Letter I: Ice Sculpture

Each year, from late February through most of March, IceAlaska hosts a kids’ park (ice slides, climb-on ice sculptures, ice mazes and skating rinks.) The same venue plays host to the BP World Ice Art Championships. These slide shows display the 2014 competition pieces.

The Single Block competition gives teams of 1 or 2 people a single block of “Alaska Diamond” ice, roughly 8′ x 5′ x 3′ harvested from O’Grady Pond Too. Heavy equipment is used only for the initial placement of the block. Power tools may be used, and the teams are allowed 2 1/2 days to work. Only the ice, ice shavings, and water (as glue) may be part of the finished sculpture.

 

Love in Motion: First Place Single-block Realistic

Carnival: First Place Abstract and Artists’ Choice single-block Abstract

Teaching Breaching: 2nd Place Realistic

Windy Day: 2nd Place Abstract

Conformity: 3rd Place Realistic

Flight to the Sun: 3rd Place Abstract

Fairy Tale: 4th Place Realistic

Peaceful Flight: 4th Place Abstract

Lunch: 5th Place Realistic and Artists’ Choice Single-block Realistic

Queen of the Forest: 5th Place Abstract

Self Made Man

Aurora Harp

Curiosity Killed the Cat?

“Resting Grizzley” by B.D. Berry

Hello

Goliath Defender of the Night

Behold

Reminder of the Past

Pass Through of Time and Space

Safety

Tree of Life

Arctic Winter Dreams

Below the Surface

The Second Brain

Born to be Wild

Arapaima

Brick House

Progression

God of Fire

Viral

Connie’s Spirit

The One That Got Away

I Love You!

To Face a Fear, To Be Set in the Clear

Metamorphosis Of Aisha’s Dream

Strong

Creation Station

Born to be Wild

Which One is Yours?

Anybody Out There?

Yearning

Full Circle

The Multi-Block competition gives teams of up to 4 people 10 blocks of ice, each roughly 6′ x 4′ x 3′. (The 3′ in each case may vary; it’s the thickness of the pond ice.) Heavy equipment and skilled operators are available to move and stack carved and uncarved ice. The teams have 5 1/2 days to work.

Maidens of Birch Tree: 1st place Multi-block Realistic

Heavy Duty Dream: 1st Place Multi-block Abstract

Soul of the Moon, 2nd Place Realistic

Gone With The Wind: Artists’ Choice and 2nd Place Abstract

Adventure Book: Attists’ Choice and 3rd Place Multi-block Realistic

Emotion, 3rd Place Abstract

The Last Dance: 4th Place Realistic and my favorite.

Blessing of the Horse Year, 4th Place Abstract

Wind of Childhood, 5th Place Realistic

Morning Coffeek 5th Place Abstract

Governor’s Choice: Aurora Dreams

Guardian of the Deep

Nature’s Judge and Jury

It Takes Guts to Get Out of the Ruts

Cocked

Imagine Dragons

Letter H: Quotes from Robert A. Heinlein

H is for Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988), one of the greatest science fiction writers of the 20^th Century. I read his juveniles in grade school, and very early published stories such as “By his Bootstraps” (under a pseudonym) in my father’s collection of back issues of Astounding Science Fiction. I have to say I prefer his early work, especially the Future History stories, and these are the sources for the quotations below. So here are the contexts for the quotes I have tweeted and placed on my facebook pages between April 3 and April 9, 2014.

“Glad did I live and gladly die.” Stevenson, quoted by Heinlein in “Requiem” (in The Past Through Tomorrow) written in 1940, long before the first man walked on the moon. The beginning of the story is better than any context I could give:

On a high hill in Samoa there is a grave. Inscribed on the marker are these words:

“Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die
And I lay me down with a will!

“This be the verse you grave for me:
‘Here he lies where he longed to be,
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.’”

These lines appear another place – scrawled on a shipping tag torn from a compressed-air container, and pinned to the ground with a knife.

And the ground is the ground of the moon.

 “Americans are considered crazy anywhere in the world.” Robert A. Heinlein (1941), “—And He Built a Crooked House—” in 6xH. And the Americans say “it’s the Californians; the Californians say “it’s the Los Angelinos;” the Los Angelinos say “it’s Hollywood;” the residents of Hollywood say “it’s the canyonites.” And it all winds up with one architect who tries to build a four-dimensional house.

“Why should we be held down by the frozen concepts of our ancestors?” Robert A. Heinlein, “—And He Built a Crooked House—”The architect, Teal, voicing his ideas of architecture.

“You are a man; you should anticipate such things. Earthquakes!” Robert A. Heinlein, “—And He Built a Crooked House—” Mrs. Bailey, complaining of California after she has talked her husband (to whom she is speaking) into moving there.

