The Place Where You Go To Listen

Speaking of the Museum of the North....
There's a new permanent exhibit there, created by John Luther Adams, with lots of help from my friend Jim Altieri and others. It's amazing! -- if not in a slightly unconventional way.

They've taken the rhythms of Nature (Sun and Moon cycles, Earthquakes, The earth's magnetosphere, and more) and turned them on your ear. There's a new acoustic space in the museum, where the typically inaudable data streams from alaska are changed into sound and light.

While sitting in the room, you'll hear what may be considered a constant drone; but just wait! For, as constant as the sound may seem at first, it is constantly shifting -- in real time-- to reflect what's happening in Alaska right now. Day or night, if the aurora should dance in the sky, it will dance about aurally in the room. Earthquakes provide a somewhat arrhythmic heartbeat, as information is passed from stations throughout the interior.

It's quite a sensation; but not really an in-and-out sort of exhibit. Stop. Sit. Stare. Meditate. Pick a sound and try to follow it. Fascinating and immersive!

Adventures in Ice Carving

Keeping Cool!

Each March, the World Ice Art Championships are held up here in Fairbanks. People come from all over and create intricate works of art from blocks of ice. No, I'm not talking about those little sculptures that crop up on tables at weddings... We're talking BIG -- and fancy. mostly.

I took some photos in 2003 and 2004 , but have always wanted to try my hand at it. This year, Katie and I took a 2-hour ice carving class from the Museum of the North (a great museum on campus), where we tried our hand on a 2x2x2 carving. (Shown below)

What started as a little cartoon penguin ended up as a really awsome little cartoon duck. While we were carving, it snowed probably about 5".

We were both amazed at how simple it was! Perhaps we've found a new hobby: There's only one way to find out, though -- Try it again!

SOOoooo, we each bought a 3-pack of woodworking chisels, plunked down the entry fee, and entered the Amateur Open

The block we carved was about 5'x3'x3'. Man, what a lot of ice : 2700 lbs worth (according to the Ice Alaska website). I figure that we must have carved off at least 1000 lbs.

It took two full days, (and more) to get our penguins into shape, while visitors strolled around and took photos of us working. At one point, I was focused on using a dremel to carve into a tight spot. I turned my head and nearly poked my eye out on this guy's camcorder. He'd just creeped up and was filming over my shoulder at a distance of, oh, maybe 3 inches. Yipes.

(This photo is of a not-quite-finished product. The final product can be seen at the world ice champtionships website)

Is it Spring Yet? Signs say it's getting closer

Nenana Ice Classic -- Tripod Days

(photo courtesy of Miss Alaska 2005, Rebecca Hayes)

Spring is just around the corner, and now we all get to participate in the great Alaskan tradition of waiting for breakup.... Oh, and that other great tradition of betting on when breakup will actually happen.


Luckily for all of us up here, the days of standing on the river and waiting to head out to sea are behind us. Instead of sacrificing some poor soul to spring, the town of Nenana sacrifices a hugantic tripod each year. (even though the "tripod" has four sides, we still call it a tripod)



Each year a hearty group of alaskans venture out onto the river and help hoist the tripod into position. Once errected on the ice, the tripod is connected to a clocktower via ropes and such.

Now, instead of waiting around for the ice to break, we all place bets on the exactitudes of when the tripod will move which will stop the clock and signify that, yes, Virginia, there really is a spring up here in the far north.

After the tripod raising, we let ourselves be dragged around the downtown streets of Nenana by the locals...



Then, went looking for pop culture


And finally stocked up on Beer for the rest of Winter

Galapagos photos online (finally)

Wow.. That trip went quickly. I didn't even get a chance to write little notes to myself about all that I saw and did. After the previous post, we went to the Cloud Forest, where we spent a lovely day and evening. Marco, the owner of the El Alito lodge, gave us both a nighttime and daytime tour of his local cloud forest. Very beautiful area, and much more temporate than the Rainforest.
One neat thing was that he had bats in the roof, so we could hear them squeaking around as we hung out on his porch drinking wine.

After the Cloud forest, we raced off to see the Galapagos. 8 days, 7 nights aboard the Yate Angelito with 15 fellow Geologists. It was wonderful! I've posted the photos to my website using Google's Picassa program. My gripe is that I can't quite seem to get the videos to work, but maybe you'll have more luck. You can get to the Galapagos from my TRAVELS page.

Here's a smattering of what we saw:


Blue Footed Boobies


Giant Land Turtles


Baby Sea Lions



Beautiful Crabs


And the omnipresent marine Iguannas

In the Amazon

Hi,
Well, We´re in Tena, Ecuador right now after spending a few beautiful days at the Arajuno Jungle Lodge. We arrived in Ecuador on the morning of the 10th, and this is the first moment I´ve had to post anything.

http://www.ecuapymes.com/arajunojunglelodge/
(Above link updated March 2006)

We had a fantastic time there... we got off the bus at a bridge somewhere in the jungle, though we were uncertain that we were in the right place. Holmes, a local there, met us and then ferried us up the river to the lodge, where we unwound and then started to explore. We toured primary and secondary rainforests, with vines and bugs and trees... we chased an iguana, ate local fruits, kayaked down the rio, learned about local medicine... it was amazing! And the food was fantastic too. The owner, Tom, was great and took us around on the tours himself; actually, we had the whole place to ourselves :)

Now, we're in Tena on our way to the cloudforest.

