Magical Places and Marvelous Creatures

Sometimes a postcard message is as much inspired by the image on the postcard as a message to another person. I sent this postcard and message below some time in April of 2009 from my home in Fairbanks, Alaska, to Suyhou City, P.R. China. Jinlin was the user name (no longer used) of a postcarder acquaintance met through Postcrossing, an online international postcard exchange project. At 150 words, this was a relatively long message for the reverse half-side of this 4 by 6 inch postcard. A typical postcard message In English runs less than 100 words. I had to use my fountain pen with a fine nib to squeeze all the words in. I consider my message to Jinlin an ekphrasis -- a fancy Greek word that means art inspired by art, typically poems (in this case a prose-poem) based on a work of visual art.  

Sandhill Crane in flight. Creamer's Field Migratory Waterfowl Refuge,

Fairbanks, Alaska. Photo by Ted Swem. Alaska Bird Observatory:

 www.alaskabird.org.

To Jinlin in Suzhou,
Suyhou City must be incredible. How lucky for us who live in magical places. I imagine floating the canals, wandering the expansive gardens, strolling past the new museum, pondering how much blood and sweat civilization requires to flower. I hope you enjoy this Sandhill Crane postcard. After the long, bleak and bitter cold days of winter, our heads tilt and ears open as flowers for the sun hungry for spring light. These magnificent birds, with their sweeping wing span and prehistoric call --- more a guttural crank ---, ride on lofty winds, some, all the way from Mexico. They give us pause to ponder what is elemental, what is winged, what is astonishing, what is simultaneously primitive and modern yet natural and supernatural in every creature.
I pray many blessings for you and your young son, Kris

Misspelled postcards

A couple of images today from Alaska's past to show the majesty of nature and the frailty of humanity. The images above have beautiful scenes adorned with misspelled words. The titles of these two photo postcards should read, "Alaska" not "Alsaska" and "Nanook" not "Nonook." It proves, if nothing else, that people occasionally misspell words. We all know that and tend to look the other way. We know by the context what was meant.

On the other hand, a local candidate is suing the state of Alaska because he believes that every voter should also be perfect spellers. In the Alaskan U.S. senate race, Joe Miller is trailing Lisa Murkowski by a large margin. Miller disputes more than 2,000 write-in ballots. He has questioned ballots that read, "Murkowski, Lisa" and "Murkowsky" and "Merkowski." He has also rejected a ballot in which the first letter of Lisa's name was written in cursive. The down side of all this on Miller's part is that by interpreting the law so strictly he risks disenfranchising voters, especially people who don't always cross every "t" and dot every "i" -- like so many Alaskan voters for whom English is their second language or for whom like me never won a spelling bee.

Alaska, the big one

A question for your elementary school-age kids. Which U.S. state has the largest land area? This postcard answers the question.

Alaska is so big you can put Texas, California, Montana within its borders and still have plenty of room for Idaho. Now that's big.

Compared to the world's countries, Alaska ranks 15th in size, just a little smaller than Lybia and nearly 27,000 square miles larger than Iran.

A few other facts, Alaska has the most coastline of any state and half the world's glaciers.

A Warm Tent Is Better Than No Tent

Though it might not look like much this 16X32 foot tent was home to the Bernhardt family for 13 months in 1977-78 while they built their cabin in Alaska's Interior. Dick and Donna Bernhardt shared a love of the land and a desire to find a home away from the big city, so they left Anchorage and moved to Tok, Alaska. Like many Alaskans, they literally carved a life out a wilderness where temperatures can reach 60 below zero (Fahrenheit). See their story here. Today you can still see tent dwellers in Fairbanks and other parts of Interior Alaska making a life for themselves in this time honored fashion.

I came by this postcard when I moved to Alaska in 1990. I had already lived in a tepee and built my own home in Northern Michigan. The card probably was responsible for giving me the idea that I could do it all over again in Alaska. In 1994, my wife and I built our own cabin 15 mile north of Healy, Alaska. I can report that there is nothing romantic about hammering roof nails at 35 below zero.

Dog Team 1920; uncanny resemblance

I bought this postcard at a flea market at our neighborhood mall a couple of weeks ago. A wonderful find for a retired dog musher and postcard collector. The card is postmarked from Juneau, Alaska, July 19, 1921. Published by the HHT Company, the card was addressed to "Mrs. Wm. Watson Jr., Monto Rio, Calif." The message reads: Dear Jean, We're having a wonderful time & lovely weather to-day. Ruth"

This postcard caught my eye for several reasons: a watercolor like composition, a good image of an historical dog team, and the good condition of the card. Yet the clincher was that the lead dog in this scene is a near spitt'in image of the hardest working and by far the most bizarre sled dogs I ever owned. His name was Lauper. He was a cast off dog from another musher. After a fight in which he was malled by an entire dog team, his heart stopped on the operating table. Six weeks later he finished the Iditarod. He was an unusual sled dog with a small head. The tip of his right ear was lopped off, thus the name, and his snout, legs and torso was crisscrossed with scars. Yet even in defeat he was never defeated. He had a swagger to his step, the kind that said, "Come on, give me your best shot." He was a committed fighter, a stupid fighter to be sure, who always picked fights with bigger and tougher dogs and he always lost. Yet, he'd never back down and even go out of his way to challenge another male. I swear, he could antagonize another male dog who was minding his own business on the other side of the dog yard. He was an idiot but I think that is what made him a great sled dog. I don't think he had enough gray matter to imagine anything other than his current condition. Had he just got drug beneath overflow or kicked by a moose he didn't remember it the next moment. Therefore his work ethic was off the charts. When traveling down the most bone-jarring trail he was unfazed. His tug line was always stretched like a banjo string. The greatest thing about him, like many dogs, is that you were the center of his universe -- the fixed and perfect star in his warped universe.

Lauper 1990-2004

Tossed Alaskans

This is a postcard photo of the Inuit (Eskimo) people of Kotzebue, Alaska, from the sixties or seventies (1960-70's). It seems here they are just having fun showing some tourists in stuffed shirts and ties how to cut loose. Like the previous pictures of the blanket toss posted on this blog, this "blanket" is made from walrus skins.

This card was produced for Wien Alaska Airlines of Fairbanks. The company was the first airlines in Alaska (1927) and the second in the nation until its demise (a victim of a corporate raider, according to the son's founder, Merrill Wien) in 1985. This was unfortunate not only for the family business, the loss of job and service to remote Alaska, but it was a blow to the those who document Alaska's traditional heritage. The company produced many postcards showing the simple live and traditions in the remote villages of Alaska, such as this one.

This postcard photo was taken by Frank Whaley. Many of his photos were used by Wien air to celebrate the unique cultural communities served by the airline. Whaley took many photos of rural Alaskan native scenes from the fifties (1950's) until this decade. See a great blanket toss photo here and other fine Whaley photos in the Alaska Digital Archives.