Not a T-Shirt but Totally Post-Worthy

Hello there!

A year ago, I shared this video:



...which, happily, sparked a bit of conversation in my comments section.

Today, the brilliant team that created that intro has a new video to share, focussed on the science and technology that drive the GMO industries and how they affect the food system.

My video gadget in the sidebar displays both videos, newest first, so if you can't quite remember the website (https://feedingninebillion.com/) you can always find it here!

Please watch the new video (it's less than six minutes long) and share with EVERYONE.



On the t-shirt front, I'm considering a blogging return after March Break. Need to reorganize the t-shirts again... ;)

Cheers!

Floating - Summer Edition

Day Four and it's official, Alaska likes things BIG. We embarked at noon on a raft float down the Talkeetna River ("na" is the suffix in Athabaskan denoting "river of" - therefore, "Talkeetna" means "River of Plenty") It's a beautiful, relaxing float and raft guide, Bryce, was informative about both our surroundings and his extremely diverse life pursuits.

The tiny-looking blue boat on the left is the Talkeetna Queen. The owner, a very nice and completely insane friend of Bryce's took that drafter boat UP the Devil's Canyon, a nearby set of Category SIX white water rapids years ago, losing all his front teeth in the endeavour. Apparently, it's still viewable on YouTube videos from "The Wide World of Sportsl.

We floated down the Talkeetna nearly to the giant triple confluence that becomes the "Big Su" or Susitna (River of Sticks).

We wandered through "Main St, Talkeetna" for lunch but couldn't wait for a table at this place which came highly recommended (to everyone, apparently): 

...so we decided to try this one across the street (also recommended):

We were forearmed with the knowledge that Mountain High's calzones were ENORMOUS so we ordered one to share. It was still HUGE.

See? Like how I made Jeff stick his hand in for proportion comparison?

We also discovered a yummy soda at Mountain High: 

After lunch we headed back through town, catching a few quirky photo ops 

en route to the shuttle that delivered us to the hotel to board the bus to take us to our last rail leg of this trip into Anchorage. The dinner shift!

I haven't written about train food so far because it has been mostly forgettable. The scenery has, by far, out-shone the food. Dinner was good though. Solid and tasty. Solid and tasty and pricey.

Jeff had the prime rib:

And I had the lemon halibut:

which, sadly, photographed blurrily.

Being our last train meal, I even treated myself to a glass of wine which was an unfortunate pinot grigio in a sturdy, train-tolerant glass:

Our rail guide had a long section of her script devoted to the praise of Sarah Palin as we passed through Wasilla. I was (easily) distracted by this cute little establishment spied through the window which, coincidentally, had a cop leaving just as our train whipped by:

Anchorage isn't much to look at but it is obviously an important rail hub.

They also have really nice hanging flower baskets.

(I thought it auspicious that the ones in front of our hotel are red & white ... to make the Canadians feel at home, eh?)

Main Street, USA - Summer Edition

Day 3 and we headed off on our own first thing to hang with the Denali National Park Canine Rangers. Denali is the only one of 395 National Parks to have working sled dogs to patrol in the winter.

These are the resident puppies when they were born 8 weeks ago.

This is Clove now.

After the sled dog demo, we met back up with the group and boarded the train to Talkeetna (where I found today's shirt - thought "Phish Hard" would've been even funnier but that's me)

Talkeetna, the "Las Vegas of Alaska", is a bustling city of 500 year-round residents.

Dinner highlight for Jeff was the "Ice-Axe", a 9.2% alcohol content locally-brewed honey ale. He also had cod & chips with his booze. 

I had the king crab plate with a locally brewed raspberry ginger "brew" (stronger than ginger ale, not alcoholic)

The 30% - Summer Edition

Day 2 started REALLY early in Fairbanks. At least, really early for holidays. We had to put our bags out for pick-up at 6am and be ready to roll at 7:30am. 

Found today's shirt at the Denali National Park Gift Shop.

(Less true when one is on a strict schedule but a lovely sentiment, very typically reflective of the environment)

The bus took us to our train (the tour guide, Kate, delineated the difference between caribou and reindeer - "Reindeer can be domesticated. Caribou can't. Reindeer can fly. Caribou can't") which brought us to Denali National Park. I always appreciate good merchandising and the US National Parks Gift Shops have some of the most engaging marketing incentives around. There's a National Park Passport and a collectible tokens booklet. And Denali has two DIFFERENT stamps for the passport at its two centres. Colour me a happy tourist.

From the Visitor Centre, Jeff and I boarded this bus:

NOT this bus:

... which took us on a four and a half hour tour of the park, through the "front woods" into, you guessed it, the "back woods" with Tour Guide Steve who may be my ultimate trivia god. (The green bus which we did NOT board would've taken us on an EIGHT HOUR TOUR and after sitting on a train for three hours already, that wouldn't have been happy-making at all)

Our tour was INCREDIBLY informative. Steve covered topics ranging from Alaskan's Native Peoples to climate change to local herbology (I can now identify three plants that can kill or, at least, incapacitate a person. And one that can make you itch and turn you photosensitive for MONTHS). I used the good camera to capture the wildlife we encountered - a few singleton caribou and some ground squirrels - but managed to grab the iPhone for a couple of what the Denali Visitor Centre refers to as "Alaskan Fast Food"

Speaking of dinner, for the second night in a row, our hotel's restaurant is booked and closed to the public (in Fairbanks, it was a wedding) so we're foraging in Denali Village, a one street business strip Jeff likened to Chase or Blind Bau.

