The Blizzzzard

This past weekend, a blizzard blew into Nome, and we got our first real taste of Alaskan winter.

We'd already had several weeks of snow on the ground - snow that would blow around like sand when it became cold and windy - but this definitely took things "up a notch." (Bam!)

The whole Western Alaska region got socked with a solid dose of winter weather, with strong winds in excess of 45 mph, yet more inches of new snow accumulation, and wind chills easily dipping below zero. (Many villages are already seeing routine daily temperatures fall below zero - without the wind chill.)

Something that immediately struck me this past weekend was just how much snow was getting inside the entries of the (radio) station, despite all of the windows and doors being shut. The heavy winds were pushing in a good amount of snow through all of the miniscule spaces between the doors and their doorframes, and the white stuff was collecting inside both the front and back doors - forming mounds more than deep enough to accommodate a deep bootprint, or to make at least a dozen robust snowballs.

It may be just the inexperience of an outsider, but the snow really seems "different" here than in the East Coast. Back in Jersey or Massachusetts, snow always seems a transient thing: even in the depths of the coldest winter, you can never count on it lasting too long, because a single unseasonably warm night or rainfall could melt it all away, leaving you with a pile of slush. The snow of the northeast thins out when thousands of cars drive over it, when bag after bag of de-icing salt is thrown down, and when it becomes "dirty snow," mixed in with sand and pebbles and dirt.

Snow at home always seems as fickle as rain: it might dominate today, but it's gone tomorrow. As a result, I think it's more of a curiosity in Jersey.

In Nome, all of that is gone. There is nowhere near the traffic in Nome that we have back home, so - guess what? - there isn't nearly as much "dirty" snow. And unless we have an unusual period of warmth, the snow we have now is pretty much here to stay for 5-6 months. So it'll just keep building up and building up, forming our snow "base," blowing around and forming snow drifts that can change with the winds, and, in general, acting like just as much a permanent part of the landscape as the ground, the rocks, or the ocean.

So in short, it's winter until May. And I'm pretty excited.

T. Hanksgiving

One of the other KNOM volunteers and my housemate, Ross, has become known among our circles of Nome friends as a self-described inventor of new and unorthodox holidays.

One of these holidays is coming up this week, right after Thanksgiving, much in the same way that Boxing Day (in Canada and the UK) follows after Christmas.

It's entitled "T. Hanksgiving," a holiday in which, on one of the weekend days following Thanksgiving (Fri, Sat or Sun), celebrators gather to eat leftovers and watch movies starring Tom Hanks.

According to Ross, with whom I've just conferred on the subject, T. Hanksgiving is, at most, two years old. While the first Thanksgiving, at least in American storytelling, was celebrated in 1621 in Plymouth by religious pilgrims and indigenous peoples, the first T. Hanksgiving was celebrated in 2004 in Pittsburgh by a few college students.

In staging the third installment of the holiday this year, the search has begun to round up as many Tom Hanks movies in the greater Nome area as possible. We already have Saving Private Ryan (1998) and Cast Away (2003) on hand, but we may also be able to borrow or rent others, such as Apollo 13 (1995), The DaVinci Code (2006) or even Sleepless in Seattle (1993).

Will other, even better Tom Hanks options present themselves? We'll have to wait and see what the winds of fate blow our way. With a little luck and a little faith, plus also ample amounts of Stove Top, we may yet discover what T. Hanksgiving miracles are in store for us.

Any fond memories of T. Hanksgivings past, or big plans to celebrate this year? Please feel free to add a comment.

A sleepy Sunday

The Sunday before Thanksgiving, and hanging around the house during the afternoon.

Lots going on lately in Nome:

Last weekend, on Saturday night, we had the Open Mic Night at the Mini-Convention center, sponsored by the Nome Arts Council. The other two volunteers (Ross and Jesse) and I decided to do an act, which we started cobbling together as the weekend began and actually had worked out mostly well by the time Saturday rolled around.

We performed as the "Talent Brothers," in which our names each spelled out N.O. Talent:

Nash Ogden Talent (Ross)
Norman Oskar Talent (Jesse)
Nathan Orville Talent (myself)

Ross and Jesse played guitars and I just sang. We did:

"Mrs. Brown" (You've Got a Lovely Daughter)
"Old Joe's Place" (from A Mighty Wind)
and
"Black Water" (by the Doobie Brothers)

It was a lot of fun, and hopefully we'll be able to reprise our stage roles for another performance at some time.

Meanwhile, I'm strongly considering applying to teach a class at Northwest campus, and am starting to amass syllabus ideas. I'm thinking maybe of teaching an overview/survey of Western art music, a kind of "highlights reel" of the past thousand years. It couldn't be anything too in-depth, since at most we'd only have 15 hours of class time with which to work.

Finally, I've also been commissioned to write the 15-minute, annual Christmas play for KNOM. I'm excited about it but now really need to tease out the few ideas I have thus far...

Going over to a friend's house for Indian food tonight! It should be fun; haven't had good Indian probably since Harvard.

A new month, a new title

Hooo, boy, I haven't written in a while. Halloween has come and gone, and all of a sudden it's November, there's snow on the ground, it's in the single-digits at night, and Thanksgiving is right around the corner.

Just to mix things up, I decided to go ahead and change the title of my blog, from "Travels in Anvil City" to "Finis Terrae." The former referred to the original name of Nome (at its founding in the last few years of the 19th century), while the latter, new name comes from the Latin phrase for "end of the world" or "end of the earth."

When I look out of our second-floor windows in the volunteer house, towards the Norton Sound and the Bering Sea, knowing that Siberian Russia and the Alaskan Arctic aren't far out there somewhere, it sometimes can feel that it really is the end of the world - not in a negative way, but rather just in a way that, from time to time, makes you lean back in your chair and say "Wow."

So thus the new title.

More soon, hopefully!