Empty rice shelves in AK

Rice shelves at a Fred Meyer in Fairbanks:

I stopped to snap this picture and caught the attention of a guy whose cart was piled high with beef and soda and Doritos. He shook his head and said, “there’s plenty of rice. It’s the media” I sort of agree… except I shrugged and said, “well, I am the media. But I’m not causing a rice stampede in Fairbanks.”

Sometimes it really torques me to hear people gripe about “the media” when I’m part of it. I mean, I understand - I kvetch about it too. “The Media!” The vultures, the blah-blah-ers, the hype. Yet I wish we used separate words to differentiate the types of ‘media.’ Journalism is journalism. When done well it can change lives and policies. Sensationalist propaganda is something different. I hope that 24-hour-tv-squawk is a few steps away from my medium and ethos, but maybe I’m deluding myself.

Anyway, the U.S. Agriculture Secretary recently said in a Reuters article, “We don’t see any evidence of the lack of availability of rice. There are no supply issues…”

Seeing the empty shelves here reminded me how dependent on the supply lines we really are. Cut Alaska off from trucks and barges, and we’re on our own. Luckily I have a few friends who are moose hunters, fishers, and veggie picklers. There’s a fair bit of halibut in my freezer and berries from last summer. In reality, we’d do far better up here surviving than most city-dwellers would. When I visited Arctic Village last month I talked to folks there about their dependence on the daily flight into the village. An elder told me that when September 11th happened and planes were grounded for days, the village was completely cut off from outside supplies. It proved to him that the Gwich’in need to keep their skills hunting, trapping, and preserving food. So they can stay independent, healthy, and self-reliant.
I’ve had phases here in Fairbanks when I’ve been driven to plant, grow, harvest, bake bread, and learn how to gut a moose. I will plant some flowers soon and perhaps some herbs, lettuce, and maybe tomatoes. Just the basics, that’s about it. The bread-baking is on-hold right now. Perhaps someday I’ll have a different pace of life that has more time for bread-baking. At least I know how. Although my abilities in that department may be somewhat dubious.

Back to the empty rice shelves: It’s odd how tempting it was to toss every gourmet overpriced box of ‘rice and seasoning’ left on the shelf into my cart. But I resisted the urge to join the frenzy. I still have rice at home that’s 3 years old. I’m kind of a packrat… instant rice left over from camping trips, cuscous a friend gave me when she moved to Germany a year ago. Polenta untouched. So I fought the urge. I did grab a little extra pasta instead. Just a little.

Arctic Village story on NPR

For a link to the NPR story about Matthew Gilbert and his home of Arctic Village, please click here.

28-year-old Matthew Gilbert stands before a lake in Arctic Village that he believes is shrinking because of global warming.

I visited Matthew in Arctic Village for a few days in late March-early April. About 150 people live in the village, which borders the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Matthew was kind enough to hang out with me, introduce me to some of his family and friends, and let me tag along as he harvested firewood.
Matthew grew up in Arctic Village, but left to go to college in Anchorage and has traveled quite a bit over the last few years. Here’s his home in Arctic.

Inside, Matthew works tirelessly on more projects than I can count. One of the many things he’s done over the past few years is a research project interviewing elders and respected hunters in his village and nearby communities about climate change. That’s why I initially contacted Matthew. He wrote this article, Farewell, Sweet Ice for The Nation last year.

We went on a few snowmachine trips around and out of the village.

I asked Matthew if I could go with him when he collected firewood so I could record a bit of the hard work it takes to live there. He said sure–as long as I would help, too. The Gwich’in in Arctic Village use the rivers and lakes like superhighways for their snowmachines during the winter. Matthew’s grandfather, Reverend Trimble Gilbert, is worried that because of global warming, the ice will rot early and become unstable, putting snowmachiners at risk.
Matthew loaded up his chainsaw, ax, and his grandfather’s gun - a polar bear had been shot in Fort Yukon just the week before - and we drove about five miles out until we came to the base of a mountain where Matthew said it was a good spot to gather firewood.

My job was to trim off the branches with the ax. Matthew was very gracious letting me take a zillion pictures and record audio of everything from the wind blowing to the chainsaw working to the peace and quiet (and us finally bursting out laughing because who records silence?), and he turned the tables, taking this one picture of me, showing off his firewood haul.

Matthew showed examples around his village that his elders say are evidence of climate change. Here’s a lake that’s shrinking. Matthew pointed out how the tree growth is creeping inward. He says the willow in the foreground is growing up too, preventing easy access to the lake’s edge.

Matthew’s research into the elders’ perspectives on climate change is getting more attention, and last month he was invited to an environmental conference in New Mexico to share his findings. I feel really fortunate that Matthew took time out of his very busy life to share his research - and his home village - with me.

