Posted on 10/21/2008 2:06:16 PM PDT by fightinJAG
HOMER, Alaska -- Like many Alaska Natives of her generation, Lena Andree, Todd Palin's 87-year-old Yup'ik grandmother, grew up living between two worlds.
Her father was a Dutchman, Glass Eye Billy Bartman, a sled dog freighter in the Bristol Bay region and caretaker of the Alaska Packers saltry on the Igushik River.
Her mother was full-blooded Yup'ik, growing up in a sod-roofed barabara in the now-abandoned village of Tuklung, somewhere on the tundra between Dillingham and Togiak.
Growing up in two worlds along the Igushik River in Bristol Bay, Lena Bartman spoke broken English with her father and more fluent Yup'ik with her mother,. Later she would make a career as a translator, bridging the cultures of Dillingham, speaking English with the doctors and storekeepers and pilots, and "speaking Native" with the residents.
"I just love that language," she says today.
Todd Palin's roots in Alaska run deep -- all the way back to that sod house on the tundra and the winter day Glass Eye Billy made a freight stop at Tuklung on a dog run to Togiak.
The musher, who had come to Alaska after leaving Holland at 14 as a cabin boy, saw a young woman dipping water from a frozen creek. The first thing he noticed about her was her fur boots and gorgeous white parka made from the supple fur of reindeer fawn.
The courtship and marriage arrangements took a year.
Their first-born's full name was Helena.
Andree grew up in the 1920s along the Igushik River.
The idea that someday a grandchild of hers would be married to the governor of Alaska, much less to the Republican candidate for vice president of the United States
(Excerpt) Read more at suntimes.com ...
Here’s to lifting a cold one to Glass Eye Billy!
This so coollllll
Apparently Todd’s grandma is NOT a “typical white person”.
The family has a long history of interesting names.
Bill always did have an eye for the ladies.
This puts me in the mood to read some Jack London or Robert Service.
A pretty good story for the Chicago Obama-Times.
Yep—Call of the Wild!
bbwwwwwaaaahhhhh!
Bet the family has heard *that* one a few times!
PETA going postal in 5, 4, 3, 2....
This article was from the Anchorage Daily News. www.adn.com
They went nuts over there on it. Extremely nasty comments.
No wonder they hate Palin in Chicago. Bartman is not a popular name there.
FWIW: I have memorized four of Robert Service’s poems.
1. The Spell of the Yukon
2. The Cremation of Sam McGee
3. My Friends
4. The Ballad of Hardluck Smith (”Now wouldn’t you expect to find a man an awful crank; that’s staked out nigh 200 claims, and every one a blank? That’s followed every fool-stampede and seen the rise and fall - of camps where men got gold in chunks, while he got none at all?.....) VANITY
How can this be? Palin is evil to minorities - just ask the couple of people the media dug up.
“Extremely nasty comments.”
Democrats loathe anyone who disagrees with them, and anyone associated with a person who disagrees with them.
Impressive!
I got introduced to Service through listening to some old Jean Shepherd radio shows. Shepherd used to read from Service pretty often.
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