Spruce Moose

As the conference winds down, I am reflecting on what a great success it has been. I attended two sessions yesterday afternoon: student papers and a focus on collections of Alaska. Kevin Tripp showed some amazing film clips from the Alaska Moving Image Preservation Association's collection including what is thought to be the last footage of Will Rogers before his tragic death in a plane crash in Alaska. Another clip he showed was taken by a local Anchorage resident the devastating damage caused by the Good Friday Earthquake in 1964. I had seen some photographs of the damage before, but somehow the moving image captures it in a different and more stark way. Most striking to me was the image of a house on its side from which a couple of guys were extracting a sofa from a door or window.



















Immediately following the final presentations, we were shuttled off to the Alaska Aviation Heritage Museum for the All-Attendees Reception. The food was quite delicious (as it was consistently throughout the conference, I should mention) and it was fun to meander through the exhibits which included a flight simulator and, of course, a bunch of planes. Enjoy this sampling of photos. Unfortunately I don't have a knack for including people in my photos, so you'll have to take my word for it that the reception was well attended! In fact, the conference as a whole had something on the order of 75 attendees which is pretty impressive considering that we are in Alaska, which is pretty far from pretty much everything!

















This morning we had the NWA breakfast business meeting followed by a set of sessions and the Closing Plenary luncheon. The plenary speaker was Mike Doogan, former newspaper man current Alaska State Legislator and mystery novelist.

We have crammed a lot in to these few days up in Alaska and we have been graced with great weather and of course a lot of daylight. Still no moose sighting but I still have some time before I leave tomorrow, and if not I took this picture at Alyeska of the faux moose just in case the real thing didn't happen.