I am now posting on my blog inside my Umbrella Website! Click the image or click here
The reason why:
Too many blogs scattered about
I decided to write from one place and house everything in one spot nancyrodger.com
See you there
I left off 20 days ago, still writing about the first day of our Alaska trip. I was so excited, overwhelmed and present to our travels back then. In those 20 days since, so many things have happened to derail my conscious thoughts and I am not as present to those images I captured and stories that are waiting to come out.
Recently I had a dream about painting a small painting of blue and pink mounds and felt the familiar and satisfying sensation of holding a brush while scrubbing the paint to blend from one shade to the next, light to dark. My desire to create is always there, in the background and for the last several years, unfulfilled. Having that dream was a gift.
A few weeks ago, I was doing some collages to get a hold of unconscious sensations and thoughts. Richard looked at one and said, that is your creativity trying to get out. He was right. It is always there, knocking. I don’t make time, I don’t let it out, and it is like a dark brooding sad little monster wanting to play and transform itself into a shinning star.
Regardless, lately there is a sensation of what some call “high vibe” fluttering within me. The satisfaction of being me is sometimes really great. When I can forget all the stuff I drag around unconsciously. Stuff that builds over the years. An incident happens when we were little, we react, we don’t forget really. It is there in our past and here in our present and future, unless we become clear on those issues and realize how insignificant we can make them by just looking. Then they no longer can rule us in their subtle destructive ways.
So why am I not so creative now? I have a story that since a computer was plopped into my space, I stopped moving about and using my body and hands to make stuff and instead started to sit pretty still moving my fingers only. I do love and have loved all my computers over the years. They give me much joy and yes, they are a tool for a sort-of creativity, but not in the same way as a good stand up, pushing-furniture-in-prep-for-stripping-and decorating or swishing paint and smashing it into a canvas on an easel, can do. Knitting while heeling over on a sailboat calmly pressing my bare feet into the fiberglass seat base across from me which was actually below me at those times. Stretching, bending and pushing clutter around to make space for the next thing I needed to spontaneously create.
There was usually no heavy preparatory thought those days, just doing. No agonizing if I was doing the right project, the right thing. No thinking about where to get materials and comparing prices on the internet till the project was all about comparing prices and the original vision faded into something not so interesting. Back in those days a blistering idea would come about and all of a sudden be in passionate frantic process. Work didn’t hinder me. Work was part of it all.
Now that I have distinguished that, perhaps there is a way that spontaneity and creative satisfaction will come into my life again.
In the meantime, here is the Whaling Wall picture.
By GingerP43
I am still on that first day, telling you about what we did in Anchorage. After doing all that stuff I told you about in the previous posts, we stopped by the Inn at precisely 3:40 pm to refresh for a moment. Then we continued towards what we believed to be the COAST TRAIL. We had heard about several points that you can enter this mysterious trail. You could see the trail…. over there…. sometimes… but how to get on it was unclear. We eventually did find an entrance…near the MAGIC TUNNEL shown here positioned just left of Elderberry Park. Elderberries can be poisonous…I was wondering if there was some foreboding foreshadowing going on…. some message…. like maybe we should turn back…. but I kept my fears under wraps for fear of seeming … a sissy.
The Tunnel takes you to the trail heading south. The poison trail takes you to the north…. where we were headed. By now I had heard many tales about Moose. Moose are scarier then Bears. Moose, as I said before, can stomp the living daylights out of you. The eerie light wasn’t helping waylay my fear of encountering a Moose. I was looking over my shoulder, trying not to appear nervous, pretend cheery-talking to Richard about the beauty, how lucky we were to be in Alaska and alive etc…. all the while dreading my eminent death by Moose.
Elderberry Park has some sort of gravitational pull also…. I think Anchorage officials plant smiling kids and grandpas with kites at the park to distract from the Tilting Vortex. You could easily miss the force but I caught it on film (see left picture).
