I don’t know how many of you listen to NPR, but one of my favorite moments from them recently has been the “This I Believe” vignettes that have been on “Weekend Edition” and “Morning Edition.” This one this morning seems particularly pertinent to Easter, the holiday of renewal and hope:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102961694
I’ve been here 18 months now, and I have participated in *4*, count ‘em, *4* ticket raffles. Before I moved here, I had never been in any, that I can remember, anyways. Alaskans sure do 1) know how to put a volunteer event together to raise money and 2) Know how to use that money, creating community ties at the same time. I’ve volunteered other places I’ve lived, but I have rarely seen it taken to the high professional results-getting art that it is here. A lot of the time, this is done through the ticket raffle. I’ve written before about how “recycling” is done in Fairbanks, and the most recent ticket raffle I’ve seen plays on this theme:
Raffle Ticket method #1:
Spring Cleaning:
1) Take nice stuff, but nevertheless stuff you don’t want anymore, and donate it to the cause.
2) Buy raffle tickets that give you the ability to bid on other people’s stuff that looks interesting to you.
3) Put the ticket in the cup behind the item on the appointed date. The ticket drawn out is the winner of the item.
4) Money is kept as a “rainy day” fund, buying cards or flowers or needed things for an employee who is having a tough time.
Numerous variations on the “ticket” theme exist. I had organized art auctions and book and video auctions before in the Outside, but never had I done the “raffle ticket” thing. There’s a whole rules structure to the ticket auction that neatly side steps the problems encountered in a assigned secret number silent auction or out loud auction. Some more variations on the ticket raffle theme:
Raffle Ticket method #2:
The 50/50 draw: I did this one for the Yukon Quest this year at the Finish Banquet. 1) Walk around with a plastic fish bowl with enticing signs and stickers on it. 2) Stick the fish bowl in a person’s face and coyly ask, “Buy a ticket? It’s 5 dollars! Come on, you can buy one beer less, and it’s for a good cause.” (It’s best to wait for a break in the mushing conversation before you interupt, especially if they’re standing in the line for the bar.) 3) Explain that for a looooooong string of tickets, you can buy many chances to get 1/2 of the total pot at the end of the evening. 4) Coyly and shyly show them the arm’s length of tickets they get, starting at the wrist, rolling out the roll and finishing at the bust. If it’s a guy, ask them to hold the fish bowl for a second. (Note: this works better if you wear a top with a low collar, which I didn’t. 
) 5) If you’re asked how much you’ve raised so far, tell them you’re doing pretty well, but haven’t counted yet. Shake the fish bowl and look at it. Another $5 paid means a bigger payout for you, ya know…
Raffle Ticket method #3:
Or, how about the “Shhhh, it’s a secret” game? This one takes a bit more marketing and selling from the fish bowl holder. 1) Explain that you’re selling tickets to a raffle to play a game at the end of the night, and the winner gets a really good prize. Tickets are $5 each. 2) When the person asks what the prize is, tell them. This works best with big expensive prizes. In the case that I saw, it was 2 coach tickets to Outside on Alaskan Airlines. That’s a good prize for this “what, still winter?” area. 3) Explain that you can’t tell them what the game is until later and then, your voice taking on a coy “I double dog dare ya” tone, ask them if they’re in. If they hesitate at all, give a slightly pitying look, then say “Oh well! I’m outta here.” Believe it or not, this worked like mosquitoes to bare flesh for the woman I saw working it that night. She, of course, was more suitably attired. She also made more than me.
Raffle Ticket method #4:
The Bingo Wheel Method: Sell tickets to the raffle, $10 or $25 each, explaining that out of the 500 tickets you sell, during the actual raffle, (held at a popular bar and restaurant, of course) 500 separate draws will be made, and the ticket numbers read out. Only the 1st, 25th, 50th, 100th, 150th, 200th, 250th, 300th, 350th, 400th, 450th, and 500th draw will award a prize though. The prizes are usually pretty good, but the lower numbers (25, 50…) are smaller prizes, like coffee travel mugs or sweatshirts. The higher numbers (250, 500)are airline tickets and cash awards. People really do come in droves to this thing. Or, maybe it’s a way to support the event, see friends you haven’t seen in while, and have a beer and some good conversation and halibut. I would totally go for those reasons. 
