Alaska Wild Child Turned Hit Singer

Alaska Wild Child Turned Hit Singer, This genre-bending singer-songwriter grew up in a wilderness home,  without indoor plumbing. Determined to earn her living only with her music, she lived in her van and performed at taverns and street fairs, and was discovered in a San Diego coffee shop. She signed a contract with Atlantic Records and released her multi-platinum debut album when she was 21.

Jewel Kilcher (born May 23, 1974), professionally known as Jewel, is an American singer-songwriter, guitarist, producer, actress and poet. She has received four Grammy Award nominations and has sold over 27 million albums worldwide.

Jewel’s debut album, Pieces of You, released on February 28, 1995, became one of the best-selling debut albums of all time, going 15 times platinum. One single from the album, “Who Will Save Your Soul”, peaked at number eleven on the Billboard Hot 100; two others, “You Were Meant for Me” and “Foolish Games”, reached number two and seven respectively on the Hot 100, and were listed on Billboard’s 1997 year-end singles chart. She has crossed multiple genres throughout her career.

Perfectly Clear, her first country album, was released on The Valory Music Co. in 2008. It debuted atop Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart and featured three singles, “Stronger Woman”, “I Do”, and “Til It Feels Like Cheating”. Jewel released her first independent album Lullaby in May 2009.

Jewel is the co-host, as well as a judge, with Kara DioGuardi on the songwriting competition reality television series Platinum Hit, which premiered May 30, 2011 on the cable network Bravo. Jewel has the vocal range of a lyric soprano.

12 For 2012: Fairbanks, Alaska

12 For 2012: Fairbanks, Alaska, NASA predicts that 2012 will feature the brightest northern-lights displays in 50 years. The “solar maximum” is the reason, a period when the magnetic field at the sun’s equator rotates slightly faster than at the solar poles.

Where will be the best place to view this amped-up aurora borealis? That’s up for debate, but many choose the area around Fairbanks, as it gets spectacular lights even during a normal year.

In fact, it’s deluged with Japanese honeymooners in winter who believe that a child conceived under the aurora will have an auspicious future.

Nome Alaska Fuel Delivery

Nome Alaska Fuel Delivery, A Russian tanker finished pumping an emergency shipment of 1.3 million gallons of fuel to shore in the ice-bound port of Nome, Alaska, on Thursday and prepared to head home, officials said.

Alaskans contracted the Renda, a 370-foot ice-class tanker owned by the Russian company RIMSCO, after a missed autumn fuel delivery left Nome short on fuel in the dead of winter, when the port freezes over.

The Russian vessel and its U.S. Coast Guard escort, the icebreaking cutter Healy, were expected to depart Nome on Friday, a Coast Guard spokesman said.

“They are done offloading,” Coast Guard spokesman David Mosley said. “The anticipated departure is scheduled for tomorrow.”

It will be up to the ships’ captains to determine when to disembark, a task that involves breaking the Renda out of ice that has enclosed the tanker during the fuel transfer at Nome’s harbor, Mosley said.

Once free of the frozen port, the Healy will lead the Renda through some 360 miles of sea ice to the open waters of the Bering Sea, the Coast Guard said.

The Nome area, home to less than 10,000 people, is about 200 miles from the nearest point in Russia.

The shipment, which took about a month to reach Nome, marked the first winter marine delivery of fuel to northwestern Alaska, according to the Coast Guard and state officials.

Nome, like most communities in rural Alaska, has no outside road access. The region normally gets fuel and other cargo shipped by barge during the open-water seasons of summer and fall.

The Russian vessel was chartered to deliver 1.3 million gallons of diesel and gasoline to the Bering Sea city to make up for a missed autumn fuel delivery.

Cancellation of that fall barge shipment, blamed on bad weather, put the city in danger of running out of fuel in late winter or paying extremely high prices for fuel that would otherwise have to be flown in, state officials said.

Governor Sean Parnell deemed the mission a success.

“The crew of the Coast Guard Cutter Healy performed capably and with great skill under extreme conditions,” Parnell said in a statement.

“Thanks to the Coast Guard, residents in Nome will avoid facing a fuel shortage that would have resulted in financial hardship for many families and businesses,” he said.

