Just for some perspective

And, BTW, Alaska is NOT an island off the coast of California.

Still trotting the globe after all these years

A look back to the tune of "Sweet Georgia Brown." Let it play while you read the post.

What do the whistled opening notes of "Sweet Georgia Brown" mean to you? For me, it means the Harlem Globetrotters are passing the basketball around a circle at center court as they warm themselves and the audience up before they play their hapless opponents once again.

I went to see them the other night and when that music came up over the loudspeakers I admit to feeling a bit of emotion. I found that strange and tried to search my database for a reason.

The first thing that came to mind was, I first saw the Globetrotters, I think, around 1955, 57 years ago. Whoa, that set me back. FIFTY-SEVEN YEARS! The second thing I realized was my father had taken me to see them. A man who had little time for sports took me to one of the very few professional sporting events I saw as a boy. The only other I can think of was an exhibition baseball game at Offerman Stadium in Buffalo with the Bisons playing the Cleveland Indians. And, get this, Satchel Paige pitched.

As I watched this new version of the team, I tried to think: I might have seen Goose Tatum, and I am sure I saw Meadowlark Lemon. Then and now I laughed at their goofiness and antics, but then and now what I really liked was their basketball, choreographed almost as ballet: their passing, the weave, their confounding of their opponents with tricky ball handling, dribbling and passing. The routines have changed. A dunk was a rarity 57 years ago. Today it is the basis for much of their scoring. But the passing on the way to the dunks, the alley-oops, the high bouncing assists, are so reminiscent of the old days the transition seems natural. And, in the old days making the basket often was a bit anticlimactic because it meant the end of the play, whereas today's monster dunk puts an exclamation mark on it.

The progress with the times hasn't been limited to the changes in the game either. A woman plays for the 'Trotters now and she is one heck of a dribbler and hit two of four four-point shots from 35 feet, a scoring opportunity the team has added to the show. There's also, gasp, a white guy, whose main job seems to be showing that he CAN jump, when given the opportunity to drive in for a dunk.

And the team still is able to make the wonderful connection with the audience, the way they have since the Forties in almost every country in the world. Five-year-olds laugh right along with 70-year-olds when a team member draws someone out onto the court for one of their comedy routines. Watching a young fellow who couldn't have been more than 7 try to mimic the dance moves of the newest generation's star, a huge man called Big Easy, brought fans to their feet at the same time almost bending over laughing. Even the players couldn't resist giggles at the youngster's be-bop.

You always leave a Globetrotters game with a smile on your face and as I walked out smiling and looking at others in the crowd, people from almost any walk of life, any age, I could picture some of these young people 57 years from now going to see the newest generation perform some of the same routines as they did this night. The Harlem Globetrotters make that kind of impression on a young mind, triggered every time you hear the first whistled notes of "Sweet Georgia Brown."

On taking that deadly catch very personally

A purse seine set in Prince William Sound, Alaska.

In chatting with a friend today the subject of the television show "Deadliest Catch" came up and I told her I had done that, though not to the extreme shown on TV. My experience with king crab fishing was on a smaller scale in calmer waters, but it gave me a good deal of respect for those souls fishing the Bering Sea. I also mentioned I had a friend who died after falling off a crab boat out there and it caused a moment's pause.

Brian was the skiff man on a salmon seine boat when I met him. I never did know his last name. He was a cheerful kid, always ready with a smile, one of those people for whom being alive seemed to be pure joy. At the time I was operating a passenger vessel on regular tours to Alaska's Columbia Glacier. In season when the commercial fisherman worked along our route I'd stop to let the tourists watch a seine boat make a set. There is enough going on in a seine operation to keep people interested and in our passenger questionnaires, watching the fishing boats came in second only to whales when we saw them. The second largest tidewater glacier in North America came in third.

It only took a while to figure out which boats didn’t mind us watching and I would look for those. Brian worked on the Sirocco II which was owned and operated by a friend of mine. We did some fun things with that boat and the crew always would put on a little show for the tourists, often coming out on deck for a bow after the set was finished. Once I even put the bow on the cork line and a crew kid snagged a salmon from the net to show the passengers.

In seining, the large fishing vessel essentially pulls one end of a 900-foot net in a circle while a skiff holds and pulls on the other end, surrounding and confining the fish rather than tangling them like a gillnet does. Once the circle is closed the crew hauls the purse line closing the bottom of the net effectively holding the fish while they slowly recover the seine and haul the fish aboard. Sometimes there are more fish than the gear can lift and then a smaller brailer net is used to dip fish out of the seine.

