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Author: Cleveland.com
Copyright Information: Fair Use.

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Why Balto the sled dog is important: 60-Second Know-It-All

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Author: AKC Staff
Copyright information:  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

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​It all started in January 1925, when doctors in Nome began to see symptoms of a deadly infection-diphtheria. Anchorage, more than 500 miles away, was the closet place with supplies of lifesaving serum. Alaska's brutal winters, where temperatures could plunge to 50 below and snow and ice are measured in yards, made travel impossible. Planes could not fly, and the sole path through the wilderness was a 650-mile freight route. It was the Iditarod Trail (pronounced i-dit-a-rod), which connected Nome to the railroad station in Nenana. By dog sled, the trip usually took about a month, too slow to head off an epidemic that could kill thousands. A relay was the only hope.

Twenty mushers volunteered for what would become known as the "Great Race of Mercy." One, Leonhard Seppala, had some of the best dogs around- huskies, imported directly from Siberia. Seppala chose his most experienced dog, 12-year-old Togo, as his leader. Another musher, Gunnar Kaasen, put his faith in a green youngster, 3-year-old Balto.

Guuner Kaasen with Balto

The serum arrived at Nenana on January 27 and was whisked onto the first sled, then passed from one to another for legs of about 24 to 52 miles, until it reached the last team, led by Balto and Kaasen.

Despite his inexperience, Balto lived up to the challenge. Even when winds lifted the sled and all the dogs high into the air, he stayed on course. He and Kaasen charged into Nome just before dawn on February 2. It had taken an unimaginably swift 127.5 hours, about five days, to deliver the precious cargo.

Everyone knew that many hearts, hands, and paws had contributed to this life-saving effort, and that Togo had actually taken the longest and most perilous route. But Balto, the dog who led the final sprint, became the symbol of it all-of teamwork, courage, tenacity, and of hope when there seems to be no reason for it.

Balto died in 1933, at 14, but the dog and what he stands for are remembered to this day.

Thousands of children visit him in New York City's Central Park, where there is a bronze statue in his honor, or at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, where a special exhibit tells his story. Every March, sled-dog teams come from all over the world to participate in the Iditarod, a race that follows the serum-run route.

And after the movie, people around the world fell in love with him again, and many found a sweet way to honor his memory by naming their puppies Balto.

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The Real Story of Amblin's Balto - American Kennel Club

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​It all started in January 1925, when doctors in Nome began to see symptoms of a deadly infection-diphtheria. Anchorage, more than 500 miles away, was the closet place with supplies of lifesaving serum. Alaska's brutal winters, where temperatures could plunge to 50 below and snow and ice are measured in yards, made travel impossible.

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Marlene Meerkat Spies
Copyright information:
CCO Public Domain

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Program or bulletin cover with picture of dog sled racing in the snow. Back panel has Scripture and message.

License: CC0 Public Domain

Marlene Meerkat Spies has released this "Stay In The Race" image under Public Domain license. It means that you can use and modify it for your personal and commercial projects. If you intend to use an image you find here for commercial use, please be aware that some photos do require a model or a property release. Pictures featuring products should be used with care.

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Stay In The Race Free Stock Photo - Public Domain Pictures

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Program or bulletin cover with picture of dog sled racing in the snow. Back panel has Scripture and message. License: CC0 Public Domain Marlene Meerkat Spies has released this "Stay In The Race" image under Public Domain license. It means that you can use and modify it for your personal and commercial projects.

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No author information
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ResponsiveVoice used underNon-Commercial License

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Is this your first time here?

Each day, Clio connects thousands of people to nearby culture and history. Our website and mobile app are free for everyone and designed to make it easy to discover cultural and historical sites throughout the United States. You can search for nearby sites, take a walking tour, create your own itinerary, or simply go for a walk or drive and let Clio show you nearby sites using our mobile app. Clio is non-profit and free for everyone thanks to the support of people like you. Donations are tax- deductible! Click here to learn more!

Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Museum

Museums, Galleries and Archives ()

The Iditarod Race is one of the great races in the world and this museum, located in the race's headquarters, celebrates its history. Photographs, trophies, memorabilia and other items are on display, and videos are presented that show footage of the trail. Visitors can meet sled dogs and even take a sled ride.

The race is 1,150 miles long and begins in Anchorage with a ceremonial start and ends in Nome. The race really begins after a restart in Eagle, which is located in the Matanuska Valley and is eleven miles from Anchorage. The race lasts 10-17 days. The trail is actually an old supply and mail route for communities deep in the interior and the Western coast. The idea for the race came about when a diphtheria outbreak in Nome in 1925 prompted a fast delivery of medicine. Since then, the race has become known globablly and is arguably the most difficult one in the world.

