On the day that Nelson Mandela died I drove to Anchorage on icy roads through freezing rain to bring home my beloved

Note: I originally prepared this as the first post in new Squarespace 6 blog I had planned to launch at this same address, to include all the work I have done in this Squarespace 5 blog. But things went wrong. I have asked Squarespace to refund the money I spent on the new blog and am bringing my Squarespace blogging to a permanent end, save for the upcoming holiday post referenced above. I do not want this post to go to waste and so have transferred it from the new Squarespace 6 blog that now never will be to being an archive, at this same address. While much of what it says no longer applies, I leave it just as I prepared it for the new, canceled, blog"

This is the first post I am putting up in the new Squarespace 6 blog. At least, I hope I am putting it up. As regular readers know, I have been running a

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Young ice covers the near-shore Chukchi Sea

Remember how when I first arrived here nine nights ago there was a layer of slush ice against the shore, reaching maybe 200 yards out into the night, undulating with the breaking surf rolling in from the dark, roiling ocean beyond? This is what it looks like now. The fellow standing by the four wheeler as he looks out over the Chukchi Sea is Harold Nungasuk, brother of the late, great, Whyborn Nungasuk. Harold was thrilled to see all that young ice, essential to the upcoming spring bowhead hunt. A bit late by historical standards but there it is. And that is good news. 

Text added at 4:36 PM.

Ice surf

Before I arrived, they had a hellacious windstorm here in Barrow and all along Alaska's Arctic Coast. The west wind holds a blanket of slush ice tight to the shore. It is a little hard to tell in the dark, but the slush ice appears to extend a couple of hundred yards out. Beyond that, my eyes could make out frothing surf as waves broke but my iPhone could not pick it up. The surf would then collide with the ice blanket and lift it up into slush swells as it rolled toward the shore where each wave rises one last time and then tumbles to the beach in a cascade of churning slush and small ice chunks. 

Text added at 10:39 PM. The Squarespace nightmare - day 51 and counting.

Finally, Little Lake is frozen over

Note: I shot this earlier this afternoon, shortly before the Bacardi study and immediately emailed it to this blog. I just now realized it never showed up. Oh, these nightmares! Anyway, here it is, throwing my order off, and here is what I wrote at the time I made the Instagram:

Finally, Little Lake is frozen over. As I have noted before, this used to pretty much always happen at least by the third week of October and quite often the second and sometimes even the first. But at least it has happened now. We just need a little snow, That's all.

Text added at 5:36 PM. The Squarespace nightmare continues - day 47 and counting.

Frederick Fred Rica lost his profile

Yesterday, I heard on the news that an 82 year-old fellow by the name of Frederick Fred Rica was walking through Wasilla when some little kids pelted him in the head with pebbles. He wasn't seriously injured, but much to his distress the pebbles knocked his profile off and he couldn't find it. He looked all over, but his profile was nowhere to be found. He even pulled out his iPhone and checked Facebook, but it wasn't there, either.

Rica was most upset, the reporter reported. "My profile was my best feature!" He lamented. "People always told me, 'Frederick, you have a most magnificent profile. Handsome! When we look at your profile we see a youthful old man.'"

Well, I just found Frederick Fred Rica's profile, frozen here in this mud puddle. I don't know how to get it back to him, but if anyone sees Frederick Fred Rica, maybe they could tell him about it and he can come over to this puddle and try to put it back on. It's just off to the side of Selden Road, not far from Ward's Hill.

Text added at 3:14 PM. The Squarespace nightmare continues - day 46 and counting.