Happy St Patrick's Day!

A brilliant day filled with sunshine.  Not warm enough to do any melting, but gorgeous just the same.

We are 3 1/12 inches of snow short on breaking the all-time snowiest winter in Anchorage.  Love or hate it, some residents are hoping for more, at least another 3.3 inches. Then they could say they made it through the winter when the nearly 60-year record of 132.6 inches was broken.

The heavy snow is collapsing rooves and forcing moose into the city, where they are being colliding with vehicles and dying in large numbers.  The moose are exhausted from traveling through the deep snow.  The state passed an emergency measure to set up feeding stations far from roads and it appears to be helping.

We now have over 12 hours of daylight and have successfully made it through Daylight Savings Time which I think is totally unnecessary up here. 

It is vacation week up here and I have thoroughly enjoyed coming home after Job one and going to bed early.  I thought I would get a whole lot more done around the house but once my body allowed itself to relax, it decided it wanted to sleep. 

The sinusitis is finally leaving after eight or more weeks.  I credit it to two humidifiers and the Neti pot, which I have been using up to six times a day.

  

In the News 02/03/2012

Groundhog Day isn't such a big deal up here, for obvious reasons.  We gained 5 minutes and 21 seconds of daylight today.  We now have nearly eight hours of daylight!  Ya-hoo!

The cold weather pattern finally broke, just as everyone was getting really cranky.  My choir students were practically comatose last week.  We had a Chinook wind for a couple of days and it warmed up to 38 and things (like the ice- and hard snow-packed roads) started to melt but it cooled off to 20. 

"Big Miracle", the story of the rescue of three grey whales trapped in the ice in Barrow in 1988, opens this weekend to good reviews.  It stars Drew Barrymore, John Krasinski, and Ted Danson.  The real story is in the Anchorage Daily News today. http://www.adn.com/2012/02/02/2297759/1988-barrow-whale-rescue-the-real.html 

The uplifting thing about this family movie is it brought the Inupiaq community, Greenpeace, Arco, Soviets, the military, local musicians, ice fishermen from MN, and a chainsaw distributor together for the rescue mission.

One of the most dangerous section of the Iditarod sled dog race was dropped.  The mileage is the same, race officials are careful to point out.  The area known as The Steps, which contains steep switchbacks will be bypassed.

We have gotten so much snow today, Anchorage drivers are being told to stay off the roads so plows can get to work.  It is eerily silent out there. 

The Anchorage Daily News gardening expert, Jeff Lowenfels is getting desperate requests for green things growing from his readers.  His suggestion is to start sweet peas.  I speculate we still have the tough months of February and March and possibly April too to get through before it warms up some.  There is so much snow in the back yard it is going to be a pond when it melts and there is no place for the water to go.  There is no grass back there, only carpets of stellaria media. It takes a big imagination to picture a green and lush back yard just now.

Alaskan Superbowl food suggestions in the paper include fresh cod ($5.99/lb), oysters (10.95/12), Manila clams (6.95/lb), and rockfish (10.99/lb).  I think we are just going to have the usual standard fare of wings, maybe chili, the lad wants chicken quesadillas, and deviled eggs.  I think we have a bag of frozen shrimp too.  I am still not feeling up to snuff, so we want convenience, although everything is home-made and not processed. 

Bush teaching was evaluated and found wanting recently.  Despite the curriculum changes in an effort to accommodate all Native youth and the ongoing progress made in educating and keeping potential staff, notably by Bering Straits School District, the challenges continue.   

The Olive Garden has finally opened a branch here in Anchorage!  I was told by the manager's husband not to go til April 'when all the bugs had been worked out'.  Later I found out from colleagues equally excited by the appearance of the chain, 'they' had built to Lower 48 standards instead of AK.  Pipes froze, then burst, and they had a big mess. 

Super Bowl 2012 and The Star Spangled Banner

Gearing up for the game on Sunday.  It is a big deal here - and everywhere else. 

Kelly Clarkson will be singing The Star Spangled Banner, and Madonna will be performing during the halftime show singing Vogue and Like a Virgin and two other selections.

The SSB is a notoriously difficult piece to sing.  It spans an octave and a fifth.  Since it is acapoco, singers have to be really careful not to start too high or else they will wipe out on the high notes at the end.  Also, the lyrics in poem-form were written in 1814 and sadly, most of us don't have all those words in our vocabulary, making it even more confusing to sing.  Rampart?  Gleaming?

 Francis Scott Key wrote the lyrics the morning after he was released from captivity during the Battle of Fort McHenry in The War of 1812.  Key was detained by the British as he had heard the British plans to bombard the fort.  Throughout the night, as he heard rocket fire and exploding bombs and in the bowels of the enemy's ship, he anguished because he had no idea who was winning.  As the dawn came, he saw our flag still proudly flying.   

So it is an honor to the singer who sings the words correctly, in the right key, with the right spirit.  I think our anthem reflects my teaching motto perfectly.  You have to be fearless to sing it.  My favorite rendition is sung by Whitney Houston who blew the crowd away with her 1991 "Welcome Home Heroes" concert in Norfolk, VA.

May Kelly Clarkson be fearless and brave on Sunday and long live the Patriots!

Here are the five verses:

O! say can you see by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming, Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight, O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming? And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there; O! say does that star-spangled banner yet wave, O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave? On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep, Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes, What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep, As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses? Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam, In full glory reflected now shines in the stream: 'Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave. And where is that band who so vauntingly swore That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion, A home and a country, should leave us no more? Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution. No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave: And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave, O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave. O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand Between their loved home and the war's desolation. Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the Heav'n rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation! Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto: "In God is our trust;" And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Cover of sheet music for "The Star-Spangled Banner", transcribed for piano by Ch. Voss, Philadelphia: G. Andre & Co., 1862

Additional Civil War period lyrics

In indignation over the start of the American Civil War, Oliver Wendell Homes added a fifth stanza to the song in 1861 which appeared in songbooks of the era.

When our land is illumined with liberty's smile,
If a foe from within strikes a blow at her glory,
Down, down with the traitor that tries to defile
The flag of the stars, and the page of her story!
By the millions unchained,
Who their birthright have gained
We will keep her bright blazon forever unstained;
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave,
While the land of the free is the home of the brave. 

Nice presentation.

So I admit the traditional English Christmas cake does not tempt all American palates, or even many, especially my family, who have been tortured with too many renditions of dry, tasteless, stale, American versions. Even the Irish won't touch it.

Also, Americans are not able to encompass the scope of this ancient traditional cake which began as a porridge to break a long Christmas eve-day fast centuries ago.   It morphed into plum porridge, then dried fruit, spices, and honey were added to the porridge mixture, and eventually it turned into Christmas pudding.

In the 16th century, oatmeal was removed from the original recipe, and butter, wheat flour, and eggs were added. These ingredients helped hold the mixture together and in what resulted in a boiled plum cake. Richer families that had ovens began making fruit cakes with marzipan, an almond sugar paste, cake using seasonal dried fruit and spices. The spices represented the exotic eastern spices brought by the Wise Men. This cake became known as "Christmas cake."

 It is hard for us to imagine the preparation and planning that went into the ingredients of this cake which included the harvest and drying of fruits used to punctuate the cake with bursts of intense flavor and sweetness along with the addition of expensive sweetner hoarded by poorer families all year to sweeten the cake, which is still not sweet enough for most Americans' palates. Small quantities of spices were available only to the wealthiest tier imported from across perilous seas.

This glamorous holiday cake crammed with fruit and nuts, covered w/marzipan, and iced a dazzling white is truly the rock star of the Christmas dinner!

In our too-busy lives everyone, including the English, cuts corners and purchases more processed and store-made food items.  We try not to eat processed food at all and although this takes months to create, it is slow food at its very best!

OK, We've Had Enough

Just a few more January days and we will have the coldest on record.  The average is 2.7 so far.  I personally would rather not break the record and indeed we are supposed to warm up to 6 degrees tomorrow and 26 on Monday! 

The thermometer is standing at -24 here in South Anchorage.  I have my wool hat on and am getting ready to dive back into bed under not one, but two down quilts, a first for me. 

I am also sick with the worst cough/sinusitis I have ever had.  It started with a bullet cough I thought, from breathing in the cold into my lungs, but is not fortunately p-neumonia, a chest x-ray confirmed.  Still it has all the indications of flu plus a river of PND running down the back of my throat per the doc, and a just awful feeling of illness.  Looking forward to feeling better and I am sure half of ANC is as well, as there is plenty of hacking going on. 

The lad has been a fine caregiver although he has been on the Comtrex himself. 

He made a great invention out of a tall, narrow box with holes to stop the slider from freezing up and shoot warm air into the room instead of onto the window.  I will try to get a few snaps tomorrow.

Still have the snow couches in the back yard and snow that is so deep in the previously plowed places, that it makes for hard walking.

I think ANC drivers are the worst and most irresponsible I have seen yet.

Anchorage police say this late 1990s-model green Toyota Tacoma pickup truck drove off the International Airport Road overpass at Minnesota Drive Friday afternoon, landing in Minnesota's northbound lanes. The driver, a man in his late 80s, was extricated from the vehicle with non-life-threatening injuries; he was speaking with police and paramedics at the scene before being taken to the hospital. (Aaron Weaver/KTUU-TV)

PS.  There were some incredible Aurora to be seen this week but not unfortunately in Anchorage.  With my friend Carol's permission I will post some of her pictures from Knik.

English Christmas Cake Update

Finally had a chance to make the marzipan for the cake which has been resting quietly since Thanksgivng weekend, waiting for its finale.  Between the heavy workload, another bout of whatever-is-going-around, and the lad sleeping (or trying to) sleep during the daytime, it was good to also catch up on some household noisy chores, including vacuuming. 

It has been brutally cold the past few days, though gorgeous.  We are gaining daylight by four-minute increments and now have more than six hours of light.  The alpenglow has been especially beautiful lately, but difficult to catch on camera.

Ground almonds...

Mixed with sugar...

Kneaded...

Cake waiting to be covered...

Rolled marzipan...

And covered completely!

Snow, Snow, and More Snow!

Snow couch the lad made for celebrating Boxing Day with a fire in the firepit.  Fully functional!

Now more snow-covered!