Just to catch things up, this is being written in the evening of 8/23. We took a seaplane from Haines to Juneau on 8/22 (where we stayed overnight and reconnected with some of our luggage, which we’d left there – intentionally – while in Haines).
In Juneau, we had a delightful lunch with Shelagh, the sister of our good friend Sandra Sands. Shelagh has lived in Alaska for quite a few years, and has an uncanny resemblance to Sandra.
The morning of 8/23, we took a plane (about 25 minutes in the air) from Juneau to Sitka, which is rich in Russian heritage. We arrived in time to catch a dance performance by a group of women who have been doing Russian dances since 1969, when Centennial Hall was opened (marking 100 years since the US bought Alaska from Russia). It turned out that when the group started, none of the Sitka men wanted to participate (they didn’t think the enterprise would last), so women dance both the male and female parts. The group has had visiting dance teachers from Russia and elsewhere, and has traveled widely, in addition to performing locally in Sitka.
This afternoon (still 8/23), we had a delicious lunch.
“YOU ATE RUDOLPH?”
One of the specialties of Alaskan cuisine is reindeer meat. I’d had a conversation during the cruise week of our trip with Shoshana about whether reindeer (and other members of the deer family) are kosher or not. She didn’t think so. I later checked, and the answer is “yes, they are, but no, they’re not.” It turns out that while the animal is a kosher animal, the laws governing protection of wildlife (or something) make it such that reindeer are never killed in a way that satisfies kosher laws. So although I don’t eat non-kosher animals (which can be very limiting in seafood-heavy Alaska: crab, oysters, etc.), I don’t worry about how my kosher-animal meat is processed. I had delicious reindeer sausage for lunch.
Finally, after lunch, we wandered through town, including the Alaska Native Brotherhood Hall, the Sheet’ka Kwaan Naa Kahidi Clan House, and the old Russian cemetery, whose entry sign is shown below:
Fendels in Alaska 