What’s the Difference Between Fall and Winter in Fairbanks?

In the fall you ride down the driveway on your Little Tikes car:

In winter you ride the kicksled:

We just got an Esla Kickspark to accompany the kid-sized sled. It’s amazing.

Sarah Palin: The Cocktail, Not the Candidate

Whether you want to raise a glass in Governor Palin’s honor or she makes you want to drown your sorrows, this is the cocktail for you. It was invented on Friday here in Fairbanks by a couple of resourceful Alaskan women and made its debut yesterday at a meeting of the Cocktail Club, a group of women who get together irregularly for cocktails. Cocktail Club used to be a book group, but it was radically restructured after its members realized no one was reading the books. I guess you could say they’re a bunch of “mavericks” who “got all mavericky” and “shook things up.”

Here’s the recipe for a Sarah Palin, cocktail version. After a few, you’ll lose the ability to form complete sentences and you might finally be able to forget the “Bush Doctrine” completely.

2 parts Power-C (dragonfruit) Vitamin Water

1 part vanilla vodka

1 part Grand Marnier

a dash of Grenadine

Marischino cherry

big wax lips (because Halloween is approaching, they’re readily available)

Shake with ice cubes and strain into martini glasses. Drop a cherry into the bottom. Place wax lips at the base of the glass and serve. Take a drink. Put the wax lips in your mouth. Have someone take a picture of you. Say, “Maverick!” without letting the lips fall out of your mouth as they snap the picture.

If you a post a photo of yourself enjoying a Sarah Palin online and email me the link, I’ll add it here. If you don’t blog, just email me the picture and I’ll post it here. You can be an honorary member of Cocktail Club.

Fire Representative Mike Kelly: Change We Can Accomplish

This election has me covering my eyes like a bad horror movie. I’m anxious, afraid, and completely disturbed. What disturbs me most is the Alaskan with a Minnesota accent claiming to speak for all of us. Personally, I don’t wear her shade. I fear that from now on people in the lower 48 will think of  Alaskan women as bouffant-wearing, tanning-salon-patronizing, cheerleaders in power suits who bark, “Drill Baby Drill!” and “Maverick!” anytime someone holds up a biscuit.

On top of that, our votes here in the reddest of red states aren’t going to do much to impact the electoral map. It’s clear that someone’s Floridian grandpa and some guy who works in a gas station in Ohio are going to decide the fate of the entire country. Alaskan polls don’t even close until everyone else has gone to bed. It seems hopeless.

Locally, though there is some change we can accomplish. Voters in District 7 can finally get rid of Representative Mike Kelly. No one has proven himself more deserving of a pink slip than Representative Kelly.

Fire him because his dangerous backward thinking on domestic violence proves he’s completely out of touch with both his female constituants and reality.

Fire him because he deliberately and brazenly votes and legislates against the interest and will of his constituants. One example (Yes, unlike Governor Palin I am capable of offering examples when asked): last year’s advisory vote on benefits for same sex partners. Kelly sponsored and championed the vote. His constituants defeated it in his own district. The day after the vote, he proclamed it a success.

Fire him because right now he’s aligned himself with Outside interests to stop the release of the Troopergate investigation. Governor Palin said, “Hold me accountable,” and whether something was fishy or not, we have a right to know. Representative Kelly is fighting to keep the investigation out of the public eye. What’s more disturbing is he’s working with the Texas-based Liberty Legal Institute who call themselves “the flip side of the ACLU” to file the case. On their website they say they focus on “religious freedom, student’s (sic) rights, parental rights, and the definition of family.” I’m not sure what keeping the Troopergate report out of the hands of Alaskans has to do with any of those things. Most Alaskans don’t like politically motivated Outside organizations pumping cash and lawyers into our state.

Especially Outside organizations based in the wee little state of Texas. In my fifteen years in Alaska, I haven’t heard any Alaskan sound too happy about working with a Texan. In fact, I once saw a bumper sticker in Fairbanks that said, “Honk if you’re another bastard Texan.”  Either Representative Kelly should remind himself of the Sourdough saying, “We don’t care how they do it Outside,” or he should start honking.

Fire him because he sponsored the legislation that destroyed the Teacher’s Retirement System in Alaska and he voted against education funding. Thanks to shrinking salaries and the loss of the retirement system our kids here in Fairbanks are going to school in a district that had to jettison its screening interviews because they don’t have enough qualified applicants. Really. Ask a high school principal. It’s even getting hard to find English teachers. You know that’s bad.

