Large Fierce Mammal

Our title today paraphrases G. K. Chesterton’s observation that, “An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.” The poem was inspired by a combination of current meteorological realities here in Nova Scotia, and some reading I’ve been doing on daily life of British and Commonwealth soldiers in the trenches of World War 1. You may enjoy an example of the latter here.

Our unofficial Clan motto is that you can always tell how much fun you had doing a thing by how dirty you got doing it. There’s a dose of that here too.

More Mud Than Glory

By LFM

Late O-seventeen
Was a big freeze and blow,
That turned dirt into concrete,
With bugger all snow.

With twenty-eighteen
Came a warm spell and rains
That tore a small thaw as
It choked all the drains.

By the time the rain stopped
All the earth was laid bare,
Slicked over with mud
Under warm humid air.

While some folks complained
How the water and mud
Turned their yards into lakes
And their basements to flood.

Stiff drinks in our hands
We looked out from our lair,
And instead of mud ugly
Saw ambience there.

So we bought some provisions,
And invites were sent
To twelve hearty guests
For our “war themed” event.

Then we buried some mines
And we dug a latrine.
We added some trenches
With barbed wire between.

Had six vet’ran soldiers
For three hours, non-stop
Firing live ammunition
Straight over the top.

We served bully beef
Eaten straight from the can,
And “rat-au-van” — rat
That’s been killed by a van.

The doneness of bacon
Was never in doubt.
It was cooked with a candle
That kept blowing out.

The tea that we served
Flavoured water abused,
Delivered in petrol cans,
Most of them used.

When armistice came
To our trench of delight,
We called for some cocktails
To round out the night.

Brought up to “the front”
By the Rum Ration bloke
Was a jug of rough trade,
And we all took a choke.

Then our guests were demobbed
And drove home on a lorry
That bore on its sides
The words, “More Mud Than Glory”.

Nova Scotia is currently swaying like a drunken sailor under an assortment of winter storm warnings including snowfall warning, heavy rainfall warning, extreme wind warning, and storm surge warning. Mostly rain in our area, falling on frozen ground leading to nearly instant ice formation on paved surfaces. Winds are expected to increase in intensity through the day and overnight with gusts forecast to be between 100 and 140 kilometers per hour. Heavy rain is also expected with predicted high volume runoff over frozen ground..

Caught flat footed by the Christmas Day wind storm that included mere 110 kilometer per hour winds and left some areas off grid for nearly a week, Nova Scotia Power announced it has mobilized 1000 people, including crews from New Brunswick and Quebec, to address outages this time — allegedly the largest mobilization the the company’s history. Notwithstanding that, they are warning the customers should be prepared to be without power “through the weekend”.

As of a few minutes ago, the NSP outage map shows 17,000 addresses without power, with causes listed in the majority as “bad conditions”, the next greatest number as “salt contamination”, about a dozen as “poorly seasoned”, three as “ennui”, and one simply as “nap time”. (more…)

The Fire Without and the Fire Within

By LFM

It’s only just started, but coming to pass
Is a Winter as cold as a well digger’s ass.
Yet it’s still not extreme if the truth’s to be told,
For it used to be worse, just go ask someone old.

Its fury brings failures of power and phone,
Where the Internet’s out and you’re sitting alone,
And there’s nowhere to hide, it will find where you are —
No Pornhub for you while you’re phoning the Czar!

Now pull up your zipper and get off your ass!
Be true to your breeding, each bucko and lass!
From heritage wrought by those too tough to die,
Now stiffen your back and put fire in your eye!

For life’s made of stories, not fretting and yelling,
So let’s light some candles and get to the telling!
Break out the rum, toast the brass monkey balls
We festooned our tree with while decking the halls!

Enough of laments and your impotent rage.
Remember your kin of the glacial age!
With stone tools and fire, both without AND within,
They hunted the Mammoth while wearing its skin.

