The Loudlibrarian’s Blog

In my admittedly small family of four, I am the only one that ever exhibited any sense of wanderlust. Since leaving college, besides Sarasota, Bradenton and Orlando, FL, I have lived in Tifton, GA, Seattle, WA, Walla Walla, WA, and now Fairbanks, AK. Honestly, I don’t know what drives me. I think I’m always looking for that next challenge. Anyhoo, I’m not sure what drove me to AK, except that I had met about five people in a row from here, and I liked them all. They all had good senses of humor, and lord knows, I need to be around people like that!

Things are pretty mercilessly organized, studied and set into policy routine in Florida. You couldn’t get into any trouble at all, even if you tried, no matter what huge theme park, parade, art festival or celebration you attended. I don’t know how they manage thousands of people parking and moving through very small areas without incident; it just always seems pretty controlled.

So, my parents came up for the Solstice week, (Fairbanks’ version of tourist season) and we’ve been doing all the tourist things; Riverboat Discovery, Eldorado Gold Mine, Chena Hot Springs, and the Midnight Solstice AK Goldpanners Baseball Game. I had not been to Growden Park before, but I figured they didn’t have assigned seats. I didn’t anticipate having to bring any chairs, though, and because we didn’t relish sitting on hard benches for two hours while waiting for the game to begin, we came later and then squished into the fenced off area on the ground in the right outfield. I decided to go back to the house for camp chairs.

I anticipated having *some* difficulty getting back there, because I had read that the Midnight Sun Run was going by out on the main through street near the house I was renting part of, but, OH NO - the 10K was going RIGHT THROUGH MY NEIGHBORHOOD! Down my street! And I had just picked that absolute WRONG way to drive back to my house!

You ever think you’re doing something clever, based on the information you have already, and then, surreally, you realize how horribly wrong you’ve misjudged, and there’s no way to fix it now? Yeah. All of a sudden, I’m driving down my street, and it’s just WALL TO WALL full of kids, parents, bicycles, strollers, garden chairs, observers, tables with cups of water, you name it!

But…but…the street wasn’t even blocked off! Nobody stopped me! It’s not my fault! And now I’m stuck - I can’t back up, people are walking behind me, and toddlers are toddling 15 inches from my car! I get lots of amazed looks - that I would even try to drive on a street that is obviously this busy; didn’t I *know* that the Sun Run was going on? Lots of neighbors had turned out in the almost-midnight-what-me-sleep?  sun to cheer enthusiasm for the walkers and runners, putting up tables of water to offer and having the garden hose ready. So, as I creep along, my fellow Fairbanksan neighbors try to help out my confusion:

“Hey, that’s cheating!”

“Are you lost?”

One lady holds out a cup: “Want some water?” Me: “Naw - I’m good.”

I start smiling at the absurdity of it all, creeping along, watching for toddlers, waving and smiling like I’m a float queen. One guy with a garden hose gets into the humor of it and hits me with some water. Me:”Hey, thanks!” One pre-teen girl hits me with a water burst, then looks contrite, like she got caught by the teacher pranking someone.

Finally, Obvious Woman: “I don’t think you’re supposed to be here right now!” Yeah. Thanks. Me: “I live here!”

Finally, I got back to the house and got the camp chairs. My landlord told me the *right* way to get back to the ball field, and even loaned me an extra chair. My landlady’s response to my story?

“Well - people gotta get to their houses, right?”

I think my sole saving grace is that I was in a rental car at the time. Maybe they won’t recognize me later. (”Hey, Martha, isn’t that the reckless girl that tried to drive through the Sun Run last summer?”)

All in all, the ball game was great, we were more comfortable than in the bleachers, we had good humored company, and the Goldpanners won. No injuries, no hits, no errors.

