the nearby pingos and so I wasn’t the least bit surprised to see that the local residents had decided to capitalize on the tourism and create the road and lookout to the nearest pingo for their occasional tourists.

I did wonder though, at the material used to create the barrier, believing for a moment that they’d used whatever scrap metal they had on hand.

Of course, ManNorth was shaking with laughter at my shout of “Hey! It’s a lookout!” and my musing about the barriers for we’d just arrived at Northern Hamlet’s sewage lagoon. “Can’t you smell what you’re standing in?” ManNorth inquired with a huge smile as I took a look under my feet at the brownish ice and a second look at the “lookout barriers”.

Hmm. That explained what the big truck leaving the lookout had been doing just before we drove up and why part of the lagoon was still steaming.

I won't leave you with that lovely image of the lagoon. Here's a favourite photo of the sea ice and another taken on our way back home.

Huzzah!

ManNorth came home with exciting news today:

We've been given a gift of something that we've really wanted.

Wanna know what it is? I won't be telling without a few of you venturing some guesses.
Perhaps these hints will help:

1. The previous owner also once held ManNorth's position and left it behind when he moved away by air.

2. Its only use in a desert would be to provide shade or shelter of some sort.

3. ManNorth owns one of these already but the cost of moving his here from where it is being stored in Yellowknife is about equivalent to the cost of buying a gently used one.

4. It can only be used for about 3 months of the year in our location.

5. We'll need to buy a few particular implements to make use of our gift properly. Two of those will be worn. Two of those will be tools.

6. It needs some repair work that will involve cutting, sanding and filling and patching with fibreglass.

7. Here's a photo of our gift as the final hint:

Afternoon diversion

Needing a diversion and have about 7 or 8 minutes?

Grrl Scientist over at Living the Scientific Life (Scientist Interrupted) has an amusing video of capricious twins giving people a rather surreal experience.

When you are done that, and in the mood for, um, something entirely different and involving snails, Grrl Scientist has another video up with an excerpt from Microcosmos (although the music has been switched from Puccini to "Sexy Boy", by Air). If you aren't in the mood for a tragedy/yummy meal, stop watching when the grasshoppers come on...

Enjoy!