Ice out

Call it… the Nenana Ice Classic is over.
The ice on the Tanana River at Nenana went out last night at 10:53 pm, shifting the tripod which triggered the clock that captures the official time. Here are some crazy-fun stats reported by my colleague Dan Bross on KUAC today: this is only the second time in the event’s 91-year history that the ice has gone out between 10 and 11 pm. Usually it moves in the afternoon during the heat of the day.

Also, there may just be one winner this year instead of the usual many. It’s such a random time on a later date that there might be a lone ticket holder out there who guessed the exact minute of 10:53 pm, May 6th. Ice Classic officials are double-checking the entries now. Last year the roughly $300,000 payout was split among 22 tickets, bought by a total of 80 people. Somebody out there might just be lucky enough to have hit the jackpot. This would by only the 9th time for a sole ticket holder to win. That’s a prize of $303,895.
Last year the ice went out on the afternoon of April 27th, so it’s not my imagination that spring is dawdling this year.
Sorry I didn’t buy you tickets, Aunt Toni!

I don’t really need this whole bus all to myself

Filling up my truck’s gas tank over the weekend cost me more than $50. That in part motivated me to take the bus to work today.
The Fairbanks Borough Gray Line stops close to my house. It’s a bus route on Farmer’s Loop that the borough initiated over the winter thanks to a grant. It will be in operation through next January, at which time the borough will evaluate and see if it’s being used.
I was one of only two people on the 8:00 bus this morning. But man, was it cool! The driver was really happy to see the whole two of us using the service. Kinda roomy for just a duo of riders though. We each had our own half of the bus.

At the end of the day I jumped on the bus again, and the ridership had more than doubled. There were five of us! I took the bus half-way home and walked the rest.

And then it started to pour. I had memories of Iceland as I swaddled my scarf around my head to fight off the torrents of rain. How awesome to have this instead of snow. It smelled like… wait… what was it? Wait, I know this one…. SPRING! It smelled like spring!

I’ll try to take the bus when I can but it only runs during peak hours, that is, 7-9 and 4-6. My hours at the radio station are often a bit wackier than that. It takes me about 2 hours to walk home from my office, a little long for a casual, “darn, I missed the bus, guess I’ll walk” sort of thing. But we’ll see! Friends are starting to get out their bikes and commute that way, too.

Resurfacing

The snow is melting, spring has arrived, and I’m back to blogging.
How was your April? Hope it was lovely.
My radio class at UAF ended last week although I’m still working on grading. My students aired their final projects on UAF’s student station KSUA on May 1st. They did a great job! It’s a true moment of “take a deep breath, and plunge into live radio” when the projects start to air, because even though I talk with the students as they’re crafting their half-hour shows, I don’t hear the final product until I click on 91.5 FM at air time.
Whew!
It’s sad to see the class wrap up, really. One of my stellar students wrote me an email at 3:46 am the other night when her group finished their project and said, “I thought I’d be a little sad to be done with your class, but after 16 hours in this lab— I’m pretty much over it. (= ” Fair enough.
School wrapping up means the change of seasons is actually happening, evidenced by the fact that the snow is finally MELTING! Hard to believe but true. The rivers are opening as the ice breaks up.

I loved seeing these birds alight chunks of ice floating down the Chena River.

In the newsroom we’ll be monitoring the flood potential in Salcha this week as the Tanana River breaks up there. Meanwhile the Nenana Ice Classic ain’t over yet. The tripod is still stationary. When the ice finally breaks up and the tripod moves, some lucky folks will win lotsa dough. I don’t have any money on it this year. Seems like I always forget to buy tickets.
I remember one year when I was in college in NY and trying to crank out an end-of-the-semester paper, (this was after spending some time in Fairbanks and Nenana), I heard NPR’s Linda Wertheimer interviewing someone in Nenana about the NeNAH NAH Ice Classic (sing-song up-beat)… I’d never heard someone talk about Nenahnah in such a refined and amused way. The NPR crew seemed to think it was the most chahming thing. Guess it is. I remember the interviewer saying something like, “so you just sit around all day and watch the ice, waiting for it to crack?” and it made it sound like… like… people in Alaska have nothing to do this time of year but sit around and stare at ice. Purty slow up here, we are. Sort of funny though how one person’s ‘charming and quaint distraction’ is another person’s real life.

Wha.. did I miss Spring?

Happy Birthday, Willie Nelson!
75 years old.
One of my primary lifelong dreams is to meet Willie Nelson. Hasn’t happened yet, although my dear friend Jane once took me to a Willie Nelson concert in PA and I got to see him up close. I swear he smiled at me.
So in addition to being Willie’s birthday, it’s the last day of April. And it SNOWED 2 INCHES TODAY.

