Mom, do you see now why we asked for a chain saw for Christmas? The view (again) from the porch of what we hope will be our new getaway by week end. A little buzz buzz here, a zip zip there, and maybe we can transform the porch view into the beach view…

… if not for that pesky out building (the neighbor’s) we might. Oh well, as I always say, let not the perfect be the enemy of the pretty darn good.

I’ve been pestered by an upper right quadrant pain this past week. When I first mentioned this to the Happy Wife she went ashen in the face. Don’t misunderstand, as an advanced practitioner with years of experience delivering evidenced based health care to fortunate patients, she nevertheless tilts toward the zebra diagnosis where her husband is concerned. No honey, I tried to reassure her, I don’t think this is the symptom of late stage liver cancer. And yet, some nights she was haunted by nightmares, a chimera loping across an African Plain, a zebra with the head of a man. My head!

Sure enough, as the week passed the pain became more like a mild discomfort, and I became convinced it was caused by a minor tear in my oblique muscle, which happened, I’m quite certain, during a bout of playful wrestling with Happy Wife one carefree Sunday morning in bed. Still, it was a puzzling discomfort I’d not experienced before, so I kept the doctor’s appointment today. After her physical exam of my abdomen she agreed this was not a zebra. If new symptoms appear, the pain worsens, or eating fatty food causes acute pain (gall stone for sure), please call me right away she said.

I am off to a conference next week in San Francisco. Blogging will be light, if at all. Now now, don’t get all weepy, I’ll be back, promise.

My 6,128 Favorite Books — That’s a lot of reading, Mr. Queenan.

Personal effort thus far this year:

On Writing: A Memoir of Craft —  Stephen King
Outliers — Malcolm Gladwell
Of Human Bondage — Somerset Maugham (current)
Generosity — Richard Powers
Freedom — Jonathan Franzen
Talk Talk — T.C. Boyle
All The Pretty Horses — Cormac McCarthy
State of Wonder — Ann Patchett
Countless short stories, essays, poems, and assorted letters from the Internet’s vast oeuvre.

The Happy Wife says, “Look what happened to my hair while I was cleaning the toilet. Do I look like The Donald?”

I turned to look. Coffee nearly exited through my nose.

“Yes, you look like The Donald. In your fluffage.”

Speculating on why Americans are resistant to doing something about climate change, Mr. Attenborough opined:

Attenborough said he thought the US’s attitude towards climate change and the environment was not just because of politics, but because of the country’s history. “[It’s] because they’re a pioneer country. There has been the wild west, the western frontier… that’s still there, you see it in the arms business, the right for everyone to bear arms. It’s part of the pioneer stuff that you’ve [Americans] grown up with.”

Righteo, chap. Perhaps our history would be different if not for the fact that your ancestors got a might pissy, shall we say, around my ancestor’s assertion of their independence?

The first time someone mentions something is “nearing completion”, you can bet it isn’t. Consider the claim by some neuro-scientists, “We’re closing in on how the human brain works.” Uh huh, sure.

Wikipedia nearing completion^*

* Via Slashdot.

Years ago (less so recently) I participated in discussions on an Internet newsgroup, now defunct. There I saw certain quixotic libertarians argue, supposedly on principle, that they would never a visit a national park. So far as I can recall, their reasoning was that the government ought not to own any land, all land ought to be privately owned, and since the government has violated this “ought” by asserting eminent domain over national park land, they will therefore not visit a national park. Fearing, I suppose, the cognitive dissonance that would arise in them if they enjoyed an experience they knew involved a violation of a fundamental ought of proper human action, namely, taking something, land in this case, by force. (Never mind that history records no examples to the contrary).

I was pretty quixotic myself at the time. Many who know me would say I still am. Nevertheless, the above reasoning bothered me then, and still does. Probably because I like national parks, not because they’re “national,” along with everything that entails, but because there’s cool stuff to see there; I enjoy nature. Nothing unprincipled about that. Would I prefer to hand over my entrance fee to a private property owner rather than a park ranger, sure, I suppose, but that’s not the way things Is. The way things is, is that the government has claimed ownership to these lands, and if I want to see the land I have to pay the government. (Even if you don’t want to see the land, if you pay income tax you pay anyway, but forget about that for now).

So what’s a Red Rocks lovin’ libertarian supposed to do? Forgo the pleasure of observing natural wonders? That’s inconsistent with my moral imperative to do things that make me happy. So no, even while I happen to live in a world that arguably isn’t as it ought to be, it is what it is, and there’s nothing practically I can do about that in the margins of an individual life.

Oddly, what set me to thinking about this was a short, well-reasoned article re: What libertarians really think about big corporations.

Already, the usual fallacies have resurfaced. If you don’t want the government to run education, you must be against education. If you don’t want the government to run healthcare, you must not want people to get healthcare.

This misunderstanding is often summed up with comments like, “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with an ‘every man for himself’ society.” This springs from the absurd assumption that human beings never confer benefits upon one another except when forced to do so at gunpoint.

Date night at The Pour, a charitable wine ‘n foodie event for a cause we support. This year Beans Cafe will have prepared and served tens of thousands of plates of food for the less fortunate in Anchorage. Good thing the cause was good, ’cause the food ‘n wine… not so much.

Now this was good food. Huevos Rancheros with Hatch chiles prepared by the Happy Wife this morning, hand delivered to my comfy chair at kickoff. <Supplicant glance heavenward>. The first bite released the Capsaicin, like being wrapped in a Down comforter, insulation against a frosty morning outside.

Update: Dinner. Wild Alaskan Salmon (caught this summer) over orzo with a kale pesto, En Papillote (“in parchment”), before and after wrapping. Eighteen minutes @ 375^o
Paired w/Red Zinfandel.

Bigger.

Heard on National Public Radio this morning: “The current congress has passed six times less legislation than the infamous “do-nothing-congress” of 1947 & 48.”

She said it like it was a bad thing.

Does the journalist think herself wiser than former national luminaries?

This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.

– Will Rogers

No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.

– Mark Twain

I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.

– James Madison

The NPR piece continued by considering the preposterous proposal of outsourcing congress, making the remark of a modern luminary curiously prescient:

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.

– P. J. O’Rourke

A friend asked in e-mail: Does it ship in a box, or is it the box?

The aurora borealis has been gushing lately.

Photographs by Leroy Zimmerman, captured this past week on Cleary Summit near Fairbanks, AK. Sent courtesy of Happy Wife’s brother, a proud Fairbanksian.

Go ahead, click an image to make it bigger.