Frozen and American Girl Dolls Home Tour Coming to Virtual Doll Convention

Frozen and American Girl Dolls Home Tour Coming to Virtual Doll Convention

American Doll and Toy Museum: Keep Smiling!

American Doll and Toy Museum: Keep Smiling!: If ever we needed Shirley Temple, we need her optimism and sunny smile, now.  Yet, we can remember her, and other friends and family no long...



More posts in Japanese soon. 

Guest Blogger; Dr. David Levy Skyward March 2020

The Alaska Highway really does stretch through Whitehorse

With camera forced against an airplane window, I got this picture
of a rayesd arc aurora from above the Arctic Circle.

Skyward for March 2020.

Ever since I saw my first major display of the northern lights on July 8, 1966, I have been fascinated and delighted by this always-welcome show of greenish lights in the sky.  But of all the displays I’ve seen, few can match the thrill of watching them from an airplane cruising high above the Arctic circle.

In January 2020 I was part of the Aurora 360 experience, an event consisting of scientific and cultural presentations surrounding the unique displays of northern lights than can be seen often from the sixty-degree latitude of Whitehorse, in Canada’s Yukon territory. 

Whitehorse is a fabulous town.  It is named after a rock structure on the banks of the Yukon river which resembles the mane of a large white horse.  Although it was in use for thousands of years by First Nations cultures, it really got its modern start with the discovery of gold in the Klondike in1896.  The Alaska Highway, built rapidly during the second world war, passes through Whitehorse.

To me, the city symbolizes two things.  One of course is the aurora borealis.  On the Saturday evening of our trip we boarded an Air North 737 and took a never-to-be-forgotten flight from Whitehorse to Whitehorse, crossing the Arctic Circle.  The sky had been cloudy and very cold, with temperatures hovering around zero degrees Fahrenheit.  Looking out of an eastward-facing window,  I spotted a greenish auroral glow the instant the plane cleared the cloud tops.  As we headed north the glow brightened rapidly, and soon there were rays, a bright green rayed arc, and dancing green arcs splattered across the sky.  As we entered the “auroral oval” just above the Arctic circle, there was no spot in the sky that was not covered by at least an auroral glow. The northern lights literally surrounded all 360 degrees of the airplane.  The three-hour flight was stupefyingly wonderful.  I have seen other great auroras, from the big one at the Adirondack Science Camp in 1966, to an even bigger one that covered the whole sky that September, and even a strong red display one night over Tucson, Arizona.    But the aurora 360 experience was unique.

What about the other claim to fame of Whitehorse? The city is the centerpiece of one of the most famous poems in all of Canadian history, Robert W. Service’s “The Cremation of Sam McGee.”   It tells the story of Sam McGee who left his home in Tennessee to join the Klondike gold rush, and who forces the poem’s speaker to cremate him if and when he perishes from the cold.  There was a real Sam McGee whom Service met in a bank; his cabin still stands on the grounds of a Whitehorse museum.  My father, and most of our family, could quote sections of the poem, but Dad’s brother (Uncle Sidney) knew and quoted every word. And when I quoted the final two stanzas during a lecture at the Yukon Centre of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, several people in the audience quoted it along with me.

Several days after Sam McGee dies in the poem, an abandoned boat, The Alice May, is used as a makeshift crematorium.  As the flames grow higher, the speaker decides to open the furnace:

“…Then the door I opened wide.

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;

And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: "Please close that door.

It's fine in here, but I greatly fear you'll let in the cold and storm—

Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it's the first time I've been warm."

There are strange things done in the midnight sun

      By the men who moil for gold;

The Arctic trails have their secret tales

      That would make your blood run cold;

The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,

      But the queerest they ever did see

Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge

      I cremated Sam McGee.”

Dr. E's Doll Museum Blog: Happy Japanese Doll Festival 2017

Dr. E's Doll Museum Blog: Happy Japanese Doll Festival 2017: In Honor of Miss Happiness and Miss Flower! Little Peach, Public Domain Publ...