Oh, but don’t worry about him, former Representative Kelly will do just fine without his salary from the Legislature. According to his 2008 financial disclosure filed with the Alaska Public Offices Comission, he collects a yearly pension of $120,000 per year from his time as CEO at GVEA (the disclosure is not available online, but you can call the APOC at 1-800-478-4176 to ask for a copy) . That’s $10,000 each month. Folks, you are paying that pension as part of your electric bill each month, but remember every time you write that check that Mr. Kelly is opposed to pensions. I imagine he would say they’re “welfare” and “morphine” too. When other people are collecting them, that is.

It’s time to kick Kelly to the curb.

So how do you fire him? Simple. Vote for Karl Kassel on November 4th. That’s all you need to do.

If you’re really mad, there’s more you can do.

Option #1: Comment on this post. For each comment up to 50, I’ll donate a dollar of my own money to Kassel. Make me put my money where my mouth is. If you love Mike Kelly, write me a long comment. Spend a lot of time on it, maybe even hours. I’ll still donate a dollar to Karl Kassel.

Option #2: Go to Kassel’s website and donate a dollar or two of your own.

Option #3: If you have no money, call the Kassel campaign and ask for a yard or truck sign.

Better yet, do all three. Karl Kassel and all Alaskans will thank you. The legislature will be a better place without Representative Kelly. He might even thank you too. Freed of the responsibility of not listening to his constituants, he’ll really have time to enjoy that $120,000 pension.

Getting rid of Mike Kelly isn’t just change we can believe in or change we need, it’s change we can actually accomplish. Let’s do this people. Fire the bum. Yes we can!

Sarah Palin: This Alaskan Mom on The Alaskan Mom

You haven’t heard from me for a long, long time, but you must have known this was coming. There’s no way I could keep quiet on the big Alaskan news, the big national news.

Today Literary Mama posted an Op Ed piece I wrote about Ms. Palin’s candidacy. They also published an excellent one on Palin by Rebecca Steinitz. Here’s an excerpt of mine. Click to read more. I’d love to hear your comments.

I never voted for Sarah Palin. Politically, we don’t get along. She wants drilling where I’d like to leave tundra. She doesn’t want kids to hear about condoms, I don’t mind them having accurate information about their own health. She wants one big cathedral ceiling covering schools and churches, while I prefer Christianity to stay in its log cabin, smoke peacefully rising from the stack, reminding me I can warm myself if and when I want to.

But I did like her. I’ve never liked any politician so unlike myself so much…

I’ve been gone because I’ve been working on poems, moving to a new house, packing, briefly homeless, unpacking, back at work part-time, tired, and still Dr. Googling and Dr. Doctoring. In the meantime, people turned two, people turned four, people started a band called “Erika’s Milkshake,” people wrote songs about shipwrecks and gum, we pondered the marketability of a band that has two ukuleles, and then we made band t-shirts. If you want a t-shirt, comment, and maybe I’ll send you one.

A Much Belated Mother’s Day Wish

So belated, in fact, it will leave you feeling nostalgic for leg warmers, asymmetrical haircuts, and those feather earrings. Even if you’re not a mom, watch.

I dedicate this to radical mama. Congratulations on the birth of Helena, her fourth baby girl.

If You Haven’t Noticed. . .

I haven’t been around here much lately. The blog is running itself. Maybe it’s just parked somewhere, idling, keys dangling from the ignition while the radio booms bass for no listener. Maybe Hal-like, it’s plotting against me. I don’t know.

I guess I should announce formally that I’m taking some time off. We’re busy packing and cleaning—sold one house, moving to another, planning a few weeks of Westfalia homelessness in between.

Then there’s the strange migrating joint pain that the Naturopath believes is related to a disturbance in my 3rd Chakra and the Doc thinks I should see a rheumatologist about. The situation is complicated by the fact that the nearest rheumatolgist is 360 miles away.

There are two little girls who like to run in circles in their underpants and cackle. One asks me, “Mama, how did the ichthyosaurs lay their eggs? Did they crawl onto land?” The other asks me “Why?” about everything. I don’t have answers for either one of them.

There are other things too, but they’re ones about which I’m keeping my fingers crossed so hard that I can’t type anything about them here.

And there’s the fact that it’s May in Alaska, and the light, such a gift, fills the day completely that it’s impossible to get anything done.

