Sheila K. Collins Website

 

 

June 2013  

Masthead Sheila K. Collins from Website
DearGreetings! 

This month's writing theme comes from our recent vacation to Alaska. Since arriving home, given the five hour time differential, my body's been having trouble figuring out what time of day it's suppose to be here in the Eastern time zone. But naps, the fun of reconnecting with friends, and a look at some pre-publication copies of my book have gotten me through. The trip was definitely worth it and I hope you enjoy my noticings and reflections on the experience.

 

For those of you in the Pittsburgh area, there are a couple of upcoming InterPlay events for your calendars. Members of the Wing & A Prayer Pittsburgh Players, lead by Toni McClendon, will be offering InterPlay at Homewood Library, Tuesday evening, July 9th 6:30 to 7:45 and Saturday July 27th 11 am - 1 pm.  

 

These events are free and open to the public to people of all ages and abilities. We'd love to see you there. Bring a child, grandchild or friend.

 

Stay in touch and I'll do the same,

 

Sheila  


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The view from the deck  

    

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Upcoming Events
TUESDAY June 15, 2013

A trip to the Alaskan Glaciers is on many peoples' bucket list of things to do before they die, and Rich and I were among that group. In 2009 we had a cruise to Alaska all planned and nearly paid for as a way to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary. But 2009...     CLICK HERE

 

Including Wellbeing in our Measures of Success 

Wednesday June 5, 2013 

I appreciated a friend's sharing with me Arianna Huffington's recent commencement address at Smith College. Instead of the usual messages to "go out there and make more money and break more glass ceilings," she challenged the woman graduates to redefine success. She suggested they add a third metric of success...

 CLICK HERE

  

Saturday April 27, 2013

People would often say to me, "This isn't the way it's supposed to be, children dying before their parents." They said it when my thirty-one-year-old son, Kenneth, died of AIDS and again, seven years later, when my forty-two-year-old daughter, Corinne, died of breast cancer. When Corinne died, I got a phone call from my cousin, who had lost her own daughter in a car accident twenty years before. "This shouldn't be happening to you,"   CLICK HERE

 

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Journey to the Past - Indigenous Connections 

"If you ever get the chance to go to Alaska, don't pass it up," my friend Charra had told me many years ago. She didn't give many details about Alaska except that the glaciers left her speechless and she cried when she saw them.

 

Now years later my husband and I get the chance to go and I find myself having trouble describing the journey and what we found there. The cruise was luxurious and elegant - at times transporting us back to the 1920s and 30s when ships were the only mode of transportation outside the continental USA. Views from our deck were glorious, the food delicious, and the ballroom dancing to a live orchestra, a special anachronistic treat.

 

Arriving in Alaska we were in some ways visiting the past, small towns with few to no roads, where boats and small planes were the most common form of transportation. On our trip to a glacier we participated in dog sledding, Dr Sheila Collins Dancing with sled dogs an experience of the past that is still viable today, moving supplies and people from one place to another through the long icy winter. The helicopter we took to get to the glacier was the somewhat scary but beautiful contemporary part of our journey.

 

Through a native carver working in the back of a souvenir shop in Juneau, I learned something of the local indigenous culture, about the Raven and Eagle symbols quite ubiquitous in Alaska's public art. These totems are clan symbols of some of Alaska's first peoples. He explained that one must always marry someone from the other group. He spoke of the integration of Christianity into the indigenous cultures, in this case, the Russian Orthodox variety, as Russia occupied Alaska before they sold it to the US. Of course while Seward was buying and Russia was selling Alaska, any claims the First Nation people had to the land were totally ignored. But I was pleased to see that this fact was not ignored in travel brochures and tour guide speeches. And now, Alaskan native hunting fishing and gathering activities, (known as "subsistence" in Alaska) have a priority on federal lands. Rural people, whether native or not, can live off the land if they consume the bounty of what they acquire. They cannot sell what they shoot, catch, or collect.

 

Hints of the future were present as well. Since most of Alaska doesn't participate in a large electrical grid, we observed other options. On a rail trip to the interior we saw railroad crossing lights fueled by small windmills and solar panels feeding trunk-size generators. Sheila Collins' new Alaskan Friend The Athabaskan woman we met at the Denali National Park spoke of the changes in the life style of four generations of her family and of things that have stayed the same. Members of her 200-person village still hunt and fish as their ancestors did, but now in her generation, the bounty goes in the freezer to get them through the winter. And learning that she has access to the Internet she and I and several other women discussed the possibility of connecting, perhaps through the park website, to purchase baskets created by the women of her village. A park ranger, overhearing our conversation agreed this would be a good idea and offered to help that happen.

Sheila K. Collins, PhD 

Email Sheila: sheila@sheilakcollins.com 

817-706-4967

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