As I said last week, a life which is split between Alaska and Kentucky often involves sharp differences in experiences. Those sometimes show up in our annual Christmas letters, which don’t usually focus on what we’ve done (won the Nobel prize, walked on the moon, are the parents of not one, but three little geniuses, etc), but on what happens to us. With Christmas approaching, I’ve been rereading past letters, and thought posting one of those a week would be a nice lead-up to the holidays. This letter follows in Christmas sequence the one posted last week:
"This winter has been much more satisfactory than last year’s in that we’ve had
less cold and more snow. Four and a half feet as of 1 December, and smaller
amounts since then. The snow falls a lot like the rain does in summer- slowly and steadily, never with much intensity, and mostly at night. Like Camelot’s rain, it tends to start in the evening and stop in the morning. (Of course, evening here in the winter is 3 p.m.) We’re looking forward to a lot more snow since we have a long way to go on our winter’s allocation.
Not so on winter excitement, however. Usually, not a lot happens here in the winter, so we think our excitement allocation was expended early when, last week, five comely young ladies marched through town clad only in Santa Claus hats, booties, and a shared banner. They were from People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and they were chanting that they would rather go naked than wear fur. Since it was eight degrees outside, their march was as abbreviated as their clothing, but it was greatly appreciated and approved by both the anti- and pro-fur factions and by some who were indifferent to the cause but
appreciated the method. There’s been some talk among the pro-fur folks about a similar parade with local trappers doing the marching, although one columnist fears that our trappers are so ugly the police might shoot them on sight. And so hairy they wouldn’t meet the “naked” standard.
It’s beautiful here now. The spruce trees are all covered with snow, and the Christmas lighting is like nothing we’ve ever seen before. Our mayor’s main interest, perhaps his only interest, is Christmas lighting, and we support him in this. Anchorage in the winter needs all the light it can get. Those other things,
like school budgets and city salaries, are largely boring and don’t affect us anyway.
This is the time of year when people get a little peculiar and start fighting over utility rates, school boundaries, the cost of telephone calls, sin taxes, whatever. This contentiousness increases geometrically through to spring break-up, by which time it has escalated into a city-wide free-for-all. On the theory of “When in Rome…” we have joined right in, and spend most of our time firing off letters and faxes. We decided today that we need to keep a scorecard because, with so many things going on, we’re afraid we’ve come down firmly on both sides of some issues.
Elections are also very intense and interesting. Most of the losers have conceded by now, but some vow they never will. There was a case last year of two people filling one seat for several weeks. This year, the Democratic Party‘s Senate candidate* had only one plank in her platform: her husband had failed the Alaska bar exam twenty-one times, and that wasn’t fair. She was the victor in a
primary-election field of seven so strange that the film of their debate has become a cult video classis.
Merry Christmas,
Dean and Nina
*She got our vote. When she was a member of the local school board, she regularly defended her stands to the point of fisticuffs, and she has the advantage of having a voice that will cut glass. We thought she would be truly representative of her constituency."
Update:
1. Her opponent in the Senate race was Senator-for-life Ted Stevens,who of course won, but who defied his long-time nickname and tenure by losing his office in 2008 in the midst of a graft scandal, and his life not long after in a plane crash. She is still around.
2. Reading about the Christmas lighting makes me wish I had a photograph of some of it to post here. One building, a midrise of five or six stories in downtown Anchorage, offers the most stunning display. Strings of small white lights descend from the roof a couple of stories, so close side-to-side and top-to-bottom that they almost touch. It has the effect of a lighted
waterfall - a not quite solid blanket of light that is staggered at the bottom, like the edge of a dentate leaf, and spans the width of the building. So serene, stunning, and beautiful, and so lacking in gaudy, that it puts every other display I''ve ever seen to shame, including the "exploding" Christmas trees in Rio.
"This winter has been much more satisfactory than last year’s in that we’ve had
less cold and more snow. Four and a half feet as of 1 December, and smaller
amounts since then. The snow falls a lot like the rain does in summer- slowly and steadily, never with much intensity, and mostly at night. Like Camelot’s rain, it tends to start in the evening and stop in the morning. (Of course, evening here in the winter is 3 p.m.) We’re looking forward to a lot more snow since we have a long way to go on our winter’s allocation.
Not so on winter excitement, however. Usually, not a lot happens here in the winter, so we think our excitement allocation was expended early when, last week, five comely young ladies marched through town clad only in Santa Claus hats, booties, and a shared banner. They were from People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and they were chanting that they would rather go naked than wear fur. Since it was eight degrees outside, their march was as abbreviated as their clothing, but it was greatly appreciated and approved by both the anti- and pro-fur factions and by some who were indifferent to the cause but
appreciated the method. There’s been some talk among the pro-fur folks about a similar parade with local trappers doing the marching, although one columnist fears that our trappers are so ugly the police might shoot them on sight. And so hairy they wouldn’t meet the “naked” standard.
It’s beautiful here now. The spruce trees are all covered with snow, and the Christmas lighting is like nothing we’ve ever seen before. Our mayor’s main interest, perhaps his only interest, is Christmas lighting, and we support him in this. Anchorage in the winter needs all the light it can get. Those other things,
like school budgets and city salaries, are largely boring and don’t affect us anyway.
This is the time of year when people get a little peculiar and start fighting over utility rates, school boundaries, the cost of telephone calls, sin taxes, whatever. This contentiousness increases geometrically through to spring break-up, by which time it has escalated into a city-wide free-for-all. On the theory of “When in Rome…” we have joined right in, and spend most of our time firing off letters and faxes. We decided today that we need to keep a scorecard because, with so many things going on, we’re afraid we’ve come down firmly on both sides of some issues.
Elections are also very intense and interesting. Most of the losers have conceded by now, but some vow they never will. There was a case last year of two people filling one seat for several weeks. This year, the Democratic Party‘s Senate candidate* had only one plank in her platform: her husband had failed the Alaska bar exam twenty-one times, and that wasn’t fair. She was the victor in a
primary-election field of seven so strange that the film of their debate has become a cult video classis.
Merry Christmas,
Dean and Nina
*She got our vote. When she was a member of the local school board, she regularly defended her stands to the point of fisticuffs, and she has the advantage of having a voice that will cut glass. We thought she would be truly representative of her constituency."
Update:
1. Her opponent in the Senate race was Senator-for-life Ted Stevens,who of course won, but who defied his long-time nickname and tenure by losing his office in 2008 in the midst of a graft scandal, and his life not long after in a plane crash. She is still around.
2. Reading about the Christmas lighting makes me wish I had a photograph of some of it to post here. One building, a midrise of five or six stories in downtown Anchorage, offers the most stunning display. Strings of small white lights descend from the roof a couple of stories, so close side-to-side and top-to-bottom that they almost touch. It has the effect of a lighted
waterfall - a not quite solid blanket of light that is staggered at the bottom, like the edge of a dentate leaf, and spans the width of the building. So serene, stunning, and beautiful, and so lacking in gaudy, that it puts every other display I''ve ever seen to shame, including the "exploding" Christmas trees in Rio.
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