Burnin’

We’re on the Island Princess at the moment along with 2000 other guests and 1000 crew. When this floating city pulls up to the dock as it has done in Ketchikan, Juneau and Skagway over the past three days tourists flood into these little Alaska towns, multiplying the daytime population by two, three, four, even five times.

Many cruisers make their way to Princess-owned jewelry stores for reasons beyond my comprehension. Others go sight seeing, fishing, hiking, bicycling, dog-sledding, zip-lining and the like. Whatever the case, it’s hard to “escape completely,” despite Princess’ claims to the contrary. Thus, we were incredibly fortunate to see Juneau and Haines with the help of our friends Gary O’Quinn and Tony Tengs, respectively.

On Wednesday morning we rode mountain bikes nine miles around Auke Lake to Mendenhall Glacier where we were greeted by a brown bear and her two cubs. After a tour of Alaskan Brewing Company and lunch at The Hangar, we took a cab to Auke Bay to meet up with Quinn and J.J., who is visiting from Colorado. We boarded Quinn’s 22-foot skiff and took off across the bay to Lynn Canal to check his shrimp pots. His wench wouldn’t start, so Quinn decided to pull the pots up by hand from a depth of 350 feet. A hungry man will do these things. Thankfully, there were over two-dozen giant shrimps (pardon the oxymoron) in his third of three pots. When we got back to Quinn’s cabin after an afternoon of salmon fishing off Douglas Island, he steamed these newly acquired sea creatures like the true sportsman that he is. The lobster-like meat was delicious and it’s the first time I’ve had shrimp caviar. Quinn also tossed some Halibut cheek in the frying pan for our tasting pleasure.

On Thursday, we poked around Skagway in the morning, drinking coffee and tea, writing postcards to our parents and talking to a Spanish couple on a six week bike trip of BC and Alaska. Then we boarded the native-owned Fast Ferry to Haines, where Darby camped in a tent 16 summers ago. In Haines, we were met at the dock by Darby’s old friend Tony Tengs. Tony, a Haines native and present day operator of the Chilkat Cone Kitchen in Juneau, took us to the Bamboo Room for lunch. The restaurant and its sidekick Pioneer Bar was run by Tony’s parents until recently when his sister took over. The Halibut fish and chips is legendary and now I know why. Freshee!

After lunch Tony drove us out to the sacred ground where Darby camped all those summers ago. Tony then introduced us to two local artists in their gallery workspaces before heading over to the White Fang movie set. Inside this Hollywood set are working Haines businesses, including the Haines Brewing Company. We tasted the hoppy goodness there and bought a litre of Spruce Tip Ale to take back to the ship. I’m about to enjoy some now, thanks to the kindness of friends.

Rice University professor, Justin Cronin, is an emerging voice in fiction, commanding multi-million dollar deals from both Manahttan publishing houses and Hollywood producers.

His 2001 release Mary and O’Neil garnered the author prestigious literary prizes, but now an unfinished manuscript has people writing big checks.

According to The New York Times, Ridley Scott’s Scott Free Productions won a biddng war for movie rights to Cronin’s lastest, eventually offering $1.75 million. This is on top of the $3.75 million Ballantine Books is paying for a trilogy from the New England-bred, Houston-based author.

Ellen Levine, a literary agent at Trident Media Group, is the woman orchestrating these deals on Cronin’s behalf. One of her ploys was to send out the new book under the pseudonym “Jordan Ainsley” because Cronin was known more for writing midsize family dramas than for Stephen King-size thrillers, and she didn’t want her client to be typecast by his previous literary success.

Cronin’s new story, a futuristic fable about death row inmates transformed into vampires by a government-spawned virus, has vast commercial potential, Ms. Levine said. She is currently shopping the trilogy to foreign publishers, having already sealed deals in seven other countries.

video courtesy of YouTube member “CSPAN Junkie”

Last night during the AFL-CIO-hosted Democratic candidates forum in Chicago audience members were given the chance to ask pressing questions. None were more pressing than Steve Skvara’s. Skvara, from Indiana, worked at LTV Steel for 34 years before he was forced to retire due to a disability. Two years later LTV went belly up and Skvara lost his pension.

Go to the 2:45 minute point in the video above to see Skvara’s tear-jerking appeal for reform.

Mules are noble creatures. This is especially true for the inhabitants of Trujillo, one of Venezuela’s three Andean states.

According to a BBC report, mules are four-legged libraries in these parts, thanks to an innovative service from University of Momboy, a small institution that prides itself on its community-based initiatives.

We reached Calembe, the first village on this path.

Anyone who was not out working the fields - tending the celery that is the main crop here - was waiting for our arrival. The 23 children at the little school were very excited.

“Bibilomu-u-u-u-las,” they shouted as the bags of books were unstrapped. They dived in eagerly, keen to grab the best titles and within minutes were being read to by Christina and Juana, two of the project leaders.

“Spreading the joy of reading is our main aim,” Christina Vieras told me.

Not content to stop at books, Robert Ramirez, the co-ordinator of the university’s Network of Enterprising Rural Schools, also wants to hook the remote villagers up to the Web.

“We want to install wireless modems under the banana plants so the villagers can use the internet,” says Ramirez. “Imagine if people in the poor towns in the valley can e-mail saying how many tomatoes they’ll need next week, or how much celery. The farmers can reply telling them how much they can produce. It’s blending localisation and globalisation.”

Watermelons
by Charles Simic

Green Buddhas
On the fruit stand.
We eat the smile
And spit out the teeth.

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Charles Simic, who learned English as a teenage immigrant, will be the new U.S. poet laureate, the Library of Congress announced Thursday.

Mr. Simic taught at the University of New Hampshire for 34 years before moving to emeritus status. He won the Pulitzer Prize in poetry in 1990 for his book of prose poems, “The World Doesn’t End.” He also is an essayist, translator, editor and professor emeritus of creative writing and literature.

Mr. Simic was born in Yugoslavia in 1938, and his childhood was disrupted by World War II. He moved to Paris with his mother when he was 15 and joined his father in New York a year later, in 1954. He has been a U.S. citizen for 36 years. “I am especially touched and honored to be selected because I am an immigrant boy who didn’t speak English until I was 15,” he said.

Later on Thursday, Simic received another honor, the 14th annual Wallace Stevens Award, a $100,000 prize from the Academy of American Poets for “outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry.”

[via The Wall Street Journal (paid sub. req.)]

Earth2Tech is reporting on a modified Prius that gets over 1300 miles per tank of gas, or 136.45 mpg.

Hybrids Plus of Boulder, CO modified the vehicle, making it a PHEV (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle).