Mascot Hockey Memories or (mascots + skates + sticks = trouble)

I was discussing one of my favorite subjects, sports jerseys, with an acquaintance the other day, and I recounted the story of a crazy hockey inter-period mascot game I had seen several years ago.  While I was attending graduate school in Seattle, some friends and I went to see a minor league hockey game on mascot night.  I cannot remember whether we knew the mascots would be playing hockey between periods, but it was so hilarious, it would be worth a $500 R/T plane ticket to Seattle on a key weekend to catch this game in 2010.

All my favorites were there:  Shneedle the Space Needle; the Mariners' Moose;  and the Husky Dawg (of course).  A few were just silly, like a giant blow up owl from Hooters, and another blow up cell phone from AT&T or some other such concern.  Those blow up ones had a hard time moving around on the ice.  My favorite was the poor woman dressed up as the Ivar's clam.  I couldn't find any photographic evidence of the clam's exploits on the ice, but in doing some research I found that Ivar's has some cool old clam mascot TV ads on their web site.

If you check out the link above you will see that the clams have no arms, so you can imagine that made holding a hockey stick somewhat problematic.  I don't think she could see very well thru her costume, and she spent most of the time skating aimlessly around the rink, trying to get out of the way of the more out of control mascots on skates.

If you take the time to look at the youtube link below, you will find that by 2009, they discovered that mascots + skates + sticks = trouble, and they decided that broomball was a safer option.

And no, I do not have, nor do I need, a Seattle Thunderbirds Jersey, however............

Latest mascot hockey at Seattle Thunderbirds game

Aquatic farming - yes or no?

The state of Alaska does not allow fish farming within its waters, but the federal government is advocating fish farming as a possible answer to future food insecurity.  There are different types of fish farming (i.e. not all methods are created equal).  There is the type where you build holding facilities on land and cultivate your critters on shore (tilapia or catfish are two examples), and then there is the method used in the waters of British Columbia and Chile, where they rear salmonids in net pens.  I don't know very much about the on shore methods, but I do know that the offshore rearing has several problems.  First, the fish are so close to each other all the time, that they have to give them lots of antibiotics so that they don't all get sick and cause a mass die off.  Second, salmon are not vegetarians, so they have to be fed other fish to survive.  The amount of fish killed to make a salmon is nearly twice the weight of the actual salmon produced by farming.  Third, all the fish waste and antibiotics get dumped on the bottom right below the net pens, and the pens have to be moved periodically to keep the ocean bottom from becoming unusable.

In warmer climes than here, much bigger fish like tuna are farmed.  This practice is common in Australia, and Japan is also producing thousands of tiny tuna fry in laboratories.  Hawaii has also gotten into the tuna farming business.  In some places they catch wild tuna when they are small, then keep them in pens for a certain amount of time so they can get bigger and more valuable.  I imagine they have the same problem with crowding and die-offs as you would have in salmon pens, but if you only have a quota to catch 10 tons of tuna, but you are able to increase the weight of the surviving fish by 25% while they are in the pens, you can see how valuable this practice might be (especially since certain species of tuna are in dire straits right now).

Back closer to home, Alaska does allow shellfish farming, and there are several enterprises farming oysters that are fairly profitable.  They have to send samples of their product off to labs in Anchorage once a week to ensure that it is not contaminated with Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning (PSP) before they are allowed to sell their oysters.  I know that many people think that oysters are just scary snot creatures, and shouldn't be eaten, but I find them delicious (though not in stuffing).

When I was stationed in New Jersey in the mid 1990s, they had these facilities called depuration plants.  When "wild clams" (that's a good name for a band!) were harvested and landed in NJ, they had to spend 3 days in the depuration plant before they could be sold.  That's because bivalves are filter feeders, and they tend to grow REALLY big when they are located near sewage outflow pipes.  They had a nice 3 day spa visit at the depuration plant after they were landed to help flush any nasty stuff out of their systems.

