wedding pics

yo! a few professional photos of our wedding weekend.

scones

i, my friends, am a surprisingly great scone maker.

this version is a honey-yogurt version, with some walnuts added in for texture.

true, they were tastier when we hadn't eaten all of the huckleberry jam steph gave us at the wedding.

still, delish. from a great little cookbook, the fiddlehead cookbook, a juneau classic the ladies at work gave me.

a bow, folks, a bow. thank you.

wedding prayers

greg has a new ski column.  and many of you helped make it happen! check out the first one:

"A skiing 'pagan' prays for snow

Can a wedding-day prayer in South Dakota affect Juneau's weather? 

A few weeks ago in the middle of my wedding Mass, I managed to slip in a request for a winter with lots of snow.

Everyone with skis, a board, or snowmachine do-ing nothing should take up the cause in their own way, every chance they get.

As a non-Catholic standing before 150 new Midwestern family members at my wedding, I asked them all to pray for a banner snow year in Juneau.

They all replied, "Loving God, hear our payer."

I've developed a pagan thing that is more manageable than organized religion. Comfort and guidance derive from the teachings of atmospheric sciences, wisdom and humility through daily mountain worship, so the prayer was offered with little "faith" that five words could deliver 48 to 100 inches of snow by Thanksgiving.

Now as the snow level creeps closer the sea and the cooling effects of a mild La Nina grows weekly since that wedding Mass, I have to ask if there is something to my new relatives' prayer.

Snow has fallen almost every night since then.

I've heard talk of violent crime dropping by 25 percent for 72 hours in Detroit because a group of Tibetan monks sat meditating in the center of the city sending out good energy.

There was good energy on my wedding day.

Last March a researcher from the University of Arizona concluded that intercessory prayer had an effect on its subject. He found that "prayer offered on behalf of another yields positive effects."

Could the effects of that big South Dakota prayer be compounded here?

It's the time of year when the local faithful flock to Centennial Hall taking in snow sermons by the longtime traveling revivalist Warren Miller, then getting some fresh preaching from the good folks at Teton Gravity Research.

According to a wise friend, it's really group energy that affects weather most. To best affect the weather, he says, you have to get the heart pumping with a little dance and "send a little vibration."

A local weather-shaman in the Juneau office of the National Weather Service acknowledges there is some room in forecasting for faith. I asked him if the prayers of 150 Catholics in South Dakota could affect global weather patterns.

Unfortunately his faith is limited to the three-day forecast model: snow today, a 40 percent chance of rain and snow showers Monday, and rain and snow likely Tuesday."

on the road again

i'm not sure that i'm a bad picture-taker. i mean, being married to a professional photographer does make me pale in comparison. but i do know how to frame a picture and capture a moment.

the thing is, i forget to do it. i have been carrying a camera around for the last 8 days and have snapped about 10 pictures. in those 8 days, i have traveled as far north and as far west as i ever have--anchorage (at that point, the farthest north and the farthest west) and fairbanks (quickly replacing anchorage as farthest north). and now i am in delta junction, the famed end of the alaska highway.

not far from chris mccandless land...

and all i have to show for it is this google image of delta junction. so here's where i am, map-wise!

i'm doing ethics seminars with high schoolers & 8th-graders this week (that's what you get to do when you have a master of theological studies, i think...). its a blast, actually.

and the cold is subsiding. three cheers for a day in bed with tv on computer.

and look! kelly's alaska country inn has free wireless. who woulda guessed?

sick

i hate being sick. i actually can't remember the last time i was sick. maybe sometime in my first year of div. school.

so now i'm sick. got sick at my job's conference this weekend--four days of "Youth Leadership Institute." on day 3, my throat was a scratchy mess. by day 4, i was guilting the kids into being quiet b/c i was so sick. ay. so i'm home sick for a day.

in other news, i recently learned that if i don't keep a hundred billion thinks on my desktop, my computer runs faster. great news.

mormons

check it: greg & i have moved to the ridge of mt. maria. it is also known as "mormon hill."

there is a little placard to that affect just to the north of us. apparently, mormon missionaries arrived here in the early 20th century, assumedly to convert the sinful gold miners and prospectors.

well, today, as i trucked my recycling into the car, i stumbled upon 2 very nicely dressed young men. they asked to help me with the recycling and then asked, "have you ever talked with missionaries?"

i nodded, smiled, and said yes, thank you. big smiles the whole time. i got in my car, drove away as they meandered over to the placard, reading about their predecessors.

i do think its gutzy what those kids do...two years on the road, trying to convert strangers. all the while wearing suits & ties. dang. i spent 2 months on the streets of minneapolis pan-handling for greenpeace...that was enough for me. and i got to wear whatever i wanted, as long as it didn't include sunglasses (no one wants to give their credit card number to someone whose eyes they can't see...).

perhaps relatedly, i have moved onto jon krakauer's under the banner of heaven, a story of fundamentalist mormonism in america (to which, of course, the LDSers are decidedly not associated).

gotta love religion in america!

Mt. Juneau, 3,576 feet, Juneau, Alaska. The avalanche originated at the top of the streak of white running down the mountain right of center. Mt. Maria is the foothill to the right. Picture taken February 4, 2005 by O. Richard Kent. http://westjuneau.com/weather/jan_19_1972.htm