Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1995 When you read this, I’ll be gone. My family will be in Southern California for the winter. We didn’t plan it this way. I had hoped to be here for the Talent Show and Halloween. My friend Kaye and I were thinking of flying in to Council [...]
Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1995 Toddlers experience everything in the first person. Mommy is theirs, Daddy is theirs, toys are all theirs, and other points of view aren’t understood. Toddlers sense the world with their mouths, hands, and bodies and it takes great patience, strength, and physical endurance to meet their needs [...]
Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1995 The final day of the Summer Reading Program at the Kegoayah Kozga Library was this week. The weight of reading 30 books for my oldest son is also lifted. It wasn’t that Sam didn’t think he could read 30 books. Between Beverly Cleary’s “Ramona” series, Tom Swift [...]
Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1995 Long before Dr. Fleischman moved into Cicely, Alaska, in the television series “Northern Exposure,” viewers were treated to a sit com episode based in our great state. It was just one episode and it was filmed right after Alaska joined the Union as the 49th state. Lucy, [...]
Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1995 If you’re five years old, you are usually not all that excited about seeing very large wildlife. When you’re driving out of town in the truck and your Mom and Dad are talking about seeing moose and bears and muskoxen, you’re sitting very quietly in your seatbelt [...]
Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1995 The tundra is a carpet of fiery reds, oranges, and yellows right now and, boy, do we Nomeites deserve it! One solid month of rain has kept us a little bit muddy and a whole lot of crabby. So, when the sun finally did come out over [...]
Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1995 Something in my soul gets weary of all this light. In winter’s doldrums, I wish and wish for July days of sun. But when they’re here, I sometimes wish they would just go away.
Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1994 I grew up on another beach down the coast. Way down the coast. My parents moved to California’s South Bay from Cleveland, Ohio, after World War II so my dad could get into making movies. All through high school, he’d goaded his friends (including my mother) into [...]
Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1994 It’s finally happened. We’ve run out of green chile. The 25 cans of this precious commodity that we packed into every available extra space in the 20 bags, trunks, and suitcases we flew in with to Nome are used up. So now we’re in trouble.
Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1994 My sons have heard the story of the threatened diphtheria epidemic in Nome nearly 70 years ago. I’ve read them the stories of the cylinder packed with the 300,000 units of serum on the train to Nenana, the great hearts of Balto and Togo, and the courage [...]