If you are starting to think that Clams Casino isn't so tempting any more, let me try to allay your fears.  If you are not a vegetarian, most of the animals which you consume probably eat something that would make your stomach turn.  I love bacon, but pigs are not the cleanest/healthiest of eaters (probably why they taste so good).  Lots of sea creatures are scavengers (lobsters, crabs and striped bass being among the tastiest that I love to eat).  And I know not too many Americans of my generation have enjoyed the delicacy of turtle soup, but we have two of those funny reptiles that live with us, and if you could see what I do when I observe their eating rituals, you would never want to eat one again.

The tofurky by comparison, has lead a clean life, but I cannot imagine it is as tasty as a Dolly Varden that you have caught yourself and pan fried in a skillet with some rosemary and olive oil.   MMMMmmmmmmmmm.........

Letter to Santa

S

Dear Santa's Helper (a.k.a. Elf Dude),


I decided to write directly to the elf helper here in Juneau,  because I know that Santa is quite busy this time of year, and I don't want to contribute to his Info glut.  I hope that he has a good relational database to see him thru the Christmas season. 

He may also want to think about using caribou rather than just plain old reindeer, since they seem to be bigger and stronger.  Here are some good candidates: 

This last one is from Canada, and looks like he has a bad attitude (like my Towson Catholic sister in law), but the first two are probably nice cooperative Alaskan caribou. 

I realize that spousal unit and I may have to give up our fish when we move, or risk having them perish during the journey.  This is going to be a difficult decision, as it was when we moved to Alaska from Massachusetts.  

However, I would still like to have one of these critters join our little saltwater community for six months.  The fellow in the picture at the top of the blog/letter is probably a pajama cardinalfish, but the spotted ones are nearly as beautiful.  You can find out what their general characteristics are by pasting the link below into your browser (as long as you are not using internet explorer, which will probably explode when you enter this:  tee hee hee 

http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/prod_display.cfm?c=15+26+85&pcatid=85 

From all reports, they play well with others, and we know a couple right across the pond who might want to adopt our creatures if we are worried that they might not make it safely back to the east coast of the U.S. (or wherever we might end up). 

Ah, here is a pair of a spotted variety called Benggai Cardinalfish.  The ones at the wee fishie shoppe in town just seem to hover in one place.   The first time I became attracted to this species was when I went to see the Jelly exhibit at the Boston Aquarium several years ago.  They had this one aquarium with upside down jellies, who basically sit on the bell shaped part of their body, upside down, and grow algae on their tentacles, which they then eat!  How cool is that?!?  But I digress.  In amongst the self eating farmer jellies were several dozen pajama cardinalfish hiding between the mangrove roots.  If you didn't look at the exhibit for more than 30 seconds, you wouldn't see the fish, because they barely moved at all.  Since their stripes were in the same orientation as the mangrove roots, it was almost like they were hiding in plain sight.

Please let me know if I can be of any assistance in this endeavor.

Your able elfling, 

aquagal

P.S.  I would also be willing to make the dreaded peanut butter cookies if that makes the difference between coal and fish.  Please don't put the fish in my stocking.....

No more Native American code talking

Native American code talkers have been used in foreign wars since the early part of the 20th century to help the armed forces of the United States confound enemy forces from decoding tactical messages. The picture to the left is of Chocktaw code talkers who contributed to the Allied victory in WWI. Navajo code talkers are commonly known to have fulfilled the same role in WWII.

We had a Native American pot luck last week at work, and I wanted to make my favorite Italian American dish, sausage and peppers. I knew this wasn't very Native American, so I asked a Tlingit lady at work if she could translate the name of the dish for me. She didn't speak Tlingit, but she knew someone down at the Bureau of Indian Affairs who might be able to help me. I went down to the 3rd floor of my building and found this woman, who didn't speak Tlingit, but she thought she knew several other people who did. After another 10 minutes of traveling around in cubicle land and asking her co-workers if they could translate something for me, we found one man who could speak Tlingit, but couldn't write it.

