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Time of India
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Alaska's Mother's Day tradition with Musk Oxen and Ice Age connection
Live Events (You can now subscribe to our (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel In Palmer, Alaska which is just an hour north of Anchorage, Mother's Day isn't marked by brunch reservations or department store deals. Instead, it comes with daisies, baby musk oxen , and a brush with the Ice year, the Musk Ox Farm opens its gates to moms for free, offering flowers and front-row access to a herd of 75 musk oxen, including newly born calves wobbling on fresh legs. The star of the show this year is Trebek, an old bull named after the late 'Jeopardy!' host Alex Trebek, one of the farm's generous supporters.'Who wouldn't want to spend Mother's Day with a musk ox mom and a calf that could melt your heart?' said Mark Austin, executive director of the nonprofit farm to ABC Day has long been the symbolic start of the summer season for the farm, whose history goes back to 1964. The current location in Palmer, where the Chugach and Talkeetna mountain ranges loom like gentle giants, became home in 1986, offering better grazing grounds and easier access via Alaska's sparse road network. It also allowed the team to expand into educational programs for settling here, the farm has treated every Mother's Day like a grand opening. 'It made perfect sense—mothers, newborn oxen, spring. The story tells itself,' Austin year, three calves have already arrived, and more are expected. The event now draws crowds of over 1,500 people and has become a generational tradition. 'It's a rite of passage,' Austin added. 'We joke that if we ever canceled it, we'd probably have a riot on our hands.'Musk oxen are no ordinary animals. These shaggy, stocky mammals date back to prehistoric times, having survived while saber-toothed tigers and mastodons faded into extinction. Today's musk oxen, relatives of Arctic goats, are smart, curious, and tough. Bulls can reach five feet tall and weigh up to 800 pounds; females top out around four feet and 500 to Alaska's Inupiat people as itomingmak—"the animal with skin like a beard"—their long hair drapes nearly to the ground, giving them a mythical widespread across northern Europe, Asia, Greenland, and North America, musk oxen nearly vanished by the 1920s. Only Greenland and parts of Canada held on to their dwindling populations. A recovery effort began in 1934, when 34 musk oxen were shipped from Greenland to Fairbanks. Since then, their numbers have rebounded, with around 5,000 now living in the wild across Alaska.
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
An Alaska Mother's Day tradition: Mingling with ice age survivors on a farm
PALMER, Alaska -- It is one of Alaska's favorite Mother's Day traditions, getting up close and personal with animals that have survived the ice age. All moms get a daisy and free admission Sunday at the Musk Ox Farm in Palmer, about an hour's drive north of Anchorage. Once inside they will have the chance to view 75 members of the musk ox herd, including three young calves just getting their feet under them. Also a draw is an old bull named Trebek, named after the late 'Jeopardy!' host Alex Trebek, a benefactor of the facility. 'Who doesn't want to celebrate Mother's Day with a musk ox mom and the most adorable calf you're ever going to find in your life?' said Mark Austin, the farm's executive director. Mother's Day is the traditional start of the summer season for the farm, which traces its roots back to 1964 and at several locations before moving in 1986 to Palmer. That move put it on Alaska's limited road system, provided easier access to grazing land than in tundra communities and it to incorporate educational opportunities at the farm facility, which is dwarfed by the the Talkeetna and Chugach mountain ranges. 'When we opened the doors here, we started doing Mother's Day as a grand opening every year,' Austin said. He called it a natural decision, celebrating mothers with cute, newborn baby musk oxen on the grounds. So far this year, three baby musk oxen have been born and are on display, and more could be on the way. Mother's Day is the busiest day of the year, attracting more than 1,500 visitors. It is a tradition that now stretches over three generations. 'It's a huge, just kind of rite of passage for a lot of people,' Austin said. 'If we ever talked about not doing it, there'd be a riot.' Musk oxen are ice age survivors. 'They were running around with saber-toothed tigers and mastodons, and they're the ones that lived,' Austin said. The herd members all have diverse personalities, he added, and they are crafty, smart and inquisitive. Their closest relatives to animals of today would be Arctic goats. Mature musk ox bulls can stand 5 feet (about 1.5 meters) tall and weigh as much as 800 pounds (about 360 kilograms), while female cows are smaller at about 4 feet (about 1.2 meters) and up to 500 pounds (about 230 kilograms), according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game's website. They are stocky, long-haired animals with a slight hump in their shoulder, a short tail and horns, the website says. The Inupiat call musk ox 'itomingmak,' which means 'the animal with skin like a beard,' for its long hair hanging nearly to the ground. The mammals once roamed across northern Europe, Asia, Greenland and North America before they began to die off. By the 1920s the last remaining ones were in Greenland and Canada. Efforts to reintroduce the musk ox to Alaska started in 1934, when 34 were delivered to Fairbanks from Greenland. Since then, the wild population has grown to about 5,000, located throughout the nation's largest state, Austin said. The nonprofit farm welcomes donations from visitors on Sunday. Some people will make a beeline for the baby musk oxen, while others will throw a $100 bill on the counter first. 'We do like to see the donation, but we truly offer this as an event to the community, as a thank you,' Austin said. 'It really gives us a chance to give something back.'
