Only a few days left to catch the Producers, evening performances are at 8pm Thursday, Friday, Saturday and 7pm Wednesday. Matinee hours are at 2pm Saturday and Sunday. The Sara Belle and Neil November Theatre, 114 West Broad Street, formerly The Empire Theatre is equipped with a new state-of-the-art induction loop hearing system that is compatible with all telecoil-equipped hearing aids and cochlear implants.  A handheld receiver and head[phone is also available free of charge to anyone who is hearing impaired.  

More information on the Producers, and Virginia Repertory Theatre are on www.va-rep.org or call 804-282-2620.

Alan Wichmann – 1973

I received both my BS and Masters degrees from River Falls. Looking back now, it was an excellent choice. I was fortunate to have a top of the line career teaching at Greenfield Iowa, Weyawega-Fremont and FOTC.  Even after 13 years it still gives me rewards.

Wendell Hillskotter – 1963

King NOG

It was a fantastic San Diego weekend of holiday cheer, but before I fill you in on food, fun, and fauns I need to redirect the many NOG requests to the recipe and method I posted a week or so ago, hope you are able to add it to your holiday imbibing, just tap on the NOG link and off you go!

NOG

Jack, NOG and Cream — time to mix and sip!

It all started Friday night in Lake Elsinore. I’m a freelance writer for Inland Empire Magazine and Taste of Italia. I was commissioned to write a piece on a fun new Persian/Afghanistan restaurant – King Kabob. So Jake and I stopped in for dinner before continuing on to San Diego…

King Kabob ready to kick off Friday night

It’s a great space, started by a young, hip guy named Haroon Ali — with a name like that, how can he NOT be hip!

We started with an appetizer called Sambosa, served with Chatni sauce. It was delicious…

Spicy Chicken Sambosa with Chatni Sauce

We shared two entrees – one was Chicken Korma and the other Lamb Kabob. We also asked for the Albalo Polo (rice cooked with sour cherries)… WOW – what a great balancing act with the savory lamb….

Lamb Kabob with Albalo Polo

Of course no meal is complete without a good beverage pairing, we chose beer… thankfully Jake knows his beer and made two great Mediterranean beer choices…

Chicken Korma with TAJ Mahal beer

With full tummies, we headed on to San Diego for one of my favorite holiday parties of the year. Our friends, Brian and Phil, sure know how to greet guests…

Grapefruit Martini Greeting

And that was Friday night, the real party wasn’t until Saturday night… with San Diego’s mild climate and a fantastic party yard complete with fire pit, and outdoor spa, Saturday couldn’t come soon enough. And it was the debut of their recently completed yard designed by Steve Wichmann – Jake has some amazing shots of the yard, you should click on Steve’s link – AMAZING WORK…

Party yard ready for its debut

I happily helped with a little table design for the buffet…

Buffet table waiting to be loaded up

And, I started out so composed and feeling hip in my black mock turtle….

Can the party please commence?

Of course, with a special guest faun named Pan, the party was soon to change…

Pan says “Time to Celebrate”

And SO IT DID…

Patrick and Phil… OH, THAT PHIL and the things he gets me into!!!

Needless to say, I was (for once) thankful that our drive home on Sunday included an important Bronco’s game on the radio… it allowed me to sleep while keeping Jake alert and focused on his driving…

Hope your weekend offered you some fun and lightness as well…

I just revisited some old pictures of my grandfather and the “modern” fishing vessel – the old N-5-Bø (N-5-Boe, in case the last letter in the registration doesn’t show correctly on your screen) – HAVLEIK. They later on bought a new, bigger wooden hull fishing vessel (63 ft.) and took the same registration number – N-5-Bø and the name Havleik. The “new” Havleik  was later sold. She sank after a blazing fire off the coast outside Nesseby in Varangerfjord on the 25th of  March 2008 – the entire crew made it in the rafts – but that’s another story. That fire put an end to the 89 year long Havleik era.

The first Havleik

• was built in 1919, with
• a 46 feet clipper hull – width 16.2 feet
• In 1920 she was registered with a Bergsund 28 hp engine. The shipping company owning the ship at that time was registered to Peder Bjugn from Lynghaugen, Bø (Boe) in Vesteraalen.
• In 1936 she was registered with a Norwegian Wichmann 30 hp (the Wichmann was a semi-diesel engine – that is a two-stroke diesel engine).
• Havleik consists of the two Norwegian nouns “hav“, which means sea and “leik” which means “play” (or loosly translated, “joy”). Thanks to Inge M. Johansen – gamlebilderfravesteralen.origo.no – I found these older b/w photos of this classic beauty. Locally she was known as “The Big 5′er” – relating to the registration number N-5-Bø (N for Nordland – the thrid northernmost county – fylke – in Norway).

Havleik – the original vessel in the annual North-Atlantic cod fisheries outside the Lofoten Islands. My grandfather – Rolv – on the fore deck.

A good catch! 45.000 kilograms of pollock in this load. My grandfather Rolv to the left and Johan Bjugn to the right.

No more freeboard to run on! Loaded to the brink! It was always a question to make a living – not always a question of safety at sea…

Loaded to the brink. My grandfather Rolv on the aft deck – number two from the left.

A Classic Beauty – Havleik with her beautiful clipper lines. Slick lines for tackling rough seas.

Havleik – a family business. From the left Johannes Bjugn (a highly decorated officer – Lieutenant Colonel – from the first Allied Victory in WW2 – The Battle of Narvik), Leif Bjugn (a fantastically kind man and skillful fisherman), Guttorm Bjugn (former chief of police in Bø in Vesteraalen), Peder Bjugn (fisherman) and Kyrre Bjugn (telephone technician) – all highly respected men.