Later that day as I drove home, I thought about how the important role which the code talkers had played in past wars would now not be possible. Not simply because the skills weren't available, but because the internet has made information so accessible in the early part of the 21st century, that the valuable skills of the code talkers have become obsolete in less than a century.

I did find some on-line dictionaries for some other Native Alaskan languages, but nothing to help me out with my sausage and pepper translations. Made me think that I should learn one of the languages in my heritage. I think Italian is the one that I will choose. It sounds so beautiful, and it may not be as useful as German, but being a latin language, it will be easier for me than Norwegian.

Ciao!

Loss of Eight Coasties and Two Marines in Mid Air Collision

Yesterday was a fairly somber day at work, punctuated by the occasional visit of the kids from the day care center on the ground floor of our building trick or treating. Everyone was holding their breath and waiting to find out if they knew any of the aircrew involved in the crash off San Clemente Thursday night.

This morning I could tell from one of my friends' comments on Facebook that the names had finally been released to the press. After a few google searches, I found the following press release:

Coast Guard identifies 9 missing in midair crash
By The Associated Press (AP) – 24 minutes ago
The U.S. Coast Guard has identified nine people feared dead at sea following an air collision between a Coast Guard aircraft and a Marine Corps helicopter.
The missing crew members from the Coast Guard C-130 are all stationed in Sacramento, Calif., where their aircraft was based. They are:
_ Lt. Cmdr. Che J. Barnes, 35, Capay, Calif., aircraft commander.
_ Lt. Adam W. Bryant, 28, Crewe, Va., co-pilot.
_ Chief Petty Officer John F. Seidman, 43, Stockton, Calif., flight engineer.
_ Petty Officer 2nd Class Carl P. Grigonis, 35, Mayfield Heights, Ohio, navigator.
_ Petty Officer 2nd Class Monica L. Beacham, 29, Decaturville, Tenn., radio operator.
_ Petty Officer 2nd Class Jason S. Moletzsky, 26, Norristown, Pa., air crew.
_ Petty Officer 3rd Class Danny R. Kreder II, 22, Elm Mott, Texas, drop master.
The missing crew members from the Marine Corps helicopter are:
_ Maj. Samuel Leigh, 35, Kennebec, Maine.
_ 1st Lt. Thomas Claiborne, 26, Douglas, Colo.
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

I didn't know any of the people involved, which somehow gave me a temporary sense of relief. Then reality set in, and I started to think about what their families must be going through right now. They are proud that their loved ones perished in the service of their country, but they are anguished trying to imagine a future without them. My heart goes out to all the families involved.

When I was stationed in Massachusetts, I did two next of kin notifications. The first one I did was to tell the wife a fisherman that our C-130 flight had located the raft which held her husband and his crew. Their ship had gone up in flames, but they were able to get into the life raft in time, and after many hours of searching throughout the night, the C-130 crew located them, and a 110 foot patrol boat would be on scene within the hour. I called her at around 5am in the morning. I am sure that she hadn't slept the whole night. She was crying, I was choked up just trying to get the words out, but at least the outcome was good.

The second time I interacted directly with the family of someone who was missing at sea. I showed up at the house of the family affected, and showed them the charts of where we were looking, and explained all the efforts we were expending to find their loved one. That case did not have a happy ending, as later that day I had to explain that we were suspending the search because we had searched many hours past the predicted survivability of the missing man, given what he was wearing, his height and weight, and the temperature of the water. I kept my composure this time, but I was overwhelmed with sadness at having to break the bad news.

The search continues off California, but I fear that someone will be making those notifications sometime soon.

There's always next year....

Sadly, my Red Sox didn't have the stuff this October to pull out another come from behind win during the playoffs. They played OK, but there were some costly errors and not enough hitting at the right time. So I find myself using the old Cubs phrase, "There's always next year," when referring to the post season of 2009.

