Summer in Edinburgh, Scotland, kicks off with an evening of whimsical revelry. Colorful characters parade atop a hill, dancing and marching to the beat of pounding drums. Fires blaze, warming the air with their bright, smoky …
National Bugs Bunny Day is observed each year on April 30. Bugs Bunny is the famous cartoon character best remembered for his roles in Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies produced by Warner Bros. He …
s I love bubble tea (aka boba tea) and I’m so glad there’s a day for it. At one point, I considered buying a machine to make my own. Amazon now sells premade boba …
The Battle of Culloden was the final confrontation of the Jacobite rising of 1745. On this date, 16 April 1746, the Jacobite army of Charles Edward Stuart was decisively defeated by a British government force …
Today is known as International Goof Off Day. It is a day to relax, enjoy and goof off. Do something fun and leave the work until tomorrow.
Even though I have 5 (yes, five!) part-time jobs, I seem to be able to do them all and manage to have lots of nap time. Except for teaching piano, most of these other jobs can be done on the computer, sitting on my sofa, where it’s a short movement to get into nap position. As of this fall, I have to put in some actual office time, too 🙁
Other than napping as a way to goof off, I also have several other things I like to do. I’ll list these right after…
The Thrillist folks said “As you cruise along the side of frighteningly sheer cliff-drops on this narrow-gauge railway, you can’t help but wonder who in their right mind actually built this thing during the Klondike Gold Rush of 1898. The train departs from Skagway on three different excursions, all of which take you up 3,000ft in 20 miles, past glaciers, mountain lakes, and thunderous waterfalls. The signature trip travels the original miners’ supply route to Carcross, Yukon, and stops at a restored station house in Lake Bennett. Or you can take the train past Bridal Veil Falls and Dead Horse Gulch to White Pass Summit, a 40-mile round trip that traverses massive trusses that are not for those with a fear of heights.”
My DH is a major train person. Even in Grad School at the University of Wisconsin/Milwaukee, he worked for the now-defunct Milwaukee Road. They even gave him a company car!
Our time in Milwaukee might be the starter of another post but it was how I got my interest in trains.
Somehow, along the way, I learned about the Soo Line and I’d take a picture whenever I saw one. The very last one I saw, I was on a Cushing’s trip to Chicago. When we went by a railroad yard, I got a glimpse of a Soo and whipped around to get a picture. This isn’t that one but another example.
After Milwaukee, there has always been an involvement with trains – including taking vacations looking at spikes and tie plates.
Fun times!
So, when we found ourselves at Skagway, we just had to go on this train.
I wanted to post some about this trip, so I searched my travel blog. When nothing came up, I thought all my notes were gone. I looked at the one measly post about Alaska and found a link to more info. I had completely forgotten that I had saved all my travel memories on a website in the days before blogs. Most of my info is here, except for some images I had stored on the now-defunct Posterous.
A place exists in Alaska where the past lives on, where the cries of “gold in the Yukon” still echo from steep canyon walls, where the sounds of barroom pianos and boomtown crowds ring out in the night. A place where the romance and excitement of yesteryear linger around every street corner, every bend in the trail.
Skagway! The wide Pacific lying at it’s door, the historic little community, known as the “Gateway to the Klondike,” occupies a lovely site with snow-capped and glaciated peaks as a backdrop. A port of call on south east Alaska’s Inside Passage route , this waterfront town, with it’s pervasive frontier flavour, attracts thousands of visitors annually via road, rail and seaway.
Designated a historic district by the US National Park Service, the area along Broadway from First to Seventh Avenues contains forty to fifty turn-of-the-century wooden structures, housing hotels, saloons and shops restored to evoke the days of the Gold Rush. The former railroad depot, a handsome 1898 building, serves as the Park Service visitor centre and departure point for walking tours conducted by park rangers.
So, join us in celebrating our Gold Rush past as we begin our second century being the gateway to the Klondike. Spend some time in our historical city, visit the surrounding wilderness areas or take in some of our events!
I woke up again sometime around 3AM when it was light again but managed to sleep a bit more. The plan had been to get up at 6 so we could have breakfast before we set out for the day. We missed breakfast. We were to meet our tour at 7:15 AM. Amazingly, we were first on the bus. I don’t think we’ve ever been first for anything!
