Good Monday morning.
The Australia post proved pretty popular, and it also got me thinking of all the places I would like to go…if only I can muster up sufficient courage to get on a plane for an extended period of time and also take time off from work.
Sometimes when I’m musing about visiting faraway places, I get a little twinge of guilt about the fact that I have barely begun to scratch the surface of what’s available right here in the U.S. We do live in a very large and varied country, and I have not even come close to visiting half of the 50 states during my 50 years on the planet.
I have, however, driven cross country not once, but twice – the first time taking historic Route 66, which was a worthwhile experience and something I highly recommend, assuming you’re not in a rush to get from one coast to another.
It is off the beaten path, and that is its charm, but it isn’t really the most direct route to get from the East Coast to the West (or vice versa, depending on where you start).
We did listen to a lot of Nat King Cole on that trip, and if you do not get that reference, well, I just can’t help you.
One place I have never been, but is high up on the bucket list is Alaska. I have a colleague who has a few clients there, and so it’s not entirely out of the realm of possibility that I might be called to assist and get to go there some day. I have made clear my interest in doing so.
(FWIW, I try not to hold the fact that the voters of the Last Frontier thought putting Sarah Palin in the governor’s office in 2006 was a good idea against them – anyone can make a mistake).
I am particularly interested in the parts of Alaska that are off the beaten path, but I have to confess that before I started doing the research on what I might write about today, I had never before heard of the City of Cordova. This tiny little community is located on Prince William Sound on the Gulf of Alaska, and is home to about 2,600 hearty souls.
According to the city’s website, the area is only accessible by plane or boat, encompasses 61.4 square miles of land and 14.3 square miles of water, and has historically been home to the Eyak, Chugach Region People, Tlingit, and Athabaskan, who together are a federally recognized tribe.
The chief economic activity in the city is seafood – namely fishing and fish processing. But there’s something else for which Cordova is famous – the annual Iceworm Festival.
The ice worm is, in fact, a real creature. It is very small – about one to three centimeters long – dark brown, black, blue, or white in color, and makes its home in glacial ice in Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia.
Ice worms are not terribly attractive, but they do have one fascinating trait – their bodies contain natural anti-freeze proteins (AFP), which help keep them from freezing to death.
Ice worms not only love the cold, they NEED it to survive. They shun the sunlight and only come to the surface of their icy homes in the morning and evening, and they can crank up their own metabolisms in order to survive.
Though they’re not particularly well known by the average person, researchers have been fascinated by ice worms for some time, and believe that they could have important applications that could help humans – say, when it comes to transporting organs for transplant. (Hint: They need to be kept very cold, sometimes for extended periods of time).
The Iceworm festival was conceived in the early 1960s with a dual purpose: To draw tourists to Cordova and also to help local residents combat the mid-winter blues. There’s not a lot of light in Cordova around this time of year, and apparently people can start to go a little stir crazy.
The highlight of the initial festival was a replica of the worm (it was sort of a cartoon version of the real thing) that paraded down the city streets.
These days, the festival lasts a whole week – from Jan. 28 to Feb. 4, and features a wide array of events, including something called the Beer Mile at Hartney Bay, which requires participants (all must be 21 or older) to run 4 quarter miles, and drink 4 beers.
There’s also yoga, a father-daughter dance, a cake-baking contest, a board game night, a smoked salmon appetizer cook-off, an Iceworm Queen beauty pageant, a beard-growing contest, and much, much more.
Learning about the Iceworm Festival got me curious about other obscure/unusual celebrations held around the world, and as it turns out there are a LOT of them.
I’m not going to ruin it here, (I guess you could jump the gun and Google it for yourself), but will be highlighting some of the more oddball ones in future posts….just in case you needed a reason to subscribe and tell your friends to do the same.
This weekend’s weather provided a nice reprieve from the storms of last week, and also melted a lot of the accumulated ice and snow on the ground. Sadly, the 40-something temperatures are not sticking around. Today, we’re in for snow showers in the evening and temperatures in the mid-to-high 30s. Next weekend is going to be very, very cold. Perhaps that will change, though.
Hope SPRINGS eternal. (See what I did there?)
In the headlines…
Thousands gathered in cities across the country over the weekend to protest the killing of Tyre Nichols, after the release of video footage on Friday showing Memphis police officers beating the 29-year old Black man, who later died.
Officials released video footage showing Memphis police officers repeatedly beating Nichols during the night of his arrest.
