Why I Live Here - Zuill Bailey, Rachel Barton Pine, and Eduard Zilberkant Play Down The Street

We went to the Sitka Music Festival's Winter Classics at UAA Saturday night.  Three incredible musicians, world class musicians, playing in the incredible concert hall in the UAA theater arts building.

Many readers have probably never heard of these people, though I did write about Zuill Bailey

Bailey and Zilberkant

before.  You've heard of sculptors who release the sculpture living inside a piece of marble.  My sense of Zuill Bailey is that he sets the music free from inside the cello.  He doesn't so much play the cello as help it sing.

Eduard Zilberkant was the pianist.  Let me just say he was also amazing, even though I'm partial to the strings.  Listening to the three instruments together,  trading off sounds then coming together, yet not quite, it was breath taking. Literally.  There were points where I had to remind myself to start breathing again. Go to the link, I'd be up all night if I tried to do these musicians any justice at all.

And then there was Rachel Burton Pine.  (Just go to the link.)  As is painfully clear to anyone who knows about music, I'm just a casual listener.  I can't tell you really why in musical terms, I can just tell you what it did to me.  In this case, I'm going to use someone else's words to tell you who she is and what she does.

Barton and Zilberkant

Because she plays again tomorrow night and at the Discovery Theater downtown there are more seats and it's not sold out yet.   From the Daily Beast,  why you should get tickets and go:

Violinist  Rachel Barton Pine’s life is a seemingly unending list of extraordinary achievements, from her soloist debut at age 10 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra to her recent live performances of Paganini’s ‘24 Caprices For Solo Violin’--a series of virtuosic pieces so technically challenging that very few violinists perform them in sequence. She has published a book of her own arrangements and cadenzas, recorded 24 albums, and travelled with the world’s most prestigious ensembles. 

 





She's going to play those Paganini's '24 Caprices for Solo Violin' Sunday evening (Feb. 15)  at 7:30pm.  This isn't something you can see very often.  And it's here, in Anchorage, with a premiere violinist.

The Standing Ovation

Let's go back to the title of this post.  Why I Live Here.  Most of the posts that have that label are about getting to nature quickly.  But another advantage of Anchorage is that we have world class performers who we can see in intimate settings for much less than people pay in big cities.  The University venue they were in Saturday is a 30 minute walk from my house, a five minute drive, with free parking.

If you look at the pictures you can see how intimate it was Saturday night - there were 20 overflow seats on stage!   Not a good place to sit if you're prone to fall asleep in a concert.  But if you're that close, it would probably be hard to do.

Saturday night's tickets were less than half the cheapest tickets when we went to a mediocre concert at the Disney Concert Hall in LA.  The UAA Concert Hall is a magical acoustical music box seating only 200 people.  The Disney in LA seats eleven times that many - 2,265.  The Discovery Theater, where Rachel Barton Pine plays tonight (Sunday,) seats 800, still a relatively small venue.

This is most of the audience on the main floor.  There's a smaller balcony above.  Thank you Michael Hood for fighting for this building and getting it built with such incredible performing spaces.  These people played here Saturday because Zuill Bailey loved the acoustics.







Here's a little preview of Sunday night's concert.  (Sorry, this post is getting a bit cluttered.)

Caprice # 12 - from Violin Sheet Music

And if you don't read music, here's a different sort of preview of the music (be sure to listen to the end.)




I do have to make a minor disclosure here.  I learned this week that a college friend of my son  is Rachel Barton Pine's husband.  But that's not why I'm gushing here.  This was fantastic and tomorrow night will be too.

How Moose Hide In Plain Sight

After the Republican Senatorial debate, I needed to get some exercise, so I took off on the bike trail.

There's a new detour - the bike trail is closed off - north of the sports center at UAA to UAA Drive.  But after going around, I got to Goose Lake where this duck was taking in the long slow sunset.


On the edge of the Northern Lights bike trail I saw the moose.  I stopped to take pictures and it drifted into the foliage so I could no longer see him.  If I didn't know he was there, I'd have ridden right by him, but I did know he was there.  At this point the bike trail is separated from Northern Lights Boulevard by a small strip of woods.  Another biker came and I mentioned the moose.  He turned around and headed for the light at Bragaw and crossed over to the East High School side.  I followed him.  And there was the moose just on the street side of the narrow woods.

 

Yes, you can find the moose in this picture, but let me give it some context.  Although it looks like I'm deep in the woods . . .

. . . I'm really on one of Anchorage's busiest roads - Northern Lights.  The cars were barreling past, and I'd guess most didn't even know he was there.  If I weren't talking about a moose here and if you hadn't seen the previous picture, I bet most of you would skip over this picture without  seeing the moose.