Our bus driver was a very good driver who told us all about the history of Skagway and the surrounding areas. Our first stop was Liarsville (http://www.klondiketours.com/goldcampshow.html), a tent village for gold miners. It was called Liarsville because many newspaper reporters were there publishing tales of how “easy” it was to find gold and become rich. No Way! The locals did a show for us and let us pan for gold. Of course, most everyone found some little gold flakes. A very hard way to make a living!
We made our way up the White Pass on the Klondike Highway to a 3,000 ft waterfall, Dead Horse Gulch (a lot of pack horses couldn’t make it the whole way), the Moore Bridge, Yukon Suspension Bridge at Tutshi Canyon and up over the West White Pass into Fraser British Columbia Canda, the same way that the miners had to walk or go with pack animal and 2,000 pounds of supplies. Much easier by heated bus! It was very scenic and we took lots of pictures.
At the summit of that, in Fraser, British Columbia, we got on the White Pass & Yukon Route (WP&YR) Railroad train.
The WP&YR was originally built to help those miners who were hauling the ton of supplies up the pass but they finished building the railroad a year after the gold rush had ended. There’s more info about this railroad at www.wpyr.com We went over trestle bridges, through tunnels, over glaciers. Definitely a worthwhile trip.
Here’s a bit of our train trip. Tom took this from the platform between the cars:
Back in Skagway we stopped in the train shop but all I got was coffee, my first of the day. Another Alaskan T-Shirt Company for yet more fleece and stuff and hiked back to the ship.
Tom took a little nap and I read for a while. Then buffet lunch time.
Tom went out to a meeting and I napped for a while. He came back and I started typing this again – and he napped. What old fuddy-duddies!
Time to get dressed for tonight’s show – dual acrobatics, Jean-Claude and Gaby – followed by “casual” dinner. Any dinner that requires anything more than jeans is hardly casual to me!
Sunset 10:23. Hubbard Glacier is 300 nautical miles.
That Thrillist had a couple other trains of interest – 1 that we took and one that we always wanted to take. I’ll save those for another post.
Every year on March 17, the Irish and the Irish-at-heart across the globe observe St. Patrick’s Day. What began as a religious feast day for the patron saint of Ireland has become an international festival celebrating Irish culture with parades, dancing, special foods and a whole lot of green.
When I was a child, my dad always reminded me that we were Scottish, NOT Irish, so he made me wear orange to school on St. Patrick’s Day. For a shy, introverted kid, this made my life even worse than it was.
He would have loved this t-shirt – if only it came in orange:
Every year on March 17, the Irish and the Irish-at-heart across the globe observe St. Patrick’s Day. What began as a religious feast day for the patron saint of Ireland has become an international festival celebrating Irish culture with parades, dancing, special foods and a whole lot of green.
When I was a child, my dad, a Scottish person, had me wear orange to school, as a minor form of protest. All that did was have the kids make fun of me even more than usual.
As my own form of protest, I later married an Irish Roman Catholic, but that’s a topic for another post.
Quite a while later, a friend of my husband’s friends lent him a copy of something called “Riverdance”. I took one look and figured I would never be interested in some kind of Irish dancing. WRONG!
It turned out I loved Riverdance and we have seen the video, I have my own DVDs, we have seen it at Wolftrap whenever it’s been here, I have 2 copies of piano transcriptions, own the Tshirt…
One weekend, we even saw it twice.
We had seen it at Wolftrap on a Friday night. Our son came home on a Saturday and we were telling him about it. We went directly from the train station back to Wolftrap.
As luck would have it, there was a bus driver there who had brought a bunch of people on a tour from a retirement home. Three people hadn’t come and he had 3 tickets to get rid of, right in the front section.
Were we lucky, or what?
How Riverdance got its start. On April 30th 1994 something happened during the interval of the Eurovision Song Contest that was to lead to the creation of one of the most successful stage shows of all time and introduce the wider world to Irish dance and music. As votes were being counted around Europe, in Dublin in the Point Theatre (now the O2), RIVERDANCE burst onto the stage and took the audience by complete surprise. From the haunting vocals of anúna, the graceful elegance of Jean Butler, the explosive arrival of Michael Flatley and culminating in a long line of Irish dancers beating the stage in perfect heart-stopping harmony – a whole new genre of entertainment was born and nearly 25 years later – Riverdance still astonishes globally.
One of my favorite dances:
And another favorite:
And, of course, that finale!
Just for fun, there was a flashmob, bringing us back to St. Patrick’s Day…
Needless to say, I was quite sorry to see that Riverdance is not coming anywhere near us this year.
