Blogging

So, Martha and I were out to a ChristmasHoliday Party last evening—and enjoyed ourselves very much—and the very nice young woman♠ next to me asked me lots of questions about blogging.

After saying that I try to blog once a day and sometimes more, and having her husband confirm that assertion, I missed Friday.  So, I have to make up for it.  And, there is a lot to blog about, but I am going to talk about how good we have it.

In today's Snail Mail I got a newsletter from KNOM, a radio station in Nome, Alaska.  (Tom Wirtanen should be thrilled.)  In the newsletter it talked about the February-March time frame this last year.

It's 22 days to be remembered, during which a string of 13 consecutive brutal blizzards hammer Nome and the region.  Several days, except for police and KNOM, everything just about shuts down.  The region affected is the size of Maine to Alabama, and west as far as Chicago. Some of Nome's plowed streets have sheer walls of snow ten feet high.

Not everywhere in Alaska has ten feet high snow walls.  Fairbanks, being in a desert plain, has snow, but not nearly as much.

Elsewhere the newsletter mentions a University of Alaska report that shows that food in Nome is 218% the cost in Portland, Oregon.  Heating oil is much more reasonable, being 190% of the Portland cost.

Life in Lowell is not nearly as rigorous, and at my age that is a good thing.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  Actually, this person is not a total stranger to me.  She was, some 20 years ago, the roommate of my middle brother's now sister-in-law.