And then, over there, I could see the MUCK. We were told not to go out there. The tide can come in and within 1 hour it can climb 7 feet. If you are out there in the muck…. you can’t get out. It’s a quick-sandy type thing. Let’s just say you tell you friend… “Oh look, a pretty rock” so you go out onto the muck to get the rock and …you are stuck. Really stuck like sinking, sort of and there is suction all around pulling you into the muck and you can’t move an inch. Before, people would just die out there no matter what. Now, you have a chance, because they have some special machine thingy that they haul out there to pull you out…. that is, if you friend sees you stuck and knows who to call on the cell phone to get the machine and people out there. And that is if it isn’t already being used on someone else that was going for a rock in the muck somewhere else. If you or your friend don’t have a cell phone… and calling out into the mist doesn’t evoke anyone else… and your friend doesn’t run very fast… you should probably tell him or her to stick close by. You should hope they have brought a pen and paper so you can dictate any parting notes to loved ones.
Then we were kinda tricked into thinking we were about to get close to the water but the trail took a turn and we were headed back, skirting the edges of town on paved streets. But first we walked on this trail…. looking like what a trail should look like…
We were somnambulated by hanging flower baskets on posts and a fish fence.
.
Getting too scared.
I am off to walk the dog… tomorrow is the “Whaling Wall” after I finish the trail story. I know I said I would do it today…but… I didn’t lie… I just didn’t do it.
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Summer, my daughter, and her boyfriend Aaron created the farm in our backyard. This spring Aaron was an intern at the Green String Farm in Petaluma. While there he learned a lot about analyzing soil and replenishing it with microbial tea and crushed rock. He wanted to start a garden in our back yard and enlisted the help of Summer. They brought our soil up to snuff and started planting. We are so thankful for this and are enjoying the yummy veggies. The more prolific ones are Napa Cabbage, Butter Lettuce and Arugula, my favorite lettuce. Echinacea, Broccoli, Green Onions and Tomatoes are doing OK too. Aaron set us up with a worm compost bin that he found at a garage sale. He ordered the worms especially for this purpose. Now we throw bits of our compostables from the kitchen into the bin and the worms make it into rich soil and “tea” for the garden!
Probably only in my dreams…..does anyone really care that I have promised to post pictures of murals in Anchorage and haven’t yet, except for the one in the last post. As you know, I will be going OUT OF ORDER …. to do so and will have to skip the details and pictures about the HUGE SCARY WALK we did on the outskirts of Anchorage…. But OK, I will do it.
This is the first mural we noticed walking back into the downtown area. It was done by Ziggy in 2007 and dedicated to Kathy Hiles.
I am off for a swim in the wind.
Several people have asked why we went to Alaska. I usually answer with some cryptic phrase but here is a whole paragraph:
One of Richard’s favorite books that he read back in the 70′s was “Coming into the country” by John McPhee. Since then he has always wanted to go to Alaska. Daisy, his x student has lived there for 3 years and has been corresponding about her life there. He has been talking about visiting her for awhile. We caught up with her in San Francisco this spring. By July we decided to ask if we could visit and she suggested what we should do on the way up to see her in Fairbanks.
Getting back to the rest of the 1st day traveling around Anchorage……
I forgot to tell you that while at the Bureau of Land Management we saw a movie about the 1964 earthquake that devastated Anchorage and demolished some small towns to the south. That was an eye opener. I had heard about the earthquake but there was footage I had never seen and interviews with people survived. One woman had two young children. They ran out of there nice large house on a bluff and road the cracking and rolling pieces of snow covered earth. The quake lasted 5 minutes and was the second largest in recorded history. The ensuing series of tsunamis did more damage then the earthquake. Here is a personal account from a resident of Kodiak.
Here is a a shot of a building that still stands next to the block that was sunk during the earthquake. The city doesn’t having planning codes as we do in the Bay Area so anything goes. There are hodgepodges of building that differ in looks, size, shape, age and there doesn’t seem to be an imposed unified sense of direction.