Of course, being an old ex-gamer, I toyed with the idea of making the “Bingo Wheel Method” (the matching numbered tickets are rolled around in what looks like a Bingo wheel) more random. How about using percentiles (three of em, even…) to determine the random numbers from 1-500 that the prizes are handed out on? Maybe it wouldn’t work as well – no one would know when to stop talking and listen to see if it was their ticket that won, if every number had a possibility of being the one that had a prize.
Wait, how about…more than one person has the number 25, for example, and then they all have to roll for initiative? 
Okay, okay, enough gamer talk…
Hey all, I figured out how to use You Tube! I know, I know…What kind of behind-the-time-luddite is this librarian, anyway? Anyhoo, it was easier than I thought. The uploaded video so far is of the entertainment at the Alaska Library Association Conference in Kodiak on March 12-16, 2009, and the third heat of the Open North American sprint dog mushing races in Fairbanks, March 22, 2009. Go here: http://www.youtube.com/loudlibrarian1965.
My mom pointed this post out to me on the Fairbanks News-Miner’s Arctic Cam comments section, and I thought it was so useful that I’m reproducing it here. I don’t know this person, but it was nice to see that I had done many of these things before moving here, mostly because I *listened* to what long-time Alaskans were trying to tell me. IMNSHO, it’s a subtle thing about living here that maybe sometimes lower 48er’s don’t pick up on right away – all sorts of things about day-to-day living here don’t work here the same way they do everywhere else, so it’s best to come without a lot of preconceptions. Your acclimatizing will go harder if you refuse to dispose of those preconceptions. Things I didn’t listen to ahead of time? I came here with not enough in savings, and having already bought boots. Those boots of mine are *useless* at -25 or -30, when you’re standing in a parking lot helping tag and load 50 pound food bags. I should have waited. Yesterday I found some *almost* new heavy type boots with the thick removable wool liner (that mine lack) in Value Village for $3.50! I also didn’t listen about waiting to set up housekeeping. I should have done that. As a result, 18 months out, I’m still paying off debt. One more piece of learned experience: don’t buy any outerwear or outfitter gear that has a metal zipper. When it gets cold enough, the zipper will seize, and then you’ll have to take it to Apocalypse Design and have the zipper replaced with a heavy duty plastic one.
How to successfully become an Alaskan. – from alaskansheilah, newsminer.com arctic cam site
Unless one is military (they offer training, work, housing, allowances, and winter gear…a savings in the thousands or more. Starting off in Alaska the military way is almost traditional, and usually the best.)
I wouldn’t come to Alaska to live until spring, without less than several thousand dollars buffer (preferably about 10 in the bank, and tell no one except authorities about it) Do NOT set up housekeeping before; The first thing you’ll need is work. Have a job or at least 5-10 serious interviews to come to (if none of these pan out, at least you have the way to leave). Many are awestruck at the wages being so ‘lucrative’ at first…Understand this, if Alaskans are paid more, there’s good reason for it…this offers no “windfall”.
Next is housing. One can apply for the Nehemiah Loan for a zero down if you’ve never owned a home before. If not, you can usually get into something for 5-6 K. Owning however humble is the better way to go here for the price of rent is usually higher. Normally you can get your investment back if you sell or rent out.
Next is reliable transportation geared to withstand minus -65 degrees below zero (Do NOT purchase a vehicle with more than 45,000 miles to it- it will wreck your budget by piecemeal. If you can at all buy new do so.)
Next is emergency arctic gear. (One can buy used if need be.) You may not need it all winter…but not having it can kill you. Best quality and prices will be found at the Army/Navy surplus stores. If not in use, keep this (plus extra) in your vehicle along with other emergency supplies: food, tools, flares, road caution signs and medical kit.
Then you need to adapt to higher prices for essentials. You don’t have to like it, You do have to accept it. That way you can more realistically define what’s actually essential. Live like you’re desperately poor so you never will be. Keep that buffer for emergencies. Yeah, you’ll do alright! If I could make it 36 years, so can YOU.
