Notes from here and there

So far, the weather this summer has been lovely. Not too hot, not too cool; sunny days alternating with rainy days; and not many fires and clean, crisp air. I'm very grateful!

Blueberries are appearing now, and they are huge and brilliant blue! But I sampled a few, and they are still sour. The sugar will develop in a week or so.

These raspberries are ripe though, and they grow wild in our yard!


Every dog has her comfy. Cricket loves to sunbathe:


Thistle prefers to hang out inside, so she gets squozen:


Here I am pulling pin bones out of a salmon fillet with needle-nosed pliers!


I am wearing a kuskpuk, an Alaska Native garment that is very practical, with a huge front pocket and a hood. Traditionally, these were made with marine mammal gut and worn over a parka in wintertime to keep the parka clean. Nowadays, they are made of light cotton and nice in summertime as a bug shield. The hood has quite a bit of overhang over your face, so it’s very effective! I also used to wear a kuspuk on airplanes before covid came along and I quit going on airplanes. The hood is a defense mechanism from chatty seatmates, and the pocket is perfect for your boarding pass, a packet of tissues, a hanky, hand sanitizer, a lip balm, and a small bottle of hand lotion since airports are so dry! Now it’s a good garment for a post-covid world. You can pull the hood over your head to protect against potential sneeze juices, and keep hand sanitizer in the front pocket. Then it’s easy to pull off and throw right into the laundry hamper when you get home.

Thistle supervises fishy handlings very closely! She has not yet learned that she doesn’t get raw fishy! She only gets cooked fishy!


Speaking of laundry, we quit going to the laundromat since the ‘Rona, and I handwash clothes in a tub. I used to stand in the tub and wash clothes with my feet (like ancient Greeks making wine, said MK). But then I found this thing at Samson's Hardware, which is a very old-fashioned hardware store here in Fairbanks. They are the only place you can find things like an old-fashioned manual clothes agitator, stovetop pressure cookers, hand-forged tools, giant cast iron dutch ovens, and other things of that nature.


My current leisure reading is very Of the Moment: