Pleased to announce....

At 9:47, the Winter Solstice has passed. The sun is now returning to the north to light our lives and make our plants grow. Rejoice!

Yea and veryily

I can honestly say that there is not a day that I look forward to more than winter Solstice. Any celebrations and beliefs aside, I like all the other plants and animals am really ready for more light! I could definitely never be a child of the night!

You should see the celebrations in Alaska for the Winter Solstice. Everyone goes to several houses in Wrangell and party all night and everyone is fed and drinked and they all stay there because anyone driving is pulled over by the city police. Can you imagine all the people crashed all over the floors and snoring loudly. I guess you get to know your neighbor well. Solstice Night in Petersburg.

Sofer, how far is Petersburg from a sizable metropolis? I'm just picturing everyone christmas shopping in those few shops, and it just seems such a nice idea: here is what is available, now be creative in your choices.

thanks for the photo.

Laurie, Ketchikan about 150 miles by water away and is a small city not any metropolis. They have Costco, WalMart, and other stores there. Petersburg and Wrangell use these and take their cars by ferry to haul their stuff and the neighbors supplies to them. But you must know they go there only once or twice a year. All local stores a completly supported by all the people who live there no matter what the cost of anything. In Wrangell the pharmacy is very costly and they all use his services. If not, they will not have any services. Each burrough is on there own islands and they have long travel to get to their neighbors. Petersburg is about 2 hours by fast boat if the weather is good and 6 hours riding up and down the big ones. This picture is the route that they take top and to the left is Wrangell narrows 20 miles long going to the right to Petersburg and at the bottom is about the same distance seen in the picture going between islands to Wrangell. Then Wrangell is about 100 miles of inland waterway to Ketchikan. I plan on sailing my open dory to that town next summer.

Marvellous, Sofer, thanks for the photo - it is an extraordinary place - the smaller islands are so tempting - the largest small one with the beach, very nice. Is the greenery conifer or shrub? Its hard to get a scale from this. And the road wrapping round the coast - my word I think I would like to avoid that in winter, but it looks like good walking in the photo.

Happy christmas, and all the best for the new year.

The roads can be quite filled with snow down here. No plows to make it all happen. The beaches you see are tidal flats with mostly gravel. All the trees are conifers except the edges of the streams which are alder and cottonwood. There is a multitude of conifer species from Cedar to Spruce. All live abundantly here. Merry Christmas.

Ahh, the solstice! Truly a day for rejoicing! I look forward to it every year!

Not me. I have no energy or purpose. A month before and a month after I am a couch potato and normally I never sit still. Reading lots of non-fiction and learning all about the British take over of India. Oh yes and how to build a wooden boat. I can't wait until Feburary!

Hooray! We are on the downhill run! Like some of you others, this is the most looked-forward to day in my whole year.

SOFER!!!!! Look out!!! There is an alien ship hoovering above your head - and they have already landed some of their glowing sprogs on the floor next to your chair!!!!!!!!! EEEEEEEEKKKKKKKKK!

I only wish. I need a trip out of here for a while. Lets See not 'Sirius' how about way way way out to the edge, no a black hole.

Okay, what is that hoovering above you?

Ohh now I know what you are talking about that is a fireplace chimmney. I am out at the light house in Sitka in this picture. It is the only picture I have of me sitting down.
Yesterday I looked out my window and found 3 garden projects! One is to take down my bird feeder and repaint it. I am going to try to glue some stones on it to make it look like it has round stone siding. Then paint it in some bright uplifting color. Lets see.... Next I saw my rock piles every where and I can move them to the project area with my sled, and finally reorganize the walls in my garden shed after I wire and make it ready for electricity.

No its not - you are sitting down next to your mom in your jimjam's. And didn't we have a photo of you last year in your big recliner chair in your glass-in room?

I could not find the one in the solar room, but yes I have one with my jammies with my mom. But I wasn't reading a book. I was trying to set the mood of my lethargy.

Sorry, ol boy, but reading is anything but lethargic - currently reading Amanda Vickery's Behind Closed Doors - georgian domestic life - and the amount of discourse, notetaking, and bounding off for other resources to make further notations is anything but lethargic. I can't imagine that your style is much different: reading, checking maps, cross referencing and planning - go boy go - AND - although sitting is my preferred reading position, think of Rousseau, unable to find an appropriate walking companion he took a book to accompany him on his peregrinations!