Everyone knows we’re supposed to beware the Ides of March and may even remember they’re from William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” but what exactly do they mean?
The Ides of March marked the day the Julius Caesar was assassinated by members of the Roman Senate in 44 B.C.E.
A soothsayer, or psychic, warned Caesar to beware the day, but Caesar doesn’t heed him.
He was then stabbed 23 times by about 60 conspirators, including his friend Marcus Brutus, as immortalised by Shakespeare’s “Et tu Brute?”
I remember learning all about this in Latin class in High School.
I remember another movie, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, discussing the Ides of March and someone asked why a month would need an “idea”.
We found Bill and Ted purely by accident. We were looking at videos for rent in a grocery store and one of the bag boys (remember them?) recommended this one.
I’ve seen this movie several times over the years…
Daylight Saving Time is currently the second Sunday in March in the USA. The practice is designed to give people an extra hour of sunlight in the evening hours.
The time change officially takes place at 2 a.m., so change your microwave and old-school clocks before you head to bed Saturday night. The change is automatic for most smartphones, computers, tablets and other digital devices.
National Grammar Day is observed across the United States each year on March 4th.
According to Global Language Monitor, the estimated number of words in the English language is 1,025,109. There is some controversy to that number, but it’s safe to say it is over a million.
Language is something to celebrate. Some people might suggest that grammar is a set of rules for language, but really it is a system for understanding a language; how the words are structured. Understanding the system and the structure helps us to better understand the language, and can help us to learn new languages.
There are some hard and fast rules in grammar, though. Even some of those come up for debate from time to time. Have you ever heard of the Oxford comma?
HOW TO OBSERVE
Do your best to use proper grammar and use #NationalGrammarDay to post on social media.
HISTORY
Martha Brockenbrough, founder of the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar, designated National Grammar Day in 2008.
As the National Grammar Day website states, “Language is something to be celebrated, and March 4 is the perfect day to do it. It’s not only a date, it’s an imperative: March forth on March 4 to speak well, write well, and help others do the same!”
For more information and ideas on ways to celebrate National Grammar Day, visit the website at: http://nationalgrammarday.com/
Join us for a blooming good time as the remainder of the 2024 Farmers Markets open this week! Get ready for live music, tasty treats and our Farmers Market Scavenger Hunt with exciting prizes!
During the workshop, you will play theatre games, take a tour of our auditorium including the lights and sound booth, props, and costumes, learn and perform a piece of choreography from the show, and have a Q&A with members of our cast and crew!
Celebrate First Friday at Historic Downtown Manassas! Come with your family and friends to enjoy the charm of our city. Find excellent promotions and offers that restaurants, cafes and stores have.
Step into a world of giggles and song with “Fun “with Music at Pender! This is not just any music class – it's a journey through sound and imagination designed especially for preschoolers and their favorite grown-ups. Since 2013, Jim and Roberta Pont have been creating a space where tiny toes tap, and little voices […]
Children, tweens, and teens are invited to join us for this DIY event. All soapmaking, balt salts, and Mother’s Day card supplies will be provided by the library and you will take the finished product home.
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A snowbound country mansion, a missing butler, and a Christmas case . . . Olive and Jasper have never been closer—except in one area. Jasper is still reticent about his frequent disappearances from polite society. With the holidays approaching and no paying client on the books, Olive decides to shadow Jasper when he’s unexpectedly called […]
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A New York Times bestseller | Soon to be a major motion picture from Steven Spielberg at Amblin Entertainment “Witty, endearing and greatly entertaining.” —Wall Street Journal “Don’t trust anyone, including the four septuagenarian sleuths in Osman’s own laugh-out-loud whodunit.” —Parade Four septuagenarians with a few tricks up their sleeves A female cop with her […]
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Ah, sweet mystery, when Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin plunge into a case of murder brimming with luscious, lethal ladies. Who murdered Waldo Wilmot Moore? Well, there were five hundred female employees at the Wall Street firm where poor Waldo had worked. Any one of them might have done it. And there was also the […]
As December turns Lake Eden, Minnesota, into the North Pole, the heat is on in Hannah Swensen’s kitchen to honor two Christmas promises: baking irresistible holiday cupcakes and preventing an attempted murderer from succeeding the second time around! While Hannah speeds through a lengthy holiday checklist, drama in town grows like Santa’s waistline on Christmas […]