Alaska Man Monday - National Christmas Tree, Highway Flagging, and the Alaska Highway

We’ve all been so wrapped up in politics, the election, and all the hooraw around it that we sometimes forget that the holidays are coming, too. And with it – the holiday decorations!

Which brings me to Alaska’s present to America – the national Christmas tree.

A 39-year-old Sitka spruce on Zarembo Island in Southeast Alaska’s Tongass National Forest was harvested over the weekend to become this year’s Capital Christmas Tree, a 54-year-old tradition in which a national forest is chosen to provide a tree for the U.S. Capitol’s West Lawn for the holiday season.
The selection process began over the summer with the Director of Capitol Grounds visiting the Tongass.
“It has to be a perfect Christmas tree, so just like in somebody’s living room,” Director Jim Kaufmann said.
The 80-foot tall spruce is scheduled to make 11 whistlestops as part of a 4,000-mile Whistlestop Tour across the country. After its first stop in Ketchikan, the tree will be barged to Seattle and taken by truck from the Pacific coast to the eastern seaboard.

Alaska Man score: 5 moose nuggets. We all love Christmas, right?

I’ve long maintained (with tongue firmly in cheek) that Alaska has four seasons: June, July, August, and winter. Some folks will tell you that Alaska’s two seasons are winter and road construction. It’s a fair point, as our winters are hard on the roads, and the last couple of summers, one can’t drive far on the Parks Highway (or any of the state highways) without encountering road repair/construction crews and the attendant flaggers. But this year, two drivers are in hot water for refusing to yield to the flaggers, and now these dumb crooks have gotten their comeuppance.

The Department of Law said that 43-year-old Summer Powers-Vogt of Houston was found guilty on multiple charges, including third-degree felony assault, and disobeying an officer directing traffic, for refusing to stop at a construction zone in summer 2023.
According to the department, a flagger working near Sheep Creek Lodge at Mile 89 of the Parks Highway testified that in late July 2023, Powers-Vogt disobeyed orders to stop her vehicle on the road and drove at the worker.
She then drove into a ditch to avoid a truck and fled the area by continuing to drive through the construction site. Powers-Vogt faces up to two years in prison for the highest offense charged.
In the other case, 65-year-old John Peter Stefanski of Talkeetna was also found guilty of assaulting two construction flaggers near mile 100 of the Parks Highway.
The department said that in July 2018, a worker reported that Stefanski had failed to stop his truck and drove toward two flaggers, striking one of them. The worker hit was uninjured.
Stefanski was convicted on two felony third-degree assault charges and faces up to two years in prison on each charge.

Wow. That’s some stupid - and dangerous - driving right there.

Alaska Man Score: 1.25 of 5 moose nuggets. Major demerits for stupid crooks; a little uptick for the “point and laugh” opportunity.

One more thing: Last Friday (Oct 25^th) was Alaska Highway Day. The building of the Alaska Highway was an amazing feat of engineering and sheer determination – what a lot of people don’t know is that in those days, in the segregated Army, several black-only units worked on the highway, and without them, the highway may not have been built at all. So this is their day, too.

Friday marks Alaska Highway Day — commemorating the day in 1942 when the Alaska Highway was completed.
The day also honors the contributions of “African American Soldiers” who helped to build the road that connects Alaska to the contiguous United States across Canada.
“We are recognizing some soldiers — African American soldiers — that, in a critical time in American history, when our national security was at stake, the Japanese had invaded Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, and so in ... March of [1942], they assembled all these engineer soldiers to build 1,500 miles of highway so they could get supplies in here,” Ed Wesley, former post commander at General “Chappie” James American Legion Post 34, said.
“Later on, the Japanese invaded Alaska, and so it was very critical to get this mission accomplished.”

The highway started in Dawson Creek, British Columbia, when Army engineers literally started driving bulldozers into a howling wilderness. I can tell you, from personal experience, that the Alaska Highway is still, today, in many places, a narrow ribbon of asphalt through that same howling wilderness.

If you ever get a chance to make that drive, I highly recommend you do so – in the summer!

Alaska Man score: 5+ moose nuggets. It’s not possible to admire the men who made this happen too much.

Now then, I have a thing or two to say about Tim Walz and his pheasant hunting photo-op.