Sources

"About." Iditarod Trail Committee, Inc. Accessed September 16, 2016. http://iditarod.com/about. "Iditarod Race." Wasilla Chamber of Commerce. Accessed September 16, 2016. http://wasillachamber.org/attractions/iditarod-headquarters.

Call for information about hours.

This location was created on 2016-09-16 by Ben M. . It was last updated on 2016-09-16 by Unknown

This entry has been viewed 351 times within the past year

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The Iditarod Race is one of the great races in the world and this museum, located in the race's headquarters, celebrates its history. Photographs, trophies, memorabilia and other items are on display, and videos are presented that show footage of the trail. Visitors can meet sled dogs and even take a sled ride.

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No author information

Copyright information: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

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In 1925, a life-or-death race to rescue the children of Nome, AK, from disease made an international hero of one sled dog - and eventually led to the creation of Alaska's Iditarod sled dog race, the subject of NATURE's SLED DOGS: AN ALASKAN EPI C.

In January 1925, doctors realized that a potentially deadly diphtheria epidemic was poised to sweep through Nome's young people. The only serum that could stop the outbreak was in Anchorage, nearly a thousand miles away. But the lone aircraft that could quickly deliver the medicine had been dismantled for the winter. In desperation, officials turned to a much lower-tech solution: moving the medicine by sled dog.

Soon, a musher embarked from Anchorage on the first leg of a remarkable dog-sled relay aimed at delivering the needed serum to Nome. More than 20 mushers took part, battling temperatures that rarely rose above 40 degrees below zero Fahrenheit and winds that sometimes blew strong enough to knock over sleds and dogs. Reporters brought news of the race to a world suddenly transfixed by the drama in the far north.

Incredibly, just six days later, on February 2, 1925, Gunner Kaassen drove his heroic dog team into the streets of Nome. In the lead of his team was a husky named Balto, whose furry face soon became known around the world. A year later, in honor of the epic trek, admirers erected a statue of Balto in New York City's Central Park.

Balto was suddenly a world-famous celebrity; for two years after the serum run, the dog and some of his teammates traversed the continental United States as part of a traveling show. After Balto died in 1933, his body was preserved and displayed at Cleveland's Natural History Museum. In 1995, a popular animated movie about Balto was released, adding to his fame.

Long after his death, Balto's popularity lives on. Today, some Alaskan schoolchildren are campaigning to bring Balto back to his home state. The students want his body moved to the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race museum in Wasilla. But Cleveland officials aren't ready to give Balto back, noting he spent more than half his life in their city. There are plans in the works, however, for Balto to return to Alaska as part of a temporary exhibit at the Anchorage Museum of History and Art - a testament to the strength of Balto's memory and a fitting memorial to his indomitable spirit.

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Sled Dogs: An Alaskan Epic | Balto | Nature | PBS

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In 1925, a life-or-death race to rescue the children of Nome, AK, from disease made an international hero of one sled dog - and eventually led to the creation of Alaska's Iditarod sled dog race, the subject of NATURE's SLED DOGS: AN ALASKAN EPI C.

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An Alaska Native Myth Tells of a Never-Ending Blizzard—Now You Can Learn About It on Xbox

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An Alaska Native Myth Tells of a Never-Ending Blizzard—Now You Can Learn About It on Xbox

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Author: Christopher Zumski Finke
Copyright information: Creative Commons NC-ND

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The Inupiaq people of Alaska have an unipqaak -a generations-old story-called Kanuk Sayuka. It tells of an unending blizzard that threatens the life of an Alaskan village. The people cannot hunt for food and face starvation. To save them, a young girl, Nuna, must overcome a series of challenges with the help of an arctic fox and forces from both the physical and spirit worlds.

It's a story about the restoration of the balance of nature. And now you can learn all about it on XBOX or PlayStation.

"American Indian stories ... are nonlinear, relational, and expansive narratives that link the past, present, and future together."

Never Alone ( Kisima Inŋitchuŋa), released this week by Upper One Games and E-Line Media, is the first game to explore Alaska Native culture and people. It's also the first game developed by an indigenous-owned company, and the first game built in partnership with native elders, taking its narrative structure from a specific indigenous myth.

According to creative director Sean Vesce and Inupiaq cultural adviser Amy Fredeen, Never Alone is the first project made "to celebrate, share, and extend an indigenous people's mythos and culture in video game form."