As always there are not enough poems (even though I’ve been having some luck publishing individual ones recently). That’s always a problem, but I’m going to put all my words into the poetry basket for a little while, so the blog will just have to suffer.

For all of this the blog will have to suffer. Please leave me in your bloglines. I’ll be back soon.

Remodeling, Procrastination, and Moving

Seven years. That’s how long we looked at the old bookcases. The previous owners made them partially out of decking. The top had pulled out of the ceiling, exposing a row of screws. We rationalized. We needed to put in laminate flooring first. We needed to make the cabin into a functional guesthouse (or rental). We needed to remodel the bathroom.

Now we’re moving and getting ready to sell the house. As of this afternoon, the new built-in bookcases are done. Our books are packed and taped up. We’ll never put them here.

Ironic? Folks tell me that’s what selling a house is all about. You fix the things that bugged you, and never get to enjoy them.

Scenes from a Subaru: One Pony on the Roof, One Middle Finger Raised

One

The pony is strapped to the roof. It’s big. It was free, a Hedstrom Bouncy Horse that TJ found on cragislist. The girls, buckled into their car seats, chant, “Pony! Pony!” We wonder if its bouncing as we drive

Two skateboarding boys stop, hold their boards on their hips and stare. A girl on her bike yells to a friend, “What the heck is on that car.” We are an attraction.

A Carlisle trucker, on his way into the gas station to get a Slim Jim, stops and cracks, “Got some extra horse power. Nyuk. Nyuk!” as TJ gasses up.

From in the car nothing seems different. There is no pony. We are in the car. It is just the car. We forget we are an attraction.

Further on, a friend pulling out of Gulliver’s Books notices us and flashes a double thumbs up and a big smile. I ask TJ, “Hey, what’s up with her?” He says, “I don’t know.” Then we remember we have a pony on the roof.

As we unload the girls in front of the restaurant, the leader of a pack of adolescent boys riding bicycles menacingly asks TJ, “Can I ride your pony?” They all laugh.

A woman pulls up, rolls down her window, and says, “When you’re ready for a full-sized pony, let me know.” She raises horses. She tells me our car was obscured by a snowbank and all she saw was the pony bouncing along, high above the road, alone.

In the restaurant, Coral points out the window and shouts “Pony!” Cedar tells the waitress, “We have a pony on the roof.”

On our way home, we pass that house on the Steese Expressway. The one just before the Chena Hot Springs Road exit. They have a big fire pit and a tall stack of pallets. Once a month they prop a big sign against a birch tree near the expressway. It says “Bonfire 7:00.” Once a month, there’s a huge fire and folks standing around with beers. Cedar comments, “They’re having a bond-fire.” Coral shouts, “Fire!” I think, “Why don’t we go sometime?” Tonight, the bonfire goers turn their heads, lower their beers, and watch us speed by.

“Did you wave to them,” TJ asks. “No,” I say. “They all looked at us.” We sit puzzled.

We have forgotten again.

Then we both say, “We have a pony on the roof.”

Two

Cedar, Coral, and I are on the Steese, going uphill after turning off the Johansen. We’re coming back from an afternoon party. It’s warm finally, fifty degrees, and slanting fingers of water grasp for the low side of the road.

I don’t notice the truck behind me until it’s about three feet from my rear bumper. It’s big, white, menacing in a Moby Dick sort of way. I don’t see any old harpoons or Ahab’s skeleton, but I feel its rage. There are four lights mounted on the grill. They look like teeth. They fill my rearview mirror.

I’m in the left lane. The right lane is crowded. I could duck in behind a Scooby-Dooish beater van, but I know the minute the van hits the hill, it will slow down.

Besides, I’m going 65. How fast can this truck want to go?

I decide I’ll move into the right lane when I can get ahead of Shaggy’s van. I step on the gas. I’m going 70. The white truck is still three feet from my bumper. I am uncomfortable and decide I’m not going to let this truck make me go 75.

In the mirror, I see the four lights turn on. They glare at me. I flop the mirror down, so I don’t have to look directly at the angry lights. Now I’m looking at the girls. They’re happy after eating cake at the party. They want to go home and ride the bouncy horse. The four lights reflect in the image of their faces.

I hold at 65.

I think about giving the finger when the truck passes me. I think about slamming on my brakes. I think about the hill and how short it really is. Will it be over one minute? Two minutes? I decide just to get out of the way.

Finally, Shaggy shows up in my passenger side mirror and I signal a lane change.

