Northern Soundings: Alaska in Conversation

This episode, I’m joined by Bil Paul, author of Awaiting the Sun. Paul’s book considers the often-overlooked Aleutian Campaign of World War II. With his father having served in this conflict, he brings a personal connection to the story, viewing it from the service-members perspective. As a seasoned freelance writer, he also drew from historical archives and authoritative sources like Brian Garfield’s The Thousand Mile War.

In the three months following the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, the Anti-Defamation League reports Anti-Semitic incidents in our country leapt 360%. Despite the rising tensions and their past experiences of anti-Jewish riots in Libya, my guests this episode, Penina Solomon and Dr. David Gerbi, insist they are hopeful for a more peaceful future. The alternative, as Dr. Gerbi told me, is despair.

My guest this show is University of Alaska Fairbanks historian Tyler C. Kirk. His book After the Gulag: A History of Memory in Russia’s Far North, was recently published by Indiana University Press. Kirk will be talking about the people and policies featured in his book Thursday evening. 

You are what you eat. Just ask Dr. Matthew Wooller, a paleoecologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The eating habits of a mammoth some 14 millennia ago allowed Wooller and his colleagues to map the animal’s journey across Alaska. Wooller also shares how his concerns for student mental and emotional health stirred him to create a space dedicated to well-being.

I continue my conversation with Jon Holmgren. Besides being an inventor, machinist, geophysicist and mountaineer, Jon is something of a philosopher. So says his friend and colleague Matthew Sturm in his book Finding the Arctic. Jon’s shop is the site for great discussions. To stimulate the conversations, one of the books Jon often hands out to folks is Robert D. Putnam’s The Upswing.

My guest in the next two shows is Jon Holmgren. I’ve known about Jon ever since I first talked with snow scientist Matthew Sturm years ago. Matthew in his book Finding the Arctic describes Jon as a machinist, miner, geophysicist, traveler and arctic philosopher. As you’ll discover, that’s a pretty fair description

As part of this past UAF Summer Session’s Tall Timber series, I spoke with Tom Bundtzen. Many know him as a research geologist as well as an avid mining historian. After retiring as Senior Economic Geologist for the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Survey (ADGGS), Tom formed Pacific Rim Geological Consulting, Inc. The state mining community also recognizes Tom’s work in the Alaska Miners Association, and a founder, along with others, of the Alaska Mining Hall of Fame Foundation which honors Alaska’s mining pioneers. 

Each summer I talk with fascinating Fairbanksans through UAF Summer Sessions‘ “Tall Timber” series. One of those figures this past summer was Wendell Shiffler. Wendy, as he is known, has spent a lifetime relishing life and the outdoors. He’s also spent a good deal of time communicating those passions to young people. In 1981 he was named Alaska Biology Teacher of the Year, and he developed the Fairbanks school district’s Outdoor Experience Program. Even after retirement Wendy didn’t slow down. He volunteered with the Arctic Winter Games doing everything from making beds in the athlete village to serving as Chef de Mission for Team Alaska in 1992, and serving on the AWG International Committee for 20 years as Secretary and Vice President. An avid outdoorsman, the Alaska Trappers Association selected him Trapper of the Year in 2021.

Banning books has a disturbing history in our country. Greg Hill is probably best known locally through his weekly columns in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. Parents may know of Greg’s work starting the Guys and Gals Read program in the elementary schools, which engages young readers with books that combine vivid images with exciting plots, keeping the flame of literacy alive. But Greg is a principled and politically adroit champion of the public’s right to access information, as he demonstrated when two censorship issues arose when he directed the Fairbanks North Star Borough Libraries.

On this show I talk with psychologist Stephen Parker. Parker has been a practicing therapist in Fairbanks for decades. More than twenty years ago, in response to a series of coronary troubles including a massive heart attack, he built a series of stone structures on his property as therapy. Perhaps the most striking of these is a spiral labyrinth that coils down into the hillside. While still a work in progress, Parker says he hopes to open the site to the public next summer.