Friends,

Last Wednesday and Thursday were our coldest days so far.  Officially it was more than 30 below.  Here at the apartment it was 24 below.  We still went for our daily walk

Since the wind storm a couple weeks ago we have been back to calm.  The snow lands on the trees and frost builds on the snow on the branches, so the trees are VERY PRETTY!

Notice how thick the frost and snow is.

Tall or short, they are all covered with snow and frost.

This is in the dark, lit with street light.

I think this is the prettiest one.  Sorry it is sideways.  I have it various other places, and here is the only place it refuses to stand up.  Look at it when you are lying down for a nap.

The days are getting shorter - sunrise today was officially 10:04 and sunset was 3:11 giving us 5 hours 7 minutes of sun time.  I knew before coming to Fairbanks that the days would be short, but I hadn't though how low the sun would be.  The highest the sun gets above the horizon is about 4 degrees.  For comparison, now in Des Moines it is 27 degrees.  These can be seen on this protractor.  Bet you thought you were all done using protractors, didn't you!  If you would stand with your arm pointing straight south and level, then raise your arm to match 4 degrees, that is how high the sun is here at noon, or 27 degrees for Des Moines.

Here are some pictures of the river a few days ago.  Then it was nearly frozen over.  Now it is completely frozen except at a few places near bridges, etc.

The unfrozen strip is about a yard wide.  There are now snow machine (snow mobiles) tracks on the ice and at least a couple people have walked across on the ice.  We will wait a while before we try that.

We had wondered about the pigeons.  With everything covered with snow we didn't see how they could survive.  We found out.  They eat choke cherries.  Choke cherries are an invasive species and some people think they should not be here.  I suppose the pigeons disagree.  A couple days ago I put out some grain for the pigeons to eat but they have not found it yet.

If you ever have questions please ask.  If you would rather that not everyone who sees the blog would see your questions you can just send an e-mail with your question instead of responding to the blog.  Our e-mail address is elvalarryevers@gmail.com

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Larry & Elva

Friends of Alaska Travelers   ---

I usually start with something about the weather.  Well, this past week we had a weather event like most people here cannot remember ever happening.  We had wind, rain, ice, and snow all from the same storm.  Last Wednesday the temperature was around 18 degrees most of the day.  Around supper time it was 28, and by the time we went to bed it was in the upper thirties.  And there was wind with it.  There were sustained winds around 40 mph with gusts near 60.  The less wind there normally is, the more susceptible everything is to wind.  Many trees went down.  They took many power lines with them.  The storm left over 10,000 customers without power.  (Those were not all in the Fairbanks area.)  Six hundred still are without electricity nearly a week later.  We were without electricity for only about 7 hours.  There has been a run on generators.  As the daily paper said, some want generators to keep their house from freezing and others want them to keep their freezers from thawing!

School was even canceled Wed, Thu, and Friday last week.  That is something else that long-timers say never happens.  So last week Elva and I each had one day of volunteering at school instead of two.

The rain froze on sidewalks and roads.  So it is quite slick.  Salt does no good when it is real cold.  At 20 degrees salt starts to loose its effectiveness.  Also, as ice or packed snow gets colder it becomes less slick so they don't put salt on the roads.  They put pea gravel on the intersections.

Thursday we went to a curling tournament.  It is called curling because they can curl or curve the stone around other stones.  This allows them to have the stone knock other stones away or stop near the center of the house.  (I would call it the bulls eye, but they call it the house.)  There were some very nice people near where we were sitting and they were happy to explain what was happening.  Curling is roughly like shuffleboard.

Play starts with one player signaling where the stone should go.  Then the

one at the other end who is to push the stone aims for that spot.

 The "pusher" must release the stone before crossing the line.  But they slide on past the line after releasing it.  They usually put a spin to get it to curl to the correct spot.

 Two players walk along with the stone.  What they are doing is rubbing the ice so that the surface melts.  That lowers the friction and the stone goes further.  Or, if they only rub the ice ahead of one side of the stone it will curl more or less, depending on how much curve they need.

If the stone is going where they want it to go they just walk with it down toward the other end.

Where the stones stop at the end of an inning (or end) determines the score.  There are no different points for being in circles closer to the center.  Only one team scores in any end.  All stones of the team with stones nearer the center get one point for each.  Here the blue team is ahead by two stones.  

Scoring is simple enough but how they show it on the scoreboard is confusing.  The black numbers in the middle row are the scores.  The red numbers for each of the yellow and blue teams show the end in which that team reached that score.  If the blue team scored one point in the next end they would have a 5 under the 3, because they reached a total of 3 points in the 5th end.

We enjoyed watching curling.  It is probably another thing that we are glad to have done but have no burning desire to see it again.  Though if it is on TV sometime we will understand much better what is happening.

