Very very dry here — it just seems this one little pocket, west of meridian 100. This is a longhorn belonging to a Utopia resident named Rusty Reddens.

A link to Caroline Woodward’s new blog about life on the lights— i.e. the life and times of lighthouse keepers Caroline and her husband Jeff, writer and photographers, check it out!

http://bcbooklook.com/2014/02/24/lighthouse-lit/#more-22276

Buck and I on the Rio Grande. It is such a beautiful mountain river here at this altitude. The dark shadowed mountains on the right are in Mexico. Picture taken by april Baxter, a truly accomplished horsewoman and wonderful person to be around. A brave rider. We were at the old movie set where they filmed ‘Streets Of Laredo’ with phony church and fake cantina and spectacular red cliffs. We had come down the Contrabando Trail in the state park.

One of my favorite books in that it describes the background of the Heian Japanese court in the year (more or less) 1000 AD and it is a world as strange to us — also probably to modern Japanese — as any of Jack Vance’s science or speculative fiction. It is in a way wondrous, like science fiction or speculative fiction ought to be. the author researched the universe of those people that lay behind the 11th century Japanese court novel ‘Tale Of Genji’. It would be hard to make this stuff up. When the ladies and gentlemen of the court ride out to the countryside it is as strange to them as it is to us; the life of the peasants toiling away so that they could have their luxurious life, so far removed. the book is fascinating.

Having mostly to do with dog-sledding and a series of inserted stories on the Chukchi of northeastern Siberia and their devastation by the Soviets. Of course the Soviets devastated everybody but it was the first time I had ever read details of the Chukchi.

I believe that the Chukchi language is the only one related to a North American language, i.e. Inuit, or Inupiat.

Descriptions of learning how to run a dog team are very good.

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“A signature is a collection of described characteristics that indicates that an entity has produced an event even if that entity is no longer present or cannot be observed”.

An excellent description of a novel. Am re-reading O’Brian’s wonderful series of tales of the English navy in the early 1800’s. His two characters, Jack Aubry and Stephen Maturin are truly among the great inventions of literature; the man of action and his friend the cerebral physician / intelligence officer.

will review Lighthouse Island on February 16th.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Me on the left, Janis DeLara on the right; she and Jose and I went to The Messiah that evening.

Finally the night of the cantata arrived and we all got through it and everybody liked it. The last two measures of O Holy Night — for altos — is impossible but we did it.

Friend Woody of Lennard Island Lighthouse (with whom I used to sing in a choir years ago) e-mails, “Oh the nerves, the director thinking it will never pull togather, the soloists disdainful of the back-up crowd, the people who are too deaf and too far gone in the larynx department to pull their weight and the interminable practices, but somehow manage to come through when it counts…”

And, I might add, the sopranos gossiping in  muted tones while the pianist drills everybody else on their parts  (I mean what do they have to worry about?) until finally the pianist slams out a big dissonant chord: “Sopranos shut up!” and the director says mildly, “Sopranos please hold it there…”

Our soloist Jim Boyd who is also the high wire man for the electric co-op (the guy who goes up in the thirty-foot bucket and fixes the transformers) is a stunning baritone and so saved the day, or night.

As Connie Willis, sci-fi/fantasy writer (The Winds Of Marble Arch) once wrote, “Everything I know about human nature I learned in choir”.

PHOTOS BY JEFF GEORGE, LENNARD ISLAND LIGHT STATION

Two stunning photos from Jeff George’s calendar, which I got in a christmas package. The first is a rough day at the Lennard Island landing, the second is ‘tideline during the herring spawn’. The North Pacific is full of endless variations and surprises and Jeff manages to capture every mood with his camera.

And to think I managed to get ashore on that landing — but it wasn’t that rough! I love these colors. The one of the herring spawn looks like some distant Celtic fairyland — the realm of the perilous Glamourie.