This is your brain on summer in Fairbanks. Really, today was SOO gorgeous, this is what I looked like all day. It was definitely one of those “can we have the library outside today, PLEEEEEAAASE??” days. Blue skies, breeze, puffy clouds, green trees, green hills, blooming white chokecherry trees, purple and pink flowers along the roadside. (Those are invasive weeds? REALLY?) It was a bumpy start to the summer, though - We got some less-than frigid weather early in mid April, and then three bouts of snow again, followed by sun, overcast, windstorm, thunderstorm, thunderstorm, overcast, overcast, overcast, and finally sun again. I finally went to a picnic that a new acquaintance had invited me to this Wednesday, because I was finally sure that it wouldn’t be cold and rainy. Weather sure is changeable here! Reminds me of FLA in a way - just wait 15 minutes. The students are kidding me that even in excellent weather, I usually have a jacket on, because the minute the sun goes behind a cloud, or the wind blows, it’s kind of chilly! And, while there are mosquitoes, there is NO humidity and NO 100 degree desert days. My basement apartment is a steady 58 degrees!

People are kind of walking around with big smarmy grins on their faces! I haven’t really seen THAT before now, not in such numbers. It’s a lot busier, but not so much that it’s impossible to get around. Not like the teeming masses of tourists and snowbirds of my memories in Florida, when we couldn’t even get into the restaurants we wanted between September and May, without an hour wait. The thing I notice most is, besides the fact that outside is still well and truly light, even after midnight, is that I can go outside without any kind of preparation whatsoever! Man, is that nice. I’ve ridden my bicycle to work a couple of times a week recently, as well as walked some days.

There is WAAAY more to do each weekend than anyone could have time for. A folk music festival, summer farmer’s market, the Alaska Book Festival, Tour de Fairbanks for Diabetes (cycling), Movie Nights, children’s music camp, and UAF Summer Arts Festival programming are just some of the things going on in the next week. They have to cram it all in in three months, don’t ya know - by early September, people start expecting cold and snow anytime.

So, I was visiting the UAF campus Pottery and Print Sales here on the UAF campus around the first of May, and it provided an unexpected warm-n-fuzzy for me. When I was in junior high and high school, my mom was a library tech at Ringling School of Art and Design’s Library. From the web site, it looks much more worldly and big-city than when my mom worked there. Like most things in Sarasota, it’s gotten much richer and more cosmopolitan than I remember from childhood. Nevertheless, during my junior year, I also was in the local Booker High School Visual and Performing Arts program (in 1981, the first year), and after that let out at 2pm or so, I spent many happy hours at the Ringling library, helping my mom shelve, stamp and shift until it was time for her to go home. Sometimes, I brought my projects from the VPA, and professors who came in to check out or pick up library books would stop long enough to critique them.

While I shelved, shifted books, or stamped magazines, I daydreamed about going to Ringling, but I never thought I was good enough. I could NEVER be as brilliantly inventive and explosively creative as all those *other* kids. Money was also a concern. So, even though I did charcoal abstracts and still lifes, drew comics, designed menus with other students as a team for a fictional client’s new restaurant, spun pottery, and shot, developed and printed black and white photos inside an old cooler at Booker, I went on to study broadcasting at UCF, did that for about two years, then spend 9 1/2 years in various Fire and Police departments as a dispatcher, and really was much more secure with a regular paycheck and a health insurance plan.

So, years later, I never have really kicked the art bug; I’m more of a consumer than a creator nowadays, and on this day, the day of the Pottery and Print Sales, I had smartly left my wallet back in my office. As I entered the pottery studio, it suddenly hit me…This is where I’m happy! Pottery dust covered every inch of the room, visual expression of every kind displayed on every wall, brightly painted and fired pottery on every conceivable horizontal surface and all for sale. One counter was actually the artists’ cubbie hole area, with names Sharpie’d on masking tape and stuck on each dust-covered door. Almost an exact duplicate of my own cubbie back at Booker lo-these-many-years ago!

The Print Sale was giddily synapse firing! I remembered lithograph and block printings and etchings that I had done at Booker. Man, what great hours I spent there, just talking art and music and cutting, painting, carving and drawing. Ross, Roger, Samantha and I talked about perspective, and who was better, Ozzy Osborne or the B-52s. I got ridiculed for liking Air Supply and Styx. Going to the print and pottery sales, as well as walking through the student art exhibit made me realize, I no longer care how good I am compared to other artists. I just love messing around with art and craft supplies because it makes me happy. If someone else likes what I do, then so much the better. I also have no problem selling what I produce to people, or giving it away, if it makes *them* happy. (I had moral compunctions about that in high school I had yet to work through. Really.) It’s funny how you can sort of “forget” about parts of you that used to be important, and then years later discover them, and remember what you liked about that so much. Maybe those parts just get lost in the shuffle in the process of providing for a living.