The End

When the new Havleik was bought -  the old one was sold to Kvæfjord outside Harstad. There she laid by an old peer year after year until her hull finally sprung a leak and she sank to the bottom. She was never recovered. An immensely sad way to treat such a gemstone of proud Norwegian culture and a classically beautiful ship.

So what about the fish?

After the fish was landed by the regional fishing vessels and preserved by freeze drying (known as tørrfisk in Norwegian meaning “dried fish” – stockfish), salting and/or – salting and sun drying (known as klippfisk), the produce was loaded onto bigger vessels known as Jekter or Nordlandsjekter. These are quite similar to my vessel – the Danish Yacht Klitta – only bigger. These sailed up and down the perilous Norwegian Coast, primarily to and from Bergen. In Bergen the fish was loaded onto even larger vessels and exported to Europe. Especially Portugal, Spain and Italy has historically been huge importers of Norwegian dried and salted fish.

The North-Atlantic fish (especially the species of cod and herring) is extremely nutritious and the cold, windy climate in the winter was perfect for freeze drying fish. The fish was hung on tall wooden racks and froze while at the same time dried (a process known as sublimation). Freeze dried fish – stockfish – has been known to be edible more than 100 years after being dried…

The other main method of preserving the fish, was salting it and sun drying it on the rocks. One Norwegian word for these rocks – and the same word as the English name “cliff” is “klippe” – hence the name “klippfisk” – “cliff fish” – clipfish.

Of course – fresh fish has been a primary source of nutrition for Norwegians since long before the Viking Period. But preservation has always been necessary for storage in case the weather didn’t allow for fishing. Later on these preserved and highly nutritious “protein bombs” became important sources for proteins in the mediterranean countries like Portugal, Spain and Italy. Later on canned Norwegian fish also became hugely popular in other European countries like Great Brittain.

Ich denke eher, dass es daran liegt, dass diese “Bekanntschaft” eher eine sehr einseitige ist. Nämlich aufgrund der Tatsache, dass sie einer dieser unsäglichen Coaches sind, die ihre Werbebotschaften bei Twitter unter die Leute streuen wie Hochzeitsgäste Reis. Einer der Twitterer, die im Gießkannenprinzip einfach mal irgendwelchen Leuten folgt, in der Hoffnung, dass man Sie dann auch zurück followt.

Ich persönlich glaube ja an die letzte Möglichkeit. Anders kann ich es mir j nicht erklären, dass man mit 3.130 Tweets die stolze Anzahl vom 13.765 Followern besitzt, seinerseits aber nur 7.304 folgt. Die Zahlen sind übrigens Stand heute, 7:03 Uhr. Wie ich darauf komme? Nun, just zu diesem Zeitpunkt habe ich die Nachricht von Twitter bekommen, dass Sie mir folgen möchten. Soweit ja noch nichts besonderes. Allerdings haben Sie diesen Versuch bereits am 6. Dezember, also vor gerade mal 3 Tagen, unternommen. Hierauf schrieb ich Ihnen am selben Tag um 13.54 Uhr folgende @-Reply:

Zu Ihrem Verständnis: Twitter ist nicht nur dafür gedacht, irgendwelche Werbetweets in die Timelines zu streuen, sondern – oh Wunder! – es ist auch eine Kommunikationsplattform! Und wenn Sie – was bei Ihren 7.304 Followern zugegebenermaßen nicht so einfach ist – Ihre Timeline auch mal lesen würden, oder lediglich die @-Replies, die direkt an Sie geschrieben werden, dann wäre Ihnen mein o.g. Tweet sicherlich aufgefallen…

Vielleicht ist aber auch Ihr Gedächtnis nicht mehr so ganz das beste, kann ja mal passieren. Aber zum Glück gibt es Twitterer wie mich, die Ihnen gerne ein wenig auf die Sprünge helfen! Zum Beispiel zu den nun insgesamt 5 Versuchen, mich zu verfolgen. Der erste, am 30.12.2009 war noch erfolgreich, da habe ich einmal zurück gefollowt, vielleicht wären ja interessante Informationen dabei gewesen. Leider war dies nicht der Fall, also habe ich meinen “Follow”-Klick wieder zurückgenommen.

Das wurde von Ihnen dann anscheinend sehr schnell entgegnet, denn wie dem auch sei, am 7. Februar 2010 folgten Sie mir erneut:

Und dann wieder am 26. Mai 2010:

Da mein Account nun aber zwischenzeitlich wieder “protected” ist – im übrigen aus genau dem Grund, dass es mir gegen den Strich geht, dass solche Pseudo-User wie Sie mir folgen, mussten Sie seitdem einen Follower-Request starten. Dies haben Sie am 6. Dezember 2010 erneut getan:

Und eben wieder heute, am 9. Dezember 2010:

Sehr geehrter Herr Kopp-Wichmann, tun Sie doch mir und sich, tun Sie doch ganz einfach alles, denen Twitter wirklich etwas bedeutet, einen großen Gefallen: verschonen Sie ehrliche Twitter-User mit Ihren nervigen Methoden, denn ich kann mir nicht vorstellen, dass ich der einzige bin, der von Ihnen und Ihren “Kollegen” extremst angepisst ist! Wobei ich Sie beruhigen kann: Sie sind absolut nicht der Einzige! Aber Sie haben ein “Problem” – ich habe ein Faible für unsägliche Doppelnamen, und drum habe ich mir Ihren gemerkt…

Mit freundlichen Grüßen und hoffentlich auf Nimmerwiederlesen,
Ihr Marcus Schultz

P.S. Natürlich könnte ich Sie auch einfach blocken und/oder Sie als Spam an Twitter melden. Aber hey, ich hab mal gelernt, dass Unkraut nicht vergeht… ;-)