Should you find your favorite coffee shop curiously crowded lately, it’s not because legislative session started early or tourist season ended late. November is National Novel Writing Month, affectionately (and cumbersomely) known as NaNoWriMo, and writers are breaking out their laptops wherever they can in a race to draft a whole novel by month’s end.
There’s post-season baseball on TV, mittens in the kids’ bins at pre-school and the crockpot back on the counter. Winter’s definitely on its way.
Naturally, my thoughts turn to skiing — specifically, that I still don’t know how. Sure, I know the lingo, I’ve got the clothes. I mean, I spend a lot of time waiting for my family in the lodge, and I want people to think I deserve all the chicken strips I consume (BTW: they’re especially “sickter” smothered in chili and cheese).
Truly, 2012 has been a year of many important anniversaries: 100 years since the sinking of the Titanic, 75 years since the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge, 60 years since the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II and perhaps most notably, three years since the release of “2012” the movie.
Well, I have your test results right here and, frankly, they could be better. Now, relax. Nothing major. Just a slight — slight — irregularity in your heart, lungs, pancreas, liver, gall bladder, kidney, thyroid and large intestine.
And small intestine.
And large intestine.
Did I already say large intestine? Hm. Let me check my notes… Yeah, it’s really bad in the large intestine.
August in Juneau, various elements in the landscape signal the coming change of seasons: the fireweed begins to wilt, wetlands grasses start to brown and Fred Meyer breaks out the back-to-school displays.
Two weekends ago my wife and I took our four-and-a-half-year old daughter and almost two-year old son to the Southeast Alaska State Fair, and though we barely spent 36 hours there, we did just about everything there was to do.
We/I…
….rode the carousel, pet baby farm animals, got our faces painted — well, one of us did — sat in the cockpit of a Black Hawk helicopter — well, one of us did — and ate multiple meats on a stick as well as three different varieties of fried bread dough.
According to self-described pun enthusiast Ariel Rolfe, while dog poop is often the “butt” of jokes, it’s no laughing matter.
American dogs excrete 10 million tons a year, and rising. At 247 pounds per pooch, Juneau’s canine population (estimated at 9,000) produces a more modest 1,250 tons. But, as Rolfe, 25, points out in her August First Friday exhibit “Fecal Matters: A Mountain of a Problem,” that’s still 18 army tanks worth of dog poop dropped on Juneau every year.
Salmon — the common name for several fish species in the family Salmonidae — is perhaps Alaska’s most abundant resource, next to T-shirt shops, as well as its most important, next to drive-thru espresso.
In addition to its popularity as a sport fish, salmon forms the backbone of Alaska’s commercial fishing industry, eclipsed in its economic importance only by reality TV shows about Alaska’s commercial fishing industry.
