Wednesday, January 22, 2003

Baby It's Cold Outside It's 10 degrees out right now and the weatherman says things might warm up by Saturday. That's if you call 26 degrees a heat wave. I can't remember a winter in a long time where we have had so much sustained cold for so long. Oh, we've had winters with more snow and ice storms, but this cold just gnaws at your bones. And now, we have all of our windows open because our son almost burned down the place by leaving popcorn in the microwave for who knows how long. I note that right now it's 64 in the Bahamas where I hope to be diving later this year and it's 73 in Maui where I was diving last winter. Damn! I could be having a nice piece of ahi at Mama's Fish House right now! Instead, I'm hauling out my book of Robert Service poems and looking at The Cremation of Sam McGee: There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who moil for gold; The Arctic trails have their secret tales that would make your blood run cold; The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, but the queerest they ever did see Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge I cremated Sam McGee.   And it gets even stranger from there. Or how about this excerpt from The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill:   You know what it’s like in the Yukon wild when it’s sixty-nine below; When the ice-worms wriggle their purple heads through the crust of the pale blue snow; When the pine trees crack like little guns in the silence of the wood; And the icicles hang down like tusks under the parka hood; When the stovepipe smoke breaks sudden off, and the sky is weirdly lit, And the careless feel of a bit of steel burns like a red hot spit; When the mercury is a frozen ball, and the frost-fiend stalks to kill— Well, it was just like that that day when I set out to look for Bill.   Now that’s some poetry for a cold winter night.   [Selections from Robert W. Service, Best Tales of the Yukon © 1983 by Running Press]   11:57:50 PM    Go Ahead, make my day  []