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Homeless in Alaska

 

Another thing that surprised us about Alaska; there are homeless people there.  How can there be homeless people in Alaska?  Maybe in the summer, but in the winter?  Yet along the highways in towns, there they are, some with signs, just like anywhere else.  We park and venture off the road into pockets of forest in and around town, in search of a particular bird, and there are the camps; places where people spend the night.  There are many homeless people in Anchorage and Fairbanks.

 

I don’t think being homeless in Alaska is a summertime fling and then you go inside somewhere to wait out the winter.  I don’t think the homeless get to do what Judy and I have done and float north and south with the seasons.  From the comfort of South Texas all winter I tracked the temperature in Fairbanks and watched it to go to 40 below and stay there, never getting as warm as zero again for a week.  As a year-round endeavor, being homeless in Alaska is unfathomable.

 

 

 

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There on the edge of the window

 

 

It’s a Texas Giant Walking Stick.

 

Found him (I think it’s a male) later on the wall.

 

They’re common in the Eastern U.S.

 

And are the longest native insect in North America.  We don’t see them much because they’re so well camouflaged when they stay on plants.

 

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Good song choice

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKpcXzDrZ7E&feature=youtu.be

 

That’s part of the reason why that choir video that Becky is in sounds so good.  It fits the voices.

 

Another part is that the choir director, Stephen Ross, is really good at what he does. 

http://www.stephenrossmusic.com/bio.html

 

He is a singer and arranger in the Boulder, Colorado vocal band Face.  You have to check out this link.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZL9W7EZYD9g Turn your volume up!  You will be rewarded.

 

And hey, I recognize that door at 2:25 on the video.  That’s the McKee’s Hobbit Door in Louisville!  Look, there on the back of their house, bottom right.

 

We’re sitting right in front of it.

 

From the inside there is an inscription over the doorway that reads: “ Never make anything simple and efficient if a way can be found to make it complex and wonderful.”

 

We knew the door was good, but we didn’t know it was magic!