We have been asked how the short days feel to us.  It is somewhat strange.  For me, the mornings don't make any difference.  It is just dark outside and we have light inside.  The afternoons seem strange.  We usually walk for about an hour during the afternoon.  But if we finish our walk at 3:30, that is when the sun sets.  It seems that supper should be about ready.  But it is still 2 or 3 hours away.  Then the time after supper seem slow.  As I am writing this it is about 8:00 pm and the sun has already been down for over four hours.  Elva says it seems strange with the late sunup and early sunset.  However, the city is well lit.  She tries to not think about the long nights.  We have put in some "daylight" light bulbs.  Elva is glad that in about one more month the daylight will start to get longer.  To resist sleeping too long in the mornings we keep a rigid time schedule.  We keep regular bed time and regular getting up time.

We have also heard comments about depression during the winter.  We have heard that the suicide rate is high in Alaska.  It is interesting, however, the highest rates are not December and January when it is dark and cold.  The highest suicide rates are in May and June.  The report in the paper said they did not know why it is that way.

The river has frozen over at some places.  We have seen cross country skiers going by.  At 8:35 pm our thermometer says -11.4.  Officially, according to the Weather Channel, it is -22.  That would be at the airport about six miles away.

God's blessings to all.

Elva and Larry

Hello Friends, I hope this finds each of you well and enjoying life.

The temperatures here continue to be above normal, but not by very much.  And they vary a lot.  One evening we drove out to see the northern lights.  It was 4 ̊ here at the apartment.  Our apartment is more or less in the east central part of town.  By the time we were in the northwest part of town it was -4 ̊.  Going north into the hills it was 9 ̊. So it is a little hard to tell just what the temperature might be.  Sometimes they give the temperature for Fairbanks on the radio and we think, "Oh really?  It is not that here at the apartment!"

It seems to me that the Alaska mind set is, "If you want it done, do it yourself.  Don't expect the government to do it for you."  We had about 6 inches of snow Sunday.  Our way of thinking said, "It snowed, the town needs to get out and clear the roads and sidewalks."  They don't worry about snow on roads.  They cleared some of the main streets, but not in a hurry.  Our street has not been done by the city.  But a couple businesses on our street had a private snow pusher come in and clear the snow from their business and up and down the street a ways from their business.  No one has cleared the snow from in front of our apartment.  It is now well packed down.  They say that is what they want, to just have the snow packed down.  Then in the spring when the snow should be done they come along with a front-end loader and take away the snow once.  This makes less expenses for the city.  It also makes more expenses for the businesses.  One lady at church said her street usually gets plowed about twice each winter.

Another sign of the Alaska mind set is boroughs.  A borough is somewhat like a county.  The difference here is that not all land is in a borough.  Much of Alaska is just under state government with nothing local.  We actually live in Fairbanks North Star Borough.  There is a city mayor and a borough mayor.  Our apartment manager has a sister who owns a farm in a very small town about 50 miles from here.  It is in no borough.  So there is no property tax, no local tax of any kind.  With no local government there is no local tax.  She heard that there was going to be a meeting about forming a borough in and around that town.  There was to be a meeting about organizing a borough there.  So our manager planned to go to the meeting to voice her opposition to it.  "Why would anyone want more taxes?" she told us.  If there are roads there they are state highways or private roads.  The private roads would be maintained by the owners.  If you want it done, do it yourself.  Don't expect the government to do it for you.

For entertainment last week we went to watch the roller derby.  It was far less violent than what we used to see on TV occasionally.  There was blocking and running into each other, but no fists or chairs flying.  They could not extend their arms.  Each team had five (if we remember correctly) skaters on the floor at a time.  The rounds can be up to two minutes each and are called jams.  Only one skater for each team can score points during a given jam and she has a star on her helmet.  That person is called the "jammer."  The jammer for each team starts at the back of the pack and her teammates are ahead of both jammers.  These others try to block the opponents jammer from breaking out of the pack and also to help their own jammer break out ahead of the pack.  Only the first jammer out of the pack can score points for their team.  The longer they were ahead of the pack and the other jammer the  more points they scored for their team.  If the second jammer started catching the lead jammer the lead jammer could stop that jam.  How the points were actually awarded the lead jammer I did not figure out.  Each lead jammer usually scored from about 5 to 25 points.  It was very interesting.  But it is also one of those things that we are glad to do but most likely will not do again.  (It was the same for the only major baseball game I have attended.  It was interesting but I have no desire to do it again.)

Here the lead jammer has broken away from the pack and is scoring points for her team.

This shows the blue team jammer trying to go between the black and gold blockers.  I don't know if these two pictures were from the same jam or not.