“What chance has a thirty-year-old married man, used to important money, to change his racket?” Robert A. Heinlein, “Space Jockey, in The Past Through Tomorrow. The man in question is a spaceship pilot but the sentiment –published in 1947—sounds very timely today.

“Men—grown-up men, not mamas’ boys—had to break away from their mothers’ apron strings.” Robert A. Heinlein, “Space Jockey” in The Past Through Tomorrow. Phyllis, the wife of the spaceship pilot above, rethinking her objections to his career. Note that this story was written at a time when men, after WWII, were trying to push their wives back into housewifely roles.

“Headaches aren’t hard to Heal.” Sue Ann Bowling, Homecoming. Well, maybe not hard for Roi, who has the esper talent of Healing!

Letter G: Glaciation

A glacier is ice, formed by layer upon layer of snow that begins to flow under its own weight. It may end on land, in which case it can form the headwaters of a river or (as in the dry valleys of Antarctica) simply sublime into very dry air. It begins, however, in an area that is glaciated, or covered with compacting snow. That area may be a small as a glacial cirque or as large as Antarctica.

This is Antarctica, but at one time much of North America looked like this. Photo Source

Continental-scale glaciations today are limited to Antarctica and Greenland. But 18,000 years ago, much of North America to south of the Great Lakes and Eurasia into the Alps and Carpathians was covered by a solid sheet of ice. The Himalayan glaciation was also much more extensive than is the case today, and the Rockies were also covered with ice. In fact,  all mountain glaciations were more extensive then, including the Brooks and Alaska Ranges in Alaska.

Interestingly, while New York State, the Great Lakes, and northern Europe were covered with mile-thick ice, interior Alaska and large parts of northern Asia remained ice free, a cold steppe that supported mammoths, long-horned bison, and horses. The Bering Sea was mostly land, due to lower sea level, and many scientists believe that the first inhabitants of North America moved from Siberia to Alaska with no idea that they were entering a new continent. But there is no evidence that there has ever been glaciation where I live, in Interior Alaska. It was and is too dry. Only the frozen bones of long-extinct animals preserved in permafrost are left to tell the tale.

 

Letter F: Fairbanks Weather

I know, I usually title this segment North Pole weather, since I live in North Pole, Alaska. But North Pole is a suburb of Fairbanks, less than half an hour’s drive away, and to be honest (being lazy) the sunrise and sunset times I give are from a website, and are for Fairbanks. To be precise, they are for the intersection of Airport Road and Cushman Street, about halfway between my home and the airport where the official weather forecast is valid. I could calculate the times of sunrise and sunset myself. In fact, I once devised an Excel spreadsheet that made that calculation for any latitude and longitude. But it was on a ZIP disk, and the disk failed. Anyway, the times from the website are accurate to within a few seconds — more accurate than the assumption that the refraction of the sun’s rays is always the same.

Moose tracks in my front yard

With that confession out of the way, sunrise this morning will be at 6:45, and the sun will set 14 hours 19 minutes later at 9:03 this evening. This is actually the last night we will have astronomical night; it will not get darker than astronomical twilight (sun between 12° and 18° below the horizon) again until late summer. We’re still gaining 6 minutes 47 seconds a day, and the sun at noon is now over 32° above the horizon. Weather? Still around freezing in the daytime and near zero at night. Not much snow has melted, except where the snow was cleared artificially and dark surfaces are warming in the sun. The back yard still has 22″ and light snow began Sunday. The moose are out; I’ve seen tracks in my yard. Needless to say there are no flowers outdoors yet!

P.S. 8 am: It snowed 2″ overnight and it’s still snowing — a fine, light snow that piles up very slowly, but the snow stake in my yard is back up to 2′. According to the radio, the first geese arrived last Friday, but Creamers’ Field is a waterfowl refuge and they generally plow part of the field so the birds have a place to land and feed. I’ll look later today.

Weekend Writing Warriors: Tourist Trap

Welcome to another episode of Weekend Writing Warriors (click on the logo above) and Snippet Sunday (click on the logo below.)

Roi has his hang glider flying again, but heat and smoke have convinced him he has an electrical fire in the compensation chip. He’s told Penny of his decision to get on the ground as soon as possible, and she is using her helmet radio to respond.

Photo Source

“I sent Flame and Amber straight to the cabin and told them to get the horses saddled and out here.  I’ll try to circle over you as long as I can to guide them, and Timi will follow you down.”

The ground was closer now, and the air was so warm his parka felt stifling in spite of the wind of his motion.  He felt ahead for thermals, and altered course slightly.  He had no intention of flying any farther than he had to before setting down, so he didn’t want to get into an updraft himself.  But if he set down close to a rising column of air, Penny could use it to stay aloft.

