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Saturday
October 18, 2003
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photo courtesy Bernd Heinrich
October 18th
The name Sitka, or "Shee
Atika" in Tlingit meaning "people on the outside of
Shee ("Shee" being the Tlingit name of Baranof
Island). Sitka was the site of the historic transfer of
Alaska from Russia to the United States, and the location of
Alaska's first capital. The capital was later moved from Sitka
to Juneau in 1906 while Alaska was still a U.S. territory. -
View
historical photographs... |
Southeast Alaska: Scientists Search for Artifacts in Melting Glaciers in Southeast Alaska - Researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder continued their search in southeast Alaska last summer to pinpoint rapidly melting glaciers and ice fields that hold prehistoric human artifacts before exposure triggers their decomposition. For thousands of years, humans hunted on the glaciers and ice fields that cover what is now the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve in southeast interior Alaska. During the summer months these ancient ice fields attracted caribou and other animals seeking refuge from insect swarms that blanket Alaska during summer. At the same time, humans hoping to feed their families visited ice fields with the goal of finding meat. Unfortunately for the ancient hunters, they dropped some of their tools, or perhaps missed when they shot their arrows or spears. Over time, those weapons and tools were encased in ice, until now. As global warming continues
to melt glaciers and ice fields at a rapid rate, discarded or
lost tools that were frozen in glaciers are being released from
the ice, according to James Dixon, curator of the Museum and
Field Studies program at the CU Museum of Natural History and
a fellow at CU-Boulder's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research,
or INSTAAR. - Read
more... Ketchikan PSA - Ketchikan General Hospital will be performing a major upgrade on phone systems. This will cause brief interruptions in phone service hospital-wide on Saturday, October 18, 4-7 am Phone service will be interrupted for intermittent periods of 15-20 minutes. Cell phones are not affected. If you have an emergency, dial 911. If you are trying to make a non-emergency call to the hospital, try again as interruptions will be brief. HUGO GOT HIS FREEDOM - No black people lived in our little town in southwestern Wisconsin when I was a boy. No black family farmed any of the tidy dairy farms that were the mainstay of the area economy. When we were kids and traveled to Madison with Mom on the Greyhound bus we saw "Negroes": the Red Cap who handled our bags at the depot, and the janitor. We saw pictures of black people in Life magazine, but we mostly knew about blacks through books like Little Black Sambo , or Uncle Remus , and songs like "Old Black Joe." Somehow we learned that radio characters Amos and Andy were black, even though we had never seen a black person or heard one talk. We never saw a black cowboy
in any of the matinees that cost us twelve cents at the Eskine
Theater on Saturday afternoons. Only later, as adults, did we
find out that the troopers of the Tenth United States Cavalry,
which chased Geronimo all over Texas and New Mexico, were black,
and that black cowboys were common in the Old West. We thought
of blacks as poor people living in cabins in mossy swamps down
south, or laboring in menial jobs, shivering in the cold in northern
cities. - Read
more...
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