Grow North Farm, Muldoon Saturday Market, Stand Up For John Lewis

 These are some of the veggıes I pıcked up last week from Grow North Farm.  By subscribing to the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) I pick up a selection of vegetables they select from what is ready to harvest each week.  You can see

I got a basic recipe for turnip greens online, but spruced it up.  It came with onions and garlic.  In addition to the turnip greens (which I steamed withwhite wine) and added walnut pieces, raisins, and hot sauce.

I thought it was great.  My wife ate it, which is always a positive.  

She made the turnips and cooked up the kale the next night.  

There were two booths selling non-food items.  And that many selling vegetables.  Some of that may be due to it being early in the season and not that much is ready to harvest.  But refugees raise the crops at this farm and wonder how much ICE fear is impacting the market.  And I'm trying to figure out ways to let you know how to contact vendors without making that information easily collectable.  Photos probably.  Mirthalaska.com

The soaps were amazing.  The fragrance was not overpowering (like a certain department store that no longer has a location in Anchorage) and the designs are spectacular.  They almost look like they belong in a bakery.  

This "is a seed from the ivory palm in South American rainforests" according to the bookmark sized card the vendor passed out.  It's an ivory alternative.

The necklaces below are made from this Tagua Ivory.  The card also says, "I design in Alaska, and our products are made in Columbia."   www.lajoyatagua.com  From the website:

"The main mission of LA JOYA is to empower women in Colombia who have been the victims of social problems.

Through developing jewelry made from natural seeds, in sustainable ways, we are preserving the environment and contributing to the social development of communities."

​

This was a week ago Thursday.  

That Saturday I went to the market on Muldoon.  Chanshtnu Park.  

I'm not sure if it's just early and people are waiting for other things to ripen or people are concerned about ICE showing up.  Many of the food vendors at this market were refugees in the past.  Someone else suggested there were just too many farmers' markets competing.  

Eclectic Cal describes this booth well.  The key things I saw were the carved walking sticks (lower right behind the blue jug) and the chaga.  Cal also took part in the musical part of the market.  He also offered chaga tea so people could taste it.

Cleveland Clinic has a page on Chaga:

"Sure, you’ve heard of portobello and shiitake mushrooms. But have you heard of chaga mushrooms?

Typically found in Siberia, the fungi have been used throughout history to boost immunity thanks to it being full of antioxidants."

And in Alaska too.  On birch trees.  An Alaska Native gentleman carrying his very young grandson knew what chaga was.  Something he'd collected.   

And this is Alizka.  She grew up in the mountains in Romania and is right at home gathering wild edibles and medicines here as well.  We didn't talk about nationality (though she speaks Hungarian as well as Romanian and English) and she agreed to the photo, but I've smudged her face just to be on the safe side. (I hate having to do this.) She offered a blueberry and (some kind of seaweed from the Atlantic) paste that has some crazy high percentage of vitamins and minerals people need.  She also had a lot of different salves.  you can contact her at novalunaherbals@gmail.com.  

I was back to get my weekly allotment of veggies at Grow North again this past Thursday and from there I biked to the Park Strip for the celebration of John Lewis.  I'm behind in my blogging so I'll leave it at that rather than try to add more.  Let me get this up first.  

If you want to Stand Up, this is an organization that is coordinating with lots of others working to 

"To stand up for social, housing, environmental, economic, and racial justice across the state of Alaska. We are a BIPOC led 501c4 that uses direct action to confront systemic injustice, mobilize community, and amplify underrepresented voices." (From the Stand Up Alaska website.)

 

 They have zoom orientations on Wednesdays at 7pm and I went this past Wednesday to find out what all they're doing.  Their website will help out.  I'd recommend the Wednesday night zoom.  Just click on the Action Alaska zoom and will tell you how to connect.  I got a full orientation and got to ask lots of questions.  

