News & Updates
From the Road
Hello from beautiful Oregon! I have been traveling for a month now, en route to Arizona for a historical presentation I will be giving in conjunction with the amazing sled dog paintings of my friend Veryl Goodnight, whose work has been on display since July 16th at the Smithsonian-affiliated Western Spirit Museum in Scottsdale, Arizona. The exhibit will run through April, 2025, and I’ll write more about it in the next newsletter!
My presentation is scheduled for February 6th, and as I am traveling slow and enjoying the journey, it might just take me that long to get there!
Cruising Along
My trip south from my home in Alaska included a week-long cruise back north from Seattle to Glacier Bay, Sitka, Juneau and other ports of call with many old and new friends aboard Holland America’s beautiful ship Eurodam, on a fundraising sailing for Jr. Iditarod and the Junior Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF). I gave an hour-long talk on the book Jon Van Zyle and I produced about the historic 1991 Hope Race, a month-long 1,200-mile sled dog race from Nome, Alaska to Anadyr, Chukotka, Russia. It was fun having Jon there to fill in the details and tell stories about the race, as he was one of the founders and traveled with the mushers as a race judge. Our book about the race is available at Northern Light Media.
Lots of New Books
I wrote about the latest books published by Northern Light Media and announced some new books coming this fall in the last newsletter, including The First Newspapers of Knik and Anchorage, Alaska: The Knik News and Cook Inlet Pioneer 1914-1916, by Helen Hegener; The Greatest Fish Ever Caught: Alaska Fishing Tales, by Lew Freedman, and more.
New titles coming soon include The Tender Life: 20 Years of Commercial Fish Tendering in Alaska, by Anne Winters, illustrations by Jon Van Zyle; and The World's Most Interesting Man, Alaska Big Game and The World's Largest Eskimo, by Lew Freedman. Details about those in the next newsletter.
Northern Light Media books can be found in many places across Alaska, including Fireside Books in Palmer, Hearthside Books in Juneau, the Talkeetna Historical Museum, the Colony House in Palmer, and at Iditarod Pioneer Rod Perry’s sidewalk bookstand on Fourth Avenue in Anchorage!
Speaking of the Iditarod, our friends there are holding an awesome raffle next month! What would YOU do with $100,000?! @theiditarod Summer Raffle is happening now and the ODDS ARE INSANE! Not only does this raffle help sustain race operations and the future of The Iditarod, but the odds of winning are HUGE as raffles go. There are 30 chances to win and each ticket buyer has a 1 in 100 chance of winning
... and that's if you only purchase 1 ticket! Watch your odds double and triple with the more tickets you buy... you CAN win more than once!!
Get your tickets today! Alaskans call or visit iditarod.com/gamesofchance
Outside of Alaska call or Text (907) 841-4578
Callback Form: tinyurl.com/SummerRaffle2024
Alaska Yukon Overland Mail
My email newsletter on The History of Sled Dogs features an article, “Alaska Yukon Overland Mail,” which appeared in the December, 1908 issue of The Pacific Monthly, a magazine of politics, culture, literature, and opinion, published in Portland, Oregon, from 1898 to 1911, when it was purchased by Southern Pacific Railroad and merged with its magazine, Sunset. The magazine earned widespread praise for the quality of its literary content, as well as details such as paper quality and illustrations. Contributors included Leo Tolstoy, Sinclair Lewis, and Jack London. Some harrowing tales of travel with dog teams are included. An excerpt:
“So unbearable became the life during these months of darkness, that at length efforts were made to obtain one mail at least during the winter. One route only seemed practicable, and that meant a difficult journey of one thousand miles from the Pacific Coast, over the mountains, and down the Yukon River.”
Mushing History Quarterly
The fourth issue of Mushing History Quarterly will be mailed toward the end of September, for arrival to subscribers the first week of October. This new magazine presents the history of sled dogs and the mushers who drove them across thousands of miles of snowy trails, creating a legacy which has endured and is celebrated today!
I’ll be getting back on the road now, thanks for reading and thanks as always for your support!
Helen