So, Dilbert got fired. And a lot of fans are mad with artist / author Scott Adams because of what got Dilbert fired. Why? Millenials, who are the generation that are about 18-24 right now, have never seen a time without a computer. The computer is their friend, their means of creating community, their entertainment, their television, their means of income. No wonder it’s hard for them to split out their personal life from their professional, wage-earning one. It’s not any surprise to a person my age or older that if you create something on company time, that work belongs to the company. Maybe it is to millenials? This cartoon sits on my staff member’s desk; I gotta admit, sometimes I feel this way. (Um, actually, I’m not writing this during company time. Really, I’m not. c. UAF, BTW.)
my grammie and me during one of our blow-out Christmas's in 1969
It might be that I’ve been looking at family pictures I brought home with me from my trip to Florida… It might be the changes that I saw while looking around at my old alma mater while I was in FL (which I’ve given to calling my “what? huh? Where the heck am I? What part of the campus is this? Heck, what part of *Orlando* is this?” magical mystery tour), or it might just be that I feel we’ve stepped into a bold new world with this Presidential Inauguration, which I am still kind of emotionally touched and happily amazed at, even (heck, probably especially because of) being a Republican. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how much things change. Almost nothing in my life is the same way it was 25 years ago. While a young person doesn’t think change happens fast *enough*, at middle age I can’t think of anything that’s the same as it was when I was 18, 25, or even 30. Not myself, not my family, not where I grew up, not my friends, not technology. Perhaps it’s because I’m reaching middle age in the age of the internet? Or, maybe it’s the whole technological generation gap that’s so prevalent between the generations today…see this article, for example. While in a lot of ways this is *good* (stagnation in anything is bad for you, grasshopper), it’s not until I get confronted by the evidence of that change that I start wondering, “who *was* that Jen of long ago? Was Orlando really at one time like I remember it?” Microsoft is *laying* people off, not hiring them, for the first time. I remember they were hiring so quickly in the early 90’s, I told my best friend that she better not move to NC and not come back for my wedding if she took that MSFT job. (She was in the wedding party, of course.) Sarasota County is knocking down the most distinctive part of my high school. The living room pictured above no longer exists, even though I spent my whole life before 24 in it. Seeing pictures of friends’ kids all grown up with their own kids does it for sure. Trace Adkins sums it up pretty well for me in this song; which is so sweet, I almost cry everytime I hear it. I’d want back the ability to talk to my best friend-from-childhood’s mom. She helped me get my first “grown up” job in Burdines Department Store after high school. Burdines, and Kim’s mom, are gone now. Maybe it’s just that I’m going into the middle aged hormone-y stage of life. However, as Trace *doesn’t* say in his song, there are some things that I don’t want back – like this haircut and earrings. I don’t want those back. My skin looks better than I remember, though!
Ode to my new snow pants on a negative -42 degree day:
My snow pants keep me quite toasty
Indeed, one could even say roasty
To get into them, that takes the most time,
It’s why I wrote this rhyme,
It’s what I dislike about them the mosty.
(Which isn’t much, really!)
(I walked the dog in completely warm comfort today for the first time since I moved here – I love finding the right combination of gear!)
Here is my favorite Christmas memory: My mom, Bill and I watching “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas” on 
our old TV on Bougainvillea St. in our old neighborhood, when I was small. It’s the details and the feeling of security I remember, but, like every hazy early-in-childhood memory, I bet I remember it differently than Mom. Mom, I know this.
This is the *old* “Grinch” – the one that was animated by Chuck Jones in 1966, the never-to-see-his-like-again snappy sly artist of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck in years of Looney Tunes cartoons. Chuck drew and worked well into his 80’s, which is a good example to follow, I think.
So, we were watching the “Grinch” on television during one Christmas, and I must have been very small, like 5 or so. I think this was “B.B”. (“Before Butch”, my stepfather.) I remember we still had this comfy old “Early American” patterned sofa with the drumming soldiers and the eagles on it, and my mom was sitting on one end, and I was stretched out with my head in her lap, because the Grinch was kinda scary to me. My feet didn’t reach the other end of the sofa by a LONG shot. I think I still had my pink earless threadbare bunny.
Anyway, there’s this part where Boris Karloff says, “Then he got an idea. An awful idea. The Grinch got a wonderful, awful idea.” And the Grinch’s pencil thin smile turns slowly to a sneer, curlicuing around the ends until his little tuft of hair splits in two. That was so scary to me I hid my face in my mom’s lap!
I know now that a lot of kids turned adults never get a blessing like that. So, thanks, Mom!
What’s my second favorite Christmas memory? Well, that’s gotta be the year Butch bought us all new Schwinn bicycles. Sorry you weren’t first, Butch, but second isn’t bad, right?
Snicker boo-boo!
