Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1994 Alaska had a kind of a birthday last week: the 253rd anniversary of landfall by voyagers from the Old World. I had pictured Vitus Bering leaving his ship the St. Peter in a floppy little velvet cap like you see in portraits of Christopher Columbus, standing in [...]
Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1995 With special thanks to Leo Rasmussen for providing historical details. It was in 1975 that Nome’s famous burled arch was first used as the finish marker for the Iditarod Sled Dog Race. Carl Huntington of Galena won the race in 1974 (in 20 days) but it was [...]
Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1994 A great culling process began the day we moved to Nome. The really great friends are being separated from the pretty good ones. And it’s all because we don’t live in Anchorage.
Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 2004 Captain James Cook sailed the waters around Nome during the summer of 1778. He walked the deck of his ship Resolution that August and exchanged signals with Captain Furneaux on the consort ship Discovery as they measured the watery depths of Norton Sound, ever hopeful to find [...]
Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1994 Nobody ever saved the town where I grew up. But I’d heard about Balto even when I went to school in California in the 1950s. The big, black husky (with a right front leg that looked like he’d stepped into a can of white paint) who saved [...]
Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1995 I was amazed when I first saw Hawai’i’s flag. Many of you may assume like I did that it was cut from bold-colored fabric with jungle hues of blue and green or volcanic oranges and reds. It’s not. Hawaii’s colors are red, white, and blue, and their [...]
This was my first article published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1994. I’m trying to figure things out in Nome. So, before I arrived, I watched a special on television on the Iditarod to help me figure things out. I noticed that everybody at the Nome finish line had on lots of clothes: boots as [...]
Originally published in The South Bay Daily Reporter, California, Summer 1994 I don’t know if anybody ever saved Manhattan Beach. I kind of wish somebody could have saved it from the polio that swept through my family in 1954. But, if anybody did save the Beach Cities from a more severe epidemic, there hasn’t been [...]
Originally published in The South Bay Daily Reporter, California, Summer 1994. I sure didn’t think much about Native Americans sitting in a classroom in Robinson Elementary in the 1950s, a Dick and Jane book in my lap. There were no Indians left in Manhattan Beach. Nobody with Mongolian cheekbones or long shinny black hair. My [...]
Originally published in The South Bay Daily Reporter, California, Summer 1994 I’ve moved up the coast. Way up. To Nome, Alaska. Now Nome is a place you’ll probably have to look up in a geography book. Even if you’re watching the Weather Channel and the guy’s pointing out highs and lows, you might think you [...]