Two years ago, the Cook Inlet Tribal Council, a nonprofit organization based in Anchorage, Alaska, that represents thousands of native individuals, was searching for an investment that would simultaneously increase the organization's revenue and share native culture with new and younger audiences in Alaska and around the world. They decided to make a video game.

It makes perfect sense to Jodi Byrd, professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Illinois, since native stories are often more complicated in structure than European-style stories.

"American Indian stories often emphasize spiritual, spatial, social, and communal aesthetics," Byrd told me. "They're nonlinear, relational, and expansive narratives that link the past, present, and future together."

Digital technology, she says, is more adaptable to traditionally native style stories. In contemporary digital media, native stories might have found a new environment where they can thrive.

To tackle this project, the Cook Inlet Tribal Council reached out to New York-based E-Line Media. The two created Upper One Games, the world's first indigenous-owned video game developer, and committed to a model of creative, respectful cultural engagement meant to value the voice and heritage of all participants.

Vesce and Fredeen call the approach adopted by the game developers at E-Line and the Alaskan indigenous communities represented by the Council "inclusive development."

"The team members came from very different worlds," Vesce and Fedeen told me over e-mail, "so developing a common vocabulary and understanding took time."

Before any development began, the creative team "met with Alaska Native elders and storytellers to discuss how Inupiaq culture, stories, and art could fit into a video game structure."

Never Alone 's art director, Dima Veryovka, worked with native artists to study traditional Alaskan art. Guided by Inupiaq philosophy and spirituality, Veryovka's graphic style originated with black and white sketches, creating characters based on Arctic dolls and seeking a handcrafted feeling for the characters.

After a small team led by noted Alaska Native storyteller Ishmael Hope chose the Kanuk Sayuka story, the development team met with Minnie Gray-an Inupiaq elder whose father narrated the first audio recording of the Kanuk Sayuka story-to ensure the messages and themes remained intact. (She, for example, approved the gender swap of the main character from a boy to a girl).

The results of all of this work will be more than just a single video game. Fredeen and Vesce hope Never Alone will be the first of many unique games created with the same model of inclusiveness and care, aimed at sharing "traditional stories of unique human cultures with the world."

They call these projects "world games."

Games = stories = empathy

It doesn't matter if Never Alone is the first indigenous game ever created if it isn't fun to play. If the game's not fun, it will not succeed in extending the indigenous mythos to new audiences, as Fredeen hopes it does.

Games, she says, "can help players understand how stories might be felt."

Playing Never Alone is not that different from playing Super Mario Bros.-and that's a compliment. It has purpose built into the game play that is rare for traditional side-scrolling platform games, which build worlds on top of a background story.

The game play is punctuated by 24 short documentary segments players unlock as they progress. The segments-made from footage about the historic life of Alaska Native peoples-teach culture, history, and the value of storytelling. If that sounds like a dreary addition to a video game, it's not: Never Alone is highly produced, visually engaging, and more than just an edutainment game for kids.

Byrd, who describes herself as a gamer, believes that games help gamers to be more empathic people. Games, she said, "can help players understand how stories might be felt." Such capacity is crucial when dealing with deeply rooted mainstream assumptions that indigenous peoples are out of step with modern society, she added.

According to Byrd, there is a lingering notion that "indigenous peoples are somehow pre-modern, technologically challenged, or just a part of a long-dead past that has no role to play in the present." Games like Never Alone -and the empathy they can inspire-could be an important step in overcoming such prejudice.

This is what Never Alone offers. By stepping into Nuna, players hear directly from Inupiaq tribal members and elders.

Crystle Martin, a postdoctoral scholar at the Digital Media Learning and Research Hub, thinks that the gaming world desperately needs game development processes that are sensitive to cultural difference and diversity-not just because diversity leads to more interesting games, but because gamers benefit from the exposure.

"Being exposed to other cultures is of ever-growing importance in a global world," Martin told me over e-mail. She said such exposure lets us see the world from a different perspective, which is how we learn to be empathic, caring people. "And this is good both on a local and global scale."

For more information on Never Alone, visit neveralonegame.com.

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An Alaska Native Myth Tells of a Never-Ending Blizzard-Now You Can Learn About It on Xbox

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The Inupiaq people of Alaska have an unipqaak -a generations-old story-called Kanuk Sayuka. It tells of an unending blizzard that threatens the life of an Alaskan village. The people cannot hunt for food and face starvation.