Bridge For Sale, Maybe

 Here's the bridge.  It crosses Campbell Creek near 56th and 57th Avenues.  

The trail to the bridge is being eroded by the creek.  If you're biking, you've come from the Arctic Roadrunner on Old Seward Highway, and gotten to an 'offramp' to 56th Avenue to the right as you ride to the left.  There's a spot where the creek is eroding the earth right next to the trail.  Then you come to a curve with a bench and get to this point where it says, "Sidewalk Closed."  

Well it's been closed a few times this year as heavy equipment has been making a new path to a spot across the bridge and to the right, where a new bridge will take the place of this old bridge.   

Below is a view from the cutoff on the north side.  The trail to the right is an exit to 56th (and Fairbanks).  To the left you can see the old bridge.  And straight ahead is the new bridge being put in place this summer.  The current trail curves around to the left (about where I'm taking the picture), past the erosion point (see below) and on to Taku Lake and beyond.  

                                                                                         Here's the detour map they've put up on the trail when the bridge was closed off.  It shows better where exactly this is.
The street to the north (above) is International Airport Road.  To the south is Dowling.  To the right is Old Seward.  I added the yellow circle so you could see just where these bridges are.  

NB = New Bridge;  OB = Old Bridge   The red line is the bike trail which follows along the creek.  [As I'm proofing this before posting, I see the white line for the new bridge is too long.  It just crosses the creek and doesn't go all the way to the trail as you'll see in pictures below.]

This was back on May 27, 2025 when they were clearing brush and just starting this year's work on the bridge.  From the south side.

Below is from the south again on June 23, 2025. 

And here's the bridge from the south on July 2, 2025.  Well, you can see the ramp up to the bridge.  The truck is blocking the view of the bridge itself.

Below is the bridge from the north on June 24, 2025

And then the same view on July 2, 2025, with the ramp in place.  

Below is where the creek is eroding the trail.  They added the sandbags recently.

And this is the old bridge from the south side.  Straight ahead is the bench I mentioned, though it's hard to see in the picture.  

I've been on this trail once or twice a week since late March/early /April (the snow and ice were gone early this year.)

There are a couple of guys there whose job is to deal with bikes and pedestrians when the bridge is blocked or when vehicles are crossing the trail.  

I asked, early on, what happens to the old bridge.  I was told it would be scrapped.  

So I'm posting this now, just in case anyone can use this old bridge somewhere.  Now would be the time to contact the Municipality and inquire about whether you can take the bridge, or buy it, and what it would take to do that.  Perhaps trying to move it would damage it.  But they moved the London Bridge to Arizona, so I would expect this would be a much easier job.

Evidential Languages Part III -

In evidential languages, as I understand it, there are verb tenses, which indicate whether the speaker personally witnessed the events they are relating.  

As I move along in my Duolingo Turkish lessons, I've come to the Turkish version of this.

In Turkish - you use a different past tense ending for things that you actually witnessed than for things you only heard second hand!   

"In Turkish, there are different ways to talk about the past. For example, you can put 

‑di/dı/du/dü   [in Turkish you use vowels in the suffixes that match those in the word]

 after the base word.

Yüzdüm.  [He swam]

Sen buraya geldin."  [You came here - word by word: You here came]

But forms of ‑di are only for things you actually witnessed. If you didn’t, you use 

‑mış/miş/müş/muş

 instead.

Yüzmüş.

(I heard that) he swam.

Biri benim ekmeğimi yemiş.

(Apparently) someone ate my bread."

As I tried to digest this, I realized that I had heard of this phenomenon before.  That such languages are called evidential languages. 

And that I've written about them before.  The first time was in 2010.  Evidential Languages.  It's short and pretty clear.  

The second time was in 2015.  "Alien forms of historical consciousness and discourse" - For Example: Arapaho Narrative Past

This 2015 post discusses how different languages cause us to see the world slightly (or significantly) differently by having words and grammar patterns that don't exist in another language.  It also raises questions about political implications if we had a tense like that in English.  Would it be harder for politicians to lie?  I'm guessing they've figured out work arounds.  

