Dec 4, 2008

Shorter Days and Longer Nights


It is snowing in Douglas, Alaska this morning and the freshly fallen snow blankets everything with a lovely glistening coat of white. I am reminded of all of the winters of my childhood. Having to wear snow pants under my school dresses as I bundled up in hat, mittens, warm winter coat and trekked off down the road to my little elementary school. We weren't allowed to wear pants to school yet...back in the fifties and early sixties and braving Taku Winds of over 100 m.p.h. on top of the snow made for an interesting walk on some days!

How lucky school children of today truly are with so many more freedoms, experiences and knowledge that opens up whole new worlds to them. I was never given the chance to learn my own native history, geography or even geology yet the small town that I grew up in held the largest gold mine in the world at one time and amenities denied to many larger cities in the U.S.

Now, we are still a small but growing town and a suburb to Juneau, Alaska's capitol city. (Never mind that Governor Sarah Palin is rarely in town and will only show up for one day in December for the Governor's Mansion's Christmas Open House ;)

Busy with caring for my parents, I am delighted to see an almost daily improvement in my Dad and a return to our 'new normal' in my Mom. It's completely dark now at about 3:00 in the afternoon, so with shortened days and the longer nights of my exhausted state of insomnia, you'd think I'd be online more often. But with dial up Internet problems, I am lucky to get online twice a week and love finding comments and a few emails from fellow bloggers.

P.S.Thanks to Mary for letting me know there was a break in my link in my post Free Quilt Patterns + How to Add a Widget . Could someone who adds a widget to my list of over 2,500 free quilt patterns please let me know if I have correctly repaired the broken link or not? I'll give you a hyperlinked post thank you for your trouble ;)

shown above:
My little elementary school, now a "Juneau Montessori" school, still braving snowy days......only now school children arrive in mini vans and four wheel drive SUV's.......and any child is allowed to wear pants to school ;)

2 comments:

Donna said...

The widget worked perfectly for me. Thanks for taking the time to make this list. I guess I should have left you a comment long before now since I have been reading your blog for quite some time. I just want to say Thank you again for all the tutorials and links, you have shared. Have a wonderful Holiday Season.

Shelina (formerly known as Shasta) said...

Shorter days always makes me more tired, and ready to hibernate. It is dark at 6 here and I hate that, I can't imagine 3! I'm ready to stay home when it gets dark.