Even before I’m over all the way the white truck blasts past. It is so much bigger than my car I have to look up. A fortyish man with gray hair holds his fist over his empty passenger seat, his right middle finger extended. He holds it, looks at me, makes sure I see.

I see.

I wonder if this man is someone’s father. In my world, fortyish men don’t do things like this. I wonder what it is like in his world.

At about 80 miles per hour, he veers right onto the Chena Hot Springs exit.

I wish I still had a pony on the roof.

Review: Brunch at Pike’s Landing in Fairbanks, Alaska

Pike’s Landing, 1850 Hoselton Rd., Fairbanks, Alaska, 479-6500

Even though it’s April and we’re still mired in snow, Mother’s Day is coming. The calendar will march on with or without spring. Holidays don’t care if they wake up in the morning to an unseasonable 5 degrees. It’s time to start planning, folks. If spring never comes, Mama is really going to need a treat on her special day.

Last year, due largely to bad planning on my own part, I had the worst Mother’s Day ever. I’m determined to have a good one this year. On the occasions when we’re feeling gluttonous before two p.m. on a Sunday, we usually hit the brunch over at the Pump House. Just in case I was missing out, I thought we should try brunch over at Pike’s Landing. That way I’d know which one to call for reservations for the biggest brunch day of the year. Last Sunday, we headed to Pike’s.

The service was good, and Pike’s has plenty of nice high chairs to go around. Of course, a brunch buffet is a great choice if you have little kids because there’s no wait time. Within minutes of entering the restaurant, your child is occupied with a plate of food. Best of all the little ones eat free, but Pike’s has major drawbacks.

Coral has entered the phase of potty training when she cries, “Potty! Potty!” in any public place just because she knows I’ll drop everything and take her. Actually using the potty once she gets into the bathroom is not high on her list of priorities. Instead, she’s happy to enjoy a few moments of diaperlessness before attempting to run a way with a bare butt and touch every surface in the bathroom. She also enjoys peeking under the stalls at her fellow potty goers. The bathroom at Pike’s was adequate for her purposes, and clean enough that I didn’t feel like I had to powerwash her when she was through.

But the lack of a changing table presented a major problem. The only flat surface in the bathroom useful for a diaper change is a narrow tiled ledge in front of a bank of mirrors. It’s the kind of ledge upon which one might place a giant can of Aqua Net, or if the lighting was worse, it was 1985, and one was hanging out with the cast of St. Elmo’s Fire, the ledge might be something off which one might snort a line of cocaine. It’s no place to change a baby. That said, the ledge is exactly where I put Coral when I had to change her diaper. If she was a floppy little newborn, I wouldn’t have known where to put her. If Pike’s really wants to vie for the big business of celebrating mothers at brunch, they need to install a changing table.

Although the buffet did include toddler-friendly chicken nuggets and “waffle stix” (as listed on the menu), the food at Pike’s was as disappointing as the changing table. The choice of “waffle stix” should have been a sign. No food that ends in a cutsie “X” should be served at an upscale brunch.

There was a variety of fresh fruit for the girls. Cedar enjoyed the watermelon, and Coral ate her body weight in strawberries. Despite the thrifty pleasure of bringing a “kids-eat-free” toddler to a buffet of expensive fruit, I was a little cranky after looking at the fruit options. Canned pineapple is fine for a snack at home, but at a Sunday brunch, the pineapple should be fresh.

Missing completely from the offerings was bacon. Bacon, so tasty, but so messy and unpleasant to cook. At home, it leaves the whole house stinking for hours, but at brunch it’s the crisp accompaniment to your eggs Benedict. Brunch without bacon just didn’t seem right.

The desserts, as they always are at brunch, were sized for kids. The chocolate mousse was tasty, and Cedar and Coral had fun eating out of the tiny glasses. I was happy to find creme brulee, but I was surprised when TJ stopped mid-bite and asked, “Is this creme brulee?” The one I had picked up tasted fine, but his must have come from a different batch. It was lumpy—more like tapioca brulee.

When it comes down to the battle of the brunch, there’s no comparison. Pike’s is a poser. Its buffet seems like the free continental breakfast at a hotel trying hard to be something other than what it is. The Pump House is the real thing—with a real stuffed grizzly and a real changing table. If you’re looking for us on Mother’s Day, you’ll find us at our old standby.

April is the Cruellest, Especially in Fairbanks

April Showers? No. Instead I found myself digging the car out from under five inches of snow this morning. This is what April looks like at our house.

There is an up side. April is tasty.

And you can share it with someone else.