Icewind's Ramblings

Remember back before the election during all of the campaigning and coverage of the presidential primaries how MSNBC was gushing all over Barack Obama? Well it is interesting now a year later to see how things have changed.  Its not the same now as reality sinks in.  Did you watch Obama's TelePrompTer reading last night?  What a mess we are in and a joke of a speech.  I couldn’t watch all of it because my bullshit meter kept going off and pegging the “get out your chest waders” because we are in deep shit.  He didn't read anything that was unexpected. Holding BP accountable.                        Yep we’ve heard that for 58 days now. We've been on the job from day 1.      Yep typical ‘no urgency’ gov’nment job. Clean up the Gulf Coast .                ...

One of my favorite books is called Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance.  It is a book about life, values, and of course fixin’ motorcycles.  There are many great quotes in the book by Robert R. Pirsig and one of them is this: "The truth knocks on your door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away." Once you think about that for a minute it becomes increasingly obvious to many of us that there is a lot of truth in that statement.  So many times we cannot see what is right in front of us or goes by without our consciousness grasping the fact that it was there. I’ve been flying a lot lately and it seems like I have been spending more time in planes than in my rig (car).  So many flight attendants with names like, Dawn, Natalie, Jennifer, and Grant. Always the slightly forced smile after so many years serving people pretzels, water, coffee, and a soft drink giving that pleasant word here and there while resetting the call b...

Part 2          Good health on tap in Chevak , Alaska As you saw in the first story about a community that is on the verge of having water and sewer service introduced into their homes will quickly change lives. One of my engineers shown in the first story, works with many villages in western Alaska helping to bring about these changes to people off the road system in remote areas of the state.  ANTHC is a non profit company whose main entity is the Native Hospital system throughout Alaska and my part called Division of Environmental and Health and Engineering (DEHE) which is an engineering and construction company which designs and builds water and sewer systems as well as health clinics all over the state.  Even with the high cost of building these project and the many years it takes to get funding and the construction completed we have found that in the long run it is cheaper than flying by Medivac air ambulance those people ...

I have written in the past about my travels to the rural (bush) villages for my work which is building water and sewer treatment plants for these native communities.  We provide what most of us take for granted in always having fresh drinking water or clean water for bathing, laundry, and brushing our teeth.  That is not always the case in many places off the road system here in Alaska and we are slowly bringing these necessary health changes to many places. We are changing people’s lives in the process of dealing with new technology or having ‘outsiders’ coming into the village to work on these projects.  Most villages welcome us once they understand what we are providing.  Change is hard to the elders whose existence in the harsh conditions is a way of life.  Hunting, fishing, and gathering food is a traditional way of life here and one that is important to the mindset of the tribes.  One of the things that my company does is hire local labor to hel...