Fall, Kind Of

With the rainy season comes lots of rainbows,
apparently there's not enough room for them all.

It's sort of fall now.  The weather has been warmer than usual for this time of year.  Our high for today was 51 and, while our lows have gotten into the 30s, we haven't had a frost on the ground yet.  Bede just got it's first dusting of snow Monday - I will take a picture as soon as I can catch it not hiding behind a shroud of clouds.  Six years ago, we had our first snow on the ground, not just in the mountains, by Halloween.  We only have a few days left to see if this year will follow the pattern.  The rainy season has arrived, but it was late to the party as well.  We now have more rainy days than dry ones, but it took a while for that to happen. 

Fall in Alaska is definitely different from fall in Missouri.  We don't have deciduous trees in the village to enjoy the changing of the colors, but there are some aspens and birches outside of the village that are pretty - for a two week window.  If you don't get out of the village in that window, you miss seeing the leaves change color.  There isn't as much variety in the colors that we have in Missouri, either.  On a really good year, Missouri will have bright reds and yellows, and brown leaves.  Here, all of the large plants turn yellow, with only a few little plants turning the pretty reds.  Then, they lose their leaves very quickly and now it is just wet and gray and will stay that way until May.  

But wait, there's more.  It doesn't show up well in the picture,
but there's actually a fourth rainbow coming up to make two
V rainbows sets.  Does that make it a double double?

 

Fall berries.  I forget what they're called.  According to the
internet they're edible, but I haven't been brave enough to try.

We get some pretty spectacular sunsets
when the rain stops enough for the sun
to shine.

 

A little bit of fall color, but not much.  The red plants are only
a few inches tall.

 

Seagull swarm!  Anytime the seagulls are around, I always
ask them not to poop on me.  I'm pretty the risk of that
happening was very high on this day.

More seagulls swarming.  There are only
a few left in the village now.  Most have
already moved on for the winter.

 

 

 

Alaxsxa

Last week we had a theater group present for the school and community.  They weren’t able to do the full show because of time restraints (the flew over, set up, performed, tore down, and flew out in one day) and the issues that come with having to bring anything you want to use for the performance on a plane.  Instead, they performed select sections, showed recordings of previously performed portions, and gave brief descriptions of omitted segments.  Sometimes, you have to get creative to make things work out here.  The play was titled Alaxsxa after the name the native Alaskans gave the land before Russians came.  The play was an intermingling of Alaskan history and the personal stories of two of the actors, an army brat coming to Alaska and an Alaskan native from the same community.  As they went through the stories they were able to share the different perspectives and discuss some difficult topics and issues within Alaska.  At the end of the play, they had an open forum discussion with the community and then our seal dancers performed a seal dance, a sea-gull dance and another super cool dance that I don’t know what it’s called.  We really enjoyed watching the dancers and Mike looked like he enjoyed joining then when one of our middle school students pulled him up to join the group.  Unfortunately, my camera and I are having some conflict about how it’s handling what it thinks are low light situations so I don’t have any good pictures of that part of the dance.

PFDs

Thursday PFDs began direct depositing into accounts of Alaskan residents.  You are probably asking yourself "What the heck are PFDs?"  Well, you may have heard people say things like "They pay you to live in Alaska."  While that's not really accurate, PFDs are the source of that common misconception.  When Alaska discovered oil, they came into a nice chunk of change and the problem of what to do with it.  The state decided to use part of the funds for state improvement projects like roads and decided to set aside a portion of the proceeds to invest.  The Permanent Fund was created to manage that process.  They began investing in various things (stocks, real estate, etc) and actually invested so well that there have been years the state has generated more income from the Permanent Fund than from oil production.  By 1980, they had done well enough to decide to give some of the proceeds from those investments back to Alaska's residents.  Thus begun a tradition that is probably bigger than Black Friday.


Every October, Alaskan residents receive their PFDs and have to decide what to do with that extra money.  Dividends typically range between $1000 and $2000 per resident, and children count.  So if you are a married couple with four kiddos, you are looking at getting somewhere between $8000 and $12,000.  We will not qualify for permanent funds for another two years.  You have to be a resident for a full calendar year, beginning January 1st, before you can apply the following year.  If you move here January 2nd, you gotta wait.  You also cannot receive dividends if you were incarcerated during the year either.  I guess the state can't be sure you would have remained a resident had you had a say in where you lived.


Since the dividends bring a large sum of money to Alaskan families the same time every year, there are PFD sales and promotions everywhere!  I would venture to say these PFD sales generate more income for Alaskan businesses than Black Friday sales.  The grocery stores are crazy busy, included the village grocery store.  (Have I mentioned lately how much I already dislike shopping?)  The village runway was busy all day Friday with people leaving the village to go shopping, mostly taking trips to Anchorage.  Attendance at school will probably be lower next week because those families will still be out taking care of their errands.  PFDs are such a big deal in Alaska, they are actually the number one issue in the gubernatorial election this fall.  Now, if I could just get voter registration to realize my polling place is in the wrong fly-in village and that fly-in village is around  250 miles away from mine as the crow flies, I might be able to get to vote in that election.

One of many magazines and fliers advertising
PFD sales.  Totally bigger than Black Friday!