Hello Friends,

Three activities to talk about this week.

Friday 3/28/14 morning we volunteered at a Alaska Surveyors and Mapmakers Convention.  We handed out name tags and answered questions.  The interesting thing is that some people were asking about a "3-D Printer Workshop" where they demonstrated making 3-D maps.  The convention coordinator was talking with us about that and thought it sounded interesting.  I also said that it sounded very interesting.  She said I should go to it after we finished volunteering.  I said that I was not registered for the convention and she said, "Well, just tell them that Brooke said it was okay for me to sit in on the presentation."  So that is what I did.  The printer works much like an ink-jet printer except that it puts down a layer of plastic instead of ink.  As it puts many layers of plastic the model or map is built.  Here is the printer, the case around the printer is about a one-yard cube.

The plastic case makes it hard to see the workings of the printer.  Here is a better picture of the print head and the beginnings of a skyscraper being built.

And this is a computer picture of the model.

This is a full size kayak built with a 3-D computer printer.  The different colored sections were printed out and then bolted together.

With better printers metal, wood composite, cloth, and other materials can be used.  Some houses have been built with printers.  Nike (shoe makers) can print shoes that are usable.  They can design and produce shoes with printers in about one-fourth the time if printers were not used.

Here are more models they displayed.

 And a map that does not show up very well in a picture, but it was 3-D.

That afternoon we went to another Native dance demonstration.  This was a small one in a bank lobby.  These were Pavva Inupiaq dancers.  They originate in the Barrow area.  "Pavva" means inland and "Inupiaq" means (people of the sea), so this group was along the coast part of the time and inland part of the time - depending partly on the time of the year.

Most of the time the women danced.  If men danced they were much more active and boisterous, in other words more masculine.

This group also demonstrated the dance style of a different tribe where the men would kneel when dancing.

This is just painted on the chin of the woman dancer.  Traditionally these markings would have been sewed into the chin when a girl was physically able to bear children.  The stitches were put in to demonstrate that the girl was able to bear pain, as in child birth.  So she was not only physically able to bear children but also mature emotionally and mentally to bear the pain.  Then when she was married there were more stitches to both the left and right of the center ones.  That served the purpose of our wedding ring announcing that she was married.

Last night (3/31/14) we were invited to some friends from church, Mark and Denise Wartes.  They served a wonderful meal.  The main meal was caribou roast, it was very good.  They also served muktuk, whale blubber and skin.  The blubber is white, or light pinkish, and the skin dark gray.  To the back right is some that has been boiled and to the left some that is raw.  I actually thought the raw tasted better, but its skin was much tougher.  I was glad they had it for us to try.  It provides a lot of energy to those who eat it.  The rest of the meal was typical "white person" and also very good.

Mark grew up the son of a missionary to the Inupiaq people, in Barrow Alaska.  His formative years were spent with the Inupiaq and he adopted their ways.  He was among the dancers we had seen before.  He is still considered an elder among the people of that tribe.  I would like to have him write the blog some week so I don't want to tell too much of his story.  He can tell it much better.  They have a large house with many Native, mostly Inupiaq, artifacts and displays.  Here are a few.

This is a famous sight in Barrow.  Mark's sister drew it from a photo, she added the bears.

These are Native dolls.  They are about 18 inches tall.  Denise is holding them for me to take the pictures.  They have many more.

Beaded gloves, these are Athabascan, the Natives from around Fairbanks.

 Pelts of black bear, fox, white fox, wolverine, and I am not sure of the others.

 Wolf and fox.

Native masks

Kayak made of walrus tusk (I  think).  It is about 20 inches long.

 This is a bench topper, the picture does not show it right, it is on top of the bench.

It was another interesting week.  They say that there are fewer activities during April and May.  Then it gets busy again for summer.  We shall see.

Thanks for your interest.  If you ever have questions I would be glad to answer them, or at least try to answer them.  You can e-mail me directly with questions if you don't want everyone to see your questions, or you can respond to the blog.

God's rich blessings to all of you.

Larry and Elva