Local legend Scott Robb won the 2023 Alaska State Fair 27th annual Giant Cabbage Weigh-Off earlier this month.  Only 113.05 pounds I say only because his world record 2012 cabbage weighed 138.25 pounds.  Measured seven feet three inches from outside leaf to outside leaf. Just like those turkeys the President honors on Thanksgiving, these monster cabbages these days get to live a slightly longer life in a wildlife garden refuge.   Did you know that a cabbage plant can live on for a second year if not picked ?  From all reports, these giants taste about the same as the one pounder you buy.  And yes, there are cabbage fairies at the Alaskan State Fair. You ask,  why do vegetables grow so large in Alaska?   The summers stay lighted for 20 hours/day.  Also takes a lot of planning, from the right seed variety to a series of transplanting in pots beginning in January, and finally into the ground in May.  Robb indicated he had an electrified fence to protect his cabbages from mooses.  He gro

Maybe you missed this, but Italy swore in its first female prime minister last week.  She is 45-year old Giogia Meloni, a white supremacist and first Far-Right leader since Mussolini.  Her party will partner with 85-year old former PM, Silvio Berlusconi's.  She caught the public's attention three years ago when a video of her   I am Giorgia  speech went viral because two DJs from Milan turned the performance into an electronic dance music track .  Worth a watch.  Meloni has been accused of being fascistic, ala Mussolini, who ran the country from 1922 to 1943, and defended Viktory Orban, Hungary's authoritarian leader, who quashed democracy in this country.  She is, however, pro-NATO, for democracy and supportive of Ukraine. Europe is more and more leaning to the right ( they would be called Republicans in the U.S .), with the recent election of Swedish conservative Ulf Kristersson to Prime Minister.  Maybe they're beginning to lean away from socialism.  One of their sci