Currently, I am watching the Rockies try to come from behind to pull out another win to force the series back to Philly for game 5, but it isn't looking that good for the men from Colorado. One of my Boston friends said that she was going to shift her allegiance to Philly now, which I think is because she got her PhD there. I supposed that is all right, but unless it is one of my favorite teams, I prefer not to see people repeat. I like to spread the wealth around by rooting for the underdog (when my teams have been eliminated).

I guess that's why I like the revenue sharing that the NFL does, rather than the Rich Team, Poor Team method that MLB employs. It just doesn't seem fair that there are more than 2 dozen World Series trophies in that new Yankee Stadium, and other teams haven't even gotten one. All those trophies were earned after 1922, and since the Steinbrenner era, they are financed mostly by television revenues.

Not that I have anything against television, but in baseball the large market teams have such a great advantage over the Milwaukee and Pittsburgh teams, for example, that it doesn't seem right. Not to mention the fact that I cannot see any Red Sox games without paying thru the nose, unless they are broadcast on a national channel. It is just wrong.

How to become a Nobel laureate........

Just so you don't read all the way to the end of this blog and get disappointed, I really don't know how to become a Nobel laureate. Being a graduate of the University of Chicago (UofC), I do know that being associated with that institution at some point of your career, gives you a better chance than your average Jill or Joe to get that cool medal and some cash from those nice folks in Sweden. When you attend a wanna-be Ivy league type school, they tend to grasp at all sorts of obscure facts to make themselves feel better. The one I remember most was the "we have more Nobel laureates than you" expression of superiority. They actually sold t-shirts in the bookstore with all the Nobel laureates associated with the University and the categories for which they won and the years listed.

There was a tall apartment complex (maybe 15 stories, which is tall for Hyde Park) which was called Nobel towers by the locals, because there maybe half a dozen Nobel winners living there. I used to camp outside Saul Bellow's office and sit on the stairway reading one of his books, hoping that I would catch him coming in or out of his office, so I could sheepishly ask him to sign it for me. [He only taught graduate students, and didn't have any office hours posted, strangely enough. Maybe he realized that would make it easier for goofy undergrads like me to stalk him......]

Enrico Fermi won his Nobel in 1938, several years before he began teaching at the UofC, but there is a huge skull/mushroom cloud bronze by my favorite sculptor, Henry Moore, positioned where the squash courts used to be. This was the site of the first nuclear chain reaction, which would not have been possible without Dr. Fermi's work. Whatever your feelings about nuclear energy, you still need to give Dr. Fermi credit for the amazing scientific discovery.

And now the book store can get some new shirts printed with President Obama added to the long list, and those Hyde Parkers can have another statistic to lord over their pals at Harvard and Yale. But seriously, I am happy that the Swedes have seen fit to honor our President with this award. I think he has done a great deal to create a better working relationship with all the rational actors on the world stage. I hope that he continues on in this vein, and is able to make good on most of his significant campaign promises.

Civility and Rules

I happened to be outside of the country when Representative Joe Wilson made his outburst during the President's address to the joint session of Congress on health care. I had heard his name on a few teasers on the CNN world channel that was available at the Westin in Busan, South Korea, but I didn't grasp the enormity of his actions until getting back to Alaska.

My first thought when I heard the whole story was, "where did he think he was, the lower house of Parliament?" If you haven't seen video footage or heard a tape of someone delivering an address to the House of Commons on a controversial issue, that might be something worthwhile trying to find on You Tube. They are hooting and hollering during the speech and making their displeasure on certain statements quite loudly known before the whole gathering. It seems like it would be unnerving for the speaker, but that is the accepted procedure across the pond.

However, that is not the way that members of the U.S. House and Senate have agreed to comport themselves. There are very specific rules which ensure that the men and women we have elected to represent us in Washington, DC, treat each other with respect and dignity. Mr. Wilson got a slap on the wrist today, but I personally believe he should have gotten a lot more. And the same party who believes that it is not our responsibility to help ensure that all Americans have affordable health care, is holding up Mr. Wilson as a hero. I have a problem with that.

