Beyond Alaska Photo
Multimedia journalism in the Last Frontier

Another 4th of July, another holiday in Seward at the Mount Marathon race. Thousands turn out to cheer racers up the 3,022-foot peak and one lucky Anchorage Daily News photographer gets to climb the mountain to get pictures from the trail. Marc Lester always gets to go (I have to maintain race results on adn.com — honest!) and this year he shot some video with his Canon G9 to go with the video project I was working on.

I shot with a Canon HV20 and, despite some minor problems with the sizes, the clips blend fairly well. If the G9 had a a mic jack for my Sennheiser wireless, I don’t think I’d use anything else (some of Marc’s mountain clips suffered from wind noise — we’ll have to work out some sort of wind screen).

Apologies. I couldn’t help myself:

Exxon Valdez
1/2 oz butterscotch schnapps
1/2 oz white sambuca

–From www.drinksmixer.com

Alaskan Oil Slick
1/2 oz Blue Curacao Liqueur
1/2 oz Jagermeister® Herbal Liqueur
1/2 oz Peppermint Schnapps
Layer blue curacao on bottom, peppermint schnapps in the middle, and Jager on top.

–From supercocktails.com

Oil Slick
1/2 shot Jägermeister
1/2 shot Rumple Minze
Mix both ingredients together in a shaker and serve in a chilled shot glass.

Oil Spill
3/4 shot Goldschlager
1/4 shot Jägermeister
Layer Jägermeister on top of the Goldschlager.

–From www.webtender.com.

Many more with a specifically Alaska history from Keith Saunders, adn.com Spirits guru blogger.

Today the U.S. Supreme Court reduced the $2.5 billion Exxon Valdez punitive damages award to just over $500 million. In doing a little Joe Hazelwood research today, I ran across this Outside magazine profile, The Captain Went Down with the Ship, from 1997.

An excerpt:

Somewhere beneath us, a subway rumbles toward Penn Station. Hazelwood lets it go. He stays on the bridge because eight years ago he didn’t stay. He stays on the bridge because he is in purgatory and in purgatory you can laugh, or cry, or protest your innocence, but the only thing that matters is reliving your sin over and over until either you or God is worn out. And that’s the other thing you learn about Joe Hazelwood: He’s served notice to God that it’s not going to be him.

“Welcome to my nightmare,” he says.

I just got around to posting my ear pull video to the adn YouTube site. It was one of my favorite videos from 2007 and I wanted to give it a little bit more of a ride than it received via our in-house video player. Timely too, since the Native Youth Olympics start in Anchorage this week (though this is not a youth event!).