Oh, you lucky duckies! Today you get to hop on the tractor with me and maintain the road. I woke up to a fresh helping of “The White Shit” this morning. There is a road under there somewhere…There is a car under there...
Yesterday, John treated the children to a lunch out at Hacienda in Wasilla en route to the orthodontist. My two oldest children made a big mistake. Several actually. Their first mistake was to try and eat the raw jalapeño peppers that came with...
What do Paul of Tarsus, Catherine the Great, Queen Victoria, Voltaire, H.P. Lovecraft, Jean-Paul Sartre, Anais Nin, and J.R.R. Tolkien all have in common? They were all prolific letter writers. Writing letters is an art. There is something very...
It was Spring (or Breakup, as we Alaskans call it), years ago, when we bought our home in Talkeetna. When the lower 48 has seeds sprouting and grass growing, we have mud. Lots and lots of mud. Breakup is when all the Winter’s snow melts and...
I suffer from anxiety. I have suffered from anxiety for as long as I can remember. I have many early memories, and all of them are of me being anxious. There aren’t many pictures of me as a child, mostly because I “ruined” most of them by frowning...
Welcome to my “Around Talkeetna” series, Episode One. This is where I will write about, and review, places around our little village. Today’s episode is brought to you by my broken dishwasher. Saturday morning, first thing, my...
Talkeetna is a rural community of 800 year round residents. Anywhere besides Alaska, it would be called a village (the definitions of “village”, “town” and “city” from the Grammarly Blog), but in Alaska itself...
My recent decision to no longer have a presence on Facebook was met with great incredulity from my friends. I laid out my thoughts and poured out my heart in the following message to my friends: “Thank you to everyone who has checked on me the...
The title here refers to both the Noctiluca House, a physical off-grid castle, and the House Bender, the eccentric family who live in the castle. The first thing you need to know is that our house is so remote that the word “boondocks”...
Raven (Corvus corax)About two years ago, a pair of ravens began eating from my compost pile. I was very worried about this at first. Wile I adore corvids (one of my sons is named Corvus, after all), I had heard about ravens attacking poultry. I keep...
