By all means let's send another clueless obstructionist to Congress

Please forgive me. I do write about politics once in a while, but I have tried not to get into individuals and campaigns except on a very general level. But, this guy Dan Sullivan I find so offensive I just had to get it out. He is closely aligned with and receives money from the Koch brothers who are doing everything they can to subjugate all the regular folks in this country. And, he is running such a negative campaign it turns stomachs at times.

Watching football Sunday at times bordered on cruel torture. The games were fine even if some of them didn't come out the way I would have liked.

Sullivan skipped a debate in Alaska so he could raise cash in Ohio.

The torture came in the political commercials, in particular those supporting a candidate for the U.S. Senate from Alaska.  Now, this guy has not said one positive thing in the whole campaign, but he is against a lot of stuff, like several issues of women's rights, gun control, global warming and, well, you get the idea, anything all the Repubstructionists in Congress are against.

The only thing he has spoken in favor of is the Pebble Mine, a massive open-pit proposal that threatens the headwaters of the largest sockeye salmon runs in the world.

Most of the ads focus on his opponent, a one-term Democrat whom this guy blames for everything except sour milk. He infers two things, that his opponent was responsible for everything that happened for past six years in the United States, and that the real opponent is President Obama. We know about Republican blame for Obama: there's that tan suit, and the offhand coffee salute and on an on. Among other things this guy criticizes his opponent for voting 97 percent of the time with the president. Well, jerkoff, your party buddies voted 100 percent of the time against him. Who's the bigger jerk. He also criticizes his opponent because he voted for Obamacare. For crying out loud, 10 million Americans now have health insurance they didn't have before. But his party has spent millions on at least 50 senseless, failed votes in Congress to repeal the enabling act and then funding a lawsuit against the president because he didn't follow that law exactly.

But Sunday's incessant ads trotted out a barely literate just-out-of his-teens snowmachine rider whose one claim to fame is he can do a flip on one of those things. And what was this wrenchhead's criticism? The other candidate didn't ride a snowmachine in his own ad very well. That ad shows the candidate simply riding by – offering all kinds of reasons for this kid to judge his abilities and condemn him as a bad candidate. I have been riding snowmachines for longer than that kid has been alive and while I have no interest in doing a flip on one, I wouldn't have done anything different than the candidate did in his ad. But, this kid would rather support some guy new to the state whose official residence is even in question. What the hell, I am supposed to vote against a sitting U.S. senator on the word of a kid who obviously has no clue about politics and the words he speaks were carefully crafted for him by some campaign shill?

There are plenty of other ads that go in the same tone: a teacher who might be an actress/spokeswoman,  among others.

The main point is this candidate takes cheap shots at a sitting senator and a president while offering nothing to the conversation. In one of his ads where he talks about what he can do for Alaskans he says condescendingly he will protect Alaskans. The question is from whom? He seems to be the kind of person we need protection from. It is difficult to understand why so many Alaskans seem to support him. He offers nothing except more of the same from Republicans in Congress, a group that over the past decade has attempted to bring the country to a standstill.

Judge for yourself. Here is the ad with the senator riding a snowmachine. Is he doing anything wrong  here, except to folks who just don't like snowmachines altogether?

Candidate goes "home" for fundraiser

Maryland residential tax breaks for candidate ruled legitimate

An earthquake and a river of mud

Autumn in the Susitna River Valley. From left the higher mountains are Foraker, Hunter and McKinley.

We had quite an earthquake Thursday morning, it measured 6.24 on whatever they are calling the scale these days and was centered not too far from the East Pole.

That's the trail. Note the river heading off to the upper right.

It started as a slow roller but something in that hinted at more and sure enough all of a sudden the house started some serious shaking for a few seconds and I heard things falling in the outer rooms. The whole thing felt like five minutes but was probably maybe 30 seconds. It was enough to clear overstocked shelves in some stores and rattle just about everyone. People all over Alaska felt it, from Fairbanks to Kenai and east into Prince William Sound. It also brought about one of the best descriptions of handling an earthquake I’ve come across. A friend posted this on his facebook page: "This just in – 6.1 earthquakes feel much bigger when you're outside and suddenly surfing a slab of concrete."

Given the location and magnitude of the quake, thoughts of the East Pole came up. Now, a few years ago the cabin survived a 7.9 so well a wine glass I had left upside down in the dish drainer didn't even fall over, so worry is relative. But, today brightened into a beautiful fall day, just perfect for a quick jaunt out there to make sure everything was all right. I had been wanting to go, but weeks of rain and what that rain does to the trail kept me from going.  It had been dry for a week, so no excuses today and I loaded up the four-wheeler and off we went.