Here is a partial (because I’m sure I’m not remembering some) list of what my dog Snickers has consumed while I’ve been gone – she always figures out the new way I’ve used to hide food from her – soon I’m sure she will figure out how to pull the step stool over, set it up, and get on the top of the refrigerator, which is the only place left I have to put food besides my (full) kitchen cabinets.
1) 6 chocolate chip peanut butter muffins, baked and sitting in a Ziploc bag, on the dining room table. The bag had not been moved, and was unzipped, with not a crumb left inside or anywhere. (This was when I had first gotten her, and was unaware at how inventive Aussies and Aussie mixes can be.)
2) A whole loaf of freshly baked, still-warm zucchini loaf, left on the butcher block table in the kitchen, still in the baking tin, left unattended while I ran the second loaf upstairs to my landlady. The tin was sideways on the ground, with nary a speck left. I was only gone 5 minutes.
3) Granola Bar – left on my dash in the car while I got out to dump trash – total gone time: 30 seconds.
4) Ripening tomatoes in a bowl from my garden on the kitchen counter – about 4 1/2 feet up. Total amount left: 1 gnawed kohlrabi, on the floor, which she apparently gave up on. She doesn’t have the best teeth; she only has two big upper canines left, from chewing rocks and her chain non-stop before I adopted her.
5) Dehydrated cabbage from my garden; stored on the bookshelves in the dining room, specifically put up there in a Ziploc plastic lidded bowl, to keep it away from her. Bowl found on ground, with teeth marks on the tab of the plastic lid.
6) The dog food in her bin – I got one of those big plastic bins with a door so that she wouldn’t help herself, but didn’t lock the door. One day not long ago, she looked at me, looked at the dog food bin, and I said, “Okay – it’s not time yet. You have to wait.” Whereupon, when I looked down next, she had pawed the door open, gotten some kibble with her mouth, and let the door slam back shut. The door now has a pen in the lock part to prevent her from opening the door.
7) How many ways has my Snicker boo-boo learned to get to the cat food dish? I used to keep it on the toilet tank, until I found dirty dog paw prints on the toilet lid one day. So, every morning, I rolled the TV cart (which had about a 2 foot opening below it) in front of the bathroom door frame. (I didn’t have a door to the bathroom where I used to live). She managed to squeeze herself into and through that small opening. So, I stuffed a big comforter into the hole to block her. Next day? Comforter pulled out and discarded, cart moved about 18 inches from door, cat food eaten.
When we moved to Fairbanks, I started putting the cat food dish on the dining room table, backed up to the bookshelf, so the dog couldn’t reach it. A couple of months later, I came home to the dish on the floor upside down, with not a speck left. So, I put the cat food on the high bookshelf, over the dining room table, where the cat has to jump 5 feet to get to it. The bowl was on the floor upside down the next day. Now, it’s *inside* the bookshelf, as far back as it can go, about a foot.
Finally, (the following is not for the squeamish) Snickers exhibits the (apparently) fairly typical Aussie trait (or maybe it’s just a dog trait?) of eating out of the cat litter box. I’ve tried many things to keep the box away from her and still make it accessible to the cat, including keeping the closet door the box is in closed to the point that only a cat-sized person can squeeze through. Guess you can guess by now – my little girl guard dog was caught yesterday coming out of the office with scoopable litter stuck to her puss.
9) This is really easy pickins for Snickers – Susan left her salmon, onion, and cream cheese sourdough english muffin alone for a minute – really, we were only upstairs for a moment – and when we came back from upstairs, it was gone, along with 3 or 4 additional english muffins from the plastic sleeve on the counter. I think the only reason she didn’t eat the salmon from the canning jar is because we interrupted her. Susan made herself another, but I think Snickers had another idea.
It’s really silly how goofy I feel about this dog – Not even the litter thing puts me off. Guess that means I’m a dog person, just a bit? Besides, that is not as bad as a friend of mine who left a mushing dog in his truck while he worked on a job and returned to find the dog had chewed off every knob and handle inside the truck cab. I do have little claw marks all over my new black vinyl covered Forester doors… But she’s still my sweetie! 
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 four people in a row from here, and I liked them all. They all had self made lives, were interested in the world and ideas, and had good senses of humor, and lord knows, I need to be around people like that! (I tend to live in my head too much, and need the kind of friends that will remind me to laugh at myself.)
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.