“Penny?” he said.  “There’s a patch of grass ahead, fairly smooth, where I’m putting down.”

Blurb for Tourist Trap: A vacation with his three best friends from slavery and a manhood challenge: Roi is given the graduation present he has dreamed of. Dogsledding, hang gliding, a chance to see Pleistocene animals transplanted to a Terraformed vacation world, horseback riding, sailing … all the sports he has returned to with his recovery from paralysis, and a few new ones to learn.

They’re prepared for danger from weather, wild animals and extreme sports. But none of them realize that Roi’s half brother Zhaim, determined to recover his old position as Lai’s heir, intends to kill them if he can—and he’s decided that the dangers of the trip will make a perfect cover for his schemes.

How long will it take them to realize that the “accidents” they keep running into are more than just accidents?

Reviewers of Tourist Trap say:

“Fans of Sue Ann Bowling’s novel Homecoming will not be disappointed with its sequel. Tourist Trap returns the reader to the world of the Jarnian Confederation—to Roi, Lai, Marna, and all of their friends and relations. The author does a stellar job of bringing these characters to life, allowing the reader to not only see their actions but to understand the culture and politics that motivate them. (ForeWord Clarion review)

“Tourist Trap” is a great read for anyone that wants motivation and feeling to accompany the action in their sci-fi adventure. Alien beings and super powers are an integral part of Roi’s story but what makes this novel really shine is the heart. Nobody is good or evil just because that’s their assigned role. Just like in real life, everyone has their own motivations and desires, and Bowling does a great job of letting the reader see what it would be like to walk in the shoes of Roi, Xazhar, and even madman Zhaim. (ReaderViews review)

Tourist Trap (iUniverse, 2011) is available from: Barnes and Noble, iUniverse, and Amazon in dust jacket, trade paper, and e-book formats.

Letter E: Eversummer

Click on the logo above to find links to other SFR Snippets.

Eversummer is the planet (in Tourist Trap) on which Marna must try to stop a plague. This is her first impression of the planet.

The planet’s name, Marna thought, must have been picked out by a publicity agent.  Everspring would have been more accurate, or Everfall, or perhaps Constancy.  Maybe even Boredom.

The planet, with its rotational axis almost perpendicular to its orbital plane, had no seasons.  The poles were bitterly cold, glaciated wastelands where the sun forever rolled around the horizon.  The equatorial belt was an unchanging steam bath, the permanent home of daily tropical thunderstorms, varied by hurricanes along its poleward borders.  The desert belts, inevitable result of the conflict between the planet’s rotation and its unequal heating by its sun, were broad and sharply defined, with no transition zones where the rains came seasonally.  The temperate zones, between desert and polar ice, were swept year round by equinoctial storms, varied only by occasional droughts.  No monsoons, no seasonal blanket of snow to protect the dormant land, no regular alternation of wet and dry seasons.

All of the settled planets Marna had known or studied—long-lost R’il’n itself, Riya, Central, Falaron, Kovee, Earth—had axial tilts between fifteen and thirty degrees, and a regular progression of seasons.  Those seasons might be subtle in the tropics, but they were present.  And she was beginning to think they were a lot more important than she had ever realized.

Letter D: Drift Ice (Jarn’s Journal)

Year 10 Day 6

Drift Ice!

Photo Source

I saw a little floating ice yesterday, but it was near the end of the day and in rather small pieces. Today ice grew steadily more common as I flew north, until most of the water was covered with flat pans of ice, ice with cracks, ice ridges where two sheets of ice have collided, and a few irregular masses of ice that might have broken off glaciers. From space, as I first saw it, this could well be an ice cap, albeit a floating one.

I’m not sure what shape it is. When I first saw ice, it seemed as much west as north of my flight. Perhaps I should map its extent? It would be easy enough to fly along with the denser pack to my right and the ocean water just visible to my left. I’d have to fly fairly high, but with the warm clothes I have now I could easily enough go high enough to see the edge.

At least as long as the weather stays as good as it was yesterday!

Letter C: Computers

I may be of a pre-baby-boomer generation, but that does not mean I’m afraid of computers. I was hand coding in FORTRAN on punched cards for an IBM 360 forty-five years ago. My first home computer was a Kaypro running a CP/M operating system, with two 64 K floppy disks. (Really floppy; no hard drives or even the plastic-cased “floppy” disks then.) I learned HTML in the days when Netscape 1 was state-of-the-art, and the first page I made is still (with some editing but looking much the same) up on the web. I created an extensive website, still referenced, on Shetland Sheepdogs, Border Collies and canine coat color genetics back in the last decade of the 20^th century.

At the time I retired, thus cutting off daily meeting with other geeks, there was no such thing as social media, aside from email.

Then I published my first book, Homecoming, with iUniverse.