I’m not the only person who thinks about things like this; last night I saw NPR’s Susan Stanberg do a talk called “Art will Save the World”, here at UAF’s Davis Hall . I’m a rabid National Public Radio addict, and she was magnificent. I agree with her that during times of stress or war or uprising, it’s the de-stressing consumption or creation of art, whatever type, that saves a lot humans.

Well, as you can see, my driveway is this amazing lake! Right now, it’s still (barely) below freezing at night, so in the morning, I have this huge 4-6″ deep frozen lake, but when I get home in the evening, it’s quite turned to the hugest puddle I’ve ever seen! And this is in town, on my rock driveway. Connected to paved road. A lot of people live on a dirt or rock road, not even a few miles out of town, and it’s much hillier. A friend who lives here told me a few years ago in no uncertain terms how treacherous his road (that he put in, by the way) got during breakup, and OKAY! so now I get it! Apparently, lots of people drove over it with less care than he desired, tore it up, and left him to regrade it after things dried out around…oh, say mid June. No wonder there are so many mosquitoes in the summer. It’s just another thing that you have to *live* here to get. It was hard for me to imagine why driving on a road, dirt or otherwise, would be such a cause for crotchetiness. Even after living in Walla Walla, which has mostly paved roads, even outside of town. It would be easy to imagine how hosed up and rutty and impassable your dirt road would get during this time of year. It was hard enough driving onto *this* without spinning my wheels. It reminded me a bit of when kids went mudding, back when I was in high school and Sarasota was still rural enough for kids who went to Riverview to do things like that. To make things worse, the melting all came at once this year, in my area at least. We got six inches of snow a week and a half ago, and then 60 degree weather two days ago!

So, what, do you think, people do when their road is 8 inches of impassable mud, and driving on it just makes it worse? They get breakup boots! Here are mine from Big Ray’s downtown:

Surprisingly, this is one of the cheaper things I’ve bought for my comfort since I’ve gotten here. These were $25! Some women buy cute (and slightly more expensive) ones that are pink, green, or polka dotted. But, these were the most comfortable. I bought them to go walking on the trails with Snickers, which I haven’t been able to do in months, because they’re given over to skiers in the winter. Now they’re kinda mooshy, though. I’m prepared like a good girl scout. It’s just soooo nice to have light to walk her in, and not have to bundle up for twenty minutes! The pics of the car (with my garbage in back) were taken at 530pm or so - and the sun was not even close to going down. It’s like my whole body and soul are going “YAY SUN!! YAY!! YAY!! Wait! It’s *10pm*? I have to go to bed? What?”

I’m constantly amused, aghast, or fascinated about expectations of Outsiders regarding their first trip to Alaska, and about what long-time Alaskans think about that. Now, it needs to be said that I am still very much an Outsider here myself. I have made it through my first winter, which I was assured was pretty lightweight compared to the 70’s and 80’s and before that. I love it here - it’s a perfect match for my tomboy-energetic-always-have-to-be-learning or thinking-about-something “teach me that *right now*” personality. Even if I wasn’t a librarian anymore, I’d have to find some way to stay here. I’ve met a lot of cool people so far, and none refused to get to know me because I’d only just arrived. But, I have heard this opinion voiced from some people who have been here a long time:

“So many people come up here looking for what they think they want as “an Alaska lifestyle”, I just don’t bother getting to know them until they’ve been here a while.”

“They have to be here for a minimum of seven years before I even want to get to know them.”