In some ways I should have stayed home. What was supposed to be a trail, more resembled a long, narrow, muddy lake. If it weren't for the hills it probably could have been done in a boat. Several times water washed up over the front of the machine. It’s one of those place where momentum is your friend; you have to keep it moving or risk sinking into the mud. The problem with that is you can roar through the puddles, but at each end people before you have hit the throttle, spun the wheels and dug a hole making the water deeper and the slope climbing up out of the water steeper.  So when you come to the end of a long lake, you have to lay off the throttle so you don't throw yourself off the machine when it hits that steep climb, at the same time maintaining enough momentum to get over the hump. If it were all that straightforward it might not be so bad, but it seems there is always a rut involved that throws the machine sideways in an attempt to buck off the driver just when he is trying to hang on and maintain control. After fourteen miles of that, my shoulders are sore from wrestling with the handlebar.

These swans were feeding at roadside paying no attention to gawkers.

But, determination can get you amazing places and once at the cabin it was satisfying to find no sign there had been any earthquake at all. Even shaky stand-alone picture frames were right where I left them. About all I gained from the trip was a little satisfaction that I had defeated the trail in as bad a condition as I have ever seen it. There was that and then there was my cabin surviving two earthquakes of more that 7 magnitude and one of 6 and still standing after 28 years. Not bad for a total novice building with a hammer in one hand and a carpentry book in the other. I do recall that of 12  pilings holding up the cabin, seven were on solid rock. That might have something to do with it.

So, satisfied with the structure and the five gallons of gas I left for next time, I headed down the hill, checked on a neighbor's cabin and headed back down the trail, faster and more confident, which made it wetter and muddier, another Alaska adventure under my belt.

And, wouldn't you know it, just as I emerged from the woods another earthquake hit, this one in the neighborhood of 4.7. Supposedly these smaller ones are beneficial because they ease pressure before it builds into a bigger one.

Oh, no! Swans!

Hip deep in the East Pole mud.

Photo gallery: Summer trail to the East Pole.

A random neighborhood exploration pays off

A couple of years ago for lack of something better to do one day, I fired up a snowmachine and took a run around the neighborhood. No one, including me, likes the sound of machines roaring close to houses so I headed toward the woods down the street as quickly as possible to get away and just to see where the road went, expecting a dead end. Instead of stopping me, the road extended on into the woods in the form of two ruts of little more than a trail and I followed it.

After a couple of hundred yards it intersected with another trail, this one much wider and obviously used more often. I turned north onto it just to see where it went and eventually it came out behind an elementary school and then joined the same street where the local trash transfer station is, which in turn led to the main road. After turning around I went the opposite direction on the trail until it crossed the Butte International Airstrip, joined a gravel road and led me out to the other main road that serves this subdivision. Across the road lay the huge recreation area and maze of trails that eventually lead to the river. I made a loop through that and ended up back home from the opposite direction to the one I followed when I started out.

Some time later, just because I could I hooked up a sled and hauled my trash to the transfer station with the snowmachine. Along the way I came across a pickup truck coming toward me using that trail, information to be filed away.

Fast forward, now to yesterday. I was happily cruising the internet at home and contemplating a trip into town for mail and groceries when I heard a loud bang outside somewhere. Then the power went out. That kind of made the decision for me and I figured I would make the trip while the repair was under way. That journey came to a halt quickly when I encountered a line of cars near the curve that gets you onto one of the two main roads into the subdivision. A fellow had hit a power line pole and a live wire laid in the road.

First of all, no sympathy for the driver. Apparently this guy had been seen racing along that road before at speeds up to 50 and 60 miles an hour in the 30 mph zone. A proof of his speed, the collision was violent enough to break the pole off entirely and it had fallen by the side of the road too. Someone said the driver wasn't hurt but was obviously drunk.

A worker at the scene said it could be three hours before the damage was repaired. Figuring someone would work out a way for traffic to get around it fairly quickly I waited patiently. We waited because the other entrance road also was closed for some construction around a bridge. After about half an hour, I was talking with a kid who had been driving the dump truck in front of me in the line and complaining a little about the wait when it hit me.  I told him, hey, I know a back way out of here.

