Three days until I leave for Asia. It’s about now that I wish I were more organized and had done my preparations sooner than three days prior to departure….
Deet anyone?
Today is Fran’s birthday
Today is Fran Tate’s 84th birthday. Send good healing thoughts her way.
It’s mine! All mine!
I have the privilege of feeding Bird TLC’s education bird, Denali – The Golden Eagle, while he presenter is in Mongolia learning even more about golden eagles. He is holding his quail dinner and, I would guess from the look on his face, thinking, “Back off, puny human. This is MY quail.”
The final day of the trilogy
And it was 43 years ago today that I arrived in Barrow. My first experience was asking for a bathroom in the old hut that counted as the airline building. Ose Matsutani, who was there to greet me with other staff from the hospital, looked a bit taken aback and then said, “She might as well experience it now as later.” And that was my introduction to a honeybucket system of sanitation. Why I didn’t run back to NYC at that point will always be a mystery to me. Glad I didn’t. I had some of the greatest adventures of
And 43 years ago today…
I was being led around the old ANMC to introduce me to the various departments. I didn’t have a clue about Indian Health Service or what it did or why. I didn’t exactly do a lot of research before taking the job in Barrow. You’d think this would have caused me to be more cautious in the future but I’ve pretty much spent my life leaping first and checking it out second. Hey… it’s a method!
Forty-three years ago today…
There are times in each year when we tend to stop and take inventory of our lives. For many people, this inventory happens on New Year’s Eve. But for me it happens on Oct. 1. That’s the day, 43 years ago today, that I first set foot in Alaska.
I don’t know what expectations I had when I arrived. I’m guessing I was too busy sobbing from homesickness to really articulate any, even to myself. Being a New Jersey-New York-Pennsylvania hybrid, I would assume I arrived with a rather jaded attitude towards this whole Last Frontier shtick being tossed at
Have you ever noticed?
Have you ever noticed how we seem to manage to work ourselves up into a complete fit of hysteria by the end of each summer and then Labor Day hits and it’s like someone stuck a pin in a balloon. Does anyone really care to cover Donald Trump anymore? Or has that bubble burst and we are now settling back into dull reality?
It’s gray and rainy and windy
My kind of autumn weather. There’s even some hope for snow before I leave for Cambodia. OMG! My heart is going pitter-pat with joy.
Blood Bank of Alaska stories
This is for all my Alaska friends and especially my Bush Alaska friends. I am trying to help the Blood Bank of Alaska collect stories from around Alaska of people whose lives have been helped/saved because of the Blood Bank. I know so many of us from the Bush know stories of emergencies where friends and loved ones had to be medivaced out and the blood from the Blood Bank was what made the difference for them. Please share any of these stories you may have. If you don’t want to put them on Facebook, you can send them to
Pope Frank
While he’s not going to get me back into church in the near or distant future, I do find that I don’t dislike Catholicism so much when he expresses what it means. Too bad all those old men at the Vatican can’t get over their fear of women enough to admit them to the clergy. Then we’d really have something to talk about!