My First Village Trip

This picture is of Sarah Palin and myself.

This past week was a nice steady week. I was very proud of myself because I was able to gain permission from a publishing company to use their book. Another big event this week was KNOM's 38th birthday.

Finally, I got to go on my first village trip. A village trip is invaluable to KNOM members. They help us learn more about our audience and their lifestyles. Since Nome is more of a city, it doesn't fully portray the lifestyle of these villages.

Friday was my first trip. I flew to Unalakleet, one of the larger fishing villages, to attend a bill signing. Sarah Palin flew into Unalakleet to sign this bill into a law. The bill was about the cost of oil for rural Alaska. The bill stated the cost to heat a home in Anchorage is approximately $2,200 and in Junaeu it costs about $4,440 but in rural Alaska, it costs about $6,600. The bill is going to put limits on the cost of fuel oil to heat homes so it will be more affordable.

Sarah came in and spoke for a while and had the mayor speak as well as the people who made the event possible.

The event still amazes me. The entire town helped make this possible. Everyone brought in their best salmon (mostly king salmon) or entre and make it a potluck. There was so much food. We had king crab, pink salmon, chum salmon, king salmon, salmon dip, fried bread, cheese and crackers, pasta salad, and even eskimo ice cream! Eskimo ice cream is a combination of seal oil or crisco, sugar, and wild berries. They used seal oil in the stuff i tried and it was amazing! This sweet old lady kind of adopted me because my coworker ran off to talk to other people. She kept throwing food on my plate and told me to put some meat on my bones.

The lady, who seemed to adopt me for the afternoon, introduced me to her entire family. She told me all about the IRA and how important it was to her. In addition she introduced me to half of Unalakleet's IRA. No village was recognized by the state of Alaska, in the time of the indian land act, unless it sent in a petition to the state to be a town. After they were approved, the town had to have a mayor and various other parts of a local government. The town maintained their old ways sort of a tribe leader through the IRA. The IRA and local government work together but some of the elders don't always respect the government because they believe that the IRA should run the village. In some villages, there is a huge rivalry, but there didn't seem to be anything to bad in Unalakleet.

After the wonderful Sarah Palin/Potluck event, I went to Summersize. That is a summer "camp" program for local children. Since this event is a Nome event, it was a big deal to have it in Unalakleet. I went to see if there was a story. There wasn't but I did get some children to record their youth dreams for a spot we have.

After this, I walked to me with Jessie and the mayor saw me and picked me up to take me to his work. The mayor is also the manager of the commercial fishing company in town. He showed me around the building and introduced some of his employees. He has people working for him from age 18 to 80. Jessie arrived and we interived him on building activity going on during the summer. After the interview Jessie and I relaxed and had a smoothie at "Peace on Earth" pizza parlor.

This is a picture of me next to my first bush plane flight. The flight wasn't that bad. There wasn't too much turbulance on the 9 passanger plane.

KNOM Update

So far, I am learning so much at the station. During the fourth of July, I got to do a remote with one of my coworkers. We went to the parade on Front Street and reported on air about what was going on during the parade. It was fun! John was the main person on the mic and I was assisting him, while learning how to use the equipment. We explained each float on the air and commented on it.

I am now running the station on Sundays by myself. It is kind of a scary thought but thank goodness there is a house full of KNOMers next door if anything happens.

KNOM will have FCC representatives here next week to check the station. We have had radio engineers working on the equipment for the last few weeks. Tom Busch works with the equipment and KNOM usually flys him out here when we are experience problems but if there is something that he doesn't understand, Less is the go to guy. Less and Tom will be here during the inspection. Since Less is here, I asked for him to explain more information about the transmitter, when he had time. He was able to take me out to the transmitter and show me around. The AM transmitter is in a field about 3 miles away from Nome. Less explained the purpose of the rings around the tower and how it is raised or lowered to get a higher or lower frequency. We walked along the gravel road to make sure all the wires were ok. We found 3 copper wires were broken and one copper strip. These wires surround the transmitter and are underground. Less let me help him weld the wires together. It was a lot of fun and suprizingly easy!

I almost have my second rotation done! I am so excited that I go my first month of work done a month before it airs. I don't think it is that bad for a newbie!

The pictures I have included in this entry are pictures of White Alice, the cold war equipment found on Anvil Mountain. I know it has nothing to do with the entry but I thought it would be fun.

Tree at last!

There hasn't been anything big going on this week at work except for a new project that I am taking on. I am assisting with an advertising campaign for Denali KidCare. This program seems pretty amazing. It pays for doctor bills for teens, kids, and pregnant women. It will even fly people to Anchorage to get the treatment they might need.

Outside of work, I was able to go on my first trip to Council. It is a big deal to go out there! There are only a few roads that lead outside of Nome and all of them don't go any further than about 120 miles. Council is about a 90 mile drive away from Nome. The road is a long dirt road that takes you up, down, and around all kinds of mountains. Driving on it, makes you feel like you should be in a truck commercial. Along the coast, most of the houses look the same as the first picture I have included in my blog. It starts getting different when you drive in the village called Safety. Safety is the last checkpoint in the Iditarod. One of the things that puts Safety on the map is the roadhouse. Just as it sounds, it is a roadhouse that has a rustic touch with walrus tusks decorating the walls along with autographed dollar bills from locals. In addition, people are known to come from all around and drink at the bar. With that in mind, the first picture in this blog is of the outside of the roadhouse with the old fashion face front. Notice the small blue plane in the parking lot. Apparently, it is common for people to fly to Safety Roadhouse.... only in Nome.

Further in the trip, we stopped at the "Train to No Where." This is the second picture in the blog. This train was built to easily transport gold to New York. Unfortunately, the builders forgot that they were in Bush Alaska and things like trains don't last. The area was flooded and the train got stuck.

After a long drive, we finally got to Council. This cute little village has about 15-20 houses and is a get away place for people in Nome. This village is unique for 2 reasons. First of all, there is no bridge to get to it so you either stop and walk across the river to get to your house or hope that your car can make it across. The water is about30 feet wide and 1-2 feet deep at the most so trucks can easily get across. The second aspect that makes Council unique is the trees. About 15 miles away from the city, we started seeing a few trees pop out. Since Nome is so far north, we don't get any trees, just tundra. It was interesting to suddenly see a line of trees pop up as if they suddently existed. The camping experience was great. It was kind of hot (70 degrees, which is hot for Northwest Alaska) with no wind so we had a lot of bugs. Despite all of the bug bites, we decided it was worth it to see trees again.

Over all, we saw 3 wild reindeer, a fox, a beaver dam, several rainbow trout, countless bunnies (over 30 just sitting in the road), and a heard of muskox from a distance.

I also got to visit Anvil Mountain. This mountain is right outside of Nome and is known for the abbandoned Cold War structures. There is always a large amount of wildlife at the top of it. Bywildlife, I mean muskox. I have never seen muskox up close but I have collected a lot of the kivia. Kivia is the fur muskox shed and is known to be worth alot of money.