While the net is being hauled, the skiff man goes to the opposite side of the boat, attaches to it and then pulls the main boat sideways to keep it from floating over the top of the net while it's being hauled. That was Brian’s job.

One day we stopped to watch just as they closed the seine and Brian went to attach to the far side of the seiner. We naturally stayed on the side of the boat with the net so the tourists could see the fish when the crew hauled them aboard. As is often the case, because we stopped another competing tour boat also had to stop or his passengers would feel they were missing something. As we moved with our boat, the seiner and the net I realized we were moving in more of a circle than usual and I had to power up more often to follow it and keep the seine in sight. It came to me gradually what was happening.

Brian was pulling and turning the seiner in such a way that he pulled the seine out of sight of the other boat and letting me stay with it. At one point I noticed him, big grin on his face chugging away with that jitney as he kept the net away from the competing tour boat. When they finally hauled the bag with all the fish, it was right in front of my people and on the opposite side of the boat out of sight from the other vessel. Then Brian disengaged the skiff and came around alongside waving. I walked out onto the weather deck laughing and shouted "Nice going." He just laughed and waved.

That night I six-packed Brian in our favorite watering hole and we all had a good laugh with Brian about his bright future in the tourism industry.

He lived around Blaine, Washington, and came up every year on one seiner or another to fish Prince William Sound.

Only, one season maybe three or four years later he didn't come. I asked the skipper of the Sirocco II where Brian was. All he could say was Brian fell off a crab boat in the Bering Sea the previous winter and was never found.

Deadliest catch, indeed.

Transitions

I missed the first kiss of spring this year, that touch of warmth on your cheek the sun puts there for the first time since the previous summer. I missed it probably because it is usually felt through a car window while you are driving and my commuting ended Feb. 22, just about the time it usually happens. I knew I missed it because the other day when I was walking up the driveway I felt the sun actually burning the back of my neck. But, I think I found a better name for that phenomenon anyway. I had come across a long-forgotten song while looking for "Phaedra" the other day and it has this line in it: "like an angel's kiss in spring." Change that to an angel's kiss OF spring and there it is. OK, here's a mini quiz. Care to guess the song?

Today was definitely a spring day in Alaska. Ice all over the place, snow deep in the shade but sun blazing, temperature above 50 and everything thawing. Living as I do, I can now sleep in as late as I like and still get up and be moving in the natural morning. I say natural morning because Alaska messed up its time zones several years ago so the whole state would be functioning in the same time frame. There used to be four and Anchorage was two time zones removed from Seattle. Since the change it's now only an hour. That puts us one hour off true local noon. Add daylight saving time and it becomes two hours. So this time of year local noon, the time of day when the sun appears highest in the sky, actually occurs at 2 p.m. A mariner using Alaska daylight time would be hundreds of miles off course, given that every minute of latitude equals a nautical mile, even though time is used to delineate longitude.

So I went out at noon (MY noon) and spent several hours putzing in the yard. First I picked up debris left by the melting snow. Then I looked at the garden which is free of snow except at the extreme shaded end. I started raking out the dead leaves still there and even the leaf rake broke through the soil. Next came the hard rake and pretty soon I had the cultivator. By the time I was finished, I had half the garden broken and raked including all those road apples the horses so generously left last winter.

The surprises were, first I found small green things growing. The are probably weeds but they might be those Johnny flowers that showed up late last summer so I will let them grow for a while. But even better I found new growth on both lilac bushes, much more on the one that's getting all the sun, the one that showed no interest in growing last year. The small picture up there is one of those buds.

And I made a plan. I had good luck with tomatoes last year. I thought I might try one of those hanging upside down tomato growers. I have a good window to hang it in until it's warm enough outside and then can hang it on the outside of the very same window. We shall see how well that goes.

Winter still clings a little. I picked up all the bird feeders but one, to clean them and put them away until next winter. For one they tend to attract bears and for another it is good for the birds to have to forage when there is food for them so they don't get all dependent on the feeders. The one I left for a day or so had a number of customers. While I was working in the garden I could actually hear the flutter of their wings as they came to it. With the sun shining from the right direction I made some pictures and was able to get to within arm's length of the feeder while they were flying to it.

