Easter Bunnies, Album Spotlights and School Science Fairs

Happy Holy Week to everyone.  Today is Good Friday, a somber day leading into a joyful Sunday!  Here is a pic of what I imagine the Alaskan Easter Bunny might look like. (Arctic Hares are not from Alaska, but just for Easter they can hop over from Canada for a visit.) Spring is arriving slowly in Nome, most notably through increased daylight hours. Sunrise is at 8:02 this morning, and sunset at 10:08 this evening, equalling 14 hours of light! We can also see the pavement on the roads around the refrozen snow melt.  The more moderate temperatures have been greatly appreciated as well.  It has been above zero degrees for at least two weeks now, and last week we almost reached 40 degrees for a bit. I felt like going sun bathing on the sea ice, but settled for a much less bundled up walk instead!

I have been searching for the perfect album to do a spotlight on for my Friday night/Saturday afternoon show. I want something fun and interesting but that also captures the significance of Good Friday and Easter Weekend.  It can be difficult sometimes to find the perfect album or music detour topic/theme for a particular event or holiday, especially one that hasn’t been done before or isn’t too blatantly obvious, or is funny only to me!  I think for this weekend’s Album Spotlight I will settle on a contemporary Christian musician’s album, probably Phil Wickham’s newest album Response, it seems like a good mixture of reverent and jubilant music, and is an artist that I have not featured before.

I have a little sister, (well two actually but one is significantly younger than the other,) named Kathryn, and she turned seven last Fall. She is in first grade this year. She has been very excited for several weeks now because of her school science fair. She and my mother worked on a project about the state of Alaska! Kat was tremendously excited to show all her friends where her favorite big sister lives and works, and where she is going to visit for vacation over the Summer. Apparently their project was a success! I sent them a few items to use as examples, like a Chrissign (a word derived from Christ Sign, an object sort of like a Christmas tree ornament made out of seal fur and beading), some dried salmon, and a couple of other things too. It was a lot of fun to be able to participate in her project a little bit, and it made me proud that she was so excited about what I have been doing here for the last eight months.  Here is a picture of Kat and her board.  Good job girlie!