Sunday, April 22, 2012

Katmai National Park (Summer 2000)


Bear in a stream feeding Kaflia Bay

In 2000, I won a bear-watching trip to Alaska in a sweepstakes that I didn't even know I had entered!

Somewhere, I had read about Bears magazine, and I bought a subscription for bear-loving Victor. I didn't know that they were having a sweepstakes where some new subscriber would win a bear-watching trip! I was shocked when I got the email telling me I had won. After calling them, I convinced myself that it wasn't some sort of scam.

The only bad part of it was that Victor -- the one who obsesses over bears, the one for whom I bought my subscription, the one indirectly responsible for my winning the trip -- couldn't join me. (Instead, in 2006, Victor and I went bear-watching in British Columbia. Update: Victor finally joined me for a repeat of this trip in 2019!) My friend Jerry, who was already planning to be in Alaska visiting his brother at the time of this trip, went along.

It was a fantastic trip. Photos and a map are here, and four of my video clips are on YouTube. And here is the text of the Bears magazine story about the trip.

On the first day, we glimpsed Timothy Treadwell at his tent in Hallo Bay. (Our guide knew who he was.) He walked away from his tent when he saw us. In 2003, he and his girlfriend were killed and partially eaten by bears at that same spot. Werner Herzog made a 2005 film,  Grizzly Man, about it all.

Friday, April 6, 2012

Autographs - William Samelson

(Click the image to enlarge it.)

William Samelson was one of my Hebrew teachers at Temple Beth-El when I was a boy. His first novel, All Lie In Wait, is based on his personal history as a Holocaust survivor who was in Nazi labor and concentration camps at the age of 11. Click here for a 7-minute video interview with Dr. Samelson from 2007.

(Index of autographs)