We currently have a health care system that pays a medical team more handsomely for amputating the leg of a person suffering from diabetes, rather than to invest in aggressive preventative measures to help get them healthier by making behavioral changes (better diet, more exercise, etc.) that greatly reduce the threat of potentially losing that limb in the first place. I have a problem with that too.

As my husband says, I like people to follow the rules. But the rules need to apply to everyone equally. And if you don't follow the rules, you need to be punished, not rewarded. That's my two cents, and it is probably worth just about that much!!!

* They also have a really cool shadow cabinet made up of opposition members, which is a practice that I actually think we SHOULD borrow.

Whale Jumping?

A few weeks ago I was out for a ride on my jetski a few weeks ago, and I wasn't able to find the friend that I was trying to meet up with to go halibut fishing. I put Wasabi (picture below) in the water at the Auke Bay ramp and headed up the coast towards Amalga Harbor. The salmon were jumping all around me, and I stopped a few places to try and tempt them to bite my lures. No luck.

As I neared Lena Point, I saw a few whales heading northward. I turned off the engine and could hear them exhaling as they came up to breathe. Up by Amalga a few sea lions were checking me out, surfacing on one side of the jetski, then the other.

When I got back to Auke Bay, I pulled up by the floating pier where some colleagues of mine were running a weigh station for a USCG fishing derby that was going on that weekend. A National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Enforcement Officer that I know walked up and asked to see my license and boat registration. I thought maybe he didn't recognize me at first, and thought I might have some fish he could check.

Then he started asking me questions about where I had been that day, and whether I had seen any whales. I said I had seen some whales near Lena Point, and he told me that he someone had called 911 with a report of a jetskier meeting my description jumping over whales.

"Jumping over whales?!?," I repeated. I just started laughing and almost fell off Wasabi and into the water. Once I sort of regained my composure, I told the NOAA officer that I didn't get closer than 75-100 yards from any of the whales I saw during my ride. He asked if I had seen any other jetskis during my ride. I said I hadn't even seen any other boats within several miles when I saw the whales.

I asked where the people were located who made the report, and he told me they were on shore somewhere near Lena Point. After a little more discussion, we realized that the people who reported my supposed "whale jumping" must have been several miles away and looking through a spotting scope or some high power binoculars. They probably had no idea of the actual depth perception of what they were looking at.

They may have seen me speeding off and creating a wake, and then saw some whales surfacing behind me, but there was no way I was hurtling through the air (on a jetski that weighs 1,000 pounds including me and fishing gear) on an extremely calm day. I may never have taken physics, but I know that I could not have jumped over the whales on that day given the prevailing weather conditions.

Of course now people at work call me the Whale Jumper.

You have to think you are in trouble to want to be saved!

One of my old bosses used to tell a great story about some communications with a lobster fisherman off the coast of Maine. Whether the story was actually true or not, it illustrates a great point.

It starts with the fisherman calling in to the Coast Guard to report that he is taking on water, he is the only one on the boat, but he just wanted to let someone know about his situation. The watchstander asks if he is in distress or needs any Coast Guard assistance. The man says no, but the Station puts him on a communications schedule where they agree to contact one another every half hour.

When the watchstander reports the call up the chain, since the Station has a boat underway doing some training, the Chief decides to send it in the direction of the lobsterman. The next time the watchstander talks to the fisherman, he says that the water is still coming on board, but it's not that bad. The watchstander asks if there are any other boats in the area that might be able to help, but there aren't any. The fisherman thinks he can get things under control fairly soon.

Ten minutes later the fisherman calls the Station, and says that, maybe he could use a little help, if it's not too much trouble. When the small boat gets on scene a few minutes later, the fishing boat is nearly swamped and the man is just about to abandon ship into his raft (if he had one).

