Icewind's Ramblings

*Nitty Gritty Dirt Band circa 1970’s “Rippling Waters” has been a favorite song during my lifetime as it feeds my soul of that longing for relaxation and small town living.   I’ve danced with my daughters to this music when each was a little girl and same with grandkids now. The music has gone in and out of my consciousness over the many years but something seems to trigger its return to my brain and my well being.   “And now ripplin’ waters flows through pipes in the walls and they’re keeping me warm” which refers to the hydronic heating systems in houses here and many other places.   It is an everyday reminder in the wintertime of this song as you can hear the air bubbles in the pipes making the sounds.   It is soothing at night lying in bed as we do not have many thunderstorms here in Alaska so those sounds are comforting to many people. We are approaching the official start of winter on the 21 st when the winter solstice happens.   So far it has been ...

And so did the ditch divers who cannot drive worth a crap. The front came through and with it a nice steady snowfall covering the frost on everything the last two weeks and as those who make their way to work in the darkness forgot some of the tenants of safe driving.  The main on is slow down lest you end up in the ditch or overturned with that unique view upside down sliding to a scary stop hoping someone else doesn’t hit you.  Another is turn of cruise control on icy roads as they can make you veer off the highway when the tires hit uneven ice on the road making the false sense of slowing down when it just spins those tires until you hit the brake spinning you out of control. After the front stalled over Anchorage it produced some nice fluffy large snowflakes which was pretty to watch once the light of day came but caused major traffic tie ups along the Glenn Highway which was closed for several hours due to out of control vehicles.  It was a long commute ...

Many of you know over the last couple of years that I have enjoyed and been fascinated by the squirrels that have taken up roost at my last couple of houses I have lived in. Squirrels are just so fascinating in how they interact with each other, birds which may share a bird feeder, and my family. Then there is the dog, Gus who now has a ‘doggie door’ so he can go in and outside while we are working or away for a few hours. My bird feeder is just outside the new door a few steps away across the deck, hanging over the side. The birds and squirrels can get to the feed and do so in relative safety with Gus just lurching his way up the railing and barking his displeasure of them eating ‘his’ peanuts. The Blue Jays and the Robbins play tag team luring Gus away from the feeder while the mate flies up and gets the food and off to the nest. It is funny how they work Gus to the point he tires of running back and forth and lies down under the feeder and watches the wildl...

The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes. ~William James It is funny to me how sometimes people get defeated by a poor attitude. It might even be a little sad that someone lets conditions, people, and other influences take away that which is yours alone to choose. I have experienced in my field that it takes 10 positive people to bring up the one negative person but when there is that one “sour grape” around it may only take one negative person to bring down a group of people. It can spread like a cancer within the group and may need to be ‘cut out’ to bring harmony back to the masses. Over the weekend we passed the summer solstice where the sun reaches it’s most northern point in its orbit thereby bringing us our ‘longest’ day of the year giving Alaskans our most daylight hours crossing back to losing a few seconds at first then minutes as we go into fall and back to winter. ...

Many of us look for the end of the rainbow and sometimes a few of us may actually luck up and find it . . . Was it what we expected or really wished for? Sometimes . . . and we may find a few unexpected things along the way. Land of the midnight Sun . . . Alaska Scenes . . . Alaska , Bringing our Natural Resources to America A Quiet Place And a song . . . Ice

Yesterday was another one in a long series of days that seemed to go on forever. I had a job meeting for the new super Walmart we are building in Kenai Alaska at 9 am which meant that I needed to be out of the house by four in the morning to make it to the shop, load up items we were taking down, and make the almost three hour drive to the jobsite. We are still in our “light gain” period for another three weeks so we gain about three and a half minutes a day now as the sun slows it trek northward for Solstice on June 21 st . Sunrise is 4:34 AM and sunset is 11: 24 PM leaving the five hours between with a semi-full light for about 3 hours and twilight ‘dusk’ period for the other two. I went to bed Sunday evening just after midnight with the birds still singing their songs and when I awoke at 3:30 AM the light was on again with no clouds to block the soon to rise sun rays peaking out from behind the Chugach mountains to the east of my house. I was not tired as I ...

I picked up from the airport this afternoon a friend who is coming back up to Alaska to work with us. He was here briefly almost a year and a half ago working but it was more in the late winter into spring part of the year. It was good seeing him again and catching up on things this afternoon and until one of my out of town projects starts later this month he will be staying at my house. We kicked back for a bit and relaxed and talked about the economy in Montana and Alaska before everyone started to arrive at the house. My daughter and son in law decided they wanted to come over for a dinner of tacos and fajitas and go over some things since they never made it by over the weekend. It was a great dinner and the two grandkids were happy to eat peanut butter and jelly while everyone else chowed down on both chicken and beef fajitas as well as soft and hard shell tacos. We made fresh guacamole and a salsa blend with my “magic bullet” for that quick and easy meal...

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...