A rare June frost

How often do you hear of someone catching a frostbite in Fairbanks in June? I am here to tell you that, while rare, this situation is not uncommon. As a matter of fact, I happen to know someone who just this past Sunday encountered a heavy frost in downtown Fairbanks. Though it was about 70 degrees outside, it was oh so chilly on the inside.

By all accounts, this person was recovering from the Two-way Torture Test. Thanks to miles of uphill on pavement then downhill on pavement the previous weekend, they were icing their knee at a rapid pace. And the fancy blue gel ice pack, fresh from the freezer, plopped skin to plastic (NOTE: when icing a knee with a plastic blue ice pack, put a towel between flesh and plastic) helped the knee to numb right up. In fact, it was so numb and this person was so busy on Facebook, blogging, talking on the phone, reading, or just dreaming off in space contemplating their belly button, that they left the 40 below ice pack on their knee for, well, about one hour. According to this runner, there were some burning sensations emanating from the knee area at various moments, but that only made them readjust the pack to a slightly different angle on the knee. And when the burning returned, more readjusting.

Maybe it was the endorphins from all that running. Maybe reduced brain cells due to lack of oxygen on the uphill. Whatever the reason, it just didn’t sink in for them that the burning sensation was the freezing of their flesh. It wasn’t until Monday at work when they were sitting on their ball, minding their own business, they happened to look down and couldn’t help notice the half dollar-sized purple blotch on their kneecap, surrounded by smaller blueberry-looking patches. At first their mind raced to possible leprosy or a strange flesh-eating fungus. Then it all came together. The burning sensation that felt like a tongue sticking to a frozen chain link fence pole in the middle of January was actually the bite of cold.

Luckily this person survived that heavy June frost and lived to blog about it.

Fairbanks’ Pigeon Place

These days when I’m working in my yard or sometimes just sitting in the living room letting the breeze float in, overhead I can often hear the sound of cooing pigeons. Occasionally they take flight or land, but most of the time this Garden Island (scroll to bottom) flock of eighty spends its days waiting on an electric wire that is located just outside my yard. And every afternoon my neighbor from across the street walks outside, scoops feed from a synthetic burlap bag into a bowl, and sprinkles its contents under the large spruce tree located in his front yard. Last month I documented this ritual in a Soundslides project called Pigeon Place.

Mandolin revival

There was some switch recently that flipped in my brain, making me want to play my dad’s mandolin. This could have been because the change of season that’s showering all of us with a profusion of sunlight, along with the invigoration in knowing we made it through another winter. It was all that, and more.

Dad’s mandolin and guitar have been sitting in my office for almost ten months straight. After he unexpectedly passed away last Mother’s Day, I unexpectedly inherited his two most prized musical possessions. Since that heart wrenching day, these instruments have pretty much sat dormant, patiently waiting for some of my grief to subside, so that they could burst out and sing again. I have opened their cases every now and then, checking in to make sure they were faring well through the dry winter, but I insisted that they just sit there. That is, until now.

Last week on my birthday, I loaded them into my truck and drove over to Susan’s place. Susan is a stellar musician and was one of Dad’s closest friends. They sang and played guitar whenever possible, and, in recent years, Dad had added the mandolin to their repertoire, after he decided that its small size was more conducive to his rambling lifestyle. Because of this history, I knew Susan was the perfect person to give me my first mandolin lesson.

As a kid I remember Dad’s remarkable bluegrass guitar picking—hot, quick licks, often accompanied with a passionate, and sometimes comedic, singing voice. His talent always created the perfect entertainment package for me. I could beg him to play Tennessee Stud or Froggy Went a Courtin’ and when he did it was always like going to the movies, for free. Sometimes while strumming and singing, his eyes would close for a few moments, suspended in time while he tweaked his pitch or marveled at the beauty in a song’s lyrics.

Once he tried teaching me to play. While he led a heartfelt life, patience wasn’t his strong suit and my feelings hurt quickly, as he seemed sorely unimpressed with my feeble attempts to channel in Doc Watson via the strings. We quickly learned that when it came to the guitar, it worked out best when he played and I listened. With that as a history, I didn’t expect much from my first mandolin lesson from Susan.

What I didn’t know until last week is that the mandolin and the violin share the same strings—G, D, A and E—and since I knew how to play the violin, from the moment I started plucking next to Susan, I could easily find my way on those strings. Practically speaking, in one hour’s time, this made it possible to learn the chords of G, C and D, and accompany Susan on a few songs. On a deeper level, since the scariest thing so far about losing my dad has been the impossible, but seemingly very real, idea that I might forget him—entirely—it was pure comfort when I plucked my first chord and instantly felt a deep musical connection with his spirit.

I could hear the feeling in his voice, see his calloused fingertips sliding between frets and guiding his Fender pick with an exacting grace. I remembered all the times that he said things that made me smile, making pronouncements from time to time like, “There is no one else on the planet Cara, on the planet, who can play dobro like Jerry Douglas.” That was that. So, short of having Dad sit here next to me and play a custom version of You Are My Flower, strumming his mandolin was simply the best birthday gift this year.

If there is something from the past that has been put in the other room, set aside because it was too painful or maybe just frozen, this could be the season to thaw it out and look at it with new eyes. All around snow is turning to water, renewing branches that build their buds, preparing to emerge as little flowers of hope.

