All Tied Up

Poor Kaija. We went on picnic and there were other people around so I had to tie her to the boat. She had to make her own fun.

Marsh Marigold

Eskimo Masks

My friend Kathy makes Eskimo masks.




Making them is quite the involved process. First she takes a whole, raw caribou skin and soaks it in water for several days.




This loosens the hair....




and makes it easy to pull it off.




After the hair is off you have a large piece of slimy wet caribou skin that is ready to work with.




The skin is then cut down and stretched out over a face mold.




The skin is sewn to the mold to keep it place while it dries. After the face is dry it is ready to be decorated. Kathy uses many different things to embellish her masks.




This mask has a musk ox hairdo. The ruff is made in the sunshine style with several layers of wolf fur.




Each mask is unique.




These masks and other artwork Kathy makes are for sale so feel free to email me for more information.

Just Wondering....

Do good moms let their kids run bandsaws???




Shucks. I didn't think so.

The Water We Drink

The water we drink comes from Devil's Lake. I hear it got it's name because an old Inupiaq legend says that there is a big creature that lives in the water. I hope he's not there anymore...I wouldn't want to be drinking creature anuk. The building at the end of the bridge is the pump station.




No Dogs! Try telling that to Kaija. Heck if the Lake already has creature anuk what difference is a few dogs gonna make.



The water is pumped out of the lake and through pipes on it's 4 mile (or so) trip to town. Here the pipes run along the Devil's Lake Road for a while and then down the hill towards Kotzebue.



Here is Uyaana playing under an elevated section of pipe.




Here the waterline crosses the lagoon.




The water is then stored and treated in these tanks and then pumped throughout town.

Wordless (almost) Wednesday- Bluebells

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Ahna's Summer Camp

This weekend we took a ride to Ahna Lena's camp. Lena is Uyaana's "Ahna", the Kotzebue Coastal Inupiaq word for grandmother. That is the phoenetic spelling for the word. All the Inupiaq words you see here will be phoenetic. Even though Inupiaq was traditionally an oral language with no written words or symbols a written language has been developend for it. Not being fluent in written Inupiaq I make up phoenetic spellings which also makes it easier for people not familiar with eskimo to read them... but I digress.




As I was saying we went to visit Ahna at her summer camp. She was there working on oogruk, or bearded seal. June is traditionally the month that we hunt bearded seal. I say "we" because I have lived here so long and participate in so many traditional subsistence activities that it does not feel like "they", it feels like "we".





This is Ahna's innisuk where she hangs strips of Oogruk meat to dry. This camp is also fish camp where she hangs salmon and other fish




Here is a close up of the oogruk meat hanging. After it is mostly dry, yet still a bit soft on the inside she will cut it into smaller pieces and store it in seal oil that has been rendered from the blubber of the oogruk.




Of course when we got there she offered us some lunch. She had cooked up some goodies and we were starving.




The meat is boiled oogruk. If you made me pick a descriptor for how it tastes I would say the closest thing would be fishy beef. Sounds terrible but it is delicious. The fatty looking stuff in chunks is just that, chunks of boiled blubber. The gray thing that looked like rubber hoses are ingaloqs. These are everybody's favorite. We all fight over the last piece. It's boiled seal intestines. Yummy with yellow mustard.




Ingaloqs are Uyaana's favorite.




Kaija the Vanquisher of Rodents had a wonderful time vanquishing.




Here the object of her obsession is hanging from her mouth.




Uyaana decided that he needed to take a closer look. This was one of many.




This is the view from the hill behind summer camp overlooking Sisualik Lagoon and Kotzebue Sound.




12 miles across Kotzebue Sound from summer camp is Kotzebue. You can see the long range radar "golf ball" in the distance.

Mosquito Swarm

These are swarming male mosquitoes. They hover above the tundra like a big black cloud. The good news is they don't bite.




The bad news is that they go up your nose and down your throat and in your eyes. Yuck.

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Forget-Me-Nots

Alaska's state flower.


(now that I think about it I'm not sure these white ones are forget-me-nots but I am pretty sure those pink ones are))

Arctic Tern

According to Wikipedia (which we all know is the source of all truth), the Arctic Tern sees two summers per year and more daylight than any other creature on the planet. They migrate from their summer breeding grounds in the arctic to winter in the Antarctic summer. They mate for life and usually return to the same colony each year.




