All posts tagged: Anchorage AK

Surrounded by vegetables,

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and we bought homemade rhubarb candies. The south Anchorage Farmer’s market ends for the season today. Carrots, beets, Brussels sprouts, potatoes are piled high and steeply discounted. The stacks of giant lettuces, kales, cabbages  – grown to monstrous size in the sunny, long Alaskan summer days – are shrinking fast. Everyone is desperate to get fresh greens because in a few short weeks the only options will be limp and pale lettuce masses, stacked like wet laundry in grocery store fluorescent light. There’s an announcement. The live entertainment, a guitar playing local man named Wayne, is moving out of state. He’ll play the farmer’s market no more. “Please sign the sweatshirt we are gifting to him in thanks,” the organizer said over the microphone. I sauntered over to the signing table. A little black lab puppy sat at my feet, staring up at me with love in his eyes. A nervy wolfhound slunk past behind us. Later, a trio of sweatered Chihuahuas pranced 12 tiny feet around their boss lady as she selected potatoes. I crouched …

18 years together | 4,100 miles apart

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“It’s disgustingly hot and humid,” the WideEyedSpouse tells me. I can hear the barest hint of dogs panting in the background of the call. “Huh,” I tuck my cold feet under me and look out the wide window into a chill, gloomy, rainy fall afternoon. “I’m putting the a/c unit back in the window,” he says and I shiver. Yesterday was our 18th wedding anniversary and we were almost as far away from each other as we can be while remaining in the U.S. We weren’t the farthest apart we’ve ever been on an anniversary. That was in 1998 when I was living in a Eureka BombShelter tent on the north shore of Attu Island and he was in Madison, Wisconsin. The WideEyedSpouse celebrated our anniversary by walking the dogs in the park. As their gift to him, Hamish and Miss Tibbit produced a record setting 11 dookies in one day between the two of them. “Congratulations Boss!” they might have been thinking, “Many happy years to come!” I celebrated by huddling at my makeshift …