Left to right: my MacBook Air, iMac, internet screen for iMac, monitor for old G3 Mac (pre-USB.) Not shown: G4 MacBook I use if I need to transfer a file from the G3. Don’t you hate “upgrades” that leave your files  and programs useless?

I knew that my best bet for publicity, living where I do in Alaska, was the internet. I knew how to make web pages but not how to find a place to post them, and I’d never heard of social media. One of the few iUniverse publicity packages I’ve signed up for that was worth the cost was web publicity.

They set up pages for me on facebook, MySpace, Goodreads, Twitter, an email account (which I didn’t really need; I’ve had email for years), LibraryThing, Flikr, an author webpage and a WordPress blog. Yes, the one you’re reading now.

I have to admit that most of them have fallen by the wayside or get occasional auto-posts. (I discovered HootSuite on my own.) Twitter (@sueannbowling) and facebook get a daily quotation (with a challenge to identify the context.) The two still really active are my author website (the ongoing science fiction story and backdrop to my published science fiction, Jarn’s Journal, is regularly updated there) and this blog.

I’m not 100% happy with the mechanics of the blog, though at least I finally figured out how to get WordPress to send notifications (including follows on other WordPress blogs) to the email address I actually read. What infuriates me is that in order to change the type size (I’d like it larger) I have to get in and edit the cascading style sheet, which is something they invented after I learned HTML. And the latest problem: the option to open a new page/tab has disappeared from links from images. (Things are changing fast here; I did learn how to use an image in my sidebar to open a new window for a linked blog.)

Would anyone like to help me?

Letter B: Beauty and the Werewolf: Quotes from Mercedes Lackey

This is the second day of the A to Z Challenge, and the first day I’ve tried to integrate my regular schedule with the alphabet. Today’s B was easy: Beauty and the Werewolf, a Beauty and the Beast-inspired book which is part of the Five Hundred Kingdoms series. As always on Wednesday I have given the contexts of the quotes tweeted each day of the previous week from @sueannbowling. (They are also shown on my facebook pages.) Today all except the last one are from Beauty and the Werewolf, by Mercedes Lackey, and the final quote refers to the color blue.

The Five Hundred Kingdom books are all “modern re-tellings of classic myths and fairy tales,” but with a difference. In this series there is something called The Tradition which tries to force people’s lives into the nearest story trope, and it is the job of the Godmothers (originally Fairy Godmothers, but now more often human) to steer the Tradition to minimize the impact. Beauty and the Werewolf combines at least three fairy-tale tropes: Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, and Little Red Riding Hood, and refers to several others.

“One should never equate shabby with dirty.” Bella’s thoughts on Granny’s attire.

“What’s magic but manipulation? Or politics, or diplomacy, for that matter?” Granny, speaking to Bella after she has calmed herself down and is starting to consider a rather manipulative way of getting back at Eric.

“A lone wolf in winter was generally a wolf with an empty belly.” Bella’s thought on hearing one wolf howl in the forest.

“I will not lose my temper. It won’t do any good.” Bella’s thought when she is introduced to the werewolf who bit her.

“She had to wonder how this particular werewolf managed to bite anyone.” Bella, faced with Sebastian’s diffidence.

“She’d never let an injury stop her from doing anything she wanted to before.” Bella is determined not to let an injured ankle stop her from exploring.

“The incredible blue followed her into her dreams.” Sue Ann Bowling, Homecoming. Marna has descended into a glacier crevasse, and been captivated by its color.

Incidentally, this is my blogiversary. My first post was April 2, 2010. Seems like just yesterday.

Letter A: Alaska

A is for Alaska, my home for fifty years now.

I don’t pretend to know all of Alaska, but it is a land of ice and snow, of rainforests, of midnight suns, gardens, and auroras, and above all of contrasts and space. Big? If you laid Alaska over the 48 contiguous states, it would touch Canada, Mexico, the Atlantic and the Pacific. It has over half of the coastline of the United States. I live near Fairbanks, in the center of the state.

I enjoy it always being light in the summer. I was once working in the garden and realized to my surprise that the sun was rising, and by the end of this month I’ll be going to bed before sunset. The winters are admittedly a bit of a drag, as I can no longer drive in the dark. But the summers make up for it, even if it does sometimes get into the 90’s. And there’s lots to do here. We have a symphony orchestra, an opera, a University known internationally for scientific research, and we’re host to the International Ice Art Championships in March.

I won’t attempt to describe our state, but I will post a few pictures and videos. Some you may have seen before, but I hope you still enjoy them.

No, this isn’t typical of most of Alaska, though it is of the glaciated portion of the Alaska Range.

My garden in summer looks more like this. The hoops are to support plastic in the spring and fall.

Only about 100 miles north of where I live. The camera is looking roughly north.

The days are a lot shorter in midwinter!