Winnipeg Free Press
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
An Alaska Mother's Day tradition: Mingling with ice age survivors on a farm
PALMER, Alaska (AP) — It is one of Alaska's favorite Mother's Day traditions, getting up close and personal with animals that have survived the ice age. All moms get a daisy and free admission Sunday at the Musk Ox Farm in Palmer, about an hour's drive north of Anchorage. Once inside they will have the chance to view 75 members of the musk ox herd, including three young calves just getting their feet under them. Also a draw is an old bull named Trebek, named after the late 'Jeopardy!' host Alex Trebek, a benefactor of the facility. 'Who doesn't want to celebrate Mother's Day with a musk ox mom and the most adorable calf you're ever going to find in your life?' said Mark Austin, the farm's executive director. Mother's Day is the traditional start of the summer season for the farm, which traces its roots back to 1964 and at several locations before moving in 1986 to Palmer. That move put it on Alaska's limited road system, provided easier access to grazing land than in tundra communities and it to incorporate educational opportunities at the farm facility, which is dwarfed by the the Talkeetna and Chugach mountain ranges. 'When we opened the doors here, we started doing Mother's Day as a grand opening every year,' Austin said. He called it a natural decision, celebrating mothers with cute, newborn baby musk oxen on the grounds. So far this year, three baby musk oxen have been born and are on display, and more could be on the way. Mother's Day is the busiest day of the year, attracting more than 1,500 visitors. It is a tradition that now stretches over three generations. 'It's a huge, just kind of rite of passage for a lot of people,' Austin said. 'If we ever talked about not doing it, there'd be a riot.' Musk oxen are ice age survivors. 'They were running around with saber-toothed tigers and mastodons, and they're the ones that lived,' Austin said. The herd members all have diverse personalities, he added, and they are crafty, smart and inquisitive. Their closest relatives to animals of today would be Arctic goats. Mature musk ox bulls can stand 5 feet (about 1.5 meters) tall and weigh as much as 800 pounds (about 360 kilograms), while female cows are smaller at about 4 feet (about 1.2 meters) and up to 500 pounds (about 230 kilograms), according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game's website. Winnipeg Jets Game Days On Winnipeg Jets game days, hockey writers Mike McIntyre and Ken Wiebe send news, notes and quotes from the morning skate, as well as injury updates and lineup decisions. Arrives a few hours prior to puck drop. They are stocky, long-haired animals with a slight hump in their shoulder, a short tail and horns, the website says. The Inupiat call musk ox 'itomingmak,' which means 'the animal with skin like a beard,' for its long hair hanging nearly to the ground. The mammals once roamed across northern Europe, Asia, Greenland and North America before they began to die off. By the 1920s the last remaining ones were in Greenland and Canada. Efforts to reintroduce the musk ox to Alaska started in 1934, when 34 were delivered to Fairbanks from Greenland. Since then, the wild population has grown to about 5,000, located throughout the nation's largest state, Austin said. The nonprofit farm welcomes donations from visitors on Sunday. Some people will make a beeline for the baby musk oxen, while others will throw a $100 bill on the counter first. 'We do like to see the donation, but we truly offer this as an event to the community, as a thank you,' Austin said. 'It really gives us a chance to give something back.'