Thank you Laurie for the new word. I have often peregrinated while I work in Alaska.
You are so like me, for I cannot read a book without a map, and the history of its story leads me for a period into deep studies of different herstories. I also combine reading with several books to refrence the time lines of what was going on elsewhere in the world. Time lines and maps, being a visual learner, give me retention of the book I have read. I have purchased many old history books and tend to stay away from the wilkipedia determination of what happened. Recently I read a book about David Thompson where he relates an encounter with the "large ape that the Piegan have often talked about" while on his first crossing of the continental divide. I found that awesome that Sasquatch did exist in adequate numbers in our past.

Ahhhh, true readers = an excuse to extend libraries.

Which raises the question of which is your favourite library? regardless of whether you have been able to access it personally.

My favourite library story is of my dh - always an avid reader as a boy he had readers cards to 6 libraries spread through out Manchester, all of which were visited on Saturdays by bicycle in an optimized route, wearing football kit for his afternoon kickabout. Love that kid!

My favorite library is the Seattle Public Library. Everything is there, even very rare books. The only thing I don't like about it is the urine colored escalators. During a sunny day the whole place looks like a crystal while reading inside. Also fond memories of my Alma Mater Library at Michigan State. The library of Congress kind of impressed me walking through but didn't spend much time there. I was only 8. Don't get me started on Bookstores.

Didn't Seattle just build a new library?

My most impressive library is the Chained Library at the Bodlean in Oxford, that is just something else (I'll try to find a photo) - I did most of the research for my doctorate at the British Museum when the national library was still in the round room - where most of the famous writers have sheltered at some point. I love the new British library, an amazing building, but you can't beat the Round Room. But what I really yearn for is a reader's ticket for the London Library - its links to the literary is just overwhelming, and it is just so so so civilized. Some day.

Tickets to a Library!? Must be cool. Yes Seattle built the new crystal cathedral with urine colored escalators. I like the fact that they have all of my current history research of the Voyagers, especially the early ones. David Thompson is my mentor and Alexander McKenzie follows a close second.
Back to Libraries, I find the smell of them so wonderful. I suppose it is the print that permeates the asiles. I spent much of my childhood reading in one next to my Mother's store. I had to wait until she got out of work to get home. Hardy Boys, and even Nancy Drew began my early hunger. I haven't been in any of the dark oaken Cambridge, Oxford, or Harvard like libraries but would find it a vacation. Hey good Idea! When I get old I'm going to visit the ones I am traveling through.

Yes, tickets - readers tickets, I think you call it a library card. It gives you access to the library (although the public ones you can go in without registering for a ticket), but the private ones and if you want to borrow books you need a reader's ticket.

Definately the smell of the library - right up there with good compost, spring earth, baking and just brewed tea. Oh, and a tack room. And the inside of my old leather hiking boots after a walk - sadly now neglected because of my new uber-light ultra hardy high tech material boots which smell of nothing - even after walking all day. Fab boots, no congratulatory aroma. Alas, some compromises come a cost.

Now you have revived the sense of smell that gives us the most vivid memories in life. Ahh the tack room, similar to the home of my arab mare I spent my childhood with. The stable smells of manure/urine tea ahhhh, the straw freshly scattered underneath the appreciative mare nuzzling you with love as you converse with unsaid emotions the love you share. Her anxiety to recieve the carefully measured oats, and to sneek her a cigarette from your pack that she feels is as good as M&Ms to our children. Brushing her heavy winter coat looking for winter lice or just straw and manure collected from the last moment of sharing. Her anxiety of the saddle to go out into the winter snow for a meadow of deep powder to gayly romp and plow chest deep into last nights dump of icy snow. Or the harness of the cutter to prance down the winter road before the snow plow arrives. Visiting our neighbors and taking their children for a true "sleigh ride". Laurie you have given me a rememberance of a lost moment in my life.

Sounds like the moment isn't so lost, Sofer - but beautifully maintained, just not on a page you had visited recently.