Inktrails from Alaska

Midnight Sun Festival 2005

Summer Solstice
June 21, 2005

The sun goes in circles on the solstice, not bothering to set. Twenty-four hours of daylight are heady for a bunch of folks who live through the long, dark winter up here. We party and frolic at every chance we get!

My part in the Midnight Sun Festival started weeks before June 21st. The Tanana Highlanders were scheduled to play, necessitating a particular urgency to weekly band practice, the date coming as it did on the heels of the Fairbanks Folk Festival.

One of the nice things about the music portion of the Midnight Sun Festival is that they allow a band to perform for an hour or more, because there are far more hours to fill with music than at the Folk Fest, where acts only get 20 minutes onstage.A twenty-minute set is barely enough time to warm up and then suddenly you are offstage again. Playing for an hour is much more enjoyable. We get warmed up, get to play to the crowd, get to stretch our musical muscles. Yep, got to exercise those hambones!

First and 2nd Avenues, all the interconnecting streets, and Golden Heart Plaza were filled with vendors, entertainers and people, people, people. People and kids, people and dogs, people and food. There was a stage at 2nd and Cushman, 2nd and Noble, and on the plaza. The Tanana Highlanders played at the 2nd and Cushman stage, and were scheduled to play immediately following on the 2nd and Noble stage. As we played our last number, the UAF Steel Drum band was setting up behind us. We grabbed our cases and stands and headed down the street. On a normal day it would be a three-minute walk, max. During the festival it must have taken us fifteen, easy. It was one of those situations where there were so many people that you had to keep shuffling along and apologizing to whomever you poked in the butt with your violin case. Everyone was good-natured, and I figured no one was going to beat up a woman in Scots “wenchware.” Cleavage will get you everywhere.

The jumble of folks who get together every Thursday at the Co-op Building (in the Two Street Station Coffeeshop) for the Celtic Jam had decided along with me that it would be good fun to play onstage at the Midnight Sun Festival. So after I finally squeezed myself past two fat children and a golden retriever (making a nice POP noise) I reached the stage and found my friends ready to play. Unbeknownst to me our set had been increased from an hour to an hour and a half. We had a good old time playing lots of tunes to a very large crowd. We sounded positively orchestral at times. Behind us the rock and roll band scheduled next started unloading drum cases...

Wandering around later I had a huge pulled pork sandwich from Big Daddy’s Barbeque ($5), saw lots of kids with cotton candy, talked to the Red Cross folks, watch a willing victim get dropped into the dunk tank, and as I walked back to my canopy grooved to the sounds of Sweating Honey who were playing under the tent on the plaza stage.

Around midnight we finally started putting things away, and the crowds were persuaded to call an end to a thoroughly energetic and fun day. I didn’t get home until 1:30am, didn’t get to bed for at least an hour later, and still haven’t unloaded the truck. I was good for very little yesterday and I’m still tired today but it’s a good tired.

Happy Solstice!

Fairbanks Folk Festival Report

Saturday, June 11 was a prototypical summer day, perfect for hanging out on a lawn, eating ice cream and letting the dogs and kids run wild while the adults listened to music.

The Moose Pavilion is surrounded by lawn, separated from the park road by a ditch that was full of sprinkler and rain water, our “moat,” and another nice 25 foot wide strip of green. The No Nukes North, Peace Center and myself set up our canopies on that lawn. Some other folks were selling Navajo jewelry, and they didn’t have a canopy so they put their tables under the trees at the end of the “moat.” The Hot Licks ice cream folks needed electricity, so they set up their tiny little stand right by the log building that housed the bathrooms. They had something in common with that place, in that sooner or later, everyone availed themselves of both. Considering the near 90 degree heat, I think it was ice cream that kept me from heat stroke!

The stage was a thrown together affair of 2x4s, and a large quilt was tied up behind it to serve as the back of the stage. It stood in front of the Moose Pavilion picnic shelter, where musicians milled around, waiting for their 20 minute set on stage. Lots of solo acts, many bluegrass bands, and three or four Celtic groups entertained.

Everyone who performed volunteered their performance. There was no admission, the entire event was free. Several folks who came to my booth (I was selling flags and Celtic items, see my website http://www.celticandmore.com) told me they couldn’t find their State of Alaska Employee Picnic but were more than happy to go to the folk festival instead!

Somewhere out there a children’s stage existed, and I had friends who performed on it, but I never did find out where it was. All day long I watched children and dogs playing in the water in the moat.

As the afternoon wore on, clouds began to circle, the wind changed several times, and I began to worry about the afternoon rain shower that had been forecast. As of 5, things were still dry. But with my last set on stage due at 8:40, I realized that I’d better pack up the booth before my set so that I wouldn’t be fiddling away and suddenly feel like I had to dash across the moat to save my stock. So away everything went, into plastic boxes and set under the canopy just in case.

Just as we were finishing our set, the clouds bumped together and it began to rain. “Hey,” I told the audience, “How about that? Just like Scotland!”

At the end of the day, event organizerTrudy Heffernan gave her thanks to all those who helped make the Fairbanks Folk Festival possible. “There wasn’t a bad set in the bunch,” she said. I had to agree.

Fairbanks Folk Festival

Today I'm off to the Fairbanks Folk Festival, at Alaskaland (aka "Pioneer Park," but I passed a trailer park in Canada named that and can't get that out of my mind every time I hear it) in the Moose Pavilion. It's a gorgeous day and going to be lots of fun!

