It's hot in the Arctic, yeah too hot

Daily bag limit for Kodiak bears: six salmon, one salmon fisherman!
Photo by Fred O'Hearn on The Alaska Life













Playlist: On the anniversary of "Layla," Eric Clapton plays with the greats.

This is more than an hour long but let it play in the background while you do other stuff. Two of the greatest jamming.

In my partying days my beverage of choice was what I called "cheap writer's wine." I learned one night that most people didn't catch what I was talking about. Then one day it came up and I had to explain it and a friend who'd heard me say it for years said, "oh that's what you mean."  Yup, the wine of Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg and Kerouac. The nectar of creativity.
Now comes validation. This came up on the facebook page of Hippies from the '60s and '70s:

Right after finishing their set at New York's Forest Hills Tennis Stadium and on the same day they made their first appearance on the cover of LIFE magazine, the Beatles returned to their suite at the Hotel Delmonico to meet journalist Al Aronowitz who introduced them to his friend Bob Dylan. John Lennon asked the folk singer what he'd like to drink, and Dylan replied, "cheap wine." 
Isn't validation wonderful?

FROM NASA EARTH:Bubbles, bubbles, and more bubbles, in a steady stream. Many lakes in the boreal regions of Alaska are emitting methane, the product of decomposing organic matter left over from the Ice Age. Thawing permafrost has caused areas of land to slump and fill up with water, creating these bodies of water called thermokarst lakes. The water then exacerbates the thawing, expanding the size of the lake and producing even more methane. In the early cold season, ice covers the lakes and traps methane in large pockets just beneath the surface. 

University of Alaska Fairbanks scientists working as part of NASA’s #EarthExpedition Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) find and measure the methane gas in these pockets seep-by-seep and lake-by-lake. ABoVE combines precise methane measurements from individual lakes with satellite data that can monitor lakes like these across the Arctic, to accurately model how much methane sub-lake seeps are adding to the atmosphere. 

For more on the bubbling lakes: https://blogs.nasa.gov/…/mapping-methane-in-a-bubbling-arc…/

Valdez airport reported 79 degrees. Going on again the next day, 69 at the house here. More records the next day, 77 in Anchorage and it hit 80 here but that was in the sun.

Best entertainment news of the day: Another season of "Shameless" is coming to Netflix in September.

ICYMI: Every summer the Arctic ice cap melts down to what scientists call its "minimum" before colder weather begins to cause ice cover to increase. The first six months of 2016 have been the warmest first half of any year in our recorded history of surface temperature (which go back to 1880). Data show that the Arctic temperature increases are much bigger, relatively, than the rest of the globe. http://go.nasa.gov/2brmSnK

Hypocrites: Today sports folks interview John Carlos and Tommy Smith about their protest at the Mexico City Olympics and as almost heroic at the same time they are horrified about Colin Kaepernick. They were just as outraged at those two raising their fists at the Olympics, saying many of the same things. If you don't like my country get out. Freedom of speech is all right as long as you agree with me.