Dear all,
"Break-up" is Alaskan for what other people call "spring" (and New Englanders call "mud season"). I call it the “I can’t get to sleep anymore because the sun doesn’t even start to go down until 9pm and where the heck did all this daylight even come from anyway” season. The snow is still falling lightly, the boyfriend remains clean-shaven, and the (pre-Pevensie) Narnian layer of snow and ice covering everything is starting to break-up. New features of the landscape begin to emerge: people's yards, lines telling you where the road actually starts, bears ...
We think the bears are awake because a few dogs have gone missing from the neighborhood (sorry, but it’s true). If/when I actually see them, I want to know how to shoot a gun. I don’t plan on carrying it – that’s the boyfriend’s job – but I do want to know how to use it. You know, just in case the bear gets to him first. So for the moment, all outdoors adventuring has been put on hold until I can bring to you the second part of the Alaska-grams Playwriting Series, this one to be titled: “How to Shoot a Gun: A Play in (hopefully no more than) Three Acts.” In the meantime, we’ve been playing a lot of Monopoly. And while it will come as no surprise to anyone that I make a horrible capitalist, I was pleased to discover that I do sort of enjoy playing the game.
In keeping with my “A” series (Austen and Achebe already under the belt), I’m reading Jane Addams’ “Twenty Years at Hull House.” I picked it up because the blurb on the back bore a strong resemblance to “The Long Loneliness,” an autobiography by Dorothy Day that I have read many, many times. I haven’t actually gotten to the part yet where she moves to Chicago, founds Hull House, and changes the pattern of American engagement with the working class, but I have been struck by her discussion of the “snare of preparation” that Tolstoy claimed both engaged and ruined our young adulthood. In the very years when we are best suited to go out and actually do, we find ourselves caught instead in “curious inactivity.” (And let’s not pretend that playing Monopoly counts, either.)
Last weekend we did go out – way out – to the northern end of the peninsula where friends’ family has a homestead, and a sauna. This was not a “sahna,” fyi. That’s the sissy kind of steam bath. This was the Finnish word, which I can’t reproduce for you here because I honestly wasn’t too preoccupied with pronunciation while I was sitting in the 200 degree temperature. The family chose and settled on this homestead a long while ago – long for Alaska being anytime fifty years ago, of course – and now much of the family has portioned off land and built their own houses around the lake. The main road out holds their last name – for privacy’s sake, let’s call it “Doe Trail.” The smaller roads carry first names: Sue’s Lane, Jack’s Drive. So Mary Doe lives, basically, at the intersection of Mary and Doe. There’s only one sauna, though – and that’s where everyone congregated at noon on Sunday, to sit and sweat and catch up. Being half-naked and sweaty is the best way to really bond with your family, I think. And it was fun, even if I skipped the part where you emerge from the sauna, skin steaming and face red, and walk through the snow down to the lake where a garden hose neatly transfers water through a hole in the ice and onto you. I opted for the slightly less abrupt “sit outside in your bathing suit and slowly lose all your body heat until you are cold and want to go back into the sauna.” Maybe next time.
In the meantime, I continue to search for a job that doesn’t involve making other people coffee, to contemplate both the strength of the familial unit and the snare of preparation, and to look around -- very carefully -- before I walk out of the house.
Much love to you all,
Showing posts with label the weather. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the weather. Show all posts
April 6, 2011
February 1, 2011
Day ... oh, I have to start counting now. Day 32!
Dear all,
My Alaskan monthaversary has arrived! Though I left New England on Dec 31st, I didn’t arrive in Alaska until Jan 1st (see Day 1 for discussion of how boring it is to celebrate New Year’s Eve on a plane). How did I celebrate my monthaversary, you ask?
I went to work.
First, though, it is time to discuss two very important things. In addition to concerns about moose, questions about S. Palin, and more concerns about bears, many people have wondered aloud (or through email) about two issues: the dark, and the temperature.
