LA Times Article about Rural Villages

Above is a link to an article about the economic situation in some of rural villages in Alaska. One of the villages in the article is Emmonak which is a village Terrence covers for the Public Defender's Office.

These pictures are from the K-300, Bogus Creek 150 and the Akiak Dash. The 300 is a long hard race, a lot of the mushers that run the Idatorad are in it along with several local teams. We had a great time at the race, Terrence was helping our friend MB run the starting line. That is them in the first picture. Trying to control eighteen teams of dogs at a time is quite a challenge. James and I weren't up for the task, so we stuck to spectating. James insisted on staying out for all three starts, which was about three hours on the river. It was cold, but not too bad, especially with a few warm up trips in a friends car. That evening there was an impressive fireworks show to celebrate the races. We have to get our fireworks for the year in now since they don't have them on the Fourth of July- it doesn't get dark enough!

New Kitty -Senator (Pinnochio) Chomskey

This is our new kitten. His name is the result of a compromise. James wanted to name him Senator Amadela (sorry about the wrong spelling) after the Star Wars character, but our kitty is a boy so we decided to only keep the senator part. James wanted to make it Senator Pinnochio, but that seemed like a lot of name for such a small animal. Terrence and I were in favor of the name Chomskey. In fact, Terrence emailed the professor and author Noam Chomskey to see if we could name our new cat after him. I figured he would never see our message, let alone write back but he did. We do in fact have his blessing to name our cat Chomskey.

He loves Jamie, follows him around the house and sleeps next to him. We figured a feisty kitten would be good entertainment for the rest of winter. We have to wait to take him to the vetbecause there isn't one in Bethel. A vet flies out from Anchorage every few months. In fact if an animal needs immediate medical attention you have to put them on a plane send them to Anchorage and the vet picks them up at the airport. Then the animal gets whatever operation or procedure it needs, recovers and gets back on a plane to come home- no need for the human to travel. Our friends Huskie got knee surgery this way last summer. Even pet ownership is different in the bush!

Our nephew Timothy at Sea World

New Do

Sadie

This is our niece Sadie. She looks gorgeous as always, wearing a dress her Aunt Jane made her.

Jamie's First Dog Sled Race

These pictures were taken at the Holiday Classic, it is a forty five mile race. It had been postponed from the day before because of the weather, although it was still very cold for the race- around twenty below. Jamie found it a little overwhelming at first, the dogs were very excited, but then we all had a good time.

Christmas Morning

Pictures- Gingerbread House

Not all fun and games

It has been a very cold week here in Bethel. We had temperatures in the minus 20's, and windchills in the minus 50's for almost a week. The pipes at Terrence's office froze and flooded, the pipes in an adjoining apartment to us froze (causing us to lose water) and even the pipes at Subway froze. It makes me feel as though Bethel might be somebody's unstable experiment, can people really live here? Of course people did live here for thousands of years succesfully, but had a very different lifestyle. They survived in this harsh environment without all of the comforts that we have now, central heating, snow machines and electricity to name just a few. I realize that the worst of winter is yet to come, February and March are the coldest months, and the snow doesn't melt until May. I cannot imagine what winter would of been like here even a hundred years ago, how long and difficult it must of been. James and I didn't even leave the house today, with a minus -46 windchill it didn't seem wise.

We are persevering though. We read lots of books and watch a few movies. Jamie bought a dart board with his Christmas money from Grandma Jane. We had some friends over for game night and karaoke on Saturday, and I am learning to knit. Terrence and Jamie are reading a chapter of Voyage of the Dawn Treader every night, and we are starting to exercise more at the teen center. It is a strange feeling when you wake up in the morning and you know that you have to make your own fun, no Children's Museum or Chuck e Cheese is going to do it for you. On days like today you just have to get through it, and dream about summer, which right now seems like a fairy tale to me.

It is strange to actually long for grass, for leaves, for a warm breeze. I thought I knew what winter was, I grew up in Michigan, they do have them there. We thought we were so tough having lived in Marquette for five years, but that wasn't anything compared to this. It has been cold and the ground has been covered with snow for over three months already, and we have at least four more months to go until spring. Yikes! I am hoping that living here will give us more appreciation for the warmer seasons, similar to how living in a wig-wam made us content with even the smallest apartments.

Friends tell us that the summers here are phenomenal, that the twenty-four hours of daylight are intoxicating and there is nothing else like it. That there is, in the end, some kind of balance between the long, dark winters and the amazing summers. We hope to be able to spend a lot of time out on the river, hopefully doing a lot of salmon fishing and bird watching and letting Jamie play outside until all hours of the night (which is still day!). This is truly, a place of extremes.