The graphic footage was released Friday “because it was important to the community and to Tyre’s family, as they want the world to be their witness and feel their pain,” Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy said in a statement.
Social media posts show that Nichols harbored a mistrust of prevailing government and economic systems, yet, a friend says, he also considered trying to change policing from the inside.
A Times analysis found that officers gave dozens of contradictory and unachievable orders to Nichols. The punishment was severe — and eventually fatal.
Two emergency medical technicians who first evaluated Nichols after he was beaten have been suspended until an investigation is complete.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a retired police captain who’s made public safety the cornerstone of his agenda, said Friday the police beating of Nichols has “hurt” him on a personal level.
“As a human being, I am devastated. As a mayor, I am outraged. And as someone who spent decades fighting for police diversity and against police abuse, I feel betrayed by these officers,” Adams said in a video statement.
Civil rights activist Al Sharpton accused the five black Memphis police officers charged with beating Nichols to death of being a “disgrace to our race.”
Former President Donald Trump said in a new interview that the fatal beating of Nichols at the hands of five Memphis, Tenn., police officers “never should have happened,” calling video of the incident “horrible.”
The Justice Department has told the Senate Intelligence Committee it is “actively working” to brief lawmakers about the potential risks to national security after classified documents were discovered in President Biden’s and Trump’s possession.
Americans are equally concerned about classified documents found at the homes of Biden and Trump, a poll released yesterday found.
After the classified documents flap, Biden’s political standing has taken a small but noticeable hit in polling, while Trump seems to have slowed what had been a downward slide in GOP primary surveys after a historically poor midterm performance by his party.
Washington political power couple Bob Bauer and Anita Dunn have been at the center of Biden’s strategy for handling the discovery of classified documents among his papers from past jobs.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy says he is set to meet with Biden Wednesday to discuss the Republican House majority’s views on federal government spending and raising the country’s borrowing limit in order to avoid a debt default.
Biden called the prospect of the federal government defaulting on its debt “mind-boggling” but pushed back against Republican lawmakers seeking to leverage negotiations over raising the debt ceiling in exchange for spending cuts.
Senate Republicans say they’re happy to sit out the fight over raising the debt ceiling and cede the negotiations to their colleagues in the House — at least for now.
House Republicans passed a bill Friday that aims to curb Biden’s ability to tap the nation’s petroleum reserves, a bid by the chamber’s new majority to rebuke the White House for using massive oil releases last year to tamp down runaway gasoline prices.
The Biden administration last week released new, more complete data about the more than 25 million Americans who signed up to have their student debt canceled before the program was blocked by the courts.
A nearly 150-year-old tunnel is expected to get a makeover under the $1.2 trillion infrastructure law and Biden is set to visit the Maryland landmark today to boast the bipartisan agreement.
Rifts in the GOP between those who support Trump‘s false 2020 election fraud claims and those who want to move on from him have resurfaced in party leadership races in key states, with each side blaming the other for disappointing midterm results.
Trump took aim at Ron DeSantis Saturday, claiming the Florida governor and his team are “trying to rewrite history” regarding their Covid-19 pandemic response, and called the potential presidential run by his GOP rival “very disloyal.”
Trump, now free to post again on Facebook and Twitter, has increasingly amplified far-right accounts on Truth Social. Experts on extremism worry that he will bring this approach to a far wider audience.
Trump pushed false claims about his own electoral losses and suggested foreign leaders shared his doubts about the outcome of the 2020 vote during his Saturday drop-by in the first-in-the-nation primary state.
Trump, his company and his three eldest children have filed an extraordinary, nose-thumbing response to the $250 million fraud lawsuit filed by AG Letitia James, stating that “Trump Organization” is branding shorthand — not a legal entity — so it can’t be sued.
It’s time for Rep. George Santos to go, Adams said.
Santos took to the House floor to deliver a speech on International Holocaust Remembrance Day after lying about his Jewish heritage in his 2022 congressional campaign.
An ex-boyfriend of Santos said he had no idea the congressman was married when they first started dating — even after moving in together with Santos and his then-wife in her apartment.
Santos has become one of the most watched first-term congressmen in history. Bipartisan frustration is growing among many of his colleagues, who see him as an embarrassing distraction at best, and a danger to their institution at worst.
Gov. Kathy Hochul promised to end the era where state workers could “click through” an ethics class. But the state has failed to implement live training.