–Or, words to that effect. I’ve been told or read that the amount of time that is proper to spend waiting is anywhere from 1 year to 7 years to 10 years. I’m not really sure *where* this statement comes from? Is it because we have two big honkin’ military bases that rotate families in and out? Is it because people generally move here expecting one thing and get another? Not to be too “Obama-rific” about it, but why draw a line where there doesn’t need to be any? And if I only stay for five years, that deprives you of five years of knowing a pretty awesome individual! **sarcastic grin**

I’m not kidding when I say that almost *everyone* I’ve met who knows anything about Fairbanks, whether for a few days visit, a military posting, or through 20 years of living here, LOVES this quirky area almost immediately. (And, yes, once friends and acquaintances knew I was moving here, almost everyone knew someone, if not themselves, that had lived here.) So, I know I’m not alone in that, by far. I’ve had more people say this to me: “I loved living there, but I just couldn’t do / got tired of / wanted to escape from the cold and /or dark, after so many years.” Or, “I needed someplace to stay that was cheaper to live in during the winter.”

It seems to me that not having *any* expectations is the best way to enjoy life and get acquainted with people here, but that a certain maintenance of “the Alaskan lifestyle” appearance is important so that tourists can travel here and get their expectations met (and spend their $$!). That’s no different than the marketing hype that goes on in Florida. It’s like there are two Fairbanks: One for the tourists, and one for the people who live here. Just like when I was growing up in Sarasota / Bradenton / Venice. I guess what I’m trying to get to the heart of is: How can you ever know when you’ve gotten to the real “authentic” experience of being or living somewhere? Isn’t that going to change with each person? Your experiences of what it’s like to live here are going to be different than mine, whether we’re in Fairbanks, AK, Walla Walla, WA, Seattle, or Sarasota, FL. All else is folly - so, it’s ridiculous to feel “gypped” by your side trip to Fairbanks, as I overheard someone downtown say the other day. (They must’ve been off a Princess bus or something - and that may be the reason why for the “not bothering to get to know” statements.)

Can’t wait to see what summer is like here!

Thursday, April 3rd

Well, the snow is really melting double time now, and it looks pretty dirty, gloppy and gross. I want so BAD to have my car washed, but until more of the dirty mooshy snow is gone, I think it would be wasted money. I’m sure that those who have been here a long time, as well as those in Florida who moved from elsewhere are inured to this, but I am fascinated at what is *melting out* of the snow, after not seeing the actual ground for months! Here’s a partial list from my head of the stuff I saw while walking the dog yesterday:

A child’s toy plastic shovel

Plastic handled tote bag

Trash and other assorted stuff in garbage bags

Dog poop that I had neglected to pick up *before* it started snowing again and it got lost. Note: the snow is not so melted that it’s *easy* to pick this up: I still have to chop it out of the ice.

A broom I had used to clean off the car from said snowfall.

A neighbor’s boat trailer

A child’s bicycle

Several older greenhouses in several yards (no kidding! It’s not that they were *buried*, just that they lurked behind huge snow dump areas).

A BBQ grill next to one of the dorms on campus.

A plastic motor oil bottle

A bicycle helmet.

Oh well, at least there haven’t been any bodies.

–Sunday, April 6th –

Well, it’s two days later, and we’ve had some light spring snow - all the ickiness is now covered in a pretty through dusting of the white pretty stuff. But, just like dead fish after red tide, the ickiness eventually makes it self known, whether now or later.

For the first time a couple of nights ago, I saw the aurora really *bright* over my house - it was definitely one of the coolest things I’ve seen since moving here. I was dejected that I had camera problems capturing it, but I found that this guy didn’t have so much trouble up by the Geophysical Institute. These pics are exactly the way it looked over my house! If you click on the arrows on the lower left side of the picture screen, where it says “1/20″, you’ll see more great pictures.