I thought I was hallucinating when I looked out the window this morning and saw giant flakes rippling out of the sky. What. The. X#@XXX$%%%%^$@*##^@@X!!!
I decided to see it as beautiful. I mean, it is, right? Lovely snow? Lovely snow!
Who knows when we’ll see snow again! It’s just that I’ve told myself that same thing nearly every other day for the past month. Each time it snows I say, “well hey, who knows when I’ll see this again?” And then 2 days later… there it is. Again.

The drive to work this morning. In blue.

My lifelong friend Ranjeet got married over the weekend on a beautiful spring day in Pennsylvania. Meanwhile in my world it’s still snowing. Jane took pictures:

Yes, Ranjeet rode in on a horse. And yes, those are greened-up trees behind him (none of that here in Fbx yet).
Many blessings, Ranjeet and Neha!
I wish I could’ve been there. It’s the last week of the school semester and there’s far too much going on here right now to be able to leave for a week. This is the challenging reality of living 4,000 miles away. What a bummer. I can’t wait to hear many, many stories about the wedding.
In the meantime… tomorrow May starts. I think I’m ready for the season of snow to end. Not to sound ungrateful. I do love the snow. It’s just… time for spring.

Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow

Oh busy April.
I’m on deadline for two stories, spring is here, and my cousin just wrapped up a fabulous two week visit to Alaska. Photos of Bill’s visit to come. In the meantime…

Arctic Village!

Spring is here… kinda? We DO NOT have flowers. Buds on trees. Cherry blossoms. What we have is melt. Wet icky melt. Pools of water with plastic bags, empty cans of cheap beer, and sometimes even shopping carts swimming inside. Lovely. And now this week as winter gave us one last memory, more snow. AND MORE SNOW. In the last 24 hours it’s dumped and dumped. Now all the ice is hidden by innocent looking powder, so you don’t know when you’re going to step on a patch of it and slide down your driveway feeling like a crotchety off-kilter old lady while the teenage boys who live next door watch you from the window and think “there goes that crotchety off-kilter old lady.” Just ggreeeatttttt. Don’t they know I’m young and hip?
But at least we’re getting so much sunlight now.
F-A-B-U-L-O-U-S * S-U-N-L-I-G-H-T

I think we Alaskans get a little squirrelly this time of year as the sunlight increases and the snow is slow to disappear. It’s so great to get some last winter adventure squeezed in… except the trails are icy and chewed up. Just as we adjust to the idea of the snow melting (noooo!) and adapt to the wet of spring, it snows again. Oh bother. Hence, squirrelly. Of course, we Alaskans are also squirrelly in the fall, as the sun disappears and we scramble to get our chores done before hibernating… and we’re hellsa squirrelly in the winter when the sun is gone. And heck, we’re squirrelly in the summer when there’s daylight all the time, hills to climb, rivers to canoe, gardens to grow, a windowless office to survive 8 hrs/day, so much to do, who needs to sleep? Um… me?
OK. So back to right now.
Spring is lurching towards us… but winter won’t quite let up her grip:

While Cousin Bill was here, we went skiing out at Chena Hot Springs. Of the group, I was the first one to fall. What a winner I am. Here’s my profile. Supine. In the snow. After I fell and lay there for a while.

I think I was rather a good sport about the whole thing. Sliding around on the ski trail is just part of spring, really.
Time to get back to my radio stories and their looming deadlines. Won’t post again until both stories are DONE. Keep your fingers crossed for me. It’s gonna be tight.
Ciao, Libby

Warm feet go the distance

Before I headed out on Iditarod, my dear friend Theresa presented me with a gift. A pair of knitted socks. Theresa’s recently taken up knitting, quickly going beyond your run-of-the-mill scarves. The socks she gave me are fabulous. Fit perfectly and even have a cable knit pattern!
I love funky socks. I sure thought these were pretty, but I had no idea of how truly fabulous they are.

Good old fashioned wool. Nothing beats it. I literally wore these socks every day for two weeks during Iditarod. Seriously. Each morning I’d go to put them on and think, “surely they can’t handle another crazy 20 hour day…” but they were in fabulous shape. Even after 2 + weeks, they’re not even icky. Or stinky! Sure, they can stand up on their own and they’re permanently molded in the form of my feet, but they’re still ready to go more miles. What was I thinking these last few years wearing synthetics on my feet? Sweaty ickiness.

These wool babies are AWESOME. They’re not itchy and I’ve never had such warm feet. I’m proud that it wasn’t my socks and boots stinkin’ up the Iditarod checkpoints and schools at night. Trust me, not everyone was so lucky to have healthy-homemade-odorless socks.

Thank you Theresa! There’s nothing like a homemade gift from a friend. And there’s really nothing like a homemade gift that keeps you warm. What a pal. Theresa’s promised to darn any holes… but I think that will be years from now. They’re sturdy! I hope to have these socks, and this wonderful friendship, forever.