There are many galleries in Anchorage and a lot of good art within. A large enclosed market houses smaller galleries showcasing Alaskan art. I wanted to take one of these paddles home for my friend Gordon who makes his own kayaks and has one of the lightest paddles ever made.
Right before 2pm, we ran back to the Bureau of Land Management to see the Fox from the zoo. This time I took off my belt and kept if off for the whole trip. No need to wear if it held me up at the check point and set off alarms. The talk about the zoo was really great. It all started because someone won an elephant. The elephant was such a novelty in Alaska that the prize winner had to set up viewing times to control the flocks of visitors wanting to see it in the barn. Then people started dropping off other animals that needed care. So the zoo was born.
Time for the tour with Emily, a college student studying law and fascinated with Captain Cook. She told us all about the first visitors to Alaska and focused on Cook ending with a story about how he died on a beach in Hawaii. His crew and the Hawaiians were fed up with him enough to beat him to death. Arg matey!
A totem in front of the Federal Building.
Next post will be murals……promise….. So much happened this day!
August 15th, Wednesday, was our first morning in Anchorage….Here is Richard putting on his waterproof hiking shoes. He looks cranky in the picture but he wasn’t. 
You never know when rain might strike. Hey …the light is the same as it was at midnight!
We chatted with the other guests at the inn and discovered their favorite things they had done while in Alaska. Armed with the Anchorage section of Frommer’s (I tear out sections and carry them in my backpack) we started our march around the city. First we headed over to one of the bagillion visitor centers. What we call the “main one” handles ticket purchases to many of the tours around town and excursions to outside environs. We popped in there and decided to jump on a shuttle to the Native Heritage Center, 8 miles away. Missed that by one minute, so decided to continue on an exploration of downtown. While we were in Anchorage, we pretty much walked everywhere. There are shuttles to take you here and there but we prefer to get the movement going and help burn up the calories of all the good food we were eating… fish twice a day…yum.
Continuing on, Richard pretty much just saw my back or had to slow down because I was doing my usual…..snapping away…. too often. I have a Cannon s90 which is a nice little point and shoot however….it is the first camera I have had without a view finder. It has a large display and even though I got a little stick-on shade that pops open easily, taking pictures is not at it’s optimum. A big display in the daylight is hard to look at. I have to admit that I used to take huge amounts of pictures with very few out takes. I used medium formats and regular slrs when I was a professional photographer. Now I prefer the little guys that I can shove in my pocket and yank out in a second. This trip I realized that I am taking way to many pictures and most of them are just so so. I can’t see what the picture looks like before I snap so I shrug and snap anyway. There is less of a concious and mystical connection between me and the photograph. I miss that… I hope someone makes a nice little guy that has an old fashioned view finder PLUS all the features I like, especially the raw files so I can mess with them in photoshop.
The next stop was the Bureau of Land Management which has a funny check point right inside the front door. Because it is a federal building, they gotta search everything and put you through a metal detector. So here we are, a line of about 5 tourists, taking off belts and bangle bracelets to circle around and go through the zapper again. The friendly smiling rangers are supervising. 15 feet away outside, is the local gang, hanging with the oldest reindeer hot dog vendor and his helper both wearing quilts. There are so many people out there just having a good time, in fold up chairs, in various work outfits. Some handing out brochures on their tours next to the guys with the old dog sled and a little video about how to make one. 
There are flowers here and everywhere in Anchorage. In hanging buckets, in pots and in the ground. Really well manicured and perfect. The growing conditions and rain make it effortless. The people in the bureau are really great. The publications are sooo awesome. Lots of maps and details about the land, how to get places and events and lectures in their theater. We decided we would cram some stuff in elsewhere and go back to see someone from the zoo and a fox at 2pm followed by a Ranger narrated hike!