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2010 Thunder Bay Classic Sled Dog Races Siberian Husky Mush M.U.S.H. Dog Sledding

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2010 Thunder Bay Classic Sled Dog Races Siberian Husky Mush M.U.S.H. Dog Sledding

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youtube channels:http://www.Youtube.com/SnowDogsVlogs http://www.Youtube.com/ArcadeSnowDogs
contact:  SnowDogs@gmail.com
Copyright information :Fair use

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7 Dog Class Clear Lake Sled Dog Races 2012  -  Siberian Husky Mush M.U.S.H. Dog Sledding

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No Author information
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There is a bronzed hero, near the Tisch Children's Zoo, who stands ready to accept hugs and offer rides to his admiring fans.

The hero is Balto the sled dog who has nobly stood on a rock outcropping since 1925. His statue, a big favorite in the Park, is located west of East Drive and 67th Street and north of the Zoo.

Back in 1925 Nome, Alaska was stricken with a horrific diphtheria outbreak. Not enough antitoxin was available to treat all the sick until teams of mushers and sled dogs battled a blinding blizzard and traveled 674 miles to deliver the medicine.

Balto, a husky, was one of the heroic lead dogs.

In recognition of such bravery, the famed Brooklyn born sculptor Frederick George Richard Roth was commissioned to create a lasting tribute.

Roth, whose other work at Park includes Tales of Mother Goose and Dancing Goat and Dancing Bear, unveiled the statue on December 15, 1925. The most important among the honored guests was the real Balto himself.

Over the past nine decades, Balto's statue has been a favorite as evidenced by the deep burnishing of his ears and back. Children and others frequently climb up on him for a photo op, or to contemplate life and the stirring words on the statue's plaque: Endurance · Fidelity · Intelligence. Good words for today's heroes and heroines too!

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There is a bronzed hero, near the Tisch Children's Zoo, who stands ready to accept hugs and offer rides to his admiring fans. The hero is Balto the sled dog who has nobly stood on a rock outcropping since 1925.

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Paul Cooper
Copyright information:
CCO Public Domain

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Sled Dog Free Stock Photo - Public Domain Pictures

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Sled Dog. Free Stock Photo. Free for private and commercial use

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Repeating News Story: Global Warming To Make Blizzards Worse

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Repeating News Story: Global Warming To Make Blizzards Worse

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Authors:
PAUL C. "CHIP" KNAPPENBERGER and PATRICK J. MICHAELS
Copyright information:
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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Over the next couple of days, as the Nor'easter honing in on the New England coast matures and eventually unleashes its winter storm fury, you are going to be subject to a lot of global warming hype.

After all, the climate change alarmist credo is: let no extreme weather event pass without pointing out that it is "consistent with" climate change caused by human industrial society.

But this time around, the pushback is also well-prepared.

While the "curator" of the Washington Post's newly-minted online "Energy and Environment" section Chris Mooney tells us in his article that global warming may make blizzards worse by increasing the temperature of the western Atlantic ocean and thereby increasing the moisture feed into the developing storm, meteorologist Ryan Maue is quick to point out that just the opposite is likely the result-that the elevated sea surface temperatures actually act to make such storms tamer.

Maue goes on to add that it is "easy to make case that global warming weakened this blizzard significantly due to warmer [sea surface temperatures]."

While Ryan is probably being a bit optimistic here, the reality is that this blizzard (in fact pretty much all storm events) are the result of a very complex system of physical interactions-the precise behavior of each one of which is not completely understood, much less perfectly predictable. This makes ascertaining the influence of human-caused climate change virtually (if not entirely) impossible.

Blizzards affecting New York City are perfect examples of this.

A couple years back, during another New York City blizzard, we looked at some of the confounding factors at play in determining how much it snows in Central Park. Our conclusion after reviewing the cases for both more and less snowfall there?

Which leaves natural variability as the primary driver of just how white New York City's winters are.

Figure 1 will give you some idea of what we were talking about. It shows the winter snowfall history from New York's Central Park since the late 1800s.

Figure 1. Winter snowfall totals from New York City's Central Park.
Kudos to you if you can pick out the patterns formed by global warming. And if you can, please write them up for scientific publication somewhere. The world awaits the definitive answer.

In the meantime, don't belive the hype.

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Repeating News Story: Global Warming To Make Blizzards Worse

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Over the next couple of days, as the Nor'easter honing in on the New England coast matures and eventually unleashes its winter storm fury, you are going to be subject to a lot of global warming hype.