And if we step back a bit, you can see why most drivers would whiz by without noticing.

Oh yeah, this is right near the spot the state wants to build a road through these woods.

Why I Live Here - Giving Guests A Great Meal And A Near Moose

We had some out of town guests - up on a cruise - to entertain for the evening.  We decided on Kincaid Grill because it's near Kincaid Park, and maybe we could find them a moose.  They seemed very pleased with the meal and I was too. 

This was my salmon - one of the evening's specials.






But we couldn't find them a moose at Kincaid.  But Glen Alps was the next destination.  We walked to Powerline trail and I did find them a couple of moose grazing way, way out in the distance that you could see in the binoculars.  Not great, but the view was spectacular along Powerline Pass and there were two moose.




And then on our way back to drop them off at their hotel, we passed a moose on the side of the road and they got as close to a moose as they could reasonably want to be.

Generally, I try to confirm people's beliefs that Anchorage is the frozen wasteland year round.  But a great dinner followed by a walk in the mountains and a near moose is one of the reasons I still live here.

I don't usually have two "Why I Live Here" posts in a row, but sometimes I just can't help myself.  

Why I Live Here - Salmon, Politics, and Food

It's another beautiful sunny Anchorage day.  Mid 70s, blue skies, like yesterday when I went for a bike ride to stretch my muscles a bit.  There were salmon coming up Campbell Creek. I didn't get a good picture with fish, but here's the creek, looking toward Lake Otis Blvd from one of the bridges. People are in the water in the background.

Then, not too far away, a group of folks were holding signs for Russ Millette who's running for governor as a Tea Party Republican.  I'd talked to Russ on the phone when I posted about his signs being defaced and this was the first time I got to meet him.  It was very cordial.  I'm convinced that if you meet the right way - and that includes being respectful - you can have decent relationships with people even if you disagree with them politically.  A lot of the acrimony today, I'm sure, is from people feeling unrespected as a human being.  And that leads to returning disrepect.  Until things are much harder to repair. 

I even suggested to Russ that his name was too small on those signs for drivers to catch as they go by.  He agreed and said Governor needed to be bigger too.  Russ in in the red and white plaid shirt.

And then, just a minute or two down the block, I stopped at Namaste, which has changed hands, to get some take out 'Himalyan' food.  

The prices might look a bit steep, but the food was delicious and the portions enough for another meal - for us anyway. 

If it looks like I'm giving Millette a lot of attention here, it's not intentional.  A lot of times I simply post what I happen to see along my path. 

Why l Live Here - Bears On Campus

I got this email that was sent out to the University of Alaska Anchorage community today.

Dear Anchorage Campus Community:

Yesterday afternoon we reported the presence of a black bear with two cubs near the Integrated Science Building. Today, June 12, the bear and her cubs are still on and around the UAA campus. Just a short time ago, they were spotted on the trail that runs beside Mosquito Lake between UAA and APU. Please continue to be aware of your surroundings as you walk around campus. If you see the bear and/or her cubs, please do not approach them.

UAA is opening and operating a normal schedule today, June 12.

Thank you.

  My wife was out for her walk and often walks where the bears were spotted in yesterday's email.  I called her and she had just walked the trail but saw no bears.  She decided to take a different route home.

Moose?  Yes, they're pretty common on campus.  Bears?  That's much rarer.  

Why I Live Here - Breakfast on the Deck

The best room in the house isn't in the house.  It's our summer extra room - on the deck.  Here's what I saw when I looked at the ceiling while I ate breakfast this morning.

 Here's one of the walls.  














OK, I can see a little more than trees, but it's a bit of wooded paradise on a normal city lot right in the middle of town.  It helps that there's a hill, but otherwise, it's just that no one cut the trees in the back ever.  We too have just left it natural.  And we've added trees on the sides to keep a little green summer oasis in the city.  It's also relatively low maintenance.


And they say it's good for our mental health. 

This Time No Cops, Just Moose On Way Home

A little less exciting, a lot more fulfilling, was my ride home from a meeting Tuesday afternoon, compared to Monday afternoon.   Two moose grazing near the airport.

You don't get this in London, Jacob.  Or having everything 15 minutes or less away. 

Why I Live Here: Cold Beauty

It's good that people Outside (Alaska) believe it's cold and dark here most of the year.  It keeps them from moving up here.  But I'm constantly awed and delighted by the magnificence of Nature and the show it puts on in Alaska is never ending.  Even after 36 years here, I'm awed daily.  Fortunately, most Outsiders think such talk is just Alaskans rationalizing why they live in the cold and dark.   That's right.  Seattle's a nice place if you have to move north.  And there's Calgary and Edmonton if Seattle's too far south.   All much nicer than Anchorage.  Really.