They have quite the nasty little disposition, especially when a certain nosey bear dog starts poking her pointy snout where it doesn't belong. Of course instead of dive bombing said bear dog they attack said bear dog's OWNER.

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My Little Archer

Happiness is a New Outhouse

It is, really.



BEHOLD!!! My new unukvik! Ain't she beautiful. Notice the lovely stairs and screened openings. I have been pleading for a new outhouse out at camp for years. My honey finally gave in.




Here is my little archer showing off the plush interior.





Here is the old crapper. How would you like to sit on that on a dark fall night??? Yeah, that's how I felt about it too.




I feel like I have really moved up in the world.


***FYI- Because a few people have asked hehehe,....yes that is a real toilet seat on there, and no it's not going to stay. You can bet your bottom (har har har) dollar that I won't be putting my butt on a regular toilet seat when it is cold out. We will be changing it to the ubiquitous blue foam.**

VORTAC

I have had several requests for pictures of things around town. Everyday things. I figure that will keep me busy for a while. Here is an everyday thing....the Kotzebue VORTAC. Ain't she a beauty?




VORTAC stands for Very High Frequency(VHF)Omni-Directional Radio Range Tactical Air Navigation. I think that this one in Kotzebue is a VOR/TACAN as opposed to a regular VOR/DME.....I'm no pilot, but I did once stay at a Holiday Inn Express.





I guess the VOR/TACAN is fancier than boring old VOR/DME and the TACAN part of it is a military thingie that is available for limited civilian use. We used to have an Air Force Base and "White Alice" (long range radar) site here in Kotzebue (I'll save that for another everyday thing post).


To put it in simple terms a VORTAC it is a beacon marking an airway for both civilian and military use. This beacon emits a specific radio signal, exclusive to that beacon, that tells the pilot where he is located and if he is on course....or something like that.

Picture Problems

I am trying not to panic.

The pictures for this blog are hosted by photobucket.com. Apparently they have had some sort of hack or meltdown and now I cannot access their website or the pictures and of course they are not working on the blog either. I am hoping that this is something that they will be able to fix. The thought of having over a a years worth of blog posts effectively trashed gives me a stomach ache.

**UPDATE**
Photobucket has apparently fixed their problem and people can see the photos on the blog now. I can see them to, but only at work. On my computer at home all the photobucket hosted pics still have little red x's. I have tried everything I can think of....
- deleted temporary internet files
- Deleted history
- deleted cookies
- ran Spybot just for the heck of it
- did all then and then rebooted

Still no photobucket pics can be viewed on my computer at home, nor can I access photobucket.com from my home computer. I have never claimed to be computer smart so does anyone out there have any suggestions???

Wordless (almost) Wednesday- Honeybee

Cannon Beach , Oregon

I hope to resume the usual Alaska pics soon. The weather, however, is not cooperating. It has been pretty rainy here since we got back. I walked out of my office today into cold drizzle to run some errands and choked back some complaints about the weather...hard to forget that 100 degrees in NH. I'll take 40 degrees and rain over nasty humid New England weather anyday.

So anyway, here are a few pics that I took while we were at Cannon Beach, Oregon.

Splash

Gotta get those cute pics posing in the water at the beach.




Whammo!




*cough* *sputter* *hack*


Lake Winnipesaukee, Gilford, New Hampshire

Uyaana and the Lorikeets

While we were in Portland, we visited the Oregon Zoo. There is a really neat exhibit there called Lorikeet Landing which is a walk-through, open-air aviary.




Lorikeets are a small to medium-sized parrot located throughout south-eastern Asia, Polynesia, Papua New Guinea and Australia. They feed on nectar and soft fruits.




Visitors to the exhibit are able to purchase small paper cups of nectar and the birds will fly down and drink the nectar out of the cups.




They are very noisy and curious and they are not afraid of people. The Lorries will often land on you to drink out of your cup.




Uyaana had a great time feeding the birds.