New York Times
05-05-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Congress's Fight Over Trump's Agenda Runs Through Alaska
Twice a month, planes land on the gravel airstrip in Noatak, Alaska, about 70 miles north of the Arctic Circle, carrying the diesel that residents need to heat their homes in the bitter cold. And once a month, they receive electricity bills four times higher than those for most of the rest of the country that include two separate charges: one for the cost of the energy itself, and another for the cost of the fuel used to fly it there. 'The fuel cost is the thing that kills,' Bessie Monroe, 56, who works as an assistant to the village's tribal administrator, said as she pulled up her bill. Even though she supplements the heat from her generator with a wood-burning stove — and can still sometimes feel the chill of wind through one of her walls — Ms. Monroe has paid roughly $250 a month for electricity for her small one-bedroom house this winter. Image Bessie Monroe in her kitchen in Noatak. Ms. Monroe's electric bill has been about $250 a month this winter. Even with an oil heater, she sometimes feels the cold seep through the walls of her one-bedroom home. So a few years ago, in an effort to build a local source of electricity and save residents money, the Inupiat village of 500 worked with its utility company to install a small farm of solar panels. And when Congress approved new tax credits for clean energy projects in 2022 through the Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law by President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the village saw an opportunity to buy more. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
29-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Sen. Lisa Murkowski makes pitch for renewable energy's value in Alaska communities
Yereth RosenAlaska BeaconIn a political environment where the president and his administration are pushing for more fossil fuel development and scorning alternative energy, Alaska's senior U.S. senator is defending renewable projects in the rural areas of her state.U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, speaking at an Anchorage conference on Tuesday, recounted her efforts to convince Interior Secretary Doug Burgum that wind, solar and other sources of renewable energy are valuable even in oil-producing a phone call Monday that lasted more than an hour and in which Burgum reiterated the administration's support for more extraction of oil, gas and coal and its opposition to wind energy, Murkowski said she made a pitch for renewable projects in Alaska that were previously awarded grants but are now in limbo because of Trump administration funding freezes.'We're coming to the department and saying, 'I know that you put on pause funding for clean energy resources. If you don't like the vernacular that we're using, that's fine, but look at it from the perspective of energy independence for these small communities and what independence means and looks like for them,'' Murkowski said at the Alaska Infrastructure Development three-day symposium is sponsored by the state, the Alaska Municipal League, the Alaska Federation of Natives and other urged conference attendees to help educate officials from the Department of the Interior and other federal departments about rural Alaska communities' situations. Unlike communities in the Lower 48 states, rural Alaska communities are unconnected to larger energy grids and often struggle with expensive and difficult-to-store diesel fuel, making renewables a practical alternative, she a long-desired natural gas pipeline megaproject from Alaska's North Slope, which President Donald Trump and others are enthusiastically backing, would not do much to help rural Alaska communities that lie outside of any large power grid.'It's not going to do a spur out to Togiak. It's not going to do a spur out to Kobuk,' Murkowski said, naming a Yup'ik village in Western Alaska and an Inupiat village in Northwest Alaska. 'So I said, 'Please, please don't forget the opportunities that come to our more rural communities that are more isolated who need to be able to access those resources that are there. And those resources may be a little bit of wind, it may be a little bit of solar, it may be a little bit of the of the run of river, it may be a little bit of geothermal.''Murkowski's defense of renewable energy comes as hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of planned rural Alaska projects are in doubt because of Trump administration actions. The administration has frozen much of the infrastructure funding that was awarded during the Biden administration, including funding for renewable energy development. Last month, the Alaska Public Interest Research Group said it had calculated that over $1 billion of Alaska energy and other infrastructure projects were affected. As a result, some local governments, tribes and other organizations have delayed planned projects because they are uncertain about reimbursement. Such delays in rural Alaska can put projects at least a year behind schedule because construction work depends on delivery of heavy equipment and material by barges that can travel only in ice-free of yet, there has been little clarity on which projects will actually get funded and which will have to be canceled, said Murkowski and municipal officials attending the said at least a couple of Trump administration department secretaries are planning trips to Alaska in June, and that might present an educational opportunity. She did not specify which cabinet members may be has been dismissive of renewable energy and, in particular, hostile to wind energy for several years. He has claimed, without evidence, that wind turbines cause cancer, drastically depress property values and kill massive numbers of whales. His disdain for wind energy dates back at least to 2012, when he fought unsuccessfully against a wind farm off the coast of a golf course he owned in of his Inauguration Day executive orders earlier this year halted federal funding and permitting for all wind projects, both offshore and energy has been important to rural Alaska communities, where diesel-fueled energy costs are extremely a mostly Inupiat community, is an example. The Northwest Arctic hub, home to about 3,000 people, has been using wind energy since the 1990s. The system has grown over the years, and by 2020, wind was supplying a fifth of annual local power needs, according to the Kotzebue Electric Association. That displaced the annual need for 250,000 to 300,000 gallons of diesel fuel each year, according to the community has also been using solar energy since 2020, and it has a longer-term goal of using renewables for 50 percent of its power, according to the the Northwest Arctic Borough and several surrounding villages are among the communities with planned energy projects that have been paused because of Trump administration actions. Last year, during the Biden administration, the U.S. Department of Energy awarded $58.4 million in grants to local governments and other entities in the region to develop more solar arrays, an energy-storing battery system, heat pumps and other projects.
