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Showing posts from June 15, 2008

Alaska’s Summer Solstice 2008

A good summer solstice to you all: this is, in the northern hemisphere, the longest of day and for those of you Outside living further south . . . the shortest night for this year. Living in Anchorage the summer solstice comes tomorrow at 3:59 p.m. Alaska Daylight Time. That’s 11:59 p.m. Universal Time, and the US Naval Observatory says it’s the first time since 1896 that the summer solstice has landed on June 20th. The leap year puts the solstice just before the dawn of the 21st of June. If you go further north, you will find even longer days where in Barrow the sun doesn’t set at all. Tonight's quote comes from Shakespeare from a Mid-Summer's Night Dream (referring to the summer solstice): “Whatever is dreamed on this night . . . will come to pass.” Celebrate the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere! Enjoy and dream big under a full moon in the light of a new summer. Ice

Lost . . . and Found . . . Tim Russert

Lost . . . Last Friday two unrelated events took place . . . Tim Russert who hosted the Sunday morning program Meet the Press and was the best political analyst on MSNBC died suddenly of a heart attack at work preparing for the Sunday program. Tim Russert’s funeral and public memorial service was this afternoon. It has been a somewhat strange phenomenon since last Friday seeing the public outpouring of everyone. I have not seen anything like it in a long time and it makes my heart happy to see everyone’s love for such a man. The everyman we could all understand and relate too on so many things . . . family . . . politics . . . fatherhood . . . patriotism. He will be missed on Sunday mornings and the upcoming coverage of the elections in November. So . . . some may ask the question . . . why all the hullabaloo and continued coverage? It's simple really . . . because he was so loved by so many. To see the likes of Tom Brokaw with breaking voice so eloqu

Home Alone . . .

Tonight is the first night in recent memory that I am in the house alone . . . everyone is gone . . . someplace. My wife, daughter, and son in law are all in Seattle tonight after early morning departures from Anchorage . My daughter who has been ill for several months was medivaced from here for treatments Outside. My brother in law has left this afternoon with friends who flew in from several parts of the country for the start of a 10 day marathon fishing adventure. They headed for the Kenai River for the start of the Red salmon run. They will come back in town on Thursday for a couple of hours and then head out once again to Seward for some King Salmon fishing. Hopefully I can sneak away for a night of fishing to relax and collect my energy for the coming weeks. My grand daughter is spending a couple of days with the other grandparents and my father in law is somewhere on the road between Utah and the wilds of Canada on his way here relocating all his belon

A Gaggle of Geese crosses the road

I was driving to work early Friday morning and as I made my way through the curve that makes the transition from Muldoon Road to Tudor Road I saw them in the middle of the road. A gaggle of geese . . . Mom and her 8 goslings huddled together in the lane in front of me of a 5 lane road. The traffic at this time of morning was building and there were vehicles filling the road giving the gaggle no real escape . . . Mom had stopped several times to allow cars or trucks to go by as each swerved after seeing them at the last minute avoiding collision. Where was dad? He had gone ahead seemingly to clear the way and was standing on the far edge of the highway helpless to the impending disaster. Meanwhile Mom was making several attempts to move everyone across cautiously stopping as vehicles came up moving around them. A few vehicles stopped on my side of the road so as to clear a path back to safety but Mom and her gaggle continued across into the oncoming traffic de