So, all in all a transition day heavy on the sunny side and the garden is almost half way toward being ready for planting. And Green Day is still probably at least three weeks away

The song? "Summer wine" Lee Greenwood and Nancy Sinatra

Phaedra

So, what does a Greek myth have to do with an Alaskan on a sunny Sunday after mucking around in the spring woods with his thoughts for a while. Partly it has to do with those thoughts of the big ocean that come up as the sun spends more time in the sky and the air warms to tolerable temperatures. I named my first boat, a 19-foot lightening sailboat, "Phaedra." She and I sailed Lake Erie for a summer and from her I came to understand the freedom of a boat on the water out of sight of land, while at the same time wallowing in the loss of the person who introduced me to both Phaedra and to sailing. But, why would anyone name a boat after a tragic Greek woman? Given the superstitions of sailors that seems like a dangerous proposition. It was more the haunting melody of the theme than anything about the story, and when the name came to mind today there was a flash of warmth and I could hear the theme song in my head and I could see Melina Mercouri dancing and I could feel the person next to me as we watched the film in 1962. It has a haunting riff that stays with you a long time. I could remember that but couldn't remember much more about the movie. Enough to say I read the legend to recall the story and from iTunes I found the theme music and from that relived a cherished moment in life from long ago.

How about blooming Hot Shots for a sign of spring?

We are quite a way from green day still, but little signs of spring are showing up around this country, one of which appeared today,
Wildfires are a big part of summer in Alaska, with years when more than a million acres burn. As a result fighting them is a full-time, if seasonal, job for a number of people.

In addition to fighting fires in Alaska, Hot Shot crews from here often are called to battle blazes in the Lower 48 states. There's a major state base for the crews near the airport I pass on the way into town.

Today in the field within that fenced-in compound a small group of people in yellow hard hats were receiving training from an instructor. (You are welcome, by the way. Notice the refusal to make the obvious metaphor about yellow flowers brightening a dull tan field.) A Hot Shot crew in training certainly means preparing for summer if not a natural sign of spring. It at least hints at the coming season.

They are recruiting now, too. Think you have what it takes to join the Alaska Fire Service Hot Shot crews? Take a look here.

The photo is of a wildfire taken off the state of Alaska's main fire web site.

And, if you are really interested, here are Alaska fire statistics dating back to the 1990 season.

As the old song goes: "it's coming by gum, you can feel it come..."

Give MTA some credit where credit is due

We seem to live in an era where businesses, beginning with banks and including so many others, try to gouge every penny out of us they can. So maybe when someone doesn't it's a good idea to single them out for a little well-deserved praise.

A few weeks ago I finally decided my internet connection was just too slow and I called the provider to upgrade. The provider is a cooperative, Matanuska Telephone Association. They offer 256k, 756k, 1 G and 3 G speeds, but I was told the two higher speeds are not available in the forgotten corner of the group of valleys where I live.

That was a little disappointing but I was able to upgrade to 756 K. Some improvement, although not nearly what I had hoped for. But, oh well.

Imagine my surprise when I received this email a few weeks later:

Dear MTA Member:

MTA appreciates your business. A monthly recurring credit of $7.50 will be applied to your bill until your facilities can be upgraded to provide enhanced services.

This credit will be automatically applied. If you have any questions please call 1-800-478-3211.

Thank you for choosing MTA.

MTA Product Management

In other words, because they can't provide me with a service I wanted, the co-op is giving me a discount on my bill, not something one would expect in the modern cutthroat world. All you can say is thank you, and more, thank you for understanding. It is a discount I never would have asked for or expected.

The one you feed

I have almost always been fascinated with the culture and spirituality of North American First People. The wisdom based in nature and expressed in metaphor often surpasses what the world's great philosophers and thinkers have been able to articulate using thousands more words. This one showed up as one of those wall-hanging sorts of illustrations on Facebook. I looked a little deeper and found a bit more about it. It is believed to be a Cherokee legend but no single person has received credit. It has been told under several titles including: "Two wolves," "Grandfather tells" and "The wolves within."

This is the story:

An old Grandfather said to his grandson, who came to him with anger at a friend who had done him an injustice, "Let me tell you a story.

"I too, at times, have felt a great hate for those that have taken so much, with no sorrow for what they do.

"But hate wears you down, and does not hurt your enemy. It is like taking poison and wishing your enemy would die. I have struggled with these feelings many times." He continued, "It is as if there are two wolves inside me. One is good and does no harm. He lives in harmony with all around him, and does not take offense when no offense was intended. He will only fight when it is right to do so, and in the right way.

"But the other wolf, ah! He is full of anger. The littlest thing will set him into a fit of temper. He fights everyone, all the time, for no reason. He cannot think because his anger and hate are so great. It is helpless anger, for his anger will change nothing.

"Sometimes, it is hard to live with these two wolves inside me, for both of them try to dominate my spirit."

The boy looked intently into his Grandfather's eyes and asked, "Which one wins, Grandfather?"

The Grandfather smiled and quietly said, "The one I feed."

Found on the website "First People -- The Legends"