After some consideration, dinner tonight is NOT here:

 (but I had to take a picture)

Nor is it here:

 

(reportedly the most expensive Subway we will ever find)

Tonight's dinner greeter is this awesome chair:

at Prospectors Pizzeria (recommended by our guide) where I ordered spag and elk meatballs and Jeff ordered a pulled pork Hawaiian-esque pizza called the Maui Wowie (also recommended). Ordering a Hawaiian pizza in Alaska while "Hotel California" is playing (seriously) made for a really odd snapshot moment. Prospectors doesn't serve mozzarella "sticks". They serve mozzarella "bricks" 

They also serve the most expensive pizza I've ever seen on a menu.

(I've heard of the Steveston Pizza specialty pizzas but have yet to physically see it on a menu and besides, those are custom orders where this is orderable at any time)

Regarding the titular 30%, we weren't lucky enough to see Mt. McKinley today but hope that tomorrow's trek to Talkeetna will be rewarded with that 1 in 3 viewing.

The Rush is On - Summer Edition

Rather than build my collection, I've decided to blog our summer adventure through shirts I see versus own. I'm also doing this on the go so formatting may vary a bit and length will definitely be reduced. There will be more pictures though!

(There's also a handful of entries that I mean to polish off from the school year but that's not going to happen until August at earliest.)

Today is Day 1 of our Alaskan Adventure, aka "the honeymoon". We flew from Vancouver to Anchorage to Fairbanks today and it was a fairly smooth journey except that Jeff's checked baggage burst somewhere between Anchorage and Fairbanks and two of my brand new (and rather pricey) cosmetic purchases were lost in the mishap. Alaska Airlines is looking and I'll be able to repurchase them at their expense if they are not recoverable.

Dinner tonight and AK Tee #1 is The Pump House, an actual historical pump house once used to pump water from the Chena River over the Chena Ridge into town. There's a restaurant and a saloon in the Pump House. 

As there was a wait for a table in the restaurant, Jeff and I tried out some local Alaskan beers in the saloon:

(Left to right: Pyramid Hefeweizen, Goose Island Honker's Ale, Alaskan Amber Alt Style Beer, and Silver Gulch Ale)

Silver Gulch, incidentally, is billed as "America's Most Northern Brewery" while The Pump House is listed in the U.S. national registry of historical sites. 

According to Foursquare, Reagan ate here in 1983. I ordered reindeer tenderloin for my main. 

(No idea what Ronnie ate.)

The view from the Pump House's deck:

The Pump House greeter:

Our hotel, the Pike's Waterfront Lodge, has a large greenhouse system set up and an advertised Iris Garden. Irises being my favourite flowers, I have to believe that this is an auspicious start to our trip (despite the luggage issue)

Music T Friday: Oh the Divine Ms. Jones...

I'm always amazed by how seemingly random things turn out to have significance. Picking a music tee for today was a process centred mostly on "I'm wearing black slacks today. I don't want to wear a black tee as well". So I pulled out the Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings shirt I picked up at the Commodore Ballroom show in 2010. It's also a very nice fit still. At the time of the show, I was a contributing freelance photographer for the Guttersnipe website (rebranded The Snipe News a little while ago) and parked myself up close to the stage to get my shots in.

There are certain shows where the tableaus are the thing, where the act holds a still frame in the audiences mind, where there are certain iconic "flashbulb" moments. Those photog opportunities are all about timing, and have a generally satisfactory pay-off because if you can capture that one definitive picture, you've done your job. This was not one of those events. The SJDK performance was all movement, all energy, all power and verve and not at all suited to the fairly pedestrian still photography that I was capable of. Instead, it was all I could do to get a series of images in focus that might one day make a good flip-book recount of the evening. The gallery I submitted to Guttersnipe/The Snipe News is still up (sorry, the browsing function is a little slow) and still doesn't do justice to the fantastic performance Ms. Jones and her Kings put on for Vancouver. There are 26 pictures in the gallery. There are 153 in my Facebook album from that night.

The fangirl and Ms. Jones

The next day, the show was touted one of the best of the year by several industry friends and music concert aficionados, many who had attended with no idea what to expect of the show. The next time Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings played Vancouver, the show was in Malkin Bowl, an outdoor amphitheatre venue and Stanley Park came alive with their unique sound which claims the "territory between ’60s soul and ’70s funk".

Live video of "Let Them Knock" (2007)

I haven't followed the SJDK news over the last half year, being otherwise distracted by life events, so it was a sombre revelation to me today (in researching this post) to discover that, as of June 3, they had had to cancel their most recent tour appearances (and the August CD release) due to Ms. Jones seeking treatment for stage-one bile duct cancer. Her message to fans on the website was hopeful and spirited as the doctors had deemed her situation operable and curable. According to her Twitter-feed, she went in for the surgery on this past Tuesday. She was out the same day, all "tubed up" and tweeting on Wednesday and declaring Life to be good yesterday. Sincerely, I send her best wishes for a speedy and total recovery.

So, there you have it, a seemingly trivial morning shirt selection leads me to a contemplative post on life, cancer, and the joys of music - making it, appreciating it, photographing it. All our lives are all soundtracked by our internal orchestras. It's when we recognize our soundtrack in the music around us, in front of us, that we know we are where we are meant to be.