Bearberry, UVA-URSI

Bearberry, UVA-URSI, Bearberries are three species of dwarf shrubs in the genus Arctostaphylos. Unlike the other species of Arctostaphylos (see Manzanita), they are adapted to Arctic and sub-Arctic climates, and have a circumpolar distribution in northern North America, Asia and Europe, one with a small highly disjunctive population in Central America.
The name bearberry derives from the edible fruit said to be consumed by bears. The fruit, also called bearberries, are edible and sometimes gathered for food. The leaves of the plant are used in herbal medicine.

Alpine Bearberry – A. alpina (L.) Spreng (syn. Arctous alpinus (L.) Niedenzu). A procumbent shrub 10-30 centimetres (3.9-12 in) high. Leaves not winter green, but dead leaves persist on stems for several years. Berries dark purple to black. Distribution: circumpolar, at high latitudes, from Scotland east across Scandinavia, Russia, Alaska, Canada and Greenland; southern limits in Europe in the Pyrenees and the Alps, in Asia to the Altay Mountains, and in North America to British Columbia in the west, and Maine and New Hampshire in the United States in the east.
Red Bearberry – A. rubra (Rehd. & Wilson) Fernald (syn. Arctous rubra (Rehder and E.H. Wilson) Nakai; Arctous alpinus var. ruber Rehd. and Wilson). A procumbent shrub 10-30 centimetres (3.9-12 in) high. Leaves deciduous, falling in autumn to leave bare stems. Berries red. Distribution: in the mountains of Sichuan, southwestern China north and east to eastern Siberia, Alaska and northern Canada east to northern Quebec.
Common Bearberry – A. uva-ursi (L.) Spreng.
Other recorded old English common names include Arberry, Bear’s Grape, Crowberry, Foxberry, Hog Cranberry, Kinnikinnick, Mealberry, Mountain Box, Mountain Cranberry, Mountain Tobacco, Sandberry, Upland Cranberry, Uva-ursi.

The plant contains arbutin, ursolic acid, tannic acid, gallic acid, some essential oil and resin, hydroquinones (mainly arbutin, up to 17%), tannins (up to 15%), phenolic glycosides and flavonoids.

The leaves are picked any time during the summer and dried for use in infusions, liquid extracts, medicinal tea bags and tablets believed to be potentially effective in folk medicine.

Bearberry is relatively safe, although large doses may cause nausea, green urine, bluish-grey skin, vomiting, fever, chills, severe back pain, ringing in the ears (some people can withstand up to 20g and others show signs of poisoning after just 1g); take no more than 7-10 days at a time.

It should not be used by people who are pregnant, breast feeding, nor in the treatment of children (under 12) and patients with kidney disease. Drug interactions have been recorded with diuretics, as well as drugs that make the urine acidic (such as ascorbic acid and Urex).

Despite these extensive applications in folk medicine, there is no scientific evidence that any of them are effective.

Alaska Lost Ski Areas Project

Alaska Lost Ski Areas Project, The Alaska Lost Ski Areas Project (ALSAP) is an Alaskan historical web site with the goal of documenting all lost downhill, cross country and jump ski sites in Alaska. A lost ski area is a site that was once used regularly for skiing, but is not used or used only rarely for skiing now. This web site is updated when new information on lost ski areas in Alaska is found or contributed. More information on lost Alaskan ski areas is always welcome ! Especially digital scans of old photos of lost ski areas in use.

Check the Recent Updates link to see what has recently been added. Here are some interesting lost ski area web pages that you might want to check out: Fire Island, City Ski Bowl, Independence Mine, Nome’s Dry Creek, Kennecott, Mount McKinley Army Recreation Camp, Arctic Valley, Cleary Summit, UAF Ski Hill, Curry Ski Hill, Manitoba, the Dan Moller Ski Trail and the Homer sites starting with the Kachemak Ski Club First Rope Tow. Also, the remote Cold War radar Air Force Stations have offered surprising lost ski areas. Places like Cape Newenham AFS, Murphy Dome AFS, Tatalina AFS and Indian Mountain AFS.

Plus – don’t miss these lost xc sites: Anchorage 4th Avenue and Girdwood Jr. National Trail.

Thanks to all the folks that have a piece of Alaska in their heart, whether they live in Alaska or not – who have contributed lost skiing site information (see the ALSAPPERS list). Your efforts to help preserve Alaskan skiing history are appreciated by many!!!

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