Thoughts in Random Patterns

Planes

One of the things you notice in a small town where there isn't much noise is what noise there is.  In addition to overlooking Kachemak Bay and the Homer Spit and part of the Kenai mountains, we overlook the Homer airport, which generates a surprising number of small plane takeoffs and the run-up engine checks prior to takeoff. 

I've traveled many miles in small planes throughout Alaska, mostly in high school as an orchestra geek.  I was fortunate enough to play in the Fairbanks Symphony and the Arctic Chamber Orchestra and saw parts of Alaska that are only accessible by air.  It's also the way to get to where the bears live.

 

Summer Break

We're in Homer, Alaska for the month of July this year.  It's easy to see why we like it here.  Here's the view from our front porch when I arrived:

Here are a couple of shots from the airplane window as I flew in to Anchorage, with the peaks of the Alaska Range poking through the clouds.

 

One of the terrific things about coming here for a month is having a a calendar with no appointments on it -- a thing of beauty, leading to the best night's sleep I've had in months.

Although I did see blue sky when I arrived, I haven't really since it since.

 

The weather forecast for the next week is quite consistent:

We may end up drinking lots of coffee.  Here are some fun local roasts:

NY Times: Observatory - Why Prince William Sound Isn’t Free of Oil From Exxon Valdez

Twenty years after the Exxon Valdez supertanker spilled nearly 11 million gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound in southern Alaska, everything is pristine and natural again, right?

Not exactly.

A study in 2004 estimated that perhaps 25,000 gallons of oil remained along the sound’s gravel beaches and was degrading very slowly. So that raised a question for researchers: Why, despite one of the largest environmental cleanups in history, has some oil persisted?

Michel C. Boufadel, an environmental engineer at Temple University, and a colleague, Hailong Li, have provided an answer. In a paper in Nature Geoscience, they report that the oil has become trapped in a zone of low permeability below the beach surface.

“We could only answer this question by understanding the movement of water within these beaches,” Dr. Boufadel said.

Field measurements showed that the beaches have two layers — a top one, a few inches to a few feet thick, that is roughly a thousand times as permeable as the layer below. The composition of the two is not very different, Dr. Boufadel said, but it is quite likely that compaction due to tidal forces has made the lower one less permeable.

Dr. Boufadel said oil floating on the water remained in the upper layer until changes in the water table allowed it to drip slowly into the lower layer, where it remains.

“In the lower layer there’s not enough motion and not enough oxygen for the oil to degrade,” he said.

But the oil can be released when otters or other creatures dig into the beaches. Even in their field studies, Dr. Boufadel said, when they would dig into deeper sediments, “the whole place would smell of oil.”

One possibility for cleaning up the trapped oil, Dr. Boufadel said, would be to inject chemicals into the lower layer that would promote biodegradation.

By HENRY FOUNTAIN

Published: January 18, 2010

via www.nytimes.com

The Year in Review

Or, where did it go?

Or, here are some of the big things in 2009 I meant to blog about, but didn't.  Good intentions pave the road to somewhere?!?

All the way back in May I went to Tanzania and Kenya for two weeks with The Nature Conservancy, which was my second trip to Africa, but won't be my last.  I am grateful for the opportunity to be involved with such an excellent organization and provide some capacity building support to their partners there.

Also in May, my Mom moved to Colorado into a retirement community near me, her grandchildren Morgan and Drew, and my sister Martha.  Sister Wendy moved back to Anchorage, Alaska in June after 10 years in Colorado, so we're holding steady on the family headcount here.  I'm looking forward to having Mom as my date for all kinds of cultural events in the years to come.  Brad can avoid ballet, museums, and symphony henceforth.

I retreated for almost an entire summer of writing at Keystone, which was wonderfully productive and peaceful.  I did manage to blog about that.

I have continued knitting like a fiend this fall.  I made a baby blanket for the adorable Rollie Cohen in blue:

Then I worked for a long time on a scarf for my amazing personal assistant, Kelli.  This is a complicated Diamond Brocade pattern using a beautiful hand-painted 100% alpaca yarn called High Country Vineyard from Lonesome Stone Yarn in Granby, Colorado stocked at the massive and excellent Shuttles, Spindles and Skeins in Boulder. 

I was very happy with how this project turned out, and was delighted to make a gift for Kelli worthy of her generous spirit and hard work.

A person new in my life in 2009 that I'm extra grateful for is Colette from Room to Room who has been working with me to organize my life.  It has been amazing to open the last boxes of college papers and throw away anything I don't want anymore.  I'm learning that just because something is useful, that doesn't mean it's useful to me.  I look forward to removing more clutter from my physical world and implementing systems that allow me to focus my time on what I really care about. Thanks, Colette.

