Icewind's Ramblings

Today is a bit of odds and ends that I wanted to post but had not gotten around to it. We had a moose that wandered around downtown Anchorage the last couple of years that seemed to be a fixture in Town Park and other locations who was named Buzzwinkle. He became ‘Almost Famous’ due to one adventure of ambling down the street and squeezed into the courtyard at Bernie's Bungalow Tavern where he settled in for a feast of crab apples and eventually assumed a disoriented stance, staring into space and snorting steam. I first wrote about him here: 11-28-07 and later upon his death here: 4-06-07 . His personality and the care free lifestyle are sorely missed this year and I meant to post his picture once again wishing everyone a Merry Christmoose so without further ado . . . *Pictures by Eric Hill, Anchorage Daily News We received about eight inches of snow on Christmas Day and w...

The innocence of our children or grandchildren makes us remember what Life is truly about . . . They force us to open up to those things long buried And beaten down by life. Ice

2008 has been one of those years that you just wish was over and can look forward to the coming New Year. Last nights post ended with a kind of somber note that I felt there would be no saving grace at the end of this year. After I posted I sat there and felt bad that over the course of the whole year I was left with a ‘downer mood’ which goes against all of my positive being. I went to sleep late after watching my granddaughter fall asleep on the couch waiting to see Santa come down the chimney. She made sure that the fire that had been raging earlier was out and the chimney had cooled so Santa would make his appearance. I wandered off to sleep just as a light snowfall was coming down outside and the light played off the crystallized snowflakes as it passed by the street light out front. I finally fell asleep around four in the morning and ‘slept’ in as that is my usual time for waking up and getting ready for work. I was in a deep sleep when around...

It’s been 40 years tonight that an estimated one billion people either watched or listened to the live broadcast from lunar orbit by the crew of Apollo 8. In retrospect of that flight it fascinates me that all of the engineers and astronauts thought about almost everything on how to blast off from Cape Kennedy Florida , travel across the vastness of space to the far side of the moon but the one thing man had not considered or planned for was something that almost didn’t happen . . . an attempt for the crew to glimpse and record the most moving of sights, as their jewel of a home planet, suspended in the blackness of space, rose from behind the barren lunar horizon. No one had thought about what our world would look like from behind the moon that first time so no scheduled ‘picture taking’ was in the mission plan but by some luck and quick thinking by the astronauts . . . one picture changed how we view ourselves in the world. What I’m talking about is the ‘Earthrise...

Yes, the bizarre story lines keep spilling from our 49th and largest state. When I first reported on this Alaska happening in December 2005 I said: “He’s been in all the papers and on TV all last week. From Florida , to Europe , in web blogs all over the internet, and brought up on weather forecast’s on television he’s becoming a star. He’s the cool dude here in Anchorage that has the neighborhood buzzing and people from all over stopping by. Snowzilla , the 16 foot tall snowman built when there was not a lot of snow on the ground. The kids in the neighborhood brought sleds full of snow from their own yards to help bring this character to life.” Last year Snowzilla grew in both size and popularity again bringing some protests from the neighbors. Funny thing that seems to happen is the spread of his story and again the world took notice. This year the MOA ( Municipality of Anchorage ) decided that enough was enough. Municipal c...

We had our company Christmas Party tonight so I’m getting in late with not much time to write. It’s snowing tonight with some strong winds blowing snow all over the roadway making driving home a slower process than usual. I made my first visit to the new Target which opened in October here in Anchorage as it is less than a mile from my house. Easy access and a new Kohl’s and Lowe’s are both almost finished so we seem to be coming out of the dark ages here in the Arctic with the ‘big box’ stores. All we need now is the Red Lobster and Olive Garden that has been talked about for years now but never built. Speaking of Red Lobster . . . I still wonder why they spend the thousands of dollars on television commercials here in Anchorage when it’s about 1,500 miles to the closest location. I was in Target in search of a cable I needed for my iPod and was wandering aimlessly around the store (get it? Target? Aimlessly? Ha! Ha!) looking for the part I needed. I...

Today is Midwinter for us here in Alaska , perhaps better known as the Winter Solstice. For people like me, however, it also represents a hopeful, optimistic time, as it kicks off the official countdown to spring and the joyful long days of summer. Sure we still have the bulk of the cold weather is still ahead of us, but if we can just make it through tonight, we'll have survived the longest night of the year. Longer days and more sunshine are on the way. In the northern hemisphere, today is the shortest day of the year. The sun makes its shortest arc through the sky that we will see this year. Time-lapse photograph of the sun's arc through the sky during the winter solstice (photo credit: Danilo Pivato) To correspond with this celestial event, celebrations and holidays will be observed by cultures from every continent in the northern hemisphere. The solstice is one of the only events observed by virtually every cu...