So I ask you, which one of these Deck Dudes would you select as your designated driver?
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Rogue's Gallery
So I ask you, which one of these Deck Dudes would you select as your designated driver?
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Monday, April 5, 2010
Anchorage High School
For those of you looking for the story about AHS days, scroll down to High Heeled Easter Sunday.
Idle Brains
“An idle brain is the devil’s workshop,” wrote H. G. Bohn in 1855. Sometimes he’s misquoted as having written, “An idle mind is the devil’s playground.” Either way you prefer the clichéd proverb, boy, did he ever get it right.
I received an e-mail this morning from the cheerleader of a writer’s group I belong to, in which she noted that the new snow should make for ideal ambiance for writers.
So, Seward got snow, too, I thought, looking on the white landscape here in Halibut Cove.
The weather has yet to take that irreversible step into spring, though the daytime temperatures are always above freezing and the nighttime mercury seems headed for the same region.
Just before darkness settled in yesterday, snowflakes as large as quarters began falling on Halibut Cove. This was wet spring snow, the kind that’s full of moisture, piles up quickly, and packs as hard as concrete. When I went to bed, the quarters had morphed into half dollars, so I wasn’t surprised to see four inches of new snow on the deck this morning.
Gerri was more than ticked off. She tried door after door (and there are many in this home), searching for the door that opened onto better conditions, as in a snowless terrain for mousing.
Then she looked at me with an expression that left no doubt: “You don’t fool me. I KNOW you can make it go away.”
When the sun came out from behind silver clouds, I tried to make the snow disappear for Gerri, if only on the front deck. I grabbed the push shovel and started in. The snow was heavy and wet, and compacted so hard I could only do a small stretch at a time and had to attack it at angles. I kept thinking about that ambiance comment as I worked. Halfway through pushing the snow off the deck, I realized that this was SO wrong.
I abandoned the shovel, and a short time later had much of the snow from the remaining half of the deck almost gone.
This is where I put it.
To complete his ensemble, and to identify him as a real Halibut Cove resident, he wore the obligatory footwear of the Cove.
These are ice grippers, fastened to the footwear of your choice by adjustable Velcro straps.
It occurred to me that I had him facing in the wrong direction, so with a bit of snowman yoga, he soon looked out on the scenery.
Soon spectators began arriving.
Gerri, who had thus far been quite blasé about a new resident on her deck, made a closer inspection after I went inside.
Not close enough, she decided.
She tried rubbing her face on the snowman’s nose.
It wouldn’t hold still, SO….
The snowman was a bit worn out after Gerri’s visit.
I’ll leave it up to you as to which one of us had the idle brain today.
Snow: the ambiance you have to shovel. Or not.
It wouldn’t hold still, SO….
The snowman was a bit worn out after Gerri’s visit.
I’ll leave it up to you as to which one of us had the idle brain today.
Snow: the ambiance you have to shovel. Or not.
Saturday, April 3, 2010
High Heeled Easter Sunday
I think I passed through a zone of harmonic convergence on my drive from Moose Pass to Homer the other day, because all of a sudden my hippocampus jumped up and yelled, “Yeah, baby!” Once I got its seat belt back on, I grabbed a scrap of paper and made a few notes, incomplete though they were.
Harmonic convergence, according to one of the many websites devoted to it, is an “allignment [sic] of planets in our solar system forming a ‘gallactic [sic] pulse,’ brightening the blue spectrum of Earth’s atmospheric light, impacting the brain’s hippocampus and causing a release of extra serotonin.” The website also said, “[t]his effect in turn, causing a boost enough to feel good worldwide, will thus able [sic] all to receive truth instead of avoiding and denying it.” [sic]
Well, my bod certainly was jittering with serotonin, or maybe it was from the caffeine in the Coke Zero I was drinking. I’m not sure about the blue spectrum being all goosed up because it was snowing at the time. But somewhere being Kasilof and Ninilchik, I surely did feel a boost of goodwill when I figured out how to tell, rather than receive, a long-kept truth, otherwise known as a secret.