Let me address the question of the dark first. Yes, it is currently dark here – but that’s because it’s 10pm, really cloudy, and something close to a new moon. Where I am, on the Kenai peninsula (more on that later), we got 7 hrs, 47 min of daylight: sunrsise at 9:21am and sunset at 5:08 pm. (In comparison, Boston is currently getting roughly 10hrs). The longest night of the year, the Winter Solstice, is roughly 5 ½ hrs of daylight. At the Summer Solstice, they see about 19 ½ hrs here. (And remember, this is only for this part of Alaska. It’s more drastic to the north – and less so in the south-eastern part.)
Today we gained 5 min and 17s of sunlight. The day after the Winter Solstice, they gained only 6 sec of daylight. The day after the Summer Solstice will be a gain of only 3 sec. Can you see the pattern? The greatest differences in length of day fall in mid-December and mid-June, at the Solstices. But the greatest change in daylight comes at the Equinoxes – mid-March and mid-September. This year, for most of March I will see almost 6 minutes more of daylight per day. That’s about a half-hour gain of daylight each week. And that - the amount of change - is how the daylight (or lack thereof) really affects someone.
When I was working this fall on the Cape, I often went into the classroom at 6:30am (to be ready for a 7:15 start time) and it was mostly still dark. If I stayed to help students or get grading done and left around 4:30, then it was mostly dark again. So it’s not really the shortness of daylight that I think is most bothersome, because I think most people with 9-to-5s rarely see daylight in the winter anyway, as long as they live somewhere north of the Bahamas, unless they get out on their lunch break. My guess is that the real struggle here comes in only having a few moments of change for most of December and January, so it seems like the darkness of the days just drags on and on.
But, having only been here for a month (and counting!), that’s only a guess.
[As a side note, I had to do some googling to get these sunrise/sunset times for December and June, and in the midst of this ran across this delightful question: How many days does Alaska have? (The answer, as provided by wiki.answers.com: "365.23 on the average every year, just like every other place on earth.")]
As for the cold, this is the part with which I struggle. It is disconcerting that the temperature displays outside the banks – you know, the tall, LED ones that flash the time and the temperature – find it necessary to post a plus sign before the number. Because it could just as easily be -15 as +15, this time of year. And in fact, it does seem to have been uncharacteristically warm – hovering between 15 and 30 – sorry, between +15 and +30 -- in what is, as I still cannot say without laughing, “warm enough to snow.” There were some days that were below 0, and that was cold. There were some days that hovered right on 0, and unfortunately, one of those days I tried to go ice skating for the first time in a few years, and it was a little bit disastrous. (Disastrous for my ego, is all – I only lasted about 10 minutes on the ice and then had to spend 20 min in the car calming myself down until I could feel my toes again. Which, obviously, were really cold, but really fine.)
Just like I had to learn how to control my body in its relationship to gravity, many years ago, and then again with water not too long after that when I started swimming, and again in the crowds and chaos that came with living in a city, I’m learning how to control my body – mental and physical – in what I would previously have told you were temperatures just too cold to go out. And after weathering the recent spat of 0 degree days, the current “warm enough to snow” days of 25 degrees here on the Peninsula really do seem somewhat balmy.
Oh, and I’m here on the Peninsula now because, with the help of Chester’s mom, I was able to find some work in a bakery in the town where she lives. Chester is still in Anchorage, about 2 hours away where it appears to be slightly warmer. He’s coming down this weekend, the weekend after that I’ll go up to Anchorage (sound familiar, HJ?). The weather should turn towards 0 again soon, which is okay with me. As it says on the forecast, conditions in Alaska remain unsettled.
I’m working in front of a bakery oven all morning, so I don’t mind.
Much love,
My Alaskan monthaversary has arrived! Though I left New England on Dec 31st, I didn’t arrive in Alaska until Jan 1st (see Day 1 for discussion of how boring it is to celebrate New Year’s Eve on a plane). How did I celebrate my monthaversary, you ask?