Sunday we had a very pretty snow.  It was probably about 5 inches on top of a couple inches earlier in the week.  I write often about how little wind is here.  These pictures show the snow just piling on top of things.  The pictures were taken Sunday right after the snow.  There still has been no wind and the snow is still piled up  on everything.  I remember that would happen in Iowa sometimes, but in a day or two the wind would pick up and blow the snow off of things and make drifts.  I have seen absolutely no drifts here.

This is the metal roof on the building next to ours just out our dining room window.  The snow started to slide off.

Snow on our mail boxes.  Notice the snow on the post.

Snow on play equipment across road. 

Snow did not blow off post.

Pretty black spruce a block from our apartment.

Snow on one end of teeter totter.

Bushes with snow.

The river is getting closer to freezing over.

Two kinds of birds are quite abundant during the winter here, ravens and pigeons.  There are also chickadees  during the winter but we only see them if we walk in the woods.  Here are some pigeons.  It has not yet been real cold.  I don't know how the birds do when it is minus 50.

  

If you want to read more about Alaska here are a couple books we recommend.  I have finished the first one and Elva is about 3/4 done with it.  It is about a Mennonite doctor and family who among other places, moved to the bush of Alaska. We highly recommend it.  The second I have just started, but so far I would recommend it.  The main character of this book married into a family that the (now former) mayor (that Elva knows from choir) went to high school with.  He says the book is embellished over fact.  How much that happened I have no idea.  In the little bit I have read it is easy to see places where it could have been embellished.  But it is very interesting.

From Kansas Wheat Fields to Alaska Tundra, by Naomi Gaede-Penner

Tisha, as told to Robert Specht

God's blessings to all of you.

Larry and Elva

Friends   ---

Greetings from the north land.  It is even feeling a little more like the north land this evening.  We received a couple inches of snow today.  There was very little wind with it and so it was a very pretty snow.  Elva and I even went walking during the snow.  They say the snow is here to stay until the end of April or so.  This will be the longest I have seen continual snow cover.  The previous longest was the year Marcia was born.  That year it snowed Thanksgiving weekend and there was still snow on the ground when she was born on Easter, March 29.  After that it was soon gone.  That was about four months.  This will probably be about six months.  The temperatures are supposed to get down to about normal.  It has been about 10 degrees above normal for the past couple weeks.  Tonight it is to be about 2 degrees, tomorrow night about 2 below.

Last week we went to the Fairbanks Community Museum.  These two pictures show three dog team sleds.  The top picture shows the brake and the anchor.  I had not thought about a sled needing a brake, but if one is going down hill the sled could go too fast for the dogs or for safety.  The brake is right under the #2.  The anchor is toward the rear of the sled.  On the runners are black strips where the musher would stand.  The strips appeared to be bicycle tires.  The anchor is needed to keep the sled from being blown away in a strong wind during the night.


The one picture below shows two sleds.  The bottom one is the oldest, about 100 years old.  The shell is leather and canvas, the guide said they would just use whatever was available.

I thought this was a very interesting comment from a dog training manual.

Susan Butcher is very famous around here.

This is a model of a prospectors tent from about 100 years ago.

We also took a picture of a pipe carrying water up into the hills for the prospectors to use.  "Placer gold" can be obtained most easily by using water to wash away the rocks and leave gold bits behind on the bottom of a pan (if panning for gold) or the bottom of a sluice box having dropped bottom portions to catch the gold.  Gold is 19 times heavier than water so it easily goes to the bottom and the gravel can be washed away.

No, we did not find this gold nugget, this picture is from the web in an article about placer gold.  Nearly all gold nuggets are much smaller than this.

We finally saw the northern lights Saturday night.  But it was not a very good display.  We tried to take pictures but the lights were not bright enough.  We will keep trying.  We missed a good display a week or so earlier.  Many nights have been too cloudy.

Saturday night we went to a drama at UAF titled "Nickel and Dimed."  It is about the problems encountered by the working poor.  The drama is based on a book by Barbara Ehrenreich.  She is a writer who took on the project to live as a working poor to see the problems they face.  She tried to live for a month at a time at various minimum wage jobs.  The amount of money the 400 richest Americans make every year is equal to the combined yearly income of the lowest 50% of all American workers.

Last weekend a woman at a bar saw her boyfriend with another woman.  She went out to his pickup, knew where he hid a key, drove the pickup to the river about a block from our apartment and drove it into the river.  She was found about five blocks away and admitted all she had done.  Her alcohol blood level was about three times the legal limit for driving.

Elva and I have jobs now.  She keeps the stairway clean and I keep the snow off the outside steps.  We get a little bit taken off our rent for doing this.

God's blessings to all, both now and forever.

Larry