LnR 099 To Build a Fire 5 by Jack London

At twelve o’clock the day was at its brightest.  Yet the sun was too far south on its winter journey to clear the horizon.  The bulge of the earth intervened between it and Henderson Creek, where the man walked under a clear sky at noon and cast no shadow.  At half-past twelve, to the minute, he arrived at the forks of the creek.  He was pleased at the speed he had made.  If he kept it up, he would certainly be with the boys by six.  He unbuttoned his jacket and shirt and drew forth his lunch.  The action consumed no more than a quarter of a minute, yet in that brief moment the numbness laid hold of the exposed fingers.  He did not put the mitten on, but, instead, struck the fingers a dozen sharp smashes against his leg.  Then he sat down on a snow-covered log to eat.  The sting that followed upon the striking of his fingers against his leg ceased so quickly that he was startled, he had had no chance to take a bite of biscuit.  He struck the fingers repeatedly and returned them to the mitten, baring the other hand for the purpose of eating.  He tried to take a mouthful, but the ice-muzzle prevented.  He had forgotten to build a fire and thaw out.  He chuckled at his foolishness, and as he chuckled he noted the numbness creeping into the exposed fingers.  Also, he noted that the stinging which had first come to his toes when he sat down was already passing away.  He wondered whether the toes were warm or numbed.  He moved them inside the moccasins and decided that they were numbed.

He pulled the mitten on hurriedly and stood up.  He was a bit frightened.  He stamped up and down until the stinging returned into the feet.  It certainly was cold, was his thought.  That man from Sulphur Creek had spoken the truth when telling how cold it sometimes got in the country.  And he had laughed at him at the time!  That showed one must not be too sure of things.  There was no mistake about it, it was cold.  He strode up and down, stamping his feet and threshing his arms, until reassured by the returning warmth.  Then he got out matches and proceeded to make a fire.  From the undergrowth, where high water of the previous spring had lodged a supply of seasoned twigs, he got his firewood.  Working carefully from a small beginning, he soon had a roaring fire, over which he thawed the ice from his face and in the protection of which he ate his biscuits.  For the moment the cold of space was outwitted.  The dog took satisfaction in the fire, stretching out close enough for warmth and far enough away to escape being singed.

When the man had finished, he filled his pipe and took his comfortable time over a smoke.  Then he pulled on his mittens, settled the ear-flaps of his cap firmly about his ears, and took the creek trail up the left fork.  The dog was disappointed and yearned back toward the fire.  This man did not know cold.  Possibly all the generations of his ancestry had been ignorant of cold, of real cold, of cold one hundred and seven degrees below freezing-point.  But the dog knew; all its ancestry knew, and it had inherited the knowledge.  And it knew that it was not good to walk abroad in such fearful cold.  It was the time to lie snug in a hole in the snow and wait for a curtain of cloud to be drawn across the face of outer space whence this cold came.  On the other hand, there was keen intimacy between the dog and the man.  The one was the toil-slave of the other, and the only caresses it had ever received were the caresses of the whip-lash and of harsh and menacing throat-sounds that threatened the whip-lash.  So the dog made no effort to communicate its apprehension to the man.  It was not concerned in the welfare of the man; it was for its own sake that it yearned back toward the fire.  But the man whistled, and spoke to it with the sound of whip-lashes, and the dog swung in at the man’s heels and followed after.

LnR 098 (Casual Language) Are you serious?

A: Hey, thanks for coming over!

B: Sure, no problem.

A: Like I told you on the phone, I've got a problem with my desktop computer.

B: What's wrong?

A: I need a new video card. The old one is finally kaput. My laptop is fine, but I use my desktop for most of my schoolwork.

B: OK. I'll check with a repairman on campus. [He speaks to a repairman in Chinese on the phone] Bad news. He said he couldn't replace it.

A: Are you serious? What's he talking about? He can't replace it?

B: Oh, wait, he just told me he figured out a way to fix it. I'll take your CPU to the repairman now.

A: Thanks. You're a lifesaver.