Of course….. we headed for FOOD. The place was Orso . We had our first piece of fish, a salmon, bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich! I didn’t take a picture but lifted this one of a salmon plate off their site.
Looking at it makes me want to go back there. THAT was a really good sandwich and such an interesting place. Kinda fancy. Here is a pic of Richard playing with his phone…..that drove me crazy. This summer, he was even texting next to a lovely creek at our campgrounds where I was trying to have a hike in “nature”. He needs to learn how to text and walk at the same time. Geeez.
I know this part of my blogging might be really boring and I promised that I would show you pictures of the cool murals all over downtown. But…..I am blogging details probably because I am insecure about my memory and want a record to revisit. And, I need to prove to myself now, that I can actually remember what happened several weeks ago.
Strolling to our next destination we meet a young woman on a swing balancing an adorable sled dog puppy… I melted of course. She gave us a brochure about the sled dog demo.
Then I turned around and low and behold…. a dog walker….just like in San Francisco! He wanted to talk forever…. one little dog he walked was there only in the summer. His owner moved to San Diego, to winter.
I am sorry, I really misjudged. I am not any were near even the middle of the day’s events and far away from the mural pictures so I am going to go against my rules (which I have broken only once so far) and give you a picture OUT OF ORDER.
Here is one of the murals. Now I am going for a beer. Hope to see you tomorrow.
From the Anchorage airport, we had a nice taxi driver who was from Somalia. He lived in Alaska during the summers and winters in Ethiopia. He told us how the winter in Anchorage had been so mild that the beatles weren’t killed off and consequently had been destroying fruit trees such as cherries. He shared his knowledge on the growing season in Alaska and how he crosses plants to create hardier versions for growing in Ethiopia. In Alaska the growing season is short but there are so many hours of daylight that the plants get to be HUGE.
Shown below is a pic by Clark Mishler (renowned Alaskan photographer) of a giant cabbage.
Here is a list of state vegetable records set in last year’s Alaska State Fair:
I digress. We arrived pretty late to our hotel (there’s me in front shown on top of this post), like maybe a little after midnight. Richard wanted to go on a walk around town but I decided to take advantage of a drowsy spell. I felt sleep coming on and went for it after blocking the sun by closing the light tight curtains.
Next post will be actually WALKING around Anchorage. Some cool pics of murals.
As we got closer to Anchorage it looked like it wasn’t getting any darker, certainly not dark enough to be 11pm! I kept snapping pictures even though visibility was not good. That is what I do….. I snap snap snap. It drives Richard nuts. Here’s one that gives you the impression that the sun is finally setting and darkness is about to arrive…..but no…….It never got dark, in fact, it seemed to be getting lighter.
I saw a road and several lakes. Maybe a hut. I just learned that there is an airport there. Also I just found this article about Fire Island that I intend to read.
In case you are wondering where Anchorage is, here is a screenshot from google earth. Juneau is the capital of Alaska. Lots of people want Anchorage to be the capital of Alaska. Juneau is way down on the south east snippet of Alaska and kind of far away from the rest of the state. You can’t even get there by car from the rest of Alaska. You gotta precariously fly in.
Here is Anchorage at 11pm!!!!! So Light! Here is a link that shows charts on daylight hours in various parts of Alaska.
July 14th at 7:30 pm, I was looking out the window of our plane we just borded in San Francisco. We were headed to Anchorage, Alaska. We would arrive there at Midnight, while the sun was still up.
I turned my head to see Richard so excited he was about to crack his face.
somewhere between Shasta and Crater Lake.
An hour or so into the flight, I looked out the window. I could see lots of… mountains inbetween clouds and then what appeared to be….. Crater Lake? The visibility wasn’t so great but I could see the shapes of things below. To double check, I got out my ipod and turned to google earth. Alaska air had free wifi up till we hit Canada. Google earth gave me more info and pictures of what I was looking at!
