Newsnote from Barry (this past Monday)

The past two days the wind has been blowing fiercely, so wind chill was 51 below zero. Yesterday we buried the ashes of a woman from here who was murdered by her own daughter while they were living in Ottawa.  It took a month or more to find her body—it had been carried off with the garbage to a huge  Ottawa landfill.  And then, once it was found, there was the forensic work that had to be done.  This week the ashes finally arrived.

After the church service, people piled onto pickup trucks or hopped on skimobiles or four wheelers and headed up to the cemetery.  The cemetery here is on a ridge overlooking the town and the frozen sea.  Blowing snow bright in the sunlight streamed across the ground, sped past our feet, on through the rows of white wooden crosses,  then off the ridge and out over the town.  Everything was swirling, dazzling white, unearthly.  And howling along with the wind was the grieving family.

I got my first case of frostbite in Hall Beach last week, walking the short distance from the town coop to my place.  Just the tip of my nose.  I wasn’t aware of it, but two Inuit women walked past me in the other direction and laughed when they saw me.  “You’re getting frostbite!”  I guess it’s about time—here everybody gets it.