Icewind's Ramblings

Since light travels faster than sound . . . People appear bright until you hear them speak. Ice

This year, 2007, the winter solstice will be at 9:08 PM (Alaskan Standard Time) in the evening of Friday, 21 st of December. I’d like to wish all my readers a happy holiday season — whichever one you celebrate, or lack thereof. Thank you so much for making this blog a fun and successful experience for me! Winter’s Solstice for many Alaskans is a time of celebration as we understand that even as winter’s grip takes hold of our great land in the far north that tomorrow we will be heading back into the light. Day by day and night by night the days slowly grow longer at first as the darkness gives way to the full light of summer. Like all the mysteries that emerge from time with no footnotes, it is left to each of us to find what meaning we can make of them. But perhaps this one monument from the time of myth gives us, every year, one small hint. No matter what time and the universe can throw at us, we still go on . . . to remind ourselves what we have and we shall ...

Where Valor Proudly Sleeps . . . This was from an email sent to me by my wife’s friend Amy so I thought I would share it with you. Rest easy, sleep well my brothers . . . Know the line has held, your job is done. Rest easy, sleep well. Others have taken up where you fell, the line has held. Peace, peace, and farewell . . . Arlington Cemetery has had the honor of having the headstones dressed in wreaths from the Worcester Wreath Company, Harrington Maine since 1992. Morrill Worchester the president of the company had visited Arlington Cemetery at the age of 14 and its imagery had an impact since. "When people hear about what we do at Arlington , I am often asked if I am a veteran," Worcester says. "I am not. But I have made it my business to never forget." He started Wreaths Across America placing wreaths in National Cemetery ’s in all 50 states. We remember you all year long . . . to your famil...

Tunesmith Dan Fogelberg gone on ahead . . . Dan Fogelberg, the singer and songwriter whose hits “Leader of the Band” and “Same Old Lang Syne” helped define the soft-rock era, died Sunday at his home in Maine after battling prostate cancer the last few years. He was 56. . . . A quiet man of music Denied a simpler fate He tried to be a soldier once But his music wouldn’t wait He earned his love Through discipline A thundering, velvet hand His gentle means of sculpting souls Took me years to understand. Those words like many others written and sung by Dan Fogelberg over the last 35 years have always had meaning and a place in my ‘favorites’ music folder. We have watched the mechanism of music change over the years from vinyl to tape, whether it was my trusty reel to reel or a great 8 track player in my Mustang or Dodge Charger to the next must have format the cassette tape. We survived the disaster of laser disc as everyone switched to compact disc and now DVD and Blu...