Never would have thought

A lot of my time here in Fairbanks consists of me driving around town for different stories or interviews, which gives me a lot of time to spend people watching and observing from afar. One thing I noticed the other day was a job that I really would not like in Fairbanks during the winter, Parking Enforcement. Even though this town sees temperatures of fifty below zero during the winter, the parking enforcement officers are always out and ready to give tickets. As many of us dread the walk from our heated cars to the heated buildings we work in, parking enforcement officers are walking all around town throughout the day monitoring parking spots and giving tickets. If you catch them at the end of their route, you can usually notice the amount of moisture icicles that have formed on the hood of their jackets and the cold ice that has accumulated on their face cover as they breathe in and out while they walk. Yes, they walk, they do not have little "meter maid" cars like many of us are used to seeing, they make their trips walking throughout the downtown area. It definitely makes me appreciate a warm car every time I see them.
Another thing that I never thought about before I got here was the use of a cemetery. In many parts of the world, cemetery's can be used year round, not here in Fairbanks. Because of the freezing cold temperatures and the amount of snow that falls so early in the year, cemetery's are shut down at a certain point and then re-open once the ground is considered reasonable to dig. No, people here don't send the fallen out to sea on large pieces of broken ice ( the same notion of no, we don't all live in igloos). I find it quite interesting that they can just close cemetery's for more than half a year and then just re-open for other parts of the year. Strange, at least to me.
And one last observance, except this one is more of a question of logic. Many residents of the Fairbanks area are called Natives. These are the people who have rooted pasts within the Alaskan Interior for hundreds of years and still call Fairbanks home. Unfortunately, many of them live off of the states money and their ancestral savings from their tribe. Okay, back to my point- Ravens within the Interior are some of the biggest you will ever see in your life, these things are just plain massive. Natives believe that all of their ancestors are the Ravens that roam the town and the state for that matter. But I wonder, why believe your ancestors are Ravens? These are the same birds that spend entire winters freezing to death in the sub zero temperatures and picking through peoples trash. When I think about my deceased relatives, I really don't want to subject them to being trash pickers that have to survive these temperatures and being one of the most hated animals within an entire town. I find it odd that one large group would selectively choose this animal to represent their relatives who have passed.
Well, that's all for now from the Last Frontier. Hope everyone is staying warm!