I pulled out of line and went back to my own street, drove to the end and straight onto that trail and then turned onto the one that took me toward the transfer station. Already three others had figured this out and were moving along the trail ahead of me. In short time we emerged from the woods, drove onto the main road and I was on my way to town, smugly telling myself how great an explorer I was.

As it turned out the power was off for about five hours, a good portion of which I spent running my errands and bringing home the groceries instead of waiting in line for traffic to move, all in all a satisfying outcome to what could have been a frustrating waste of time.

The first ten great races – Iditarod

When I was fresh to Alaska, one of the first events I observed was the 1974 running of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, the second in what has became an annual festival in the state. All those dogs and their rough-looking Alaska drivers and sleds packed for the long trail and heading out for Nome a thousand miles distant, epitomized everything I had envisioned as a boy playing in the woods and dreaming of a day when I could venture north.  Over the next few years I stayed close to the race, at times envisioning ways I could get free to enter it myself, something that never quite materialized.  The best I could come up with was flying along with it a couple of those first ten races and writing the first book about the race.

Over time my own adventures led me elsewhere, but my interest in the race remained and come March the urge would rise again. I eventually built a cabin in Bush and usually venture there during Iditarod time and follow the race on a local public radio station. I will never forget the first year I did that.  I had made it to the cabin, got inside and started a fire, brought in my supplies and then turned on the radio and began putting things away, straightening up and sweeping the floor, all the little chores you do when you come back to a cabin after a while. I had heard this little radio station had started up during my most recent absence, so I twirled along the dial until I found it. At that moment there was a radio-reader program on, and I pretty much tuned it out as I went about my work.

Once in a while, I would catch a phrase the reader said and it would sound familiar but I never stopped to focus enough to try to figure out what he was reading. That happened several times over the next hour until I sat down for a rest and listened more carefully. That was when it hit me: He was reading MY book, my Iditarod book, during the running of the race.  Wow. There are a lot of joys in writing a book and seeing it published. That one had to be close to the top of the list.

Now, many years later I have been given the opportunity to contribute to a book about the first ten years of the race. which has been running 40 some years now. What we are writing now is almost ancient history.

This new book about the Iditarod has been mentioned in posts over the past couple of years.  Well, it's getting closer. The final edit has been sent to the printers and it's not too long until the book will be available for sale.

More than 100 contributors wrote a variety of articles for it, mushers, pilots, veterinarians, family members. volunteers and even a few sundry writers such as myself. These are complemented by historic photos from the trail and original art works. The end product documents in a very down-home way, the first 10 years of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, called by many who have not sailed single-handed around the world, the last great race on earth.

The Old Iditarod Gang, a collection of people who had something to do with the race during those first years joined together over the last four years gathering materials and preparing the tome for publication. The group has now put up a web page where interested folks can learn a lot about the book and the people who made it, and how you can purchase a copy :) . Look for the link at the end of this posting.

Take a look at some preview pages

There's a link to some preview pages attached to the illustration to the left. Those selections include part of one of my contributions. Flipping through those pages will give a reader an idea of what the more than 400 pages in the entire publication will be like.

There is quite a variety of articles including personal accounts by racers themselves, adventures and profiles told by others, recollections of people and places woven into the very fabric of the trail.

When that first race took off in 1973, many of the folks didn't really know what they were getting into. One musher, Dick Mackey, told of wives and sweethearts in tears kissing their mushers goodbye not knowing for sure if they would ever see them again.

It was a huge logistical undertaking by a whole bunch of people who had never tried anything that huge before. In those first years mushers often found there was no trail, supplies had not reached some checkpoints when they arrived with hungry dogs. And that difficulty seldom brings mention of the frantic volunteers trying desperately to get supplies to those drivers and teams. There are tales of competitors stopping to hunt for food along the trail, of temperatures with wind chills going lower than minus 100. Many looked at it more as a long camping trip than a race. But year after year the support logistics matured and evolved, better equipment also came available, lessons learned in dog care and nutrition all grew to make the race more and more competitive.

And, you will hear survivors of those first years today talk with pride about how tough it was in the old days, but no one ever complains about the improvements, either.

It is a different race today. Tougher? Maybe, maybe not. When you figure the race usually took more than two weeks in those early years, now it's done in eight days. Racers may be better equipped, but they are going faster on less sleep too. Perhaps it's just a different kind of tough.

