Alaskan Adventure 2010, Part 2

Here are a couple more pictures of Denali:

Our day in the park was so beautiful!

After spending a day and a night in Denali National Park we traveled to Anchorage, and from Anchorage to Whittier, where we embarked on an afternoon cruise in Prince William Sound to see some glaciers:

This is Surprise Glacier, which we saw calve! (Calving means it loses a chunk of ice into the water.)

While in Anchorage, we also hiked up to Thunderbird Falls. So pretty!

We had a great time on the trip, spending time with family and seeing new sights. Thanks to Sheri for hosting all of us and planning the trip!

Bob and Emily (Mike's brother and sister-in-law) traveled with us to Alaska, and they've just posted an 8-part series on the trip on their blog. Bob took some amazing pictures that you can see on their blog: http://bibbidibobilyboo.blogspot.com/

Alaskan Adventure 2010, Part 1

The parts of Alaska that we saw last week were so beautiful. There was rainforest, taiga, tundra, and boreal forest. There were moose, sea otters, seals, and all kinds of birds. We had a fantastic time with half of Mike's family (Sheri, Nick, Bob & Emily) and we missed the other half (Garth, Rachel & Jacob). It was light for 21 hours of the day! We arrived at 1:30 a.m. on Saturday, July 3rd and were totally disoriented by the weird twilight (it looked like maybe 4 or 5 in the afternoon).

Here are some favorite pictures, from our various stops along the way:

Mike loving his kettle corn at the Fairbanks farmer's market
At the Alaska Pipeline near Fairbanks
Downtown Fairbanks (check out those hanging baskets!)
Some of the Terrys at Pioneer Park in Fairbanks (hanging baskets again)
Mike with Santa at North Pole, AK
Mike riding a salmon at the Salmon Bake (yum!)
University of Alaska Fairbanks, Library
Sheri's dogs, Zeus & Ziggy, rode around with us a little in the Yukon
We took a Riverboat Discovery Tour on the Chena River. Beautiful!
We saw this racing dog team while on the river. They're Iditarod champions!
Our riverboat tour stopped in a (replica of an) Athabascan Village. Here's one of the cabins. The sod on top works great as insulation.
This old Polaris replaced a dog sled team. But, some of the dog sledders told us that dogs are much better because they don't break down or run out of fuel.
After spending a few days in Fairbanks, we went to Denali National Park. Mt. McKinley, aka Denali, aka "the mountain" was visible, but I didn't get a great picture of it (see above). At 20,320 feet it's the highest peak in North America!
Fireweed in Denali.

More on Denali, Anchorage, and glaciers in the next post! Coming soon . . .

For even more photos, see our Alaska 2010 set on Flickr.

American Library Association Conference in Washington, D.C.

(No, that's not really Obama. It's Faux-Bama!)

I just spent 4 days in our nation's capital with 20,000+ librarians. ALA is the biggest conference of the year, with all kinds of librarians attending: public, school, academic, etc. I attended my committee meetings, went to some interesting discussion groups and programs, heard Toni Morrison give the keynote address, and talked to vendors about their products. I also met up with friends from graduate school, ate good food, and saw some of the sights! I'd never been to D.C. before, so I was particularly excited to do some museums and monuments. See all the photos I took here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/14784472@N07/sets/72157624387631896/

Brother #2's Wedding

This post is overdue -- one of my brothers got married early in June and Mike and I went to Idaho for the wedding. It was lovely. Justin is a very lucky kid to have married Annie. She's smart, funny, and beautiful. Here are a few of my favorite photos from the festivities:The happy couple

My brothers, Annie & me after the wedding
All the family together!
The Bowles family, minus Annie the bride, at the reception the evening before the wedding.

Carl Kasell's voice on our home answering machine!

So, we don't actually have a home answering machine, but we do have Carl Kasell's voice! Listen below, or call us between 9am and 5pm and hear the prize that I won on Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me, from National Public Radio.

Wait Wait . . . Don't Tell Me!

Most readers of this blog (family members and Facebook friends) already know that last weekend I was a listener-contestant on the NPR news quiz (from Chicago Public Radio) Wait Wait . . . Don't Tell Me! But, since this blog functions not just as a news-spreading tool but also a scrapbook/journal, I thought I'd record the experience here.

