Everyone has their own way of enjoying a frozen Mendenhall Lake.

Ice skating is a natural choice.

Ice climbing, another given.

Ice biking, actually also quite popular.

Dogs are, of course, welcome on the ice.

The bravest of these choose to enter confined spaces, regardless of the risk.

As one — not brave, but curious — I’d say the risk is worth taking.

Wallen’s bear today

Was adorned in cedar boughs

Fit for a cold day

My newest neighbor

consumes its kind, careful not

to make eye contact

Bad news is bad, but
I must report, I witnessed
A death most sudden

If you had been me,
Would you have done what I did
In the midst of shock?

All I knew to do:
Confirm suspicions, give a
Proper burial.

More deaths have been seen
In this same spot since that day.
I try not to fret.

Thanks to a story about private pilots in Juneau for tomorrow’s issue, and a fortuitous encounter with a friend who works at Wings Airways, I’ve been able to spend a bit of time over the past week in the air above our backyard Juneau icefield. Local tour guides love to point out that the icefield is about the size of Rhode Island (once upon I time, I said this a lot myself). But comparisons to the smallest state don’t do much justice to the icefield’s vastness, or character. We’re never far from our backyard ice in our daily lives, whether in the icefield-influenced weather patterns or visits to the faces of the Mendenhall, Herbert and Eagle glaciers. But sometimes it seems like the Mendenhall is disappearing over the horizon. Where does the ice come from, where is it going? A 40-minute flight over part of the icefield is still just a glimpse, but it’s enough to give you chills.

Last weekend, words took over the street at the Poetry Block Party outside the Canvas.

We tried to have people erase our words to “find poetry,” but it turns out that,

like some ancient stone tablet,

or like a Higgs boson,

our journalistic efforts are indelible.

That, and it was raining.

So instead they snipped, stuck, and made their own headlines.

Pie in the Sky offered up a free treat to anyone providing a poem about pie.

Words covered everything. It took a thousand pictures to capture the image below.

(The CCW has no staff photographer).

The search was on for the most beautiful phrase in the English language.

Last November we reported on a new Alaska-themed workout video produced by a group of Wrangell kids and SEARHC Traditional Foods. (Read the original story here.) The group just posted a 5-minute workout video to YouTube and is planning to have a 10-minute video up soon too. Check it out for a fun way for all ages to keep active on a rainy day!

Thinking about what Russian writer Varlam Shalamov said about his time in the Gulag, how they had no snow plows and instead would be forced to march together, pushing down the snow.

There are more than enough warning signs, usually, even if we choose to ignore them.

Only a few minutes outside the heart of the city, embarrassingly enough, nature takes on lascivious form.

Everywhere we go, we leave something, even if it’s the absence, the compression, of something.

After months of living as a mushroom, we become a mushroom. We think like a mushroom.

After fifteen minutes of direct sunlight, however, even living on Venus seems less like a prison.

Recently, the Filipino Community, Inc. of Juneau held a welcome party for the 2011 Alaska State Legislature, who had slumped into town for the new session.

Everyone was invited to come down the hill and the checklists at the door kept track of who showed up.

It became like a political game of “Where’s Waldo?”

“I have to show you something,” said Sen. Dennis Egan (D-JUNEAU) , pulling out a large photograph. It was a picture of his newborn granddaughter, Aven, both the name of a flower and Egan’s mother’s name backwards. Neva Egan, the first first lady of the state of Alaska, passed away earlier this year.

Aven weighed 10 pounds, oneounce when she was born the previous night, while Egan’s daughter weighs just over 100 pounds.

“So we’re trying to figure out how this happened,” he said.

The politicos were also treated to special performances of Filipino dancing, including the tinikling, the national dance of the Philippines, in which fleet-footed participants have to move quickly between two long wooden poles being rhythmically moved and banged together.

The audience was encouraged to participate in the tricky dance, and though a few of the legislative staff members, hovering around the wine bar at the back of the room like hummingbirds, attempted it, none of the legislators themselves agreed to do it.

To read the full story, go to http://capitalcityweekly.com/stories/020211/new_779416200.shtml