New Addition to the Family.

After some letdowns at home, a little shake-me-up was in order. I finally decided it was time to try my hand at guitar. I'd briefly experimented with one a couple years ago, but gave it up for a lost cause. "More than a lifetime's worth of work with fiddle and harp" I thought at the time. But sometimes, you just have to stretch your self imposed limitations a bit.

So I got myself a student level acoustic. Nothing fancy, though I freely admit the knotwork art and moonphase fingerboard really appealed to the pagan chick in me. I confess I'm no great judge of instruments in general or guitars in particular, but I could tell it was one I'd keep reaching for off the wall just 'cause it looked *fun*. Every little bit helps. :)

Astonishingly, this time around it's coming along much easier - I think all those hours of just idling with a fiddle "mandolin style" have paid some dividends. The strings being separated by fourths instead of fifths is a little disorienting, but the adjustment isn't hard - especially once I puzzled out what the marks on the fingerboard meant. :)

Mostly I'm just picking out the occasional melody and rhythm right now, letting my ears and fingers get acquainted. But already I can see why it's so popular! Loads more versatile than a harp, despite the tradeoff. I think I'm gonna like this thing...


edit from the next morning.... ouch. That growing callouses thing ain't fun.

Only in Alaska...

Some things are just... unique in this town.

Say you're driving along one of the busier streets in the largest city in the state. And you happen to see a guy just off the sidewalk holding back a dog yapping its sweet head off an something out of view.

First thought is "oh joy, dogs having a disagreement." Second thought was "oh crap, maybe it's a bear or something, I should see if this feller needs help."

Good thing I slowed to see, 'cause right as I come up on the scene, HUGE momma moose and her two babies (each of which are easily the site of a TN whitetail) come tearing across the road right in front of the jeep. A touch faster and I'd have been ipcking moosebaby our of the front grill.. to say nothing of the car behind.

That'll start your day off with a bit of excitement.

Outside

It's been an.... interesting week or so Outside.

A few stored reminiscences may appear here over the next week or so as I unpack. The preview...

1. Washington State is everything Alaska would be, if it were warm enough to grow all kinds of lush woods, beautiful farmland, and overcrowded cities and suburbs. The mountains are nice though, and you occasionally see a Cessna dragging floats through the sky, so it's hard to get *too* homesick. Hot though.

2. Got a first-(okay, second)-hand look at modern lesbian culture visiting friends. Interesting "see the world from a different set of eyes" experience.

3. The advantage of packed cities - AWESOMELY fun attractions to visit here and there. And darn it, it's fun to play Alaskan Tourist down in America.

bedtime.

The nice thing about modern construction techniques?

It turns the baby earthquakes from "Oh my Gosh!!" to "ooooh - cool! Again! Again!"

Sunday drive, Take II

Alaska is funny place.

More particularly, Alaskans are funny people - especially near "city Alaska." See, there's lots of research type people up here. Lots of recreational and professional pilots, outdoorsmen, oil folk, the occasional tech geek, OG hippies, so forth and so on. Stir that all up with the freedom-loving spirit of folk drawn to the remains of the last frontier, and well...

The end effect is that a Sunday jaunt one mountain range over has a very unique feel to it. Take equal parts "Sunday drive," "mountain meadow hike," "picnic," and "Star Trek landing party" and you're getting pretty close.



In the space of a couple hours, you'll be:

• landing on a backcountry strip carved out on the dirt - or clearing one by hand.
• watching beaver swim and listening to the cascade of waterfalls miles distant - themselves hundreds of feet high, but only distant white scratches in your binoculars.
• hearing one of the local sciency types talk about the ancient grasses of the place (looked like miniature bamboo - cool!)
• keeping an eye out for black bear
• hunting for the remains of a downed plane
  
• plinking at ice chunks floating out in a glacial lake
• cooing over butterflies going to sleep in the fireweed
  
• passing around reindeer (caribou) smoked sausage and modern hardtack along with more conventional staples
• and of course... having the most interesting conversations you ever did imagine. One minute it can be elementary education, the next sciencey lectures or pilot stories.

Alaska is without a doubt the most amazing place I ever have had the good fortune to live. The land itself is without peer. The population... even moreso.

What an amazing place to be.

Learn somethin' new every day...

So several of the ol' gang got together at one of the local rifle ranges today. The actual shooty part was nice enough I suppose, but the best was wandering the line. You meet the most interesting people at rifle ranges. I've always loved the folks in the American "gun culture".. I passed through it sort of tangentially, in the "I guess I better learn how these things work since they're all over the place" way, and just fell in love with the people. There's just something in the confluence of historical literacy, technical aptitude/fascination, and freedom nuttiness that makes it just quintessentially care-free charming American. Great folks.

So anyhow.. the cowboy folks were one end.. they're prolly the most fun of all I think. It's like being surrounded by a whole clan of your favorite grampa all at once. But I didn't get a chance to talk with them much. More towards the middle was a curious new sight - a whole cadre of people in the new army uniform practicing with pistols.

"That's odd," I think ... "why would Army be on a civilian range?" Not wanting to interrupt them, I ask a nearby gentleman, who somewhat scornfully refers to them as "roadbumps."

"hunh?"

As it turns out, they were State Guard... a sort of Alaskan state militia, more "citizen" than "solidier" than either the NG or Reserve folks.. hence my informant's (career military) disdain.

Eventually, I get a chance to chat with one of 'em myself. Truth be told, they reminded me strongly of the CAP here or the Search and Rescue folks down Idaho way - a fairly loose volunteer organization, more or less an auxiliary to more professional organizations. Historically, something of an anachronism, left over from the full mobilization days of WWII - or the State Militias that predated the vast military we have now.

Interesting folks.

And Alaska has a militia. Hunh, cool. Good to know. :)

Birchwood from the air. Airstrip right next to a rifle range.
Someone's idea of heaven, I'm sure. :)

Eternal desires.

I've been on one of those "let's discover" tears recently, this time in the opposite direction from our friends Livy and Herodotus.... trying to get a layman's grasp on nanotech and bio-engineering. Something my boss mentioned got me curious, and it's been a week's worth of skimming academic papers, watching "for the plebs" documentaries and intro lectures from MIT and Yale open courseware (what a Godsend!) and the occasional forum here and there.

Amazing stuff on the horizon. How much of it goes the way of those lunar bases and space stations* we were dreaming of in the 60's is yet to be seen, but the film from labs of stuff they're doing now already looks like science fiction - near miraculous.

Wow.

The big shocker though was seeing how many people were talking about indefinitely deferring death, at least via aging. I've been so at home with the death/rebirth cycle in my pagan soul that seeing aging attacked on a disease model was curious. And yet...it makes sense, I guess. Why not try? I confess though, more than once I couldn't help but be bemused at how Christian in worldview a good many of the stolid materialists on one board or another were with the "death is an enemy to be defeated" stance.**

Then the host of more immediate things on offer, from lab-grown replacement windpipes "breathing" in jar to MAVs flying around like literal killer bees.

Whatever happens, our world now will someday soon seem as distant and strange as the horse-drawn carts grampa grew up seeing. Interesting times.











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* I can't be the only one that thinks the Space Race dying down right about the time we got good ICBM and targeting technology out of the deal is a cooincidence. Or who puts a good deal of the "we could be on the moon now" blame at the feet of the Great Society. Ugh.

** Like any internet community though, a few seemed intent on proving over again the old adage that those who most want any power are those least to be trusted with it. Yikes.
The more things change...