It was really fun to play on one of my favorite radio programs! Mike and I went to a live taping of the show in Chicago in August 2008, which was one of our favorite Chicago adventures, so I had an idea of how the taping would go. A few months ago I called the radio program to see if I could be a contestant. Then one of the producers called me just a few weeks ago to let me know that I'd been chosen. (I don't know why. Because I live in Laramie, WY? Because I'm a librarian? Because my voice sounded good on their voicemail? I have no idea how they choose contestants.) So the producer called me at the beginning of the show and I waited for the host, Peter Sagal, to ask me some questions. I'd been following the news extra closely that week and got all three questions right. My prize? Carl Kasell's voice on my home answering machine!
Now we just have to figure out what we want Carl to say and email the script to producer Emily Ecton. Then Carl will record the message in studio and we'll get a CD in the mail. Call me in a few weeks to see what he says!

Multi-media Entertainment

It's been an action-packed week in Laramie. I'll go in reverse chronological order and tell you what Mike and I have been up to.
Last night we saw Ani DiFranco live at University of Wyoming. Ani is a feminist folk singer who became quite prominent in the 1990s. She is remarkably prolific and has released one album per year since 1990. She owns all of her own music and has never been under the thumb of any studio, since she started her own record company: Righteous Babe Records. Ani came to my attention in my Women & Gender Studies classes at USU and I've been a fan since then, but have never had the chance to see her live. Then she came to Laramie! She is absolutely amazing on guitar. Her songs tend to be political, but one of my favorites that she played last night is about being a new mother. It's called "Present/Infant":

lately i've been glaring into mirrors
picking myself apart
you'd think at my age i'd of thought
of something better to do
than making insecurity into a full-time job
making insecurity into an art

i fear my life will be over
and i will have never lived it unfettered
always glaring into mirrors
mad i don't look better

but now here's this tiny baby
and they say she looks just like me
and she is smiling at me
with that present/infant glee
and i would defend
to the ends of the earth
her perfect right to be

so i'm beginning to see some problems
with the ongoing work of my mind
and i've got myself a new mantra
it says: "don't forget to have a good time"
don't let the sellers of stuff
power enough
to rob you of your grace
love is all over the place
there's nothing wrong with your face
love is all over the place

So that was cool. It seems like a long time since we went to a rock concert.

Tuesday night we saw a UW production of Hamlet. It was quite excellent. There were two guest stars: Pete Simpson, Jr. played Hamlet and Pete Simpson, Sr. played the ghost of Hamlet's father. The Simpsons are part of one of Wyoming's most important political families, and some of them are theatrical to boot! (Al Simpson, former senator from Wyoming, is now co-chairing President Obama's commission on reducing the federal debt. He's probably the most well-known in the family, and Pete Sr.'s brother. This is completely tangential, but I highly recommend Al Simpson's interview in Newsweek. The best part is how he describes Rush Limbaugh: "I never considered Rush-babe to be anything more than an entertainer. He gets people all riled up all day long, get them filled up with gas, ulcers, heartburn, B.O., and fear. Hell, that's pretty good. You really are an entertainer if you can get that done!" Oh, and how he describes the filibuster: "It's like a big old hobnail-boot ass-kicking machine.")

I meant to review Hamlet and got sidetracked with Al's colorful way of speaking. We enjoyed the play very much and were impressed with the students and guest actors.
Finally, on Monday night my book group discussed this really amazing novel, The Secret Scripture. It's really beautifully written, with descriptions like poetry. The main character and narrator is a 100-year-old woman named Roseanne Clear who has been in mental hospitals for about 60 years. She writes her history -- and the history of Ireland -- on sheets of paper that she found and hides in the floorboards of her room. Some of the members of my book group thought the book was depressing, and Roseanne's story is a sad one, but as a narrator she is never mournful or despairing. I highly recommend the book.

I love Laramie. There are so many great things to do, even though it's quite a small town. And the people here are just the best. Even though it's mid-April and winter lingers (the forecast says we'll have 3-7 inches of snow between now and Saturday morning), I think we made the right choice when we decided to move here.