Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1994 Alaska had a kind of a birthday last week: the 253rd anniversary of landfall by voyagers from the Old World. I had pictured Vitus Bering leaving his ship the St. Peter in a floppy little velvet cap like you see in portraits of Christopher Columbus, standing in […]
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1995 With special thanks to Leo Rasmussen for providing historical details. It was in 1975 that Nome’s famous burled arch was first used as the finish marker for the Iditarod Sled Dog Race. Carl Huntington of Galena won the race in 1974 (in 20 days) but it was […]
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1994 A great culling process began the day we moved to Nome. The really great friends are being separated from the pretty good ones. And it’s all because we don’t live in Anchorage.
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 2004 Captain James Cook sailed the waters around Nome during the summer of 1778. He walked the deck of his ship Resolution that August and exchanged signals with Captain Furneaux on the consort ship Discovery as they measured the watery depths of Norton Sound, ever hopeful to find […]
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1994 Nobody ever saved the town where I grew up. But I’d heard about Balto even when I went to school in California in the 1950s. The big, black husky (with a right front leg that looked like he’d stepped into a can of white paint) who saved […]
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1995 I was amazed when I first saw Hawai’i’s flag. Many of you may assume like I did that it was cut from bold-colored fabric with jungle hues of blue and green or volcanic oranges and reds. It’s not. Hawaii’s colors are red, white, and blue, and their […]
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
This was my first article published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1994. I’m trying to figure things out in Nome. So, before I arrived, I watched a special on television on the Iditarod to help me figure things out. I noticed that everybody at the Nome finish line had on lots of clothes: boots as […]
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Originally published in Connections, 1999 Sometimes a year will stand out in your memory as a bad one. It may not have been difficult every single week, or perhaps even every month, but looking back over a particular twelve months can bring overwhelming feelings of sadness, conflict, or anger. You can’t wait to throw out […]
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Originally published in Connections, a La Leche League USWD administrators’ publication, in about 2000 When I was a new Leader in New Mexico, I wrote quite a few articles for their ALL Enchantment. The trouble was my essays and poems for that publication were personal and all about mothering: artwork with children, difficult mothering days, […]
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Originally published in The South Bay Daily Reporter, California, Summer 1994 I don’t know if anybody ever saved Manhattan Beach. I kind of wish somebody could have saved it from the polio that swept through my family in 1954. But, if anybody did save the Beach Cities from a more severe epidemic, there hasn’t been […]