“As to Human kind, Winter will bring challenges at the end of which the result will lie on a spectrum ranging from the greatest of joys to the gravest of sorrows, and in this it stands as no different from any other aspect of life but for bearing a greater degree of urgency and inexorable deadliness in the face of any vulnerability.” ~ A Long Winter’s Night — 2017 Edition: Day 1

All two parents and three bairns of the Family LFM attended a pre-Christmas event on the Lunenburg waterfront on an unusually cold late autumn night in early December of this year. While there, we met some clients who introduced a couple of their friends visiting from Florida — something we could guess from their bulbous layers of clothing and the fact that only their watering eyes were showing.

As we parted in a swirling cloud of good wishes, I offered the visiting couple the advice that feeling the cold was a good thing, because if either of them suddenly felt all warm and cozy, that happens just before you die of hypothermia. I like to believe their muffled utterances were expressions of thanks, for many are cold, but few are frozen. (more…)

If you live in my neck of the woods, a lot of you lost electric power Christmas afternoon, and some will still be waiting for it until some time tonight. If you lack more “natural” means of heating your dwelling, things have gotten a bit cold, and the usual mid-season burnout has turned into quite the opposite.

For our part, things here at the LFM Fort have remained quite comfortable for all five Human and equivalent number of Canine denizens, and while we can do little to alter the course of what Nature hath wrought upon some of you in Her fury this season, we can at least offer up a couple of uplifting ditties for those who might want to tap some feeling back into frozen toes while thawing pipes after the power finally comes back up.

As I’ve previously written, my late Father once fronted a country and western band called “Slim Major and his Ranch Boys”. Throughout his abbreviated life — a mere 59 years — he continued to play and sing, and his voice bore a striking resemblance to Hank Snow, particularly when he sang one of Hank’s songs.

At many a Winter kitchen party at the household of Whynacht the Elder, he’d sing this one. Set in the depression days when railroad bums were men unemployed and down on their luck, hopping boxcars and dodging railroad police in search of what sustenance and meagre labour might be found in the next town, Hobo Bill’s Last Ride speaks for itself. (more…)

Raven from the book “The Ice Bear” by Jackie Morris, whose website (http://www.jackiemorris.co.uk/blog/) chronicles “The balance of life as an artist and writer living and working in Wales: or, how to ignore housework.”

Culturally, the hospitality aspects of festivities prevailing at this time of year exist in a maelstrom of ill considered and contradictory drives. Year after year, many will attempt to answer seasonal motivations to visit people who sometimes live at a great remove and may be reached at no small peril to life and limb, even as they simultaneously yearn for good food and drink in the role of Host, enjoying the sanctity of hearth and home with Family and Friends.

I said ill considered. Perhaps I should say unconsidered, for in this lies a template for behaviours and expectations that should be governing intercourse between Hosts and Guests everywhere, even as they have in every time.

Some of us have learned these lessons and, notwithstanding cellars full or scant, meet the onset of the solstice with spirits shored against the long cold sleep, prepared to meet wayfarers of good will every bit as thoroughly as those of the other sort. Those of us who ourselves are called to be wayfarers must also draw from the well of ancient wisdom that has long set down the rights, obligations, and appropriate expectations of host and guest. (more…)

We’re not looking for a few Good Men. We’re building them in house, from scratch.

The best of everything from us to all of you who matter. The rest we’ll fall upon without mercy in a snow storm before Spring, as I’ve promised the Dogs.

Anyway, whether you’re on our naughty or nice list, you know who you are.

Yet glorious day, the Solstice comes
With casting off of dooms!
Now’s the time to feast and drink!
To plant strong bairns in wombs!

~ A Song of Winter ~

I published that on Christmas Day of 2012, and as you can see from the pictures below, I took my own advice three times. Joy of joys!

Click to enbiggen. And that is a knee slapping in progress, NOT a Nazi salute.

A timely tanker of single malt is the magickal secret ingredient to keeping those girls in the air!

