4 August 2005Anchorage Daily NewsHeather Lende
The best (and only) float in the Southeast Alaska State Fair parade was plumber Gene Kennedy's. It was called "Seeds of Climate Change" and featured paper palm trees lashed to Gene's Ford Model A truck, with Gene himself dancing on the back in a grass skirt, wig and coconut-shell bra. Or at least someone said it was Gene. I don't think anyone except his wife had ever seen that much of his skin.
There were also grand marshals, Rep. Bill Thomas and his wife, Joyce, the flashing and sirens of the borough firetrucks, children with dogs and Annette Smith walking on her Uncle Sam stilts. The mayor and his grandson carried the American Legion flags. The mayor's son will be going to Iraq soon, and like many of us, the mayor supports the soldiers but doubts the reasons for war.
The whole parade lasted about a half-hour, if you count from the time it was supposed to start (11 a.m.) instead of the actual time it came down Main Street (11:14) and include the time it took for Gene to jump off the truck and hula dance in front of the judges (about three minutes).
Before the new bank with its digital clock was built, it wasn't as easy to time the parade, but I know it lasted longer back then because you could turn around and watch it again as it wound back to the fire hall on the lower road.
The spectators included many tourists, who were still pointing their video cameras in the direction the parade had come after it was gone. Even so, I think Gene's entry would have won if there had been other floats. Climate change is on everyone's mind, and the way this summer has been, maybe the day is not too far off when dancing girls have 5 o'clock shadows and furry backs.
When last summer was so warm and sunny, we loved it. Or most people did. Only really cranky folks would find a reason to complain about good weather in Alaska. But this summer's changes are even causing optimists to make the switch to energy-saving fluorescent light bulbs.
The blueberries, raspberries and salmonberries are huge and abundant, and many have been ripe since the Fourth of July. Cherry trees all over town have already been picked, but some are still so full the branches touch the ground.
And it is not just fruit that has gone crazy. Glaciers are melting, rivers are high, salmon are slow and the wind kicks up whitecaps most afternoons. The warmest spring on record has also created a bumper crop of yellow jackets and hornets. Last year, our hardware store sold 10 cans of hornet killer. In one day this week, we sold 120.
A few weeks ago my teenage son and some friends tried to get a papery yellow jacket nest out of a tree near a driveway. After a couple of failed attempts involving a welding helmet and a big stick, they decided to shoot a bottle rocket into it.
The old bottle rocket trick has been used with bears in Haines for years, with mixed success. Hikers either scare the bear off or the angry bear scares the hikers away.
Fireworks don't frighten hornets, ever. Luckily, the boy's second bottle rocket, shot in self-defense, set fire to the nest.
To be fair, stinging insects do have many uses. Pollination, for starters -- bees may be responsible for all those berries and cherries. Also, some wasps eat aphids, which otherwise might kill my tomato plants and roses. Bumblebees inspire poets -- Emily Dickinson comes to mind, with her verse about all you need to start a meadow is a bee and some clover.
Still, it is difficult to remember that there are good bees when you have just been stung twice by a very bad one that is somehow inside the leg of the shorts you wore to the fair because, well, it was so nice out. Likewise, poetry does not leap into your heart as you spill root beer all over yourself trying to shake a vicious yellow jacket off your finger.
The other day, the police were called because a man on Main Street was waving his arms and screaming obscenities. Turns out he'd been stung too and was not, as someone joked afterward, singing the lyrics to one of fair performer Steve Earle's songs.
And contrary to what you may have read or heard, there was not so much as a buzz of protest in Haines before, after or during Earle's packed show. (My friend Tony even took his 80-something mother, Helen.) Maybe that's because this has been the summer in which we have all been swearing a lot anyway.
But there's more to it than that. When you live in a place where climate change actually stings, you pay attention to people who say it is time to make our leaders do something more constructive about it than shooting bottle rockets at hornet nests.
Heather Lende lives and writes in Haines. She can be reached at [email protected].
