Alaska - Surviving and Thriving

Blog roundup: Baby, it’s cold outside edition.

December 15, 2010 by Donna Freedman

Earlier this week I was out walking when the temperature was about 5 degrees. My body felt warm enough but boy, did my face sting. Apparently my blood has gotten thin after six years of living in Seattle, aka “the tropics.”

While I was living in Anchorage, the features reporters had to collaborate on an annual “Christmas lights” story. Acting on tips from readers, we fanned out across the city in search of the best-decorated homes in the city.

“Best” sometimes meant elegant and tasteful. Most of the time it meant “so bright you could get a tan while standing nearby.”

Snow days.

May 17, 2013November 23, 2010 by Donna Freedman

Yesterday it snowed in Seattle. This happens rarely enough that folks panic when the first flake hits the ground. Buses run less often. The stores sell out of milk and ice melt. Driving becomes an adventure on Seattle’s famously sloping roadways. (I swear it really is possible to walk through the snow uphill both ways.)

On Saturday I’m heading up to Anchorage, Alaska for a month in the frozen north. Which today happens to be the glazed-over north: Freezing rain on top of snow turned streets into skating rinks and hilly streets into luge runs.

The thought made me cringe, which in turn made me realize I’ve become a total weenie after nine years of Lower 48 living.

When I moved from Alaska to Chicago in 2001, I actually missed winter. Ice and all.

Miscellany.

January 24, 2016August 18, 2010 by Donna Freedman

This is not a fancy word for “Donna is too lazy to write anything today.” It’s just a place to put some odds and ends that aren’t strong enough to carry posts on their own.

Now that I’ve underwhelmed you, let’s have us some miscellany.

Re-entry is, um, a challenge.

January 24, 2016August 10, 2010 by Donna Freedman

I stumbled into my apartment at 12:30 a.m. today, dragging/lugging about 60 pounds of luggage from the plane to the train to the downtown bus. It might have been half an hour sooner but I just missed the train, which meant I just missed the bus and had to wait another 37 minutes.

I just missed them because I stopped to help a young mother with her two-under-two kids when we got off the plane. They’d been sitting next to me, apparently on their way to what cartoonist Scott Adams called the Colicky Baby Convention. They were like family, especially since the 5-month-old had thrown up on me during the flight.

Hey, you, take off those shoes!

July 20, 2010 by Donna Freedman

Wish I had a piece of the hosiery industry in Anchorage, where you remove your footwear after you enter someone’s house. Knowing you’ll be unshod regularly means making sure your feet are decently covered.

Once when I was an Anchorage Daily News reporter I took off my shoes at an interviewee’s home and discovered a rent in one sock. It’s hard to look professional when your big toe has its eye to the peephole.

Obviously Alaska is not the only place where indoor shoe-wearing is frowned upon. People in other cultures live this way too – and so, increasingly, do U.S. residents, as a quick Internet search indicates. Sometimes it’s because they want the carpet to last longer. Sometimes it’s because they don’t want spike-heel scratches on the hardwood.

And sometimes it’s to keep you from tracking in poisons.

Win this bear.

July 16, 2010 by Donna Freedman

You don’t have to throw baseballs at weighted milk bottles to win this rather pensive ursus maritimus.

Br’er Rabbit and Br’er Bear, Alaska style (aka “a fed bear is a dead bear”).

January 6, 2014July 13, 2010 by Donna Freedman

From an Anchorage Police Department press release:

“On 7-8-10 at 10:17 hours, Anchorage Police officers responded to the report of a woman chasing a black bear on the 200 block of Yellow Leaf Circle. Upon arrival, officers found that a woman…had indeed been chasing a black bear which had jumped the fence in her front yard and snatched up her pet rabbit in its teeth.

“The rabbit, known as ‘George,’ had been…known in the neighborhood because its back legs were paralyzed and his owner had fashioned a two-wheeled cart so he would have mobility.

“… George’s owner, upon hearing the cries of her rabbit, chased the bear in her stocking feet across several yards and down an alley before the bear reportedly turned and confronted her.

“The bear left the area with the rabbit.”

And this is why I love Alaska.

Now: Where to begin?