That was quite the snow fall and blow last night. The good news is we are all in this together. Much of the country will be feeling Alaskan this week as we shovel snow, make changes in plans, and soup from whatever we can find in the pantry, freezer, and fridge for dinner.
I know, it is cruel that the snow arrived just as clocks “sprung” ahead for spring, and it reinforces, as the homily noted yesterday in church, the folly of man’s attempts to control time, and define the seasons by our calendar. Yesterday I picked cottonwood branches to force the sweet smelling leaves open in a sunny window. This morning I have St. Francis giving them a nudge.(And reminding me to console, rather than seek to be consoled…)
I’m not sure it is proper to pray for the pool when there are so many more pressing needs in the world. The hope is it may re-open Wednesday, but that may be wishful thinking. Some pipes froze having to do with the sprinkler system, apparently, and it could be complicated. I fear it may be partly my fault, because on Friday morning when we were in the locker room noting how chilly the showers were (and the air for that matter) after the nice warm lap swim, and after one of the women noted that for 20 days in a row the temperature in town had not broken 20 degrees, I said, isn’t it a miracle that we can still swim in Alaska in the winter? Isn’t a miracle that the pool is still open when toilets and drains all over town are frozen? What a wonderful gift this huge tank of wet water is in our otherwise ice-bound world!
Oh well.
It must be manic March.
There are a ton of meetings, events, and activities this week to help get your heart rate up:
The Freeride World Tour activity begins, with some of the best extreme skiers and snowboarders in the world arriving in town. You can meet them at the Sheldon Museum Weds. between 4:30-6:30 during the community welcome reception. The competition will happen sometime between March 17-25, weather depending. The good news is there is plenty of fresh snow after last night’s storm, and more on the way.
Tonight at 6:30 there is a meeting on the harbor park and trail design process and plans in the Chilkat Center , and another one on Weds. at 6:30, with more details, at the same place, plus the material regarding it all will be on display at the library this week, beginning tomorrow.
There is an assembly meeting tomorrow at 6:30 with an appeal hearing on the Skyline area Southeast Roadbuilders rock extraction conditional-use permit. The Planning Commission meets Thursday at 6:30, and Friday is St. Patrick’s Day, and also Hannah Bochart’s play, a musical fairy tale, “Rusty Compass, Dusty Rose,” will be performed Friday and Saturday night at the Chilkat Center.
School Spring Break begins on Friday, and the annual Gold Medal Basketball Tourney in Juneau starts for the men on Sunday, but the women don’t have their first game until the middle of next week.