I went to work.
First, though, it is time to discuss two very important things. In addition to concerns about moose, questions about S. Palin, and more concerns about bears, many people have wondered aloud (or through email) about two issues: the dark, and the temperature.
Let me address the question of the dark first. Yes, it is currently dark here – but that’s because it’s 10pm, really cloudy, and something close to a new moon. Where I am, on the Kenai peninsula (more on that later), we got 7 hrs, 47 min of daylight: sunrsise at 9:21am and sunset at 5:08 pm. (In comparison, Boston is currently getting roughly 10hrs). The longest night of the year, the Winter Solstice, is roughly 5 ½ hrs of daylight. At the Summer Solstice, they see about 19 ½ hrs here. (And remember, this is only for this part of Alaska. It’s more drastic to the north – and less so in the south-eastern part.)
Today we gained 5 min and 17s of sunlight. The day after the Winter Solstice, they gained only 6 sec of daylight. The day after the Summer Solstice will be a gain of only 3 sec. Can you see the pattern? The greatest differences in length of day fall in mid-December and mid-June, at the Solstices. But the greatest change in daylight comes at the Equinoxes – mid-March and mid-September. This year, for most of March I will see almost 6 minutes more of daylight per day. That’s about a half-hour gain of daylight each week. And that - the amount of change - is how the daylight (or lack thereof) really affects someone.
When I was working this fall on the Cape, I often went into the classroom at 6:30am (to be ready for a 7:15 start time) and it was mostly still dark. If I stayed to help students or get grading done and left around 4:30, then it was mostly dark again. So it’s not really the shortness of daylight that I think is most bothersome, because I think most people with 9-to-5s rarely see daylight in the winter anyway, as long as they live somewhere north of the Bahamas, unless they get out on their lunch break. My guess is that the real struggle here comes in only having a few moments of change for most of December and January, so it seems like the darkness of the days just drags on and on.
But, having only been here for a month (and counting!), that’s only a guess.
[As a side note, I had to do some googling to get these sunrise/sunset times for December and June, and in the midst of this ran across this delightful question: How many days does Alaska have? (The answer, as provided by wiki.answers.com: "365.23 on the average every year, just like every other place on earth.")]
As for the cold, this is the part with which I struggle. It is disconcerting that the temperature displays outside the banks – you know, the tall, LED ones that flash the time and the temperature – find it necessary to post a plus sign before the number. Because it could just as easily be -15 as +15, this time of year. And in fact, it does seem to have been uncharacteristically warm – hovering between 15 and 30 – sorry, between +15 and +30 -- in what is, as I still cannot say without laughing, “warm enough to snow.” There were some days that were below 0, and that was cold. There were some days that hovered right on 0, and unfortunately, one of those days I tried to go ice skating for the first time in a few years, and it was a little bit disastrous. (Disastrous for my ego, is all – I only lasted about 10 minutes on the ice and then had to spend 20 min in the car calming myself down until I could feel my toes again. Which, obviously, were really cold, but really fine.)
Just like I had to learn how to control my body in its relationship to gravity, many years ago, and then again with water not too long after that when I started swimming, and again in the crowds and chaos that came with living in a city, I’m learning how to control my body – mental and physical – in what I would previously have told you were temperatures just too cold to go out. And after weathering the recent spat of 0 degree days, the current “warm enough to snow” days of 25 degrees here on the Peninsula really do seem somewhat balmy.
Oh, and I’m here on the Peninsula now because, with the help of Chester’s mom, I was able to find some work in a bakery in the town where she lives. Chester is still in Anchorage, about 2 hours away where it appears to be slightly warmer. He’s coming down this weekend, the weekend after that I’ll go up to Anchorage (sound familiar, HJ?). The weather should turn towards 0 again soon, which is okay with me. As it says on the forecast, conditions in Alaska remain unsettled.
I’m working in front of a bakery oven all morning, so I don’t mind.
Much love,
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