For The Guardian: “Alaska put politics aside for Obama visit”
“This is the president and this is exciting. Period.”
“This is the president and this is exciting. Period.”
In Alaska, nobody really cares if you went to Harvard, but if your grandmother was buried here, you should say so because it gives you cred. I think this is because there are only 700,000 people in this state and a whole lot of dangerous country, animals and weather. People from very different backgrounds tend to find themselves relying on each other, so we care most about stuff like whether you are the type to carry a tow strap in your truck and would be willing to pull us out of a ditch in a snowstorm. Politics come way second. Our loyalty to Denali over McKinley is driven by the same impulse.
Alaska is among the most coffee-obsessed states in the nation. Some years, the coffee-shop-to-human ratio in Anchorage has been higher than Seattle, making it the most caffeinated place in the America.
On a weekend morning you can hear the sound of Lao Buddhist monks chanting on one block and African-American spirituals pouring out a church door on another. Welcome to the future of America.
The 900 people who live here hold on to a ritual that dates back 2,000 years: the spring hunt for the bowhead whale. This year, the village took three.
Today we have a story about climate change, hunting and eating bowhead whale in The Guardian, an international newspaper based in England. It’s the second part in our project on climate change, hunting and traditional foods, funded by the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting.
In Kotzebue, as temperatures and ice become increasingly unpredictable, hunters worry their children and grandchildren will no longer be able to participate in the traditional seal hunt.
Exploring the windswept remnants of Adak’s long-vacant military settlement.
I’m really excited to announce that my site, which launched at the end of November, has now been viewed 100,000 times! Thanks, friends, for supporting my experiment!