A dream in the midnight dusk.

2:48 am

I don’t normally remember my dreams, even the one’s that soon slide away after I’ve woken from a start. And I have never written down the fleeting shards of a dream as it scrambles away in the first moments of wakefulness.

But this one… this ethereal experience… this one I wanted to keep.

We were standing in back of our new house which was in an old and spacious neighborhood on top of a hill that rolled broadly down to the ocean. A friend was with us, and the friend’s daughter and our daughter we darting around the unfenced yard, diving behind the detritus left by the former homeowner then reappearing through unkempt tangles of shrubs.

In the middle of one foray, my daughter asked if we would like to see the “tunnel” then disappeared into a hole in the middle of the abandoned street in our back yard. I followed, expecting that she had found some old manhole… expecting to find the kind of place that just wasn’t safe for kids. I stayed down there long enough to know that it was fairly safe, then I went back out, looked at my wife, and said “You gotta see this.”

The opening of the tunnel lead through a break in concrete wall buried beneath our new yard. When we stepped through, it was like stepping into a time capsule. The concrete wall belonged to a house, a house that I’d guess dated to the late forties, a modern/post modern house that was very Frank Lloyd Wright, a house that was so perfectly preserved that I kept expecting the owners to come in and chase us away.

The windows of the house were large plates of clear glass bordered by leaded frames of red and blue and green art glass. The windows lead to expansive views of the harbor below, of the hill sloping down in a broad curve of grass, of boats bobbing quietly in a clear summer breeze.

As we moved deeper into the house, the floors began to rise and fall in short succession. It was like looking at a single still photo of earthquake waves. The walls were split in places, allowing the sunlight to stream in, but everything inside was preserved like it was in a museum.

As we moved further into the house, I began to wonder if it was some kind of semi-subterranean museum, but then I realized it was a hotel, an opulent art deco hotel, and we were moving down a grand hallway on the ground floor. Along the hallway were open glass shelves lined with Depression glass vases and craftsman style crafts. The place reminded me of the Philbrook in Tulsa, but larger… seemingly endless.

Lots of passages led into the old hotel from the town above. It was obvious that the upper levels of the hotel had been dozed into the suburban lawns and shopping malls of our town. Some of the passageways were open, and evidence of looting was strewn about—broken pottery, torn wallpaper, soiled carpets.

We started talking about what a shame it was that our town had let this happen to this wonderful grand hotel. It was the last ideal example of its kind... and the people from our town seemed to not even care.

It was at this point that a charley-horse pulled me out of bed. As I hobbled across the floor, I realized that it was dream, then I realized that it was more than just a dream. The house-museum-hotel buried beneath the urban sprawl was a metaphor for what Alaska will be in the future.

At this point, let me say that I am glad that we moved here, but I and also deeply saddened by what I see going on around me. I am glad because I have gotten to see Alaska in all it wild, pristine beauty. I am saddened because I know that this beauty is short-lived. We are in the process of neglecting and looting and burying Alaska just like the people had forgotten and abused the hotel in my dreams. And no one seems to care.

That’s what my dream was really about—Alaska in the future when everything that made Alaska, well, Alaska, will be gone. The Great Land will have been crushed by the indelible thumbprint of America and people will find small pockets of wonder buried beneath the subdivisions and shopping malls. And everyone will go about their lives as if this is the way things should be. Our manifested destiny.

Ka-Booooom

This is an image from a seismograph located just a stone's throw from my house, my wife, my seven year old daughter, my dog, my two cats, three turtles and (sadly now only) 5 chickens. See all those big groupings of blue lines? Those are the signatures of Mt. Redoubt erupting.... six times in the past day.

It's been cloudy, so we haven't gotten any good images of this batch of belches from the neighborhood blowhole, but last time Redoubt erupted, it looked like this...

Yeah, scary shit.

But not quite as scary as this...

This is the little shithead governor of Louisiana who claimed that President Obama didn't need to be spending money monitering volcanos that are pratically in my back yard.

Obviously, I beg to differ. We do need volcano monitering right here in the good old USA. What don't need is more mindless Republican rhetoric.

(Note that I resisted going on a rant about how the Republican Party has become a haven for Neo-Nazi Fascism... because... well... take a gander at the pic of Bobby Jindal above.... what do you think he's saying?)

Ramblings and Bramblings

The Great Procrastinator returns with apologies to my few readers... I really have been meaning to write. I've even conjured up topics... well... half topics floating around in my brain like dust motes in the attic. Thus, in leiu of writing nothing, I clean out the attic of all things semi-topical.

• On returning home from work this afternoon, Omegamom informed me that she had a snow day today. I find this amusing because we live in Alaska, and we just don't do snow days here. However, Omegamom telecommutes to Arizona, where they do do snow days. Three feet of snow has dumped on Flagstaff, while Prescott has been pushing a foot. We rarely have snows like that here in Urban Blight, Alaska. Our snow tends to fall in small batches that linger for a while... Okay, they linger for 7 or 8 months here in the low country, year-round up in the mountains.
• My marvelous Mum-in-Law posted an Arizona snow blog today... I find her pics of cars fighting their way up hills to be rather funny. Should Urban Blight get a foot or so of snow overnight, you wouldn't find us Urban Blighters trying in vain to drive through the stuff. We would face the storm like the stalwart Alaskans that we are. We'd stay home.
• Speaking of the homefront, I've been giving some thought lately to the oddnesses of shopping locally, Alaska-style. We pay about a buck a gallon more for local milk, and we do this largely on principal. Our milk comes from a herd of holsteins living about four miles down the road. The cheaper, non-local milk comes from California. I think there's something obscene about buying milk from California. It's shipped here on ocean freighters, for gawdsake. Still, the locals flock to buy it instead of supporting our neighbors who grow the good stuff. You gotta remember-- these are the same people that elected Sarah Palin to the governorship. They ain't all that bright.
• I wonder what they have to do to milk to ship it by boat from California to Alaska? The thought of it sends shivers up my spine.
• I've been wanting to increase my stock of kitchenwares lately, and accomplishing it within my 'shop-local' mantra has proven interesting. I've got two items on my list - big deep mixing bowls with handles and a spare set of stainless measuring spoons. Bread baking drives my need for mixing bowls... I run out of bowls before I can get to kneading up a second batch. The spare spoons are a pure convenience item... my primary set seems to always be in the dishwasher, and my secondary set has been relegated to the Pet Medicine Cabinet downstairs. I've checked everywhere from the gourmet shop to the hardware store for the mixing bowls... all for naught. (I finally broke down and asked the folks at the cooking store if they could order me some.) Until today, the spoons were also a bust. I had spotted exactly what I want online... Culinary Institute of America 18/10 Stainless Steel 6-piece Measuring Spoon Set, $19.99 plus shipping on Amazon. But Amazon ain't local, folks. So when I asked the proprieter of the local gadgetry if she could get me the spoons, she looked at me oddly, then walked about ten feet away and pulled them from a display rack. Price--twenty bucks, no shipping. So even in Alaska, shopping locally is the only way to go. (Granted, the local shop get's them from somewhere else, but at least we're able to trade a few dollars amongst friends.)
• For those of you who smirked while reading the last bullet, yes, we have a Pet Medicine Cabinet. 1 dog + 2 cats + 3 turtles + 6 chickens = 1 Pet Medicine Cabinet. Now wipe that look off your faces. You're just jealous because you didn't think of it yourself.