Do you really want to know about me?

For those of you who care, I changed my About Cara page. It’s now called 32 Facts About Cara and for your reading pleasure, it’s much more lengthy and monotonous.

Who moved my ch’i?

Considering a feng shui fix on your life this winter? Below is the first part of a simple three-step overview of what it takes to incorporate feng shui principles in a house, though any space can be the focus of feng shui. People have been known to incorporate feng shui into just one room, an office or even a garden. There are several different sects of feng shui that have developed through the centuries and the method that follows is based on the Black Hat sect of feng shui study that came about in the 1980’s. It was developed as more of a transcendental aid, in the philosophical sense, for westerners.

Step 1: Awareness of Ch’i
To understand feng shui, it is important to first grasp the Chinese concept of ch’i (pronoucned chee), viewed as the life force energy that every living thing is made of, and that flows through us and is all around us. Feng shui aims to influence the flow of ch’i, with the overall goal towards improving aspects of one’s life.

So begin to take note of ch’i! This means considering how you’re feeling inside, but also how the environment around you feels. For starters, on a daily basis, is there anything or anyone in your life that is unsettling? And when you walk into a room does it seem creepy, stagnant, crazy? Take notice of these sensations and keep reading for more feng shui happy talk!

Your own private radio station

So the eight hundred below zero temps are behind us and at five above it’s practically Tahiti here in Fairbanks. My hat has quickly become a useless accessory that just gives me bad hair, and last night I forgot to bring my gloves to the hockey game. February in Fairbanks is that on-the-fence time of year when it could be really cold, but with the slightest hint of a warming trend, we start to prematurely think that it’s spring. The vacuous feeling of zipping from car to building when it was forty below in January is no longer, and it’s now light at the start and end of the work day. I think this is progress.

Regardless, the boaters are still practicing their rolls in a swimming pool and wearing skirts without tights is out of the question. So what is a dreamy Pisces, or any sun sign for that matter, to do when landlocked and turtlenecked in the north? I suggest a musical escape. For starters put on some headphones and visit Pandora, the Music Genome Project.

Pandora is a free place you can listen to commercial-free radio stations that only play music you like. You create your first station by typing in the name of an artist, song or musical genre. Pandora begins to magically play songs that are similar to the style you specified in your initial search. If you don’t like what you hear, you can fast forward to the next song, up to six times per hour. Give a thumbs up or down to each song that plays and Pandora gradually creates a map of your musical DNA. You can also share your musical tastes with others. Here’s my Pandora profile.

The catch is that if you really like a song, bookmark it and Pandora takes you to iTunes or Amazon where you can instantly download the song onto your computer. How convenient you say? Yes, and dangerous. This is the Pandora’s Box part of Pandora. Instead of opening the box and releasing all of the world’s ills as in the Greek myth, the Pandora of today releases one’s bank account to the music makers of the world. This is what enabled me to then spend $25.98, downloading newly discovered Ka’au Creater Boys, O.A. R. and Matt Dusk, while at the same time leaving with me the hope to make it through February.

Out with Valentine, in with Val and Tiny

Today it’s all about love. Or is it? There are bunches of flowers bursting all over the Safeway and Freddy’s, chocolate gummy teddy bears in flashy heart-covered tins adorning store shelves, and cards with hearts and kisses and red, passionate red, calling out for just the right lovestruck buyer. This Saint Valentino must’ve been some sweetheart. Or was he?

Contrary to my Hallmark infiltrated-notion of Saint Valentine, the man was not actually one, but three different Catholic priests, martyrs to the max, who happened to each share the same name—Valentine. February 14th was first recognized by the Catholics as a way to honor the pure passion of all three, and commemorate the fact that they willfully suffered death rather than renounce their Catholic religion. Then along came Chaucer in the 1300’s and the Valentine story took a lavish turn towards romance, love and cupid.

Cupid? Some of us have had the experience of being targeted by a tiny angel type who flits around innocently shooting us with arrows, making us bleed until we fall in love. Of course, as Nazareth croons, “Love hurts,” but is it really necessary for Cupid, who was actually the Roman god of erotic love and sex, to fly around shooting and painfully piercing earthly types with arrows? With or without any endorphin- laced arrowheads, I say “Ouch!”

I call for an overhaul of the traditional Valentine’s Day holiday. The meaning has been lost with the commercialization, or maybe there never was a solid, soulful definition of the day. Love is too grand a notion to be wasted on a day with a buzz that creates often unrealistic expectations and disappointment. Therefore, I recommend we toss out the Catholic martyrs, the Roman flying sex god, and change the name to Val and Tiny’s Day, with the tag line, “A day for everyone to love!”

Val and Tiny, with the help of Google and Yahoo, could be two people who simply loved each other, warts and all. Tiny sometimes left the toilet seat up and Val found it in her heart to forgive him. Val snored and drooled at night, and Tiny just accepted it. At the heart of the matter was the simplicity of their consistent love for each other, and also for their neighbors and their planet. This love was infectious and spread like a string of dominoes, until everyone, everywhere, was just feeling love for everyone else and for all things. The energy from this love actually increased the speed of the earth’s rotation and is, of course, the reason why love makes the world go round.

And for the story of how Val and Tiny first met and made this all happen? I’ll save that for later, but let me be the first to wish you a very happy Val and Tiny’s Day.