We got home from LA just in time for the temperature to plunge to about -5˚F (-20˚C).  But I shoveled the driveway in the cold sunshine yesterday.  Today when I got back in from finishing the job (well there's a bit more I could do tomorrow) the outside thermometer said +9˚F (-12˚C) and tomorrow it's predicted to be in the 20s.

As I shoveled I kept looking up at these birch trees, dressed in hoarfrost, and I thought about how the new camera can take much better pictures of this than the little one.

Why I Live Here - One Great Summer!

Our backyard thermometer read 80˚F this afternoon though I'm sure the official temperature in Anchorage didn't get that high.  We rode over to dinner in balmy weather with spectacular views.  (The fact that I still am amazed at how beautiful the mountains are here after 35 years says something.)

After dinner, it was just too nice to go straight back so we headed on to the bike trail south of Tudor. 

I thought about getting the photographer's shadow out of the picture, but then decided I'm not in the blog too often, so I left it in.  This is about 9:20 pm.  (It's 11:30 pm now and there's still some sunshine on the mountain tops.)

 

We stopped at a lookout over Campbell Creek where we saw salmon a couple of weeks ago.  Didn't see any tonight, but then this momma Mallard showed up with 11 ducklings.  They were much better behaved than human babies would have been.  

 

A little further along the sun lights up everything.  An evening when it's a joy to be alive. 

While May was cool, June was spectacular.  I missed the first week of July when I'm told it was grey and rainy.  But it's been great the last couple of days. 

Why I Live Here: Moose in the Backyard

Usually we know that there have been moose in our yard by footprints or deeper tracks in the snow.  Or a pile of nuggets. 


Actually seeing them there is less frequent.  It always surprises me how animals this big can so easily blend into the background. 


The one out in the open snow is pretty easy to see, and it's what I saw when I looked out the kitchen window this morning, but the second one* in the trees took a bit longer to spot.

These two moose were stripping the bark from our willow trees and trimming our high bush cranberries.  You can see in the video the bare trunk under the freshly stripped bark.



There's a reason moose choose willow.  This is from a report
Willows of Interior Alaska by Dominique M. Collet, who is the author of the Alaska Insect book.

Salicin, the chemical that preceded acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin), was first isolated from willow. The bark of some willow species is rich in tannin used for the processing of leather. The primary use of willows today, however, is for reclamation of disturbed sites and stabilization of riverbanks.

In Great Britain and Scandinavia, where fossil fuels are expensive, there is a developing interest in willows as a source of renewable energy; the fast growing shoots are coppiced (harvested) every few years, and the dried chips are sent to electric power plants. This fuel burns clean, leaves little ash, and emits carbon less than or equal to that absorbed from the atmosphere by the willow during growth.

Herbivores
The foliage of most willow contain salicilin, a chemical (phenolic glycoside) that deters browsing by most generalist herbivorous insects and mammals. Only a small fraction of the diet of these herbivores, such as the snowshoe hare (Lepus americanus) can consist of willows because the salicin distresses the digestive tract just as aspirin (methyl salicylate) does when taken on an empty stomach. A few generalist herbivores, like the moth Orgia antiqua, are able to complete their development on willow alone.

Specialized herbivores, like moose (Alces alces) and to a lesser degree caribou (Rangifer tarandus), cope well with these chemicals in their browse and are able to tap this otherwise little used resource. For a few specialist herbivorous insects such as sawflies (Tenthredinidae) and leaf beetles (Chrysomelidae), the volatile phenolic glycoside even serves as feeding and oviposition cues.

Herbivores that do not feed on willow may still depend on the plants for shelter or for the microhabitat they create. This results in a compartmentalization of the fauna in willow-rich habitats: a majority of herbivorous species avoids feeding on willows while a small fraction is totally dependent on them.

*It's to the left of the greenhouse and and the two trees there.

Why I Live Here - Birding at Elmendorf Airforce Base

We were going to meet our birder friend Dianne at the Thai Kitchen, but they went on a short vacation. So we decided to go birding instead. As Reserve Officer, Dianne can get onto base and she knows great spots. At first the birding wasn't too good, but the evening scenery was spectacular.




Dianne pointed out this tiny plant, a sundew.

Drosera
(sundew)

Nature has endowed the Sundew with the unique ability to capture and digest insects. This carnivorous habit allows these plants to thrive in nutrient deficient soils and supplement its diet with animal protein. The sundews have a wide range; about 100 recognized species with new varieties being discovered that were not known to exist only a few years ago. This genus has seven North American representatives. They frequent the acid soil of pine barrens and peat bogs and are often found growing along with other Carnivorous Plants.