Despite a mandate from Hochul, just 0.4% of the 130,000 New York state employees have completed a live sexual harassment and ethics training they’re legally required to take.
Buried at the end of Hochul’s book outlining her 2023 agenda was a pledge to overhaul New York’s alcohol and beverage control laws – regulations she called “byzantine” and out of date.
Newly available records reveal that his government staff were already working on ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s pandemic memoir during the deadliest phase of New York’s COVID outbreak, months earlier than previously known.
On Wednesday, Hochul will release her first full-year budget proposal, for the 2023-24 fiscal year.
A bill that would dramatically expand birth control access in New York is gaining traction in the legislature this year and has Hochul’s support.
Nearly three-quarters of New Yorkers residents would like to to see the state’s recycling program expanded to include more types of beverage containers and the increase of the per-container deposit from 5 cents to 10 cents, according to a new poll.
New York City parents strongly support charter schools — and want Hochul and Albany lawmakers to lift the state-imposed cap and open more of the publicly funded alternatives as an option for their kids, a new poll found.
Hochul, Adams and police officials joined MTA leadership at a Lower Manhattan subway station on Friday to deliver what they said was encouraging news for commuters.
During the joint appearance, officials unveiled NYPD figures that showed subway crimes occurred at a rate of 1.7 incidents per 1 million riders during the first three weeks of this year, down from 2.3 incidents per million in 2021 and 2022.
Data shows major crimes have dropped 16 percent in the three months since more officers were assigned to the system, the governor and mayor said.
Decades ago, a gritty and dangerous spot under the Brooklyn Bridge was the nerve center for city skateboarders. Adams just announced plans that could fix it up.
Adams’ administration has stiffed thousands of low-income New Yorkers on their food stamps and cash assistance benefits, leaving them in a state of “hunger and immense distress,” sometimes for months on end, according to a lawsuit filed late Friday.
Former New York Gov. David Paterson called Adams “brave” for breaking party lines and pressuring Biden to help with the city’s migrant surge.
One of Adams’ controversial cronies, Robert Petrosyants, is named in a lawsuit alleging sexual harassment, workplace retaliation and gender discrimination at a Brooklyn restaurant.
Late fees and interest attached to overdue water bills will be forgiven starting today under an amnesty program being launched by New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection.
The City Council is set to rename a Harlem street after Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad — a figure civil rights activists consider a bigot who promoted black separatism.
City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams has donated $1,000 each to 35 fellow Dems on the 51-member council — an unprecedented move as she solicits support to keep her leadership post.
It has been 50 years since the city has waited this long for the first measurable snowfall of the season. It’s a record-tying absence that has made many residents at turns grateful, wistful and worried.
Yesterday marked New York’s 326th consecutive day without a measurable snowfall, a streak trailing only the 332 days in a row recorded in 2020. If projections hold, New York would set a new record in that category Feb. 5.
A recent court ruling put a stop on a high-rise planned for the South Street Seaport, pitting preservation against housing needs — again.
Local maintenance crews are dumping dry ice in rat burrows in the trendy Lower Manhattan neighborhood so that when it melts, it leaves behind carbon dioxide, which suffocates them.
Six people were killed on Saturday following a collision between a truck and a bus on a highway in upstate New York close to the Canadian border, state police officials and local media said.
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the collision Saturday of a bus and a box truck that left six people dead and three others seriously injured in Louisville, a community near the Canadian border.
State investigators found staff at New York schools serving children with disabilities intentionally misused physical restraints on students dozens of times annually in recent years.
Bombers Burrito Bar, a popular Mexican restaurant known for its “huge burritos, kick-ass wings, and amazing margaritas,” closed yesterday, leaving visitors to downtown Schenectady with one less dining option.
The majority of Albany’s vacant buildings are concentrated in the formerly red-lined Arbor Hill, West Hill and South End neighborhoods, home to many low-income and Black residents.
After ousting the San Francisco 49ers and the Cincinnati Bengals, the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs are set to go head-to-head in Super Bowl LVII at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona next month.
The Eagles defeated the San Francisco 49ers, 31-7, on Sunday at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia.
Quarterback Patrick Mahomes, who played through a high ankle sprain, and the Chiefs secured a trip to their third Super Bowl in four years by escaping a valiant Bengals outfit 23-20.
The Empire State Building was seen green last night in honor of the Eagles’ win, and Twitter lost its collective mind as a result.