Last weekend I finally got to mush some dogs! Man, it was cool! I can see how people think it’s “addictive”. For about a half hour, I didn’t worry about anything except leaning the sled on curves, shouting “gee” and “haw” at the appropriate turning times, listening to the enthusiastic pants and scrabbling feet of the dogs, hearing the sled runners scrape the snow, watching the gangline and tuglines of the dogs, and trying to anticipate any problems (there were none; the dogs know the trail *really* well, and took care of me) on a bright blue sunny day in almost-spring. It was already too warm; about 20 degrees. I didn’t dump the sled! I was ready and prepared to hang on whatever should happen, (like, getting banged into a tree) but nothing did. I think recreational mushing is the way to go. It’s not “the toughest sled dog race in the world”, but it is fun. It’s also a way to spend a LOT of money. Nevertheless, my co-worker asked if I wanted some dogs. Ohhhh no, I said. That’s how it *starts*. AND, until I get my own place, I don’t want to strain the generosity and good will of my very kind landlords. It’s hard enough to find some place to rent in this town with *one* dog, let alone a whole passle! Not promising anything later, though, after said mythical house is purchased. (Out of my mythical millions, ya know.)

Anyone who has seen any mushing events in person like the start of the Yukon Quest or the Open North American here in Fairbanks could never say these dogs are forced to race. If you could see the yips and howls and jumps and big doggy grins of anticipation, and the way the handlers have to hold the dogs down with their body weight, six and seven handlers at a time, you would never ask that again. If you could see how the mushers run down the line and pet and encourage all the dogs before and after the race, and attend to every dog’s needs, whether it’s a paw and shoulder massage, ointment for sore pads, snacks, or encouragement, at the cost of their own meal, health and sleep, you would never ask that again. It’s sheer chaos at the start, with the din of announcers, mushers, handlers, families, dog trucks and dogs all mixed in at once. But, once the announcer counts down to the start, with the spectators help, and the whole sum of humanity cheers the musher off with whoops and muffled clapping in big fur and double fleece mitts, the dogs settle down into a fine sewing machine precision, the harnesses, tuglines, ganglines, sled and bootied dog feet all working in concert to propel the whole schmeer off down the trail, or down the river. My friend Rob took some cool pics here. Come and see a race in person. You’ll be convinced, too. (The News Miner posted a good article on this from the Idaho Press Tribune here.)

Anybody who knows me knows I have been single a looooong time. Anyone who knows me knows how tired I am of it, also! But sometimes when you want something too badly, it continues to elude your grasp until you sit down and let it come to you. And sometimes it doesn’t! There are no guarantees.

Therefore, I would like to dispel for all time the myth of the single woman (especially me) moving to Alaska to “find her man”! Anyone who has lived here for any time at all knows that that notion is:

1) Ludicrous and insulting (helloooo? Feminine liberation? Ever heard of it? Look it up in Wikipedia.com…)

2) Entirely unsuited to the facts easily at hand, if one just *looks* and pays attention

3) A product of popular and imaginative television writers

Analyzing my experience so far, Interior Alaska is about as hard and expensive to live in as anywhere I’ve lived so far. It’s expensive to move here. It takes more than average effort from day to day to continue to live here. The trees are little and spindly; there are no oaks and hemlocks or walnuts to make timber; the soil is poor for growing, and breeding livestock has been usually and eventually unprofitable, whether it’s cattle, caribou or milk cows. No fruit trees, except a few apple trees, and that by taking advantage of a microclimate in a few areas in Fairbanks. To grow tomatoes, one needs a greenhouse. I’ve read several books about how the Yukon Kuskokwim area north of here has the best, fattest salmon in the state, but the rivers and land barely provide the people who live there adequate sustainability. They know this because they’ve lived there since time immemorial. The land has always been that way. The ground water is contaminated in a lot of places with arsenic from the not-so-careful gold mining practices of last century. Despite this, with determination, people continue to make productive lives here - they find ways to grow tomatoes and potatoes at organic farms - they make a small craft industry of the salmon, which are sold to the fanciest Seattle restaurants - they build an amazing feat of will and technology like the pipeline, which allows a lot more people to get groceries and clothes and internet service, and even DVDs and bass guitars. There are three musical instrument stores in Fairbanks, and some chain stores, even; and I’m sure there are a lot of folks that would happy to see those chains leave.