One of the areas that I'm spending more energy on and really enjoying is the philanthropic work I do through the Anchor Point Fund, particularly the Anchor Point Internships in Global Leadership at Wellesley College.  I have thoroughly enjoyed working with Joanne Murray, the director of both the Center for Work and Service and the Madeleine Korbel Albright Institute for Global Affairs which has its inaugural program in January 2010.  I look forward to continuing to shape the vision of what global leadership means in the 21st century with Joanne.

We funded four internships in Africa during the summer and will do so again in 2010, and many years to come, with the interns presenting their experiential learning results at the Tanner Conference in the fall.

Here is a photo of 3 of the 4 Anchor Point Interns and me in the spring of 2009:

And a different set of 3 of the 4 interns and me in November 2009, along with Salwa Muhammad ('06), Assistant Director of  Internships & Service Learning at the Center for Work and Service: 

 

We each ordered the gorgeous lobster at our celebratory dinner at Blue Ginger Restaurant:

I am deeply honored to have been elected to the board of trustees at Wellesley College and look forward to learning how to be an effective trustee and serving the College during my tenure.

In 2010 I'm thinking of reviving some other dormant skills since the knitting has been so satisfying.  My viola gathers dust in its case and I think I'm going to try to find a way to bring viola back into my life.

We'll be going to Alaska for the month of July, and we love company.  If you're considering a trip to Alaska, come stay with us in Homer.

I'm not making any specific New Year's Resolutions, but I will continue to try to do more blogging.  I have enjoyed tweeting on Twitter, but I think I do have some thoughts that take more than 140 characters to express.  I'll post them here.

Best wishes to all for a healthy and happy 2010!

Wordle Weather

During the past week I've spent a lot of time and energy complaining about the weather here in Homer.  And here's why:

Brad and I talked pretty much every day about going home, but here's the weather forecast for Denver / Boulder / Eldorado Canyon for today -- the usual July weather:

 

So going home wasn't the solution either.  Sigh. 

To amuse myself while indoors and in my pajamas, I caught up on what my friends were blogging, and found Wordle, which is this fantastically diverting and entertaining little website, courtesy of Ryan, that made my delicious tagcloud into art:

And another scintillating version with the same color palette, but with the words oriented mostly vertically instead of mostly horizontally:

And yet another version, with a radically different orientation and font and color palette:

And another one with the same font and color, but with half vertical and half horizontal:

Fascinating, isn't it?  I could go on, but I won't.  You should try it for yourself now.

The good news is that the sun is shining enough for me to stop goofing around and start my summer reading.  I've read a book each day this week, which is a more typical Alaska summer reading pace, and I have every intention of doing a summary of summer reading post.  Just as soon as I get out of these pajamas.

It Must Be Spring

The 36th running of the Iditarod sled dog race started on Saturday, with 96 teams signed up for the 1,049 mile race from Anchorage to Nome.  The Anchorage Daily News website has great photos and a daily newsletter about the progress of the mushers as they cross the Alaskan bush.  This is definitely an extreme sport.

Iditarod

Today is the ceremonial start of the 1,100 mile Iditarod sled dog race.  The official race website has a nice interactive map and the Anchorage newspaper has extensive coverage. 

The End of the Trail

Legendary Iditarod sled dog musher Susan Butcher died of leukemia on August 5th at the age of 51.  See the Anchorage Daily News, the Fairbanks Daily News Miner, the Boston Globe, the Iditarod site, and the Susan Butcher website for words about this incredible woman.

An Alaskan Childhood

Or:  Not the 'Burbs

My earliest memories take place here, watching the sun set behind Mt. Redoubt across Cook Inlet and thinking that the golden path across the water actually went somewhere.

It really is a beautiful place.

And here is Brad, doing his version of enjoying the scenery:

The sun shone today for the first time in maybe a week, and I was nearly delirious with happiness.  Cloudy, gray, rainy days really wear me down.  We drove up to Anchor Point so I could take about 200 pictures of the same mountains, ocean, seagulls, and sunset.  I frequently think about getting a smaller digital camera that would fit easily into purses and be truly portable, and then I have the chance to take advantage of the capabilities of my Nikon D100 and I reconsider.  I'm still learning how to frame things, and how to make the horizon level, and other quite basic things; but this camera sure helps.  I'll upload everything to my Alaska Summer 2006 album, even the crooked horizons, and edit later. 

There's an entertaining series of shots of pulling a boat out of the water using a big farm tractor, and lots and lots of photos of mountain, ocean, seagulls, and sunset.

On our way home from the beach we saw a baby and mama moose on the side of the road.  It was getting dark enough the the aperature stayed open a long time and they photos are pretty blurry -- but fun anway.

Just a Little One

We were just reading quietly, enjoying a beautiful evening, when I felt the house shake just a little bit.  That's what we do for excitement up here in Alaska..