TQ 064 Mr. Boddington from England and Laos

I'm on vacation in Laos, staying at a lovely place just outside of the capital of Vientiane. The owner is an Englishman married to a woman from Laos. (We didn't have time to talk about it, but his wife helps to fight human trafficking in Laos.) Mike has a large home that includes two rooms that he rents out to visitors. He also has a cottage with two rooms that he rents. I'm staying in one of the rooms in the cottage for two weeks to relax and get some work done and do some sightseeing. The name of his place is The Jungle House, and I highly recommend it if you want a quiet and interesting place to stay when you visit Vientiane. Listen as Mike talks about the brewery that his ancestors started, his father who flew a plane in World War 2, and two interesting places: Angkor Wat and Hong Kong. Also listen for his wonderful Winston Churchill impression!

Warning: Mike speaks slowly, but he has a very large vocabulary. Here are some words that you may not know: Anglo-Saxon, Celts, to brew, conglomerate, oak barrels, cellar, family heirlooms, to repel, vital, gender, ski chalet, cottage, NGO, disability, Cambodia, the scourge of land mines, limb, in a nutshell, ambassador, to diminish, transport, conflict, intolerable, to negate, pacifist, pacifism, reprehensible, to abandon, possessions.

LnR 097 To Build a Fire 4

To Build a Fire by Jack London

Empty as the man’s mind was of thoughts, he was keenly observant, and he noticed the changes in the creek, the curves and bends and timber-jams, and always he sharply noted where he placed his feet.  Once, coming around a bend, he shied abruptly, like a startled horse, curved away from the place where he had been walking, and retreated several paces back along the trail.  The creek he knew was frozen clear to the bottom—no creek could contain water in that arctic winter—but he knew also that there were springs that bubbled out from the hillsides and ran along under the snow and on top the ice of the creek.  He knew that the coldest snaps never froze these springs, and he knew likewise their danger.  They were traps.  They hid pools of water under the snow that might be three inches deep, or three feet.  Sometimes a skin of ice half an inch thick covered them, and in turn was covered by the snow.  Sometimes there were alternate layers of water and ice-skin, so that when one broke through he kept on breaking through for a while, sometimes wetting himself to the waist.

That was why he had shied in such panic.  He had felt the give under his feet and heard the crackle of a snow-hidden ice-skin.  And to get his feet wet in such a temperature meant trouble and danger.  At the very least it meant delay, for he would be forced to stop and build a fire, and under its protection to bare his feet while he dried his socks and moccasins.  He stood and studied the creek-bed and its banks, and decided that the flow of water came from the right.  He reflected awhile, rubbing his nose and cheeks, then skirted to the left, stepping gingerly and testing the footing for each step.  Once clear of the danger, he took a fresh chew of tobacco and swung along at his four-mile gait.

In the course of the next two hours he came upon several similar traps.  Usually the snow above the hidden pools had a sunken, candied appearance that advertised the danger.  Once again, however, he had a close call; and once, suspecting danger, he compelled the dog to go on in front.  The dog did not want to go.  It hung back until the man shoved it forward, and then it went quickly across the white, unbroken surface.  Suddenly it broke through, floundered to one side, and got away to firmer footing.  It had wet its forefeet and legs, and almost immediately the water that clung to it turned to ice.  It made quick efforts to lick the ice off its legs, then dropped down in the snow and began to bite out the ice that had formed between the toes.  This was a matter of instinct.  To permit the ice to remain would mean sore feet.  It did not know this.  It merely obeyed the mysterious prompting that arose from the deep crypts of its being.  But the man knew, having achieved a judgment on the subject, and he removed the mitten from his right hand and helped tear out the ice-particles.  He did not expose his fingers more than a minute, and was astonished at the swift numbness that smote them.  It certainly was cold.  He pulled on the mitten hastily, and beat the hand savagely across his chest.

LnR 096 (Casual Language) Chores

A: What kind of chores did you have to do when you were a kid?

B: I had to wash dishes after dinner, feed the dog twice a day, and take her for a walk. 

A: Is that all?

B: No, of course not. I also had to keep my room neat. You, know, make up my bed and put away my clothes and toys. When I was older, I had to vacuum the carpets and do my own laundry. 

A: What happened if you didn't do all of your chores?

B: Then I didn't get my allowance! But I always did all of my chores. My brother, on the other hand . . . .