Sundew leaves have numerous tiny tentacle-like projections. At the end of each is a mucilaginous secretory gland. This gland secretes a droplet of sparkling fluid which gives the plant its dew-drop appearance. Insects, upon being attracted to the plant through odor and color, become stuck to the mucilage. With this stimulus, the tentacles begin to slowly enclose the victim. And later, in about an hour, the entire leaf itself may be bent over its prey. It has been found that these plants only respond to objects of nutritional value and not to sand, paper, or water.

And truly if you look at the picture carefully, the black boggy water is visible. Below you can see the larger bog area around Fish Lake.

No manipulation of these pictures. This is what it looked like!

We were at an air force base. A C-130 I believe.



As we drove from one lake to another, there were four spruce grouse grazing on the side of the road.

Dianne watching two young common loons and two adults.

In the middle of the lake, at the head of the trail is one of the adult loons.

In the middle of the picture, the white spot is the head of a belted Kingfisher sitting at the end of a branch from where it and its partner dove into the lake.

A red fox sat in the road a while than ran across the grassy field.

A pair of muskrats meet in the sunset lit water.

Why I Live Here - Biking in the Rain

The weather report for today in the paper.







Looking out at the sky. Hmmmmmm. Best kind of rain for a bike ride.










We drove down to the the bike trail at Indian on Turnagain Arm. About 20 minute drive from home. And started out past the fireweed.














The trail meanders along Turnagain Arm, sometimes in the woods, sometimes with views of the Arm, and sometimes by the road.


















The Amanitas are popping up now.

The Amanita spp. are a genus of mushrooms containing a few species famous for their toxicity. There are many edible amanitas, but eating the wrong one can get you into heaps of trouble, not to mention the delerium, vomiting, diarrhea, cramps, liver failure or death you may experience. Most poisonings tend to occur in people from foreign countries who pick Amanitas that look "just like" those yummy ones they ate at home or to overconfident novice mycophagists (people who wild mushrooms) who have not bothered to properly identify their mushrooms. So, if you plan to hunt the wild mushroom, make sure to arm yourself with the proper knowledge and only eat a wild mushroom in a foreign country based upon identification in that country's field guide, not a North American guide. Be sure that you use a guide and don't listen to any old wives' tales about how to tell edible mushrooms from poisonous ones.

But you get a different view of this from the IamShaman Shop

Amanita muscaria, the highly visible and strikingly beautiful mushroom, also known as the Fly Agaric, is yellow to red in color and speckled with white. Amanita muscaria is probably humanity's oldest entheogen. Amanita muscaria's history has it associated with both Shamanic and magical practices and it was identified as the "Soma" of the ancient (4000 BC) Rig Veda by Gordon Wasson.

So Amanita muscaria has historical use as far back as we have history, and it shouldn't be hard to suppose that prehistoric man, in his activities as hunter/gatherer, recognized that there were mushrooms and other plants that had benefits not related to hunger. Our ancestors must surely have been intrigued by the Amanita muscaria. They appeared magically from nowhere, in strange and beautiful shapes and colors and gave magical visions of the beyond when eaten.

We went came back and crossed over the road to view the people fishing at Bird Creek. I'm sure yesterday (Sunday) this place was a bit more crowded.




Remember, to see this fishing rules or any other pic bigger, you can double click on it.










You can see here the well known geological formation known as the parkinglotriam cut.





And the eagle flying above didn't seem to approve.



















While Joan pushed her bike up the hill, I enjoyed the rain.














I did a whole post on cow parsnips here. These are the seeds.


















We stopped to watch a passenger train go by above the beach where the car was parked, then stopped again at Potter Marsh. Birdwatching wasn't too exciting, but the reeds were nice. Then in pulled up one of these highway scourges. I can't believe that anyone would willingling drive in one of these rolling billboards. My story is that these were Germans who made their camper reservations online. When the arrive in the US, they were horrified to see how ugly their vehicle was, but the ones billboardless ones were $50 a day more and for three weeks that would come to $1,000. So they swallowed hard, and took it. Except that before we drove off, they took pictures of themselves next to the camper. Uggh. Doesn't the Alaska billboard ban cover these moving billboards? The name of the company discretely painted on the side of a truck or van is one things, but this is horrible. (It's more satisfying to vent about this than something like the Dems rolling over and giving Gonzales the power to decide whose phone and internet get tapped. I can't believe it and if I think about it too long I'll get sick.)