It's all about perspective. Someone who hadn't spent most of their life on the water, or had a different view of the current circumstances, might have asked for someone to rescue them at the first sign of a little leak.

I don't consider myself a godless heathen, but I don't consider myself a religious person either. However, I also don't think that I need to be saved. I try to treat everyone with respect and concern, as I would like them to deal with me. It's that whole golden rule thing.

Giant Blob of Goo

Don't worry, our shores are fairly safe up here in Southeast Alaska, unless the giant blob of goo starts to come thru the Bering Strait, passes by Unimak Island in the Aleutian chain, hangs a big left and takes the same trackline as all those cruise ships that come up in the summer. It may not look like algae, but that's what it is. Not as photogenic as the seaweed salad I love to get with my sushi, but algae nonetheless.

Here is a cool video that a local search and rescue plane first took of the blob.

http://storyballoon.wordpress.com/2009/07/16/video-blob-of-bio-goo-floating-around-the-artic-sea/

(somebody hasn't learned how to spell Arctic yet; it actually took me a while too....)

I'm going to change gears here a bit, and type about something that is even more frightening to me than a big glob of algae that is trying to impersonate an oil spill.

Now that our governor has decided that she has better things to do than finish our her term, I feel a little bit better about the threat from within as well. Of course the governor didn't live here in Juneau after the first year of her term anyway, so I guess the threat was always as far away as Anchorage (or Wasilla, or the campaign trail) anyway, but there were plenty of her minions down here in the panhandle as well.

I didn't vote for her, but even though I had only been a resident for a few months, I welcomed a change from a Murkowski administration that seemed to be a bit misguided. I actually listened to her entire inauguration speech, and liked how she joked about the fact that her family cleaned up very well when they had to wear something other than Carhartts (a Michigan clothing company that makes jeans/coveralls/outerwear that are very popular here in AK). Then she started making decisions that were not quite to my liking.

I don't think that the new governor will be more to my democratic liking, but at least he won't be a complete publicity hog like the one who will give up the reins of the 49th state in five days.

Why do they call it the De-Militarized Zone (DMZ)?

In March of 2009, I had the opportunity to take a trip to the DMZ between North and South Korea. I was in Seoul for a North Pacific Coast Guard Forum meeting, as a member of the fisheries working group. The tour was just for the USCG folks attending this meeting, and it was arranged by the USCG officer working with the State Department at the US Embassy in Seoul.

The trip from Seoul took an hour or so, and we traveled north along the Han River for much of the transit. Almost immediately after leaving the downtown area, there was barbed wire on top of the tall fences along the river. Then we started seeing guard posts painted in green/blue camo designs every quarter mile or so.

As we entered the checkposts into the DMZ, I started to wonder why they called it that. Seems like there were a WHOLE bunch of military folks every where you looked. When we were first allowed to get off the bus, we were reminded that we shouldn't wander off the road or paths, because the woods were heavily mined.

When we reached the observation post, we were met by a New Zealand military member who was our primary tour guide. We also had a US Army sergeant as our armed escort. The visibility was quite good that day, so you could see the North Korean ghost town with the 300+ foot tower with the huge flag flying from it. People used to live in the town, but right now it is abandoned. Soldier of Fortune magazine has offered a million dollar prize for anyone who can infiltrate the border and bring back a section of the flag. Of course the North Koreans would never admit that anyone had taken a piece of the flag, and presumably would replace the damaged flag, or delude their people into thinking it hadn't been taken, so I'm not sure how you could get the reward without US military assistance.

One thing that is not militarized about the DMZ is that their is a lot of fertile farm land on the South Korean side. The farmers who live there are not required to complete the military service requirements to which the rest of their fellow citizens are subject, and they have a better standard of living than your average South Korean. They also are not allowed to possess any firearms. No hunting allowed for these farmers, but I suppose that they are able to trap some game.

One other thing that I didn't know about the DMZ is that it is rife with malaria. I discovered this when I tried to give blood upon returning to Juneau. So I am deferred for the next two years.