A: What did he have to do?

B: He had to take out the trash, wash the cars once a week, and cut the grass. In the winter he had to use the snow shovel to clear snow from the driveway. What about you?

A: I was raised on a farm! I had so many chores to do. I had work to do before I left for school, and then when I got home. I had to wake up at 5:30 every morning. 

B: Did you get an allowance?

A: Shoot, no! My parents expected all of us to work on the farm. If we didn't do our chores, we didn't eat. They were very strict. We always did our chores!

B: Gosh, our childhoods were so different!

TQ 063 Lukas from Germany

Lukas and his girlfriend Anna (not TQ 062 Anna) stayed with me in Nanning for four nights as they were on their way from Vietnam to Mongolia and Russia. They cycled from Germany to Iran, then sent their bikes home, and are now traveling by plane, train, bus and hitchhiking. Lukas is from Potsdam, which is in the former East Germany. Listen as we talk about Luke Skywalker and Star Wars, East and West Germany/East and West Berlin, the wonderful chocolate and hazelnut spread that is called Nutella, and an interesting place in Myanmar (Burma) called Bagan. We also talk about football and psychology for a bit.

Here are some words that you may not know: gospel, ominous, a demanding job, theoretical, psychoanalytical theory, cognitive, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Bosnia, Croatia, Albania, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Georgia, the Caucasus, ferry, hospitable, vineyard, botanist, to be allied with, sauce, a sexist remark, monks and nuns. 

LnR 095 TO BUILD  A FIRE 3 by Jack London

The frozen moisture of its breathing had settled on its fur in a fine powder of frost, and especially were its jowls, muzzle, and eyelashes whitened by its crystalled breath.  The man’s red beard and moustache were likewise frosted, but more solidly, the deposit taking the form of ice and increasing with every warm, moist breath he exhaled.  Also, the man was chewing tobacco, and the muzzle of ice held his lips so rigidly that he was unable to clear his chin when he expelled the juice.  The result was that a crystal beard of the colour and solidity of amber was increasing its length on his chin.  If he fell down it would shatter itself, like glass, into brittle fragments.  But he did not mind the appendage.  It was the penalty all tobacco-chewers paid in that country, and he had been out before in two cold snaps.  They had not been so cold as this, he knew, but by the spirit thermometer at Sixty Mile he knew they had been registered at fifty below and at fifty-five.

He held on through the level stretch of woods for several miles, crossed a wide flat of n#$%@-heads, and dropped down a bank to the frozen bed of a small stream.  This was Henderson Creek, and he knew he was ten miles from the forks.  He looked at his watch.  It was ten o’clock.  He was making four miles an hour, and he calculated that he would arrive at the forks at half-past twelve.  He decided to celebrate that event by eating his lunch there.

The dog dropped in again at his heels, with a tail drooping discouragement, as the man swung along the creek-bed.  The furrow of the old sled-trail was plainly visible, but a dozen inches of snow covered the marks of the last runners.  In a month no man had come up or down that silent creek.  The man held steadily on.  He was not much given to thinking, and just then particularly he had nothing to think about save that he would eat lunch at the forks and that at six o’clock he would be in camp with the boys.  There was nobody to talk to and, had there been, speech would have been impossible because of the ice-muzzle on his mouth.  So he continued monotonously to chew tobacco and to increase the length of his amber beard.

Once in a while the thought reiterated itself that it was very cold and that he had never experienced such cold.  As he walked along he rubbed his cheek-bones and nose with the back of his mittened hand.  He did this automatically, now and again changing hands.  But rub as he would, the instant he stopped his cheek-bones went numb, and the following instant the end of his nose went numb.  He was sure to frost his cheeks; he knew that, and experienced a pang of regret that he had not devised a nose-strap of the sort Bud wore in cold snaps.  Such a strap passed across the cheeks, as well, and saved them.  But it didn’t matter much, after all.  What were frosted cheeks?  A bit painful, that was all; they were never serious.

LnR 094 (Casual Language) Spring Festival

I'm talking to my mother.

A: Hi, Mom, it's Nancy. Can you hear me?

B: Hi, dear. Yes, I can.

A. Happy New Year, Mom!

B: What? It's January 28th!

