One thing leads to another

So I went for a run, but with a destination - Lowe's to get some washers for the leaky faucets downstairs. And to enjoy the rare blue sky and sunshine. I took my camera along - I'm getting the hang of the new one. Here's a new building planned for east of the northeast corner of Tudor and Old Seward Highway.


And gas prices are going down, but still over $4 here.

I got to Lowes. Clearly this is a sign of approaching winter.

I went to the part of Lowes that used to have drawers of screws and washers and things and you could buy one or two for two or three cents apiece. I asked for help and the sales person showed me those above - two for $1.09!!!!
I was at a rubber factory in Pune, Maharashtra State, India where they make things like this. They cost something like 10 for a penny. I decided these weren't the right kind of washer anyway and went over to the plumbing department where I found these.
They look cheap only in comparison to the ones for $1.09. [But the faucets aren't leaking any more.]

Outside, headed home, I could see the mountains sparkling in their fall glory with a bit of termination dust. But there were too many poles and buildings in the way. So I headed toward Cuddy Park to see if I could get a better view.

The park looked good, but still not high enough for a good view. On to Loussac.

In this picture the library looks pretty forbidding, but I like to think of it as a fortress of learning and freedom. Anchorage, back when the state was flush with oil money in the 1980s, built this huge library. We're flush again, but hardly building libraries. And the parking lot here is always full - people really use the library. Even on Thursday midday.


This fountain was supposed to be an ice sculpture originally. The water was supposed to drip in the winter causing interesting ice formations. We were excited. The sculptor was Finnish I think so he should know about ice. But it had problems from the beginning. A year or two ago a group of folks raised money to rehabilitate the fountain. And it is nice to see the water spraying skyward, but to me it looks like they just stuck some water spouts in the middle of the sculpture. They really don't mesh with what was there. Anyway, I got the last picture with the flowers. The crew was there taking them out for winter as I shot this.

[Update 9/21/08 - email from Catherine - "I wanted to tell you about the fountain at the Loussac. The artist's name is Carl Nesjar, he's from Norway. He's still alive! Born in 1920. We met him when he was here, working on the fountain, he worked with my studio partner Bob Pfitzenmeier. Carl is also a painter and printmaker, I have 2 (wonderful) lithographs he did in Paris. He has also worked with Picasso. There are only a few of his ice fountains in the world... they are very tricky (obviously) to keep functional. The project at the library came in over budget, of course, no one made any money from it. I was really glad when they tried to get it going again."]

I went up on the grassy hill that rises up to the door of the library to get a view of the mountains. It's not great, but you can get an idea. But I thought, I could go upstairs and get even higher.

Here's the children's part of the library. Yes, there are Alaskans who believe in libraries and teach their kids to love books. It's a wonderful child friendly library with great kid lounge chairs and nooks with big pillows and a little theater even.



But I'm headed for the good windows of the Alaska room. That takes me through the Ann Stevens room. This is like the an old fashioned library in huge mansion that anyone can come and sit in. The room was named for Senator Ted Stevens' wife who died in a plane crash that the Senator survived. Some have said our airport should have been named after her instead of Ted, but she's not the only one to have died at the airport. I have to think about that more.

And here's the Alaska room, one of the round silos. A great place to study and while I tried not to invade people's privacy, there were people in here. Actually, the views through the windows weren't that much better, but given I was here, I decided to look in the catalog to see what they had on Wasilla. Thirty two items showed up for the Loussac Library. There were a lot of phonebooks and land studies for various projects. But this one looked really interesting.

This is a book on the creation of the Wasilla library. I'll try to give some excerpts in another post. An interesting story about early Wasilla life. The book ends in 1959 when the author had to leave Alaska - before Sarah Heath was born and moved to Alaska. Olson sold her house to the "husband of Katie Hurley."