Saturday, May 30, 2009

Roaming Religion

Religion is very important in Alaska. Nome has eight churches, five of which are spread over a three-block radius, ready to serve. Once upon an Alaska time someone in charge took a map and designated certain settlements to be this that and the other Christian denomination. The Natives already thought there were some kind of higher spirit lurking, but they’d never known its name. In come the missionaries eager to tell. Now the locals could go to a building every Sunday and pay their respects to a specific god, named God, and their place in the afterlife would be a done deal. It must have been the missionaries dream-come-true, and the result is churches everywhere.

Monday, May 25, 2009

Car Talk

Alaska loves dogs. After taking some evolutionary steps from the wolf, the dogs have helped deliver mail, provide transportation and fill the Alaska air with barks, howls and general dog sounds. As the great state continues through westernized evolution it's not surprising to find dogs doing the same thing.

Break Up 2

Yearly is an event the locals call Break Up. This has nothing to do with switching partners, but everything to do with the Bering Sea and watching the ice sail away to unavoidable ice-death. Somehow Break Up doesn't seem to come fast enough as the locals started talking about it sometime last month, and a few days ago euphoria hit. The shoreline broke the ice's heart and sent it packing to sea. Welcome back the smell of salt, ripples on the water and the shade of dark blue. It's as if the place woke up; the dancers scheduled to entertain the elders failed to show, apparently they'd taken their boats and gone hunting, and the townies walk around with permasmiles big enough to melt what's left of the permafrost. Good times to be had.

Monday, May 11, 2009

Noon!

Every day at noon the fire-alarm rings loud over Nome. It’s loud enough to make a cadet stand attention, and the town's many dogs howl. It also announces it's time for town to take lunch, which I think is odd because nothing here seems to open before noon. Which leads me to believe that perhaps it’s not the lunch bell, but the time-to-go-to-work bell. Either way, it’s a sign.

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Boondoggle

I love English. It has words like boondoggle. I learned it on CNN, yes, I barely have internet, but CNN seems to flow without interruption here, don’t ask... Boondoggle means work that is wasteful or pointless but gives the appearance of having value. CNN is a bit of a boondoggle sometimes. Internet too. Personally I can spend hours, even days on the internet, surfing blogs, Facebook and the occasional world renown newspaper (only if someone is reading over my shoulder of course, after which I return to boondoggling blogs and Facebook), and always make it seem like I’m doing very important work. Point and case, I just made you spend 30 seconds on my boondoggle of a blog, much appreciated, where I use words like boondoggle frequently and in many incorrect ways... Keep up the good work!

Monday, May 4, 2009

Temp Home Nome

It lives under the motto: There’s No Place Like Nome. It’s true, a city of 3000 on the spit of a peninsula in the Bering Sea, 15 minutes on foot will take you from one side of town to the other, about 7 minutes will do across. It’s a city built on a promise of gold which still holds. Named because of a spelling error, apparently some Brits sailed around in the Bering Sea some 150 years ago and realized this prominent point was nameless. The officer wrote “? Name” on the map, which the guy copying it down saw as “C Nome” which turned into Cape Nome, which means it was officially named by a mapmaker in the British Admirality. Gold was prominent here once, still is, and every year the Iditarod lands about 1000 dogs here. It’s also very rhymalicious: Nome, home, alone, condone, moan, grown, tone, bone, cone...