If you would like to see pictures of Lorikeets in the wild along with other types of parrots, be sure to visit Alaska Dave Down Under

Home Again

We made it back to Kotzebue this morning. It's great to be back in the land of the long sleeves. I will try to get back in the groove of blogging tomorrow with some pics from our trip.

Portland

We are in Portland Oregon now visiting a friend. Today we drove to Cannon Beach. It was beautiful. The weather was kind to us. I just thought I would check in to say we were still alive.

Chocorua Lake

Stayin' Alive......barely

It's hot. Good grief it's hot. Nasty, sticky, hot. It was 91 degrees in North Conway today and it's not looking any better for tomorrow. I think I might croak. Seems all I have been doing is complaining. First I'm sick, then I'm hot, then I'm sick of being hot....sheesh. And not one posted picture. First it was raining too much to take pictures and now it is too hot to exert the effort to lift up my camera.....I joke. I have taken some pictures and I promise to post a few tomorrow....at least I promise to try.

All complaining and joking aside it has been nice to visit my family. It's great to see them all again.....but next year I think they are all going to have to come seee me insead because this heat wave crap is for the birds. A few more days in New Hampshire then I leave for Oregon on Wednesday. I'll be there for a couple days and then back to Kotzebue on Saturday.

Best Laid Plans

Well even the best laid plans get derailed. Last night I came down with what surely must be Malaria or Amoebic Dysentery. I spent the whole night and all day today in close contact with the toilet. For most of the day it was threatening to come out of both ends.

We had to cancel our trip to Canobie Lake Park. We had the day all planned out. Uyaana was sad. The good news is we will have time to go next week. The bad news is that it is supposed to be 90 degrees next week. I'll probably die of heat stroke.

Uyaana spent the afternoon playing Wii with his teenage cousins. It's all he could talk about. I'm sure he will be begging for his own Wii soon. Last Christmas he asked Santa for a Wii. I told him that Santa was all out. He said "But mom.....Santa MAKES Wii's." I said "No he doesn't....he buys them from Japan".

Wordless Wednesday- Fire in the Sky

Traveling Sucks

Well from my door in Kotzebue to my Aunts door in Conway, NH it took 24 hours. 24 very loooooong hours. I took no pics of the trip here because I don't need to be reminded of spending hours on three cramped jets, hours in airports, and driving through the Ted Williams and the rest of that maze in Boston hoping that I hit 93 North on the first try. Ugh. Traveling sucks. Once you get there it's ok, but everything else about it sucks.

So this is my first full day in NH with a decent amount of sleep under my belt. Went to bed last night at 9pm EST and I slept for 14, COUNT EM, 14 hours! Probably because in the 48 hours before that I only had 6 hours of sleep. Conway is outlet heaven I wanted to go shopping. I have only one t-shirt. Living in Kotzebue I don't have much of a need for short sleeved shirts, everything I own is long sleeved. I also needed to get Uyaana some shorts. He doesn't own any. I also scheduled haircuts for me and Uyaana. We drove to North Conway and picked up some lunch. Then we went and bought him a new pair of sneakers and me a cool new pair of sandals at Bootlegger's. Then Uyaana says "Mom I'm gonna muhgaq!" (the eskimo word for vomit) And sure enough, ONE NANAO SECOND after he says that he erupts like a human fountain and loses his Happy Meal all over the front of himself and the back seat of the rental car. Thank got it didn't have cloth seats. Thank goodness I had an extra change of clothes for him in the car.

So after he throw up he seems to feel better. I thought that we still might be able to get haircuts. I starting getting mine cut first. Part way through Uyaana tells me he has to throw up again. He runs to the bathroom. He stayed there until my haircut was done. We don't spend much time in cars back in Kotzebue. Our family vehicle is a 4 wheeler (atv) in the summer and a snowmachine in the winter in the winter, so he has a tendency to get car sick. So now we are washing his pukey clothes and waiting for his Dramamine to kick in and then we are driving to my dad's house in Gilford. Hopefully it will be a puke free ride.

So no pics but I figured I would check in write a few words so the blog wouldn't look like it had been abandoned.

Zoom Zoom

Well we are off on our vacation to Visit family in NH. We leave this morning at around 8:30am Alaska time and will Arrive in Boston at around 7am EST. It's a long trip.