It's like the time my son complained about how hard sports practice was.  He thought by the time he was a senior it should be easier because he was better at it and knew more. I used the example of a sprinter.  His big goal is a 10-second hundred-yard dash. After he does it, do things get easier? No, they get harder, because now he wants to run a 9:98 and that is going to be even more difficult.

Safe to say, anybody who competes and finishes that race has accomplished something major in respect to the outside world and can take pride in it but that racer also can still tell next year's rookie how tough he had it last year.

Along with the heritage of Alaska, this book celebrates the accomplishment, for individuals and as a tremendous amount of teamwork in the group effort it takes to put on a race the magnitude of the Iditarod. Some of those original team members are responsible for producing this book

Iditarod: The First Ten Years website

A most fortunate encounter
200,000 miles on a dog sled
What do Truman Capote and the Iditarod have in common?
Not just another Iditarod book

Where in the world is Alaska?

For years Alaskans looking at maps of the United States have had to live with the impression that the state is an island in the Pacific Ocean somewhere west of California. It's understandable to a certain extent given that it's probably difficult for cartographers to put The Lower 49 and  Alaska in the same frame, given their distance apart and the relative size of each land mass.

Still, over the years now and then Alaskans have chafed at the idea of being relegated to a smaller size and out of  place on the Earth's surface. Pollsters and graduate students at times have also discovered that a fairly sizable portion of the population thinks that's the true positioning and when asked where Alaska is, respondents often place it west of California in the Pacific.

The other part of misplacing Alaska is that it is seldom drawn on the same scale as the rest of the country. At one-fifth the size of the contiguous 48 states with a longer shoreline, Alaska would dominate any map of the U.S.

As a result mapmakers continually make it smaller and not even attached to the continent.

Well, recently one cartographer fixed that. The first map shows Alaska attached where it should be – that's Canada in gray to the right – and puts the rest of the states and Hawaii out in the ocean south of us.

Although it's doubtful this particular map design will catch on, Alaskans can smirk a little at this reversal of positions and size emphasis.

Fine with us if they want to put the rest of the United States out on an island somewhere and leave Alaska firmly attached to the North American continent as it should be.

Minimum wage isn't a maximum wage

From +LowPay NotOk

What's really amazing here is I pay less than that for milk in 

Alaska.

As fast food workers across the country are getting their fair share of abuse at demonstrations today, there is a form of what seems to be  pervasive ignorance that needs to be addressed about what the minimum wage actually is.

It was best illustrated in a news story the other day about a shopping mall that straddles a boundary between two cities in California. The city on one side of the line has set the minimum wage at about $8 per hour. The city on the other side of the line has a minimum wage of a little more than $10.

The store owner on one side of the line, the only one interviewed in the story, said he kept losing workers because they could make more at stores across the mall in the other city with the higher minimum wage and he wondered how he would ever keep employees.

Here's a clue for that store owner and for every other sanctimonious business owner who somehow tries to say workers would be paid more if only the minimum wage were raised:  YOU DON'T HAVE TO PAY THE MINIMUM WAGE!

The minimum wage is just that, the minimum you are allowed by law to pay an employee. It doesn't mean that's all you can pay. If the store owner in that mall wants to keep his employees, he can raise their wage to match the other side of the mall. If he wants the old ones back, pay a little more than those on the other side are paying.

There is no MAXIMUM WAGE limit, just look at the one-percenters.

It's amazing that capitalists want a free market, but then hide behind a regulation to control one facet of that market, instead of paying wages that match the competitive environment.

If you want to keep your employees pay what the market demands, if not, don't whine about losing employees just because the minimum wage is higher on the other side of the fence.

(Kind of a sad sidelight to this is the reporter didn't even challenge that store owner about giving his employees a raise to match the other stores.)

It's the customers, stupid

Harvest

First potatoes.  All these came from that row of disturbed dirt. Have about twice this many still to go.

It snowed in Prudhoe Bay this week and also just north of Fairbanks. Overnight frosts gradually creep farther south, most recently not too far from the East Pole. Still no termination dust even on the highest peaks but still it's time to give the garden a good look with an eye toward saving what can be harmed. So, today the harvest begins. Lots of potatoes and lettuce.  Peas and beans kind of a failure and a grand total of two tomatoes.  I started those tomatoes too late and now while I have several strong plants, they are only just blossoming. All those last things a product of mistakes I made last spring and now know how to correct that next year,

The entire tomato crop.

The same bunch of potatoes.

Two lillies on another plant.

A single lillie on one plant.

Pansies in the pot.

Petunias in a pot.