A: Happy Chinese New Year!

B: Oh, yeah, thanks. Did you do anything special?

A: You know I'm hosting German travelers, Anna and Lukas.

B: Right. They are cycling from Hong Kong to Greece.

A: No, that was another Anna from Germany. She left a couple days ago. Anna and Lukas cycled from Germany to Iran, then flew to Southeast Asia, and are now traveling by bus, train and hitchhiking.

B: Oh, OK. Did you hear lots of fireworks last night?

A: Oh, man, the noise at midnight was amazing! Firecrackers were going off all around, and in the sky you could see beautiful fireworks. We had heard fireworks off and on all day, but the closer it got to midnight the louder it got. I could still hear some fireworks when I went to bed at 1:30.

B: That's so interesting, dear. I just had a quiet day with my three kittycats.

A: I'm having a quiet day today. The weather is lovely and my campus is so empty. The Germans and I are going on a little picnic later today.

TQ 062 Anna from Germany

Anna, 25, is from Kiel in northern Germany. She studied in the U.S. and now works in Greece during the summer and fall. She is on a bike trip from Hong Kong to Greece. A couple years ago she rode a bike across the United States. Listen as she talks about her bike trips and about riding through a Navajo reservation in the American Southwest. Also listen as the birds outside my apartment sing!

Here are some words that we use in this interview that you may not know: multi-national, failure, scholarship, volleyball, infrastructure, Myanmar/Burma, Bangladesh, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, grad school, vividly, It's a trade-off, pasta, knees, ankles, pipeline, tribal, casino, inequality, underserved people, tune in.

LnR 093 TO BUILD A FIRE 2 by Jack London

As he turned to go on, he spat speculatively.  There was a sharp, explosive crackle that startled him.  He spat again.  And again, in the air, before it could fall to the snow, the spittle crackled.  He knew that at fifty below spittle crackled on the snow, but this spittle had crackled in the air.  Undoubtedly it was colder than fifty below—how much colder he did not know.  But the temperature did not matter.  He was bound for the old claim on the left fork of Henderson Creek, where the boys were already.  They had come over across the divide from the Indian Creek country, while he had come the roundabout way to take a look at the possibilities of getting out logs in the spring from the islands in the Yukon.  He would be in to camp by six o’clock; a bit after dark, it was true, but the boys would be there, a fire would be going, and a hot supper would be ready.  As for lunch, he pressed his hand against the protruding bundle under his jacket.  It was also under his shirt, wrapped up in a handkerchief and lying against the naked skin.  It was the only way to keep the biscuits from freezing.  He smiled agreeably to himself as he thought of those biscuits, each cut open and sopped in bacon grease, and each enclosing a generous slice of fried bacon.

He plunged in among the big spruce trees.  The trail was faint.  A foot of snow had fallen since the last sled had passed over, and he was glad he was without a sled, travelling light.  In fact, he carried nothing but the lunch wrapped in the handkerchief.  He was surprised, however, at the cold.  It certainly was cold, he concluded, as he rubbed his numbed nose and cheek-bones with his mittened hand.  He was a warm-whiskered man, but the hair on his face did not protect the high cheek-bones and the eager nose that thrust itself aggressively into the frosty air.

At the man’s heels trotted a dog, a big native husky, the proper wolf-dog, grey-coated and without any visible or temperamental difference from its brother, the wild wolf.  The animal was depressed by the tremendous cold.  It knew that it was no time for travelling.  Its instinct told it a truer tale than was told to the man by the man’s judgment.  In reality, it was not merely colder than fifty below zero; it was colder than sixty below, than seventy below.  It was seventy-five below zero.  Since the freezing-point is thirty-two above zero, it meant that one hundred and seven degrees of frost obtained.  The dog did not know anything about thermometers.  Possibly in its brain there was no sharp consciousness of a condition of very cold such as was in the man’s brain.  But the brute had its instinct.  It experienced a vague but menacing apprehension that subdued it and made it slink along at the man’s heels, and that made it question eagerly every unwonted movement of the man as if expecting him to go into camp or to seek shelter somewhere and build a fire.  The dog had learned fire, and it wanted fire, or else to burrow under the snow and cuddle its warmth away from the air.