I'm setting up a booth to sell flags from all over the world, some Celtic Jewelry, tankards and whiskey flasks and other interesting things. It will be easy to find, what with big flags flying all about it.

The Tanana Highlanders play at 8:40pm tonight, so catch me then, or tune in on KUAC, on the web at KUAC. It's cool that KUAC has a webcast of their station.

Tarawathie drafted me to play with them as well, and we'll be on at 4:40 in the afternoon, sadly not making the radio time this year.

Be sure to come by and say hi if you are going to the festival!

Bugged?

I am having so much fun in such an unexpected way I just had to tell you about it. There's a website all about bugs that is just fascinating!

You know those teeny tiny beetles you find around the house? Kind of a generic mini-beetle? And you look at it think, "Hey little bug, what's up?" Then you flick it across the room with your forefinger, right?
Well, I just found out what those little guys are, and they aren't just little bugs trundling mindlessly buggily around. They're eating your pasta, or your rice, or worse, your stuffed moose or that special drum you brought back from Africa. They're pantry beetles and they come in all kinds of shapes and sizes.

Wouldn't it be nice to know exactly what WAS that creepy bug that you tossed at your sister to make her scream?

And what's the deal with sugar ants and the bathroom...are they trying to steal your soap?

You can find all the answers plus much more at What's That Bug? .

Besides that, they print all the interesting and funny letters that people write to them, asking what bugs are what, and post the pictures they send.

Maybe I'm just weird, well, okay, so I'm weird, but this site is quite a lot of fun. Go check it out.

New Book Review Blog

In order to concentrate better my literary skills, I've created a blog just for book reviews. You can find it here: Northern Book Review.

Some of the book reviews here will be moved just to get it started. My goal is two reviews a week. We'll see, won't we?

Things You Don't See Everyday

Every year is different. The first summer I was here in Alaska the hornets and yellowjackets were everywhere. The fellow I was living with had his coveralls hanging on a nail next to the front door of the cabin. He found out the hard way that hornets had built a nest in the sleeve. Amazingly, he only got one sting.

That was Summer 2003. I was living in a spruce forest then, where the moss is at least three feet deep everywhere, creating the most humongous mosquito condo you can imagine. The bugs were awful that year. Spruce bark beetles seemed to think I was a tree, my hair was constantly red and black, from all the smashed mosquitos in it, and going out the front door meant a quick dash, hoping to avoid a commando attack by yellowjacket.

Part of the bug problem was that I was in prime bug territory. But the mosquitos and hornets were really bad that year.

The next summer, in 2004, the mosquitos were just gearing up when the world caught on fire and didn’t go out until it snowed in October. Six million acres burned, the worst forest fire the United States has ever had, as far as I know. That was the Smoking Summer, and I had to wear a gas mask much of the time because of forest fire smoke, not to mention not knowing if or when I’d have to evacuate. It sure kept the bugs down, though! Unfortunately it kept down birds and humans, too. I got more exercise last winter than I did last summer!

Now it is Summer 2005 and already I know how it is going to be remembered. The Summer of Butterflies is here. Swallowtail butterflies are everywhere.

Last weekend we were out doing what we do, which is tootling past junk yards and junky yards looking for old cars and trucks, when Scott said “We need to pull over here!” I pulled in and sure enough, there was a neat old fire engine that looked like it would run if someone would just turn the key! I looked it over, but before Scott was done my attention was drawn to the barn swallows that were swooping in circles just above my head. As I raised my focus to include the rest of the yard, I saw a puddle where the birds were gathering mud. This enabled me to move much closer to them and get a good look at their metallic blue coats and to notice that they are really much larger than swallows in the Lower 48!

I have noticed that the robins up here are quite large and I asked Nancy DeWitt, biologist at the Alaska Bird Observatory about it. She’d replied that the farther north a bird migrates, the larger they tend to be compared to their compadres who don’t make it up this far. I was glad, because I had first thought it was my imagination. But these robins are huge! You could practically put a saddle on ‘em...

A swallow flew up from the puddle as I approached and I realized what looked like a strange pile of leaves was actually about fifty swallowtail butterflies standing on a damp patch of ground. It was so unexpected, so fairylike! Being very careful not to step on any I crept up to them. I probably could have picked one up but I didn’t try. I got within a foot and most of them decided to fly away. The wind was toward me, so all at once I was enveloped in a cloud of feathery butterfly wings. I stood there with my arms out, hoping one would land on me. This is definitely something you don’t see every day.

The swallows were eating mosquitos up in the air, but I wondered how they didn’t end up stuffed like little birdy pillows. The air is full of cottonwood seed. It mimics snow, that’s how thick it is. It’s actually poplar seed, a relative of the cottonwood, but having lived around cottonwood trees and their fluff for twenty years, I have a hard time calling it poplar seed. Lots of people still call it cottonwood, too. It looks the same.

We bumped down a mining road to check on an old abandoned dump truck, and saw poplar seed a foot thick in the woods. It filled some of the ruts and potholes in the dirt road. If there is any other name for this summer, it will be Summer of Cottonwood seed.

It’s been raining on and off all spring. I’ve had to move my potted plants off the porch and under the eaves so that they don’t drown. That’s after I brush all the cottonwood fluff off them, poor things.

On the way home a few nights ago there were sporadic showers in the big sky. It was about midnight and the sun was just going down, causing the whole western sky to go coral. As I drove northeast, with the intense coral sky behind me and big puffs of cloud raining here and there, I saw a rainbow right over my cabin. No, two rainbows, three!

A rainbow at midnight. Now that’s not something you see every day.