As to which planets were supposedly in alignment, I’m pretty sure Mars and Venus were involved, as well as Saturn, because ideas were spinning around my head like the rings of that planet, so that’s proof enough for me. I’ll throw in the now-demoted Pluto also, because my story reminds me of Goofy’s disjointed dog.
I wasn't sure how to bring all those ideas together until I reached Halibut Cove and heard a story on a newscast about a high school somewhere banning students from hugging in school. I’d heard this same thing a couple months ago when another high school in another place banned hugging. Darned shame, I thought.
But this story isn’t about a lack of childhood nurturing. It’s a story about Easter, my up-coming 50th high school class reunion, and my rebellion against social mores of the day, which I blame entirely on Elvis. Throw in my most embarrassing moment, how times have changed since I was in high school, and you’ve got the plot of a real bodice-ripper a la 1960.
Fifty years ago, students not only didn’t hug at school, we didn’t touch each other. You’d see the occasional hand-holding between kids going steady, but not much else. At least, not in the hallways of the high school. I wasn’t privy to what happened in the privacy of Chevy Bel-Airs and Ford Fairlanes.
I was a hopeless romantic at the time. Any expressions of affection between other people brought me to tears. The most romantic thing I ever saw was when my friend Renetta’s boyfriend Dennis met her after class outside the chorus room one day to walk her to her next class. Renetta was wearing a light green sweater with a wide two-layer knit collar, much like the wide flap on a sailor’s jumper uniform. As she leaned back against the door jam, Dennis put his hands through each end of that collar, drew her close, and spoke softly to her. I almost swooned.
In those days, proper young ladies waited for boys to initiate social activities, call them, etc. As a result, girls like me sat home a lot and bore their unrequited crushes on boys in not-so-secret crying sessions on other girls’ shoulders. I cried easily and often, and I still wonder how my best girlfriends tolerated it.
With that information, you can understand what happened in my senior year and why, when I came across a recommendation that young people go to church together to help build a relationship. How romantic, I thought, and promptly (with my heart joining both feet in my mouth) called the object of my unrequited affection at the time. He wasn’t another student.
He was Ron, four years older and a popular disc jockey at KFQD radio, which was THE only station in Anchorage that played rock and roll. Elvis, Bill Haley and the Comets, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Everly Brothers. Ah, heaven.
Church and I had a tenuous relationship. Many years before I was at summer Bible camp at King’s Lake north of Anchorage, and started crying one evening as I lay in my bunk at bedtime. The cabin counselor called in one of the pastors, who soon had me praying with him and thanking God for my salvation. I was uncomfortable with that at the time but it wasn’t until a couple years later, when I found out what puberty did to a girl’s emotions and learned the word “gullible,” that I suspected I’d been had. Not intentionally perhaps, but misled anyway.
By the time I called Ron and invited him to church, I had decided that I’d keep my distance from organized religion until I was old enough and smart enough to sort it out for myself. But once a romantic, always a romantic, and to have Ron to go to church with me on Easter Sunday was a coup. Easter Sunday was neutral enough, and church was likewise neutral enough, so it wasn’t like I was really asking him on a date, though I secretly considered it one, even though Ron was forbidden by contract from dating high school girls.
Darned if Ron didn’t say he would go. Darned if he didn’t pull up to my house on Easter morning in his black Cadillac. Darned if we didn’t attend Easter Sunday services at Central Lutheran Church in downtown Anchorage.
But here’s the thing about Central Lutheran Church: when you exited the church, you had to walk down a number of concrete steps to reach the sidewalk. There was one handrail right in the center of the steps. And Easter Sunday in Anchorage? It’s still winter. There was snow and ice on the steps.