But another point I want to make is that with such different tenses, people are required to internalize the concept reflected in the vocabulary and in the grammar.  Having to distinguish between something you witnessed from something you hear second hand, and having to do that unconsciously as you speak seems pretty significant.  And as the translations of theTurkish examples above suggest, we have adverbs in English that allow us to add that notion to a sentence, such as "Apparently."  Or we could say, "He told me that. . .," or "I heard that . . ."  But we can leave such qualifiers out of the sentence.  But if you use a verb tense that means you witnessed it, it would seem it would be equivalent to saying, "I saw this happen."  

I don't know how this all actually works in these languages.  But it's interesting to think about.  

I also see that in a comment on the first post on this topic, KDS pointed out the Turkish example I just discovered for myself.  

Prospect Heights Hike

We got a hike in up the Wolverine Peak trail, not too long ago.  We were surprised to see the parking lot paved.  Did we miss a year?  This is one of the closest 'real' in the mountains trails and we go here every year at least once.  And the paving looked fairly new.  Maybe they paved it after we were there last summer.  Or maybe we missed a summer.  

And instead of a metal mailbox like box to put your parking envelope and money in, there is now a new electronic parking pay station.  We have an annual pass, but I was curious to see how much a day pass was, but it wanted me to swipe my card before telling me how much I'd have to pay.  Is this because there are different prices for different weekends or holidays, than for weekdays?  I don't know.  

I don't know is the prompt for me to check.  State parks website says:   

"Nightly camping: $10 to $45 per night 

Daily parking: $5 to $10 per vehicle"

Starting off on the trail, there was a giant vehicle clearing a wide path below the power line. [This goes on up to Powerline Pass]

In my memory, there's always been green below the power lines.  This was like a buzz cut.  

The whole state, including the Anchorage hillside is much more aware of fire danger.  In California power companies have paid large fines because fires have been caused by broken power lines.  So that's my positive interpretation of this new clear cutting under the power lines. The picture on the left is looking south, on up to, eventually, the Flattop area.  

 

One of my favorite spots is the bridge that goes over the rushing Campbell Creek as it pours down the mountain and eventually to a calmer existence in town.  

It was a warm, sunny day.  Though hazy.  There had been reports of fires near Fairbanks and the Matsu area and when we were driving home we could see a big white cloud rising in the distance.  

The trail goes on up about three miles, then there's a smaller, steeper trail that goes up above treeline and to this view of Wolverine Peak.  This was one of the first trails we hiked back in 1977 or 1978 when we first got here.  There's a big rock as the trail emerges into this view.  We have lots of pictures over the years of the kids standing on the rock.  Didn't take a picture of the rock this time.  Also, the treeline is higher up than it used to be.  And the permanent ice bank above the big rock was no longer there.  And this was in June.  

While most people seem to curse dandelions, I think they're pretty cool.  And the leaves are full of vitamins.  

The bugs seemed to like them too.  

Here you can see how hazy it was from the rock.  On a good day, this spot has a view of Denali.  We could barely see the Inlet behind downtown Anchorage.  

Yes, I'm thinking a lot about how all three of our national legislators voted for the big horrible bill.  And I may or may not comment sometime here.  

Anchorage's Gay Pride Festival Seemed To Have Biggest Crowd Ever

 In an attempt to keep up here, I'm going to give you lots of pictures, relatively little commentary, no real order.  Sort of like someone visiting we experience it.

 

As you can see, the weather was just right.  The food lines were long,  Lots of organizations had tables and booths.  You wouldn't know we were at the beginning of regime suppression of people who don't fit the white alpha male mold.  

And there were lots of children there along with their parents.  Not being 'recruited' or 'indoctrinated' but simply seeing that there are lots of ways to be a human being and that lots of people think that is just fine.