On the bus in Denali this dumb caribou would not move, for ten minutes it wondered around the road, even the bus couldn't nudge it. In the second picture see the road below, April and I hiked up from there. As you can see she was so tired, I convinced her to stop going up.
We traveled to Anchorage and took a plane to Kotzebue, 30 miles North of the Arctic Circle. The community is 90% Eskimo, here they are getting salmon from the Bering sea. In 1978 I lived in the gray building. The second picture was taken in 1978 about 200 feet to the right of the first picture. I worked in Kotzebue in 1978-79 as engineer and later manager of KOTZ-AM. Very few managers of any radio station in the U.S.A. could claim that a 100% share of all radios tuned in as listeners, but no one ever listened to any other station. Can you guess why?
I was anxious to see my former students, I found one, Glenda who died in 1998. The flowers of course are not real and all those buried here are frozen in the ground. The second picture of me was taken in the same location in 1978
This is the radio station, they did paint it ONCE since I was there in '78, however inside most areas of the radio station needed some care. Whether it is funding or poor management I do not know. As you can see it looked better in 1978.
There is one studio that in is pretty good shape, I was interviewed on the air for about 15 minutes, also Dee, a very kind announcer had some trouble doing the program, "Mini Tundra" due to a cough, so I had the honor of reading the one way messages broadcast into the bush.
Our guide, very talented, very personable. She was a pleasure
Brad Reeve, program Director of KOTZ (second picture) in '78, now head of the Kotzebue Electric Association, , Brad has a very nice home which he built. Also we talked about wind farms, Kotzebue gets up to 40% of their electricity from a wind farm. He thought it was ridiculous how we on Cape Cod are fighting over something that is so helpful in cutting back on the use of oil. Who are we to tell them where to drill after what we have done to Cape Cod
?http://www.greenpowergovs.org/wind/Kotzebue%20case%20study.html
Ernie Norton, a very kind gentle soul, who was an announcer at KOTZ in '78. He older now but still kind. 25 years separates the two pictures
Local Eskimo boys swimming in Kotzebue Sound at 11 PM, water temperature 45 degrees. Second picture, same location, 25 years earlier.
Number of Visits since August 4, 2003