And me? I was in high-heeled shoes that I was unaccustomed to wearing. I held the handrail on the way down those slippery steps, but even that didn’t save me. Down I went on my backside while Ron looked on helplessly. I was mortified, and briefly wondered if I wasn’t being punished for my breach in social mores, my breach with the church, and every other sin that could be laid at my feet, thought about committing, and would commit in the future forever and ever, amen.
Ron took me home after my spectacular spectacle. We never dated. We were, however, good friends, and still are. I haven’t seen him since he played music at my 20th class reunion, but we are in touch by e-mail.
Come this June, he will fly to Anchorage from Texas where he now lives. And once again, the students of the Anchorage High School class of 1960 will dance to music of the Fifties and Sixties, emceed by Ron, the much-loved DJ from back then.
Except for me. Oh, I’ll be there—can’t wait for it. However, not only am I still a wallflower and still can’t dance, but I have a history with high heels around my friend Ron.
I will, though, give him a hug. I promise.
Harmonic convergence, according to one of the many websites devoted to it, is an “allignment [sic] of planets in our solar system forming a ‘gallactic [sic] pulse,’ brightening the blue spectrum of Earth’s atmospheric light, impacting the brain’s hippocampus and causing a release of extra serotonin.” The website also said, “[t]his effect in turn, causing a boost enough to feel good worldwide, will thus able [sic] all to receive truth instead of avoiding and denying it.” [sic]
Well, my bod certainly was jittering with serotonin, or maybe it was from the caffeine in the Coke Zero I was drinking. I’m not sure about the blue spectrum being all goosed up because it was snowing at the time. But somewhere being Kasilof and Ninilchik, I surely did feel a boost of goodwill when I figured out how to tell, rather than receive, a long-kept truth, otherwise known as a secret.
As to which planets were supposedly in alignment, I’m pretty sure Mars and Venus were involved, as well as Saturn, because ideas were spinning around my head like the rings of that planet, so that’s proof enough for me. I’ll throw in the now-demoted Pluto also, because my story reminds me of Goofy’s disjointed dog.
I wasn't sure how to bring all those ideas together until I reached Halibut Cove and heard a story on a newscast about a high school somewhere banning students from hugging in school. I’d heard this same thing a couple months ago when another high school in another place banned hugging. Darned shame, I thought.
But this story isn’t about a lack of childhood nurturing. It’s a story about Easter, my up-coming 50th high school class reunion, and my rebellion against social mores of the day, which I blame entirely on Elvis. Throw in my most embarrassing moment, how times have changed since I was in high school, and you’ve got the plot of a real bodice-ripper a la 1960.
Fifty years ago, students not only didn’t hug at school, we didn’t touch each other. You’d see the occasional hand-holding between kids going steady, but not much else. At least, not in the hallways of the high school. I wasn’t privy to what happened in the privacy of Chevy Bel-Airs and Ford Fairlanes.
I was a hopeless romantic at the time. Any expressions of affection between other people brought me to tears. The most romantic thing I ever saw was when my friend Renetta’s boyfriend Dennis met her after class outside the chorus room one day to walk her to her next class. Renetta was wearing a light green sweater with a wide two-layer knit collar, much like the wide flap on a sailor’s jumper uniform. As she leaned back against the door jam, Dennis put his hands through each end of that collar, drew her close, and spoke softly to her. I almost swooned.
In those days, proper young ladies waited for boys to initiate social activities, call them, etc. As a result, girls like me sat home a lot and bore their unrequited crushes on boys in not-so-secret crying sessions on other girls’ shoulders. I cried easily and often, and I still wonder how my best girlfriends tolerated it.
With that information, you can understand what happened in my senior year and why, when I came across a recommendation that young people go to church together to help build a relationship. How romantic, I thought, and promptly (with my heart joining both feet in my mouth) called the object of my unrequited affection at the time. He wasn’t another student.
He was Ron, four years older and a popular disc jockey at KFQD radio, which was THE only station in Anchorage that played rock and roll. Elvis, Bill Haley and the Comets, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Everly Brothers. Ah, heaven.
Church and I had a tenuous relationship. Many years before I was at summer Bible camp at King’s Lake north of Anchorage, and started crying one evening as I lay in my bunk at bedtime. The cabin counselor called in one of the pastors, who soon had me praying with him and thanking God for my salvation. I was uncomfortable with that at the time but it wasn’t until a couple years later, when I found out what puberty did to a girl’s emotions and learned the word “gullible,” that I suspected I’d been had. Not intentionally perhaps, but misled anyway.
By the time I called Ron and invited him to church, I had decided that I’d keep my distance from organized religion until I was old enough and smart enough to sort it out for myself. But once a romantic, always a romantic, and to have Ron to go to church with me on Easter Sunday was a coup. Easter Sunday was neutral enough, and church was likewise neutral enough, so it wasn’t like I was really asking him on a date, though I secretly considered it one, even though Ron was forbidden by contract from dating high school girls.
Darned if Ron didn’t say he would go. Darned if he didn’t pull up to my house on Easter morning in his black Cadillac. Darned if we didn’t attend Easter Sunday services at Central Lutheran Church in downtown Anchorage.
But here’s the thing about Central Lutheran Church: when you exited the church, you had to walk down a number of concrete steps to reach the sidewalk. There was one handrail right in the center of the steps. And Easter Sunday in Anchorage? It’s still winter. There was snow and ice on the steps.
And me? I was in high-heeled shoes that I was unaccustomed to wearing. I held the handrail on the way down those slippery steps, but even that didn’t save me. Down I went on my backside while Ron looked on helplessly. I was mortified, and briefly wondered if I wasn’t being punished for my breach in social mores, my breach with the church, and every other sin that could be laid at my feet, thought about committing, and would commit in the future forever and ever, amen.
Ron took me home after my spectacular spectacle. We never dated. We were, however, good friends, and still are. I haven’t seen him since he played music at my 20th class reunion, but we are in touch by e-mail.
Come this June, he will fly to Anchorage from Texas where he now lives. And once again, the students of the Anchorage High School class of 1960 will dance to music of the Fifties and Sixties, emceed by Ron, the much-loved DJ from back then.
Except for me. Oh, I’ll be there—can’t wait for it. However, not only am I still a wallflower and still can’t dance, but I have a history with high heels around my friend Ron.
I will, though, give him a hug. I promise.
Life is Hard, Then You Die
Oh, my word.
Tote that barge. Lift that bale.
Get a little drunk and you land in jail...
In the meantime,
there's this:
Tote that barge. Lift that bale.
Get a little drunk and you land in jail...
In the meantime,
there's this:
Fresh, troll-caught winter king salmon, the best-eating of all the salmon varieties. Enhanced by a light sheen of dijon mustard/mayo, and baked until just done.
Too bad about that hard life, huh?
Friday, April 2, 2010
Low Tide in Halibut Cove
I made my rounds yesterday at a low, low minus 4 tide. Here are some things I saw.
A starfish that got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Very visible underwater growths. I want to say these are anemones, but I'm not sure.
A starfish still underwater, in the shadow of a boat.
An exposed beach littered with clam shells.
All those white things are clam shells--sea otters' dinner plates, if you will.
Gerri and a pair of mallards.
The ducks paddled back and forth, each lap taking them closer and closer to Gerri.
There was no way Gerri was going to jump in the water after them, and I think the ducks knew that.
Curiosity, Gerri, might get the cat wet...
And I doubt Gerri knew that.
A starfish that got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Very visible underwater growths. I want to say these are anemones, but I'm not sure.
A starfish still underwater, in the shadow of a boat.
An exposed beach littered with clam shells.
All those white things are clam shells--sea otters' dinner plates, if you will.
Gerri and a pair of mallards.
The ducks paddled back and forth, each lap taking them closer and closer to Gerri.
There was no way Gerri was going to jump in the water after them, and I think the ducks knew that.
Curiosity, Gerri, might get the cat wet...
And I doubt Gerri knew that.
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