Because it takes so much effort to transport everything in, from groceries to houses and cars, and it must be built to a high standard to withstand the temperature range of 120 degrees or more, and it takes extra effort to maintain it, a huge amount of time, money and effort is spent on transportation, building and construction, and maintenance. I’ve met more than one guy (and girl!) that had a master’s or undergraduate degree in geology or economics or English, but left that to work in construction, carpentry, plumbing, electrical work, marine transportation or truck driving. The pay is excellent and the work is hard, but you can be your own boss, for good or ill, and there’s more than enough work to go around. Most guys I’ve met are either busy making money or busy losing it. There’s always something else to spend your hard earned money on; snowmachines, dog food and vet bills, ski equipment, fuel oil, a new water softener (as a friend of mine did 2 weeks ago - $2200! Ouch!), better triple-paned windows for your house, hunting excursions, that nice little retreat cabin out Tok way. Interior Alaska is a place of extremes. Extreme cold in winter, extreme warmth and light in summer, extreme possibilities, but also extreme darkness and depression. This whole area just seems to soak that energy up and feed it back with more and more opportunity. If you have the energy, chutzpah and the brain power, you can make quite a living for yourself here, and have a life unlike 98% of the rest of Americans. That’s pretty dang spiffy!

Doesn’t leave much time for dating or a social life, though. Maybe it’s because there’s some local knowledge I haven’t figured out yet, but I don’t see any difference between the difficulty of meeting guys here and other places I’ve lived. The possibility of meeting a guy here has been asked of me by friends (mostly lower 48 friends) more than a couple of times, though. (Is that why you want to move / moved there?”) While I must admit I thought of it, I think of it a lot, regardless of where I live. Not necessarily just when I considered moving here. Funny, but no one asked me that when I moved to Walla Walla. I wonder why? Thus, I must conclude, this Alaskan urban myth is a media construction. Not the type of construction one thinks of first in Fairbanks, but oh well. Or, perhaps, I still have that stink of “Outsider” on me. How long does that take to wear off? Depends on who you’re talking to, I think. Anyway, in announcing this, am I announcing that the king has no clothes? Could be - a lot of income is made by authors, hotels, contractors, et. al. in propping up Alaskan myth.

BUT, while walking home from the library today, I saw the whole Alaska Range from the UAF campus, clear and sharp and beautiful in a blue sky, for the first time in months. Chickadees and other birds are cheeping in the trees for the first time in months, adding to the endless raven squawks, quorks, clicks and imitation-but-all-too-real child noises that are always present. And, maybe not as pretty, huge irregular ten foot tall piles of reverse image oreo ice and snow chunks dominate every spare area from the recent plowing. Some kids playing on one at one of the intersections yelled and waved at me while I walked by, and I waved back. Pretty amazing.

MAN, it’s warm here. Currently, it’s 48 degrees! It sounds weird coming from my mouth, since I haven’t even been here a year yet, but even a cheechako (a word which only authors trying to sell Alaskan-themed non-fiction use for a lower-48 audience) like me can tell it’s too warm. We’re in the midst of the Winter Festivities here, and they all depend on it being colder than it is right now. Ice carvings melt. Dogs can’t mush through this melting snow moosh. It sounds unbelieveable, but I would rather it were colder here right now. A co-worker told me that the ice carving dates were *moved back* this year because they needed colder weather, and it’s still too warm! The city of Anchorage has trucked in snow to downtown for years now, for the ceremonial start of the Iditarod. But apparently it used to be the last week of March for years, with no trucking needed - temps were usually still sub-zero here, if not there.

I also expected spring to be more violent. People use terms like “break-up” and “wash-out” to describe what happens to rivers and roads here in the spring. I said that to someone today, and he paused - “Just wait for it.” Spring is, near as I can tell from the descriptions people have given me, about 48 hours long. I’ve also been told this kind of weather is about a month ahead of time this year. So, I’m not putting anything cold related away yet - last year this time I was visiting here, and it was in the 20’s during the day, and below zero at night - about in the negative 20’s! Even though every cell in my body is screaming “IT’S SPRING! IT’S SPRING! HOW CAN WE GET RID OF ALL THIS FREAKIN’ SNOW SO I CAN START GROWING STUFF?”, I’m not dropping my guard.