We had a really bland winter… some snow flurries here and there, a little rain to make the streets especially icy, some melting, but never enough for the ice to leave the streets, just enough to make the trees and roof tops bare and blah.
Then, after a mild February, spring was in the air through most of March. The roads were finally clear… clear enough, in fact, for the city to start clearing off the gravel from all the streets. The plows were replaced with street sweepers. The trees started to show the tiny little hints of buds that are the drum roll prior to the fan fare of spring. March ended and we held our breath; the first week of April rolled by with the continued blue skies and warming temperatures, the second week rolled by and people start to wash their cars from the grime and dirt of the melting snow, the third week began and the snow tires were coming off the cars (studded tires have to be removed by May 1st).
And… the inhabitants of Anchorage let out their collective breath…
Then BAM!!… late-April snow. There was forewarning: the radio weather-man said, “Showers with a chance of snow over the weekend, but it should melt in a day…” I scoffed. “No way will it snow again…” But for once the weather people are right… somewhat. No, not really, actually. We got two feet of snow. TWO FEET!!!
I drove home in the middle of the evening, pushing snow with my bumper all the way down our street… and I had to call Daryl on the cell phone to shovel the driveway because I got stuck at the bottom of it! (What did we do prior to cell phones? Walk up a hill through two feet of snow like our grandparents? Ha! I am missing out on the stories for our kids!) Daryl had to shovel three times that day as we went from no snow to two feet THE LAST WEEK OF APRIL!
I must say… I love Alaska! It was gone in a week, and now we truly have let out our collective breaths, changed our tires over to summer tires, washed the cars, raked the lawns of the left over debris from the fall…and are starting to put on the flip flops… but I really wouldn’t mind one last chance at snow…
(Sarah)
The library. Yup. Definitely one of my favorite places of all. In fact the first place I went in Anchorage was to the public library. I figured out the public bus system, hopped on a bus and spent a whole day at the library before Daryl got here. I was not disappointed either: it is a magnificent library. The library has reading rooms, chairs galore, and tons of books. The best part is that most chairs face the massive windows that line almost every wall, and those windows look out on the magnificent mountains that surround Anchorage. And, the book collection is impressive. Not only the sheer volume, but the fact that I quickly tried some of my favorite authors, and found many of them represented. Since that blissful first afternoon in The Z.J. Loussac Library, we have spent many an afternoon there….
Now, you may be saying to yourself, why the library as a ‘fun place’ to be. I have no problem explaining this further. For one this library allows lidded beverages… this is a novelty, in fact they have a coffee shop right on the premise. There is nothing like a hot cocoa or a mocha breve to top off the comfy-chair-facing-the-mountains-sinking-into-a-good-book reading experience. But I am getting ahead of myself. I think another reason why I love the library so much is that, quite simply, I love to read. In fact reading is such a wonderful form of escaping the worries or the clutter of the day. It allows me to escape even from stressful situations completely and rests my brain for a couple of hours, but doesn’t leave me restless like the TV does. I can always tell how stressed I am when I walk into a library. If I am nervously walking through the aisles like I am at Safeway and can’t find the stupid wheat germ or whatever, then I know that I am way too high strung and need to relax. On the other hand if I am walking through the aisles, like I am in a sanctum of peace and quiet, I know that I am doing just right and will be able to sink into a book or find a really good new one with no problem.
The other reason I like a library is that it is all free. I do like bookstores like B&N or Title Wave in a pinch, but I always feel guilty perusing a book for a long time, and I get disgruntled having to circle like a vulture for the few comfy but over-used chairs that grace the cramped aisles. Once I am settled in I also feel the eyes drilling into my back as other people look for the chairs to relax into. I also can’t very well get up and use the bathroom, or someone will have zeroed in on my chair and I will be ousted once again. No, I much prefer the library, with its slightly worn books, the familiar smell, the many lights and many, many chairs that welcome one and all from the homeless to the mothers with children, to the couples like us that think it is a great place to sit and sip coffee, smile at each other, sigh at the beautiful scenery out the window then contentedly turn back to our books and magazines.
Hmm…. Maybe we can go to the library today…. (by Sarah)
I thought about titling this post “hermeneutics,” but I resisted since that’s an archaic Greek word that might not be familiar to you. Hermeneutics comes from the Greek word hermeneuein (to interpret, to make clear), and refers to the way we interpret things as we read, the way we take words on a page and convert them into meaning. It doesn’t just have to be with words though; one can hermeneut the look their wife gives them (as I try to do… nobody said hermeneutics was easy!) or the weather patterns visible in the sky. It has to do with taking data and gathering meaning from it.
We all use hermeneutics all the time, not only in relationships and weather prediction, but more specifically when we read. We are always gathering information (words, symbols, punctuation) on the page and filtering it through a grid (context, creeds, what I believe, what others have told me) to come up with a meaning. It is easier to do with a person speaking than with a written word, because when someone is speaking to us we have a whole host of bodily language (posture, gestures) and audible clues (rhythm, intonation, volume) to help us understand what is meant.
This process is largely unconscious, which is why you might not have heard talk of hermeneutics before; if we had to consciously “hermeneut” everything we read and did, it would be debilitating. It is useful, though, to think about it in terms of reading the Bible. Why do we understand a particular verse to mean what it does, when other people think it means something else?
There is a nice little post on Christianity Today via Scot McKnight about this, and there is even a quiz to help us see what kind of assumptions we bring to the biblical text when we read it. So, I encourage you to check out the quiz and to think about the question, “How do I read?” I would love to hear about your results via the comments.
And when you see that word “hermeneutics,” you can interpret it to mean “making things clear,” or “to understand” or “interpretation.”
Just in case you didn’t notice: I’ve created another page (accessible on the menus to the right) titled Books, where I’ve listed out what I’ve read since January, 2005. If you love to read, you might find it interesting. (Daryl)
Thought you might enjoy a couple pictures of our winter…
Here is our neighbor’s little birdhouse, right before we had a Chinook wind that took out all the snow on it…
This moose was just down the street from our house… they’re pretty big, but so cute 
I’ve been running off and on all winter. At first I thought it was pretty cold to run down near freezing, then I was impressed when I went running at 22 degrees F, and then again at sub-20 F. I decided I’d only run when it was above 10 degrees… that seemed reasonable.
But the end of January was so beautiful. We had perfectly clear days with a bright sun (a luxury here in Alaska)… how could I not go outside and take advantage of such beautiful winter weather? So I broke my rules. After all… when it is beautiful and sunny in Alaska, it is also usually very cold. The end of January was in the high single digits, and the beginning of February hovered around zero. This shot was taken after a 6k run at 3 degrees F… my new low for cold-weather running.