Someone most of us here have enjoyed the benefit of “knowing” since our childhood embarks on another perilous journey tonight, and few have every paused to consider the strategic, tactical, and logistical realities of a Grand Mission that, done half-assed, could end up being Nick’s last ride.

He’s been at this a while so it stands to reason that it’ll all go off swimmingly, but we do have to express our concern. Not unlike your Mother who tells you to drive safely because, if she hadn’t brought it up, you’d naturally default to driving like a negligent maniac.

The Show Must Go On

By LFM

The open lonely road has
Always been a risky place.
Demanding care and caution,
And a sharp blade, just in case.

Eyes upon the road ahead,
But watch your back my Friend.
Take care it’s just the voyage,
Not your life that meets its end.

Brigands, thugs, and highwaymen,
And unbelievers too,
Pop full erect this time of year —
They’re waiting just for you.

Perhaps I worry o’er much,
For more than most I ken
The flak was thick in ’44,
And many times since then!

Every year, the Girls and you
Fly off in face of hate,
But Nick, please tell me if you need
A tail gunner Mate!

The road still offers contest
To your safe return to bed.
Keep your powder dry my Friend,
Remember — dead is dead!

Screen capture from “Kejimkujik National Park – Milky Way over Jeremy’s Bay – Timelapse” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njeKhWPzd8M)

In the early morning hours of 17 January 1994, a 6.7 magnitude earthquake and subsequent aftershocks knocked out power to much of the city of Los Angeles, California, plunging at nightfall some of the most light polluted portions of the globe into a deeper darkness than most of its denizens had ever known existed.

Named the Northridge earthquake, the event is recorded as having killed 57 people, injuring 8700, and for many among the surviving urban population, marked the first time they had ever seen the unveiled night sky in all its glory.

Legend has it that in the darkness, people called 911 to report a mysterious glowing cloud overlaying the city. Still other tales report that those calls were directed, instead, to observatories, but examining events that occurred before the internet through the lens of bullshit that actually IS the internet, my money’s on 911 before anyone using a directory in the dark so they could use a telephone connected to damaged infrastructure to call facilities most wouldn’t even know existed and that probably wouldn’t answer anyway (Astronomers do their best work in the dark), about something observed that mattered enough to them to even call anyone.

Whatever happened, we unquestionably live in a world in which most of humanity has lost touch with the True glory of the Heavens, along with much else. If the Biblical Christmas story had unfolded today, it’s likely the star would have gone unnoticed. (more…)

Source: https://deingel-dog-stock.deviantart.com/art/Kids-of-the-Snow-196526273

Yesterday I offered you all a poem that chronicles a more primal and realistic approach to the onset of Winter than one usually encounters in this pseudo-enlightened age.

The first, To Yip Roll and Frisk!, views the anticipation of Winter’s arrival and revelation from the unbridled perspective of children and Dogs.

To Yip and Roll and Frisk!

By LFM

Late Autumn comes to promise Yule
With samplers of snow,
That melt revealing grass, still green,
But too asleep to grow.

And when the main course comes it comes
Agleam in servings brisk,
Inciting child and Dog alike
To yip and roll and frisk!

They fear not Winter’s dearth nor dark
As grownups often do,
And in the deepest snow they find
The magick peeking through.

Next is The Winter of our Malcontents that treats a tiresome seasonal theme I’ve encountered since childhood. Perhaps you’ve noticed it too.

The Winter of our Malcontents

By LFM

I hear it in the checkout line,
I hear it in the street.
It echos from the lips of
Every person that I meet.

“A lot to go through every year
“For just one bloody day!
“It’s all about the children though,
“So Merry Christmas, eh?”

I hear how much they love the snow,
But just enough for Yule,
And thence the weather back to fall
As kids go back to school.

I’ve watched this show in reruns now
Some sixty years agone —
They think the Winter’s pizza
One can choose the toppings on.