Osama Bin Laden is dead.

My wife just announced that Bin Laden is dead.  I'm trying to identily the emotion I feel.  But distracted from that, I'm caught up thinking of my children's reaction.  My 10 year old shouts "Hurray!" and my 4 year old says "oh, that's not good."  Of course I understand where they are at.  My oldest is still young enough to see the enemy and be glad he's dead.  The world is good and bad to him and Osama was definitely bad, so we should be happy.  My younger son doesn't even recognize the name.  He shows a Christ-like love for all people (inadvertantly, I'll admit), but I admire that.

So I'm stuck, do I celebrate the death of a bad man that was clearly an enemy?  Or do I feel sorry for a man that just entered some form of existence that is worse than I care to imagine?  I said nothing as I tried to decide what would be the best thing to say.  Do I teach the younger child about enemies, or teach the older one that we're supposed to love our enemies? 

Upon reflection I think the best description is contentment.  Osama Bin Laden is seeing justice today.  I don't want to rejoice in his death, it's sad that a successful, charismatic man chose to cause so much harm and sorrow in the world.  But I'm just not one to dance on a coffin.

Movie Reviews

So I tried a weekly column blog this spring that didn't go. I have always enjoyed movie crictiques and I thought I'd try my hand at it. I'm not going to create a new blog, just adapt the old one:

www.davesweeklycolumn.blogspot.com

I hope you enjoy.

Ground Zero Mosque

So I've been following this story for a good week now, but I've never commented because I kept thinking this couldn't actually be real! How is it that our freedom loving country could be protesting the building of a church? I keep making parallels in my mind to the guilt-by-association internment camps for the Japanese citizens during WWII. I keep hoping that our enlightened country can't possibly be so blatantly disregarding one of the most basic and important principles to our constitution, Freedom of Religion.

I want to point out to protesters that the equivalent to a Muslim terrorist is a Nazi skin-head, or a KKK member. They are not just your average Arab!

And that this church is not a terrorist training ground, stop listening to FOX News and think about it. They don't train suicide bombers in the US, it's too nice here. They do it in poor countries where young men have no hope.

So why is it that we are suddenly afraid of this church? I have an answer: Fear of those that are different. So they believe a different religion, they dress differently, and therefore we can't trust them? I certainly don't fall into this group, maybe because I'm part Scottish and the Scottish dress differently and are very hard to understand.

Honestly I think anyone who has protested this church should be ashamed. And I can see this lash out of hate ending the tea party movement and killing the republican momentum that has been growing. Not a great time, just before the mid-term election, to splash a lot of hate around.

Honestly I hope this does become a big issue for candidates because it is so telling.

Why Alaska?

So I was discussing with some friends on where the best place to live would be. My wife has a series of 4 posts answering this same question: http://www.brightonwoman.blogspot.com/ I think I can illustrate my reasons as follows.
Not sure if I need to say anything else. Winters are cold, but not terribly so. Winters are dark, but not oppressively (winter solstice still has 7 hours of daylight) and it doesn't last all that long. Anyway, winter is when you tend to be inside more. And summer is light all day and night!


People still feel new here. We are intruding in the wilderness rather than trying to preserve a bit of it.



I fit in with the other odd-balls that live here.



Food is more expensive in the grocery store, but so easy to come by in nature (not to mention how much better for you, and nature, it is to eat) that I don't think our budget is any more here.



Our kids get PFD's just like we do (yeah, that around $7000 for our family each year).


Do I need any more reasons?

Saving Money

I think most people can remember the dread of buying college text books at the beginning of each semester. Well, I'm going back to school and I just bought 8 textbooks on Amazon. So as I was looking I discovered one book on sale for $80, then I noticed (and remembered my miserly old tactic of saving money) the last edition of the book with the used price of $4!!! That's like 5 steak dinners difference! So of course I bought the 4th edition instead of the 5th, it's always worked just fine before.

I looked in the syllabus and saw that I needed to read chapters 7, 10, and, 11 for today's class. I dutifully did my reading and then went to answer the questions. They questions just didn't seem right so I went back to the syllabus where he had included chapter titles as well as numbers.

Turns out I needed to read chapter 8, 12, and 14! Great! Then like five times during class he asked us to turn to a certain page and none of mine matched, of course. So I need to run and read three different chapters and answer these stupid questions... Textbooks are not as exciting as I had remembered them being :(

I think I need a steak dinner!

Doing something real.

Yesterday I caught 3 sockeye salmon, filleted them and rubbed my own recipe of brine on them and laid them out in the fridge. Today I went and cut down an alder tree and sawed it into small chunks and then split those chunks into chips. I lit some charcoal and put it into the smoker, threw some alder chips on top, and then set the fish on the rack. Then I continued to saw and split the rest of the tree and now I have a decent size bag of alder chips waiting for the next fish.

I feel a bit Thoreauish right now because I did something myself, something that will feed myself and my family, and I didn't need any help. I could have run to the store and bought a bag of chipped alder, or used an electric smoker. I could have bought salmon, or even bought smoked salmon, but there is a pleasure and satisfaction that comes in doing something one's self. I told my wife that the next step is to learn to make charcoal myself.

There is something about knowing how to find food from nature and provide for your family that way. Not that fishing is anything new to me, but I have started dip-netting (which is legal here in Alaska). That is standing chest dip in the river with a 4 ft. diameter net and basically scooping fish out of the water. It's not quite that simple or that easy, but that is the gist of it. Dip-netting is a much more reliable way to get fish because you do it at the peak of the salmon run and there are hundreds of thousands of fish that swim up the river each season. Thus far I have caught fifteen. I am allowed 50 more and though I don't plan on getting that many I really like the idea of having that much food safely stored away for winter. Not to mention that this is wild Alaska salmon, high is those great oils, fresh preserved with no chemicals. You can't get healthier food than this!

I'm reminded of a personal hero of mine, Dick Proenneke (author of One Man's Wilderness) who said, "Too many folks just work on parts of things, doing something to completion. That suits me."

We should all try to do more things to completion. I love learning something new that I can do to provide for my family. Growing the garden is nothing new, and we are anxious to buy land where we can put in a large garden and greenhouse to grow much of the produce that we use. This fall I am going to work hard to go out and find a legal moose to pack in the freezer. I can just imagine the feeling of having a few hundred pounds of meat in the freezer waiting to be eaten this winter.

Our next goal is to learn to raise chickens. This will probably also have to wait until we have our own land, but we want to be able to have the eggs and meat on hand. Eventually, this home will include sheep. Then my dear wife can post a blog about the satisfaction of sheering, dying, spinning, and knitting a sweater.

At least for Jenni and I life seems to be much happier when we are doing things, rather than buying or having things. The next project I have is building my own smokehouse. I've been using a friend's but I have gotten a hold of four oven racks and I think I can build a good smokehouse so it's always on hand.

Come Together

You know I have spent several hours over the last month researching figures and debating polls of this new healthcare law. I want to be done. As a friend said "... we'll just have to wait and see who is right." I'm sure that is true. I dislike how both sides can support their ideas and prove each other wrong and the media does very little to provide hard evidence.
I suppose I am tired of politics, at least for now. I hope wish that this country could be nicer when it comes to differences, and that we could sit down and discuss things more than we do. Both sides just seem to be on the attack all the time and that is not good for anyone. One big reason I am not a member of any party. I guess I just want to ask the question (seriously!): Can't we all just get along?