End of the trail, for now

Sunset in Nome

Iditarod is over. The last musher arrived under the burled arch on Monday at 8:36 in the evening. Deborah Bicknell claimed the red lantern for her team’s hard work. Finisher number 78. Here’s a fabulous fun fact: Bicknell becomes only the second musher ever awarded the red lantern in both the Iditarod and the Yukon Quest. The other is University of Alaska Fairbanks journalism professor Brian O’Donoghue.
Wish I could’ve been there to see Deborah finish after witnessing her prior Quest runs. But I left Nome before she even arrived. Iditarod is just a memory now as I settle back into life in Fairbanks.

Here’s a photo of Lance Mackey from the start of the race in Anchorage.

Some final photos from Nome

Nome graffiti:

Zoya DeNure finished her rookie run Friday in 53rd place. I saw her just a few hours later at Airport Restaurant, the most fabulous place to eat in Nome. Zoya said running Iditarod was a life changing experience. It was really lovely to see someone so passionate about her dogs and the whole experience fresh off the trail.

Zoya was having dinner with her husband John Schandelmeier. I love that she was enjoying pizza, cake, a beer, and cappuccino all at once.

Fritz, one of the sled dogs who saved Nome from the diptheria epidemic. Preserved for eternity. Kinda creepy? Yeah. But hey, he’s loved. That’s cool!

Sunny Saturday in Nome? How about some golf?

And their forest, made of recycled Christmas trees and cut-outs.

Now I’m back in the land of real trees. Spring is here–the vernal equinox means we’re getting equal light and darkness now. March is beautiful. There’s still snow on the ground and yet it’s warm and light out in the evenings. A little more time left for snowshoeing and skiing.

Trail fashion: must have fur

Is there such a thing as Trail Fashion?

Lots of animal skin hats on Iditarod. Lots and lots of them. Especially at the race start.

From the back:

And some don’t stop with the hat, going instead for the whole look.

And to think I refused to dissect animals in high school because I had moral issues with it. And I was a vegetarian for like, a decade. This is a different country than suburban PA.

Oregon musher Liz Parrish at the race start:

I’m not really sure what was up with the helmet get-up, but I’m sure there’s a darn good reason.*
I never caught up with Liz to learn more about her. Sure wish I had. With 95 mushers running Iditarod, there were some I never saw after the Anchorage start. Alas. But I did read about her in the Anchorage Daily News, in which Craig Medred reported that Parrish is a survivor of cancer, fibromyalgia, and scoliosis. She trained in northern Minnesota all winter with dogs she raised herself. Medred wrote that Parrish crashed on the race’s first turn on 4th Avenue, so I guess that helmet came in handy.
Parrish finished Iditarod successfully in second-to-last place this week. Congratulations to her! She’d never run such a long race. What an accomplishment. Think about how much harder it is for the back-of-the-pack teams. They contend with raw, chewed up trail, checkpoints weary from scores of other mushers, and a much longer adventure. Whereas the front-runners finished up in 9 or 10 days, the back-of-the-packers took two weeks. I would feel high as a kite if I and my dogs had done that.

I was thinking perhaps I should wear such a helmet on the trail. A couple years ago on the Quest I knocked myself out and got a big lump on my head. How, you may ask. Tussle with moose? Speeding on a snowmachine? No, I fell in the Eagle community library trying to quickly jump out of my chair fast to help someone clean up. My boot got tangled in the chair and I fell right into the stacks. The rest of the reporters just stood there and stared at me, except my buddy Trish, who went out and filled her glove with snow so I could put it on my lumpy head. The News-Miner reporter was like, “woah. That was really, really funny.” Ouch.
No trail injuries this year, though!

My friend Trude getting into her many layers to head outside. Even we reporters have to wear a ton o layers to stay warm. In fact, we end up standing around a lot, making warm layers an necessity.
Here’s the finished product:

Not bad!

I got made fun of a bit by a couple of TV guys because of my grubby jacket, Carhartt pants, and overall Pippi Longstocking look. I think they were just jealous. Poor guys, they have to get all dressed up and fancy and whiten their teeth every darn day just so they can be on TV.

So what if my coat has a little bit of duct tape on it?
When Alaskan musher Zack Steer finished Iditarod last year in a stellar 3rd place showing, he said, “score one for the dirty jackets this year!” The Dirty Jackets: the guys and gals who don’t have a ton of money or sponsorship, and mostly run smaller kennels.

Not much to say about this next bit of fashion from the Willow restart:

Future musher?

* I just found out by reading Jon Little’s blog, Eye on the Trail, that Liz Parrish wears a snowboarding helmet because she’s on blood thinners. Jon has a great story about Liz, Deborah Bicknell, and Molly Yazwinski, three women running at the back of this year’s race here.