Alaskanization

It struck me very strange today, as I drove in to school. I didn't look at the weather. I didn't check out the thermometer.

When I first arrived in Alaska, as winter encroached, I would check with the weather almost every day. I was eager to know if it was going to get to be negative such-and-such, since negative such-and-such was bound to be a new personal record. I'd find a way to sneak "Oh, it's -23 out today" into just about every conversation. I used to swing past a couple different temperature signs, wondering which would register the lowest.

But today... today, I drove past the temperature sign and didn't even look at it. No, that didn't surprise me... what surprised me is that --when I stopped and pondered my emotions on the subject-- I didn't care. It was cold, yeah, but not eyeball-twisting cold.

(Here's a movie I did last winter, to the tune of one of those weather reports I like so much..)

ps. the photo is from last Jan -- you can tell by the gas price :)

Win some, loose some

Ugh. Last night the Nanooks took a beating. (The 'nooks are UAF's hockey team.)

I first started heading to the games when I moved up here, 'cause it seemed like a "community" thing. Boy, was I right. Everyone shows up to the games... I mean, The population of the town of fairbanks (excluding outlying areas) is suppsedly something like 40000. Well, on a good night, such as our games agains Michigan, or --even better-- against Anchorage, we have a sellout crowd of 4500. That's more than 10% of the population showing up for the games.

When I moved to Alaska, one of my first purchases, aside from thermal underwear, was a pair of hockey skates. The people I worked with (at that point, volunteered with) got together once a week to play a friendly game of pick-up hockey. We played in the neighboring town of Esther, next door to a fire-department that would spray down an outdoor basketball court. Temperatures being as they are here, it only takes a few layers of water before you've got instant hockey rink.

Back then, I'd only been on skates once before-- at someones birthday party, I'm sure. It was difficult to see anything as we skated around at minus such-and-such, with eyelashes knitted together. Mostly, I just did small circles in the center of the rink, as people better (and faster) than I whizzed about in every which direction; occasionally, during the persuit of a rogue puck, they'd plow into a snowbank. Skating too close to anyone was a sure-fire way to drop them to the ice.

As the years (oh my, it's been more than two point five years, now!) progressed, the game has gotten a little more sophisticated. The transistion wasn't without growing pains. Pretty soon, the whole afair was moved indoors, to the Patty Center skating rink. Well, soon after that, it became apparent that 25 people all on the ice at the same time was an awfully rough way to try to run a game. Luckilly, collisions were still happening at slow speeds.

Soon, the field of players whittled down to teams of 6 or 7, with subbing for effect. When we decided to play intramurals, we even introduced the concept of off-sides into our "practices". Intramurals helped us with any self-esteem issues we may have had... yep, all delusions of grandure were stripped away as our 7-point handicaps were whittled away at the rate of a goal every minute or two. Invariably, the tete-a-tete became a shuffling of both-teams players as we salvaged the rest of our alloted time-slot.

These days, we're renting a bigger and better rink -- the Big Dipper. With it's luxurious lockerrooms and great ice, it's easy to be a little spoiled. The speed of the game has increased tremendously, and now, in full padding, our crashes tend to send people, pads, and sticks in every which direction. As march starts to creep up on us, the idea of intramurals is also seeping into the back of our conciousness... and this time, I look on it with interest; we just might be able to hold our own (a little) out there.

Ah, but this started with me talking about the 'nooks. They kicked butt on friday, a really fun game against Northern Michigan. But Saturday was a little painful..

Radio

Wow! I'm listening to the AK program about volcanoes right now. It was almost like a reunion-- Several cohorts from the Western Aleutian trip were interviewed. Gabriel did a great job of sifting through my interview and keeping the coherent bits :)

I've backloaded my logs from the Western Aleutian trip. Photos are still being added to them, slowly.

Listen up

Well, here's my first blog post. Finally, I've decided to join the legions of bloggers out here, 'cause I'm just too lazy to keep up with my regular website, yet, I still have this burning desire to post photos and stuff up at a whim.

Today was interesting; it started with an interview at a radio station, where I talked about the sound of seismic signals. A snippet or two just might make its way onto the airwaves on AK, a show that is hosted by Gabriel Spitzer on Alaska Public Radio Network at 10am on Sundays. It looks like the volcano show might be on this weekend! Anyway, I think the interview went over pretty well, but talking to yourself in a padded room is always just a little unnerving ;)

Anyway, I'll be backposting some photos soon (hopefully).

The grand ball!

Who says we don't have culture in Fairbanks? There was a grande masquerade ball at belfair, complete with a quartet and a live performance from The Phantom of the Opera. A lovely time was had by all... Thanks Sharon & Lars!!!