Large Fierce Mammal

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.

A wallpaper available all over the internet. If you want it, do an image search!

Winter in Nova Scotia will arrive at twenty-eight minutes past noon Atlantic Standard Time today when the Solstice heralds the start of the long, slow plod to Spring. For those of us of whatever species who haven’t already migrated or gone into hibernation, this is a time of uncertainty tempered with incipient joy.

The Black Bear sow impregnated in June will give birth in her den in January, and nurse her offspring in her warmth as the very dead of Winter holds sway outside.

The pregnant White-Tailed Deer doe who survives the Winter will carry her fawn through the snows to late May to early June.

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.

And so it goes.

We’ll start this year’s celebration with a poem that first appeared here on the Christmas Day of 2012. Many of you will never have seen it, while still others were drunk enough not to remember it. Whatever, let it stand as tonight’s greeting and in contrast to what follows.

Here again is …

A Song of Winter

By LFM

The equinox of Autumn
Sees the harvest gathered in.
All store rooms packed, all larders full,
Each cellar, loft, and bin.

A bounty bought with sweat and toil,
With dash of blood and tear.
Long days afield preparing for
The shortest of the year.

Each morn the sun must struggle
Just to bring the light of day,
And daily weakens in the fight
To keep the night at bay.

Such knowing weighs the brows of Men,
As ice doth bend the bough,
With naught but snow to meet the scythe,
And frozen earth the plough.

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!

For now is seen the Sun’s rebirth
And how the Night doth flee,
Giving back the land to let
Another harvest be.

Today we welcome the month of December with a poem about Trolls. Why the hell not?

Taken from The Unquestionably Fanciful Booke of Worlde Historie which has been relentlessly hammered upon my literary anvil for at least the past nine months, and based on Troll lore I once had verbally related to me, Wringing Out the Trolls tells how Trolls are born, live their lives, and depart this mortal coil in a most unconventional fashion that is absolutely in opposition to the way everything else in Nature does it. Legend tells that a Troll is born in a form that far surpasses the dimensions of the largest adult man, and that through its life it dwindles unto the moment of its disappearance. Through it all, one constant is the Troll’s horrendously acrid natural scent that even as its bearer’s physical size diminishes, becomes progressively more concentrated until, at the pivotal moment of demise, nothing but its stink is left.

So now, here’s

Wringing Out the Trolls

By LFM

Of Trolls I’ve writ this little verse,
Of how they grow from bad to worse,
Made big at birth they shrink to death,
Whence Troll is gone, but stink is left.

There is a place where Trolls still dwell,
A little left and north of Hell.
Foul of mood and worse of smell,
Trolls never talk, they only yell.

Loud and ugly, big of feet,
The foulest things you’ll ever meet.
Unmannerly and indiscreet,
They’d rather burp and fart than eat.

To pass the days and entertain,
Trolls play at games like “Name the Stain”,
Gulp liquor made from phlegm and grain,
At tournaments of “Clog the Drain”.

They number few, I’m glad to tell,
But hard to judge it from the smell.
No gas cape, mask, nor diving bell
Such stink as this can ever quell.

Their number dwindles every year,
They’ll soon be gone for good I hear.
But how they go bodes ill I fear,
For when Trolls die, their stink’s still here.

It’s all in how they grow you see.
They’re not born small, like you and me.
They start out big, thence by degree,
They’re opposite of seed to tree.

The older Troll’s a smaller one,
Through life it goes from huge to none,
Its stink will concentrate ere done,
So when one dies, it’s best to run!

Where Trolls came from, no one knows,
Nor where a dead Troll’s spirit goes,
As dwindling through final throes,
Leaves nought but stink to scorch your nose.