Alaska
At different points in their notable careers, cartoonist Shel Silverstein and writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn explored Alaska
Part of a continuing weekly series on Alaska history by local historian David Reamer. Have a question about Anchorage or Alaska history or an idea for a future article? Go to the form at the bottom of this story.
Two weeks ago, this column covered the path of hard-boiled crime writer Dashiell Hammett — a sickly, famous, and nearing 50-year-old member of the Communist Party — as he went from Hollywood celebrity to Army enlistment to his posting in remote Adak. Last week, this column covered the forced several-month sojourn of author and religion inventor L. Ron Hubbard in Ketchikan. Of course, Hammett and Hubbard are far from the only celebrated authors with ties or significant visits to Alaska. From Jack London to freshly minted Pulitzer winner Tessa Hulls, Alaska has lured and inspired numerous writers. This time, let’s look at the two disparate characters, cartoonist Shel Silverstein and Soviet exile Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
In 1960, Sheldon “Shel” Silverstein (1930-1999) was not quite the beloved author and illustrator he would become. The Korean War veteran grew up drawing whenever he could. During his Army tenure, he published a series of cartoons for Stars and Stripes, a transformative experience. In a 1968 interview, he stated, “The Army was the best thing for me as far as my art work went because I didn’t have to worry about coming through any commercial way. I knew I wasn’t going to sell or I wasn’t going to appear anywhere. I could draw what the hell I wanted to draw, so I did. And I ate three meals a day, which is lucky because usually your meals depend on how well your stuff sells.”
After leaving the service, he published a couple of compilations of old cartoons and went to work for Playboy in 1957. There, he began to expand his fame, most notably with a travelogue series called “Shel Silverstein Visits.” Basically, Silverstein was forced to circle the globe and create some cartoons about the experience, shuffling from the likes of Paris to Moscow to Italy. In the summer of 1960, he took off for Alaska and Hawaii, a chance to document life in the new states.
He arrived in Anchorage in mid-July 1960. As would happen elsewhere in Alaska, the Daily News warned locals that he appeared like a “Beatnik” from the neck up but was in fact a gentleman, as indicated by his suit and tie. Silverstein famously went with the shaved head, bearded combination, which is, of course, a well-evidenced signifier of intelligence and manliness in writers. The Nome Nugget likewise warned its readers that the “beatnik,” “bearded young man who is about town with a sketch book” was, in fact, nothing to fear, just an itinerant Playboy representative.
There was something of a nationwide panic then about supposed counterculture youths undermining American society. From the 1950s to the late 1960s, blame shifted from juvenile delinquents to beatniks to hippies as the elders learned new words. To be clear, it is evident that no one in 1960 Alaska had the clearest idea of what exactly a beatnik looked like. Silverstein told the Daily News, “Why, in some places if you don’t wear a tie, you’re a beatnik.”
While in town, he was a judge for the Miss Alaska contest won by June Bowdish. Conversation naturally arrived at the nature of Playmates, and the Daily News asked him how many Alaskans would be worthy. He replied, “We haven’t seen one yet,” a review that sounded worse after he revealed his thoughts on Playmates. “It doesn’t take a mental giant to be a Playmate. We just want good-looking dolls. We don’t care if they have brains.”
From Anchorage, he flew around the state, including stops at Fairbanks, Nome, Kotzebue and Barrow, now Utqiaġvik. With more experience in Alaska, he offered a litany of takes to the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. Alaska Natives were the “warmest, most sincere people I’ve met.” The sandwiches were “ridiculously skimpy and prohibitively expensive.” On liquor, “It’s absolutely fantastic the amount of liquor consumed in Alaska.” Overall: “If I ever was unhappily married, this would sure be the place to bring my wife on vacation.” Silverstein notably never married.
The resultant piece was published in the May 1961 Playboy. Other features in that issue of the urbane men’s magazine include a deeper dive into private airplane ownership, fiction and satire from the most respected authors of the day, an analysis of gambling systems, and something called “The Girls of Sweden,” apparently an exposé on the lack of clothing in the Scandinavian nation. Occasional actress Susan Kell was the centerfold.
Material from the interior may be too mature for some readers, but suffice to say, Silverstein was shocked by the difference between the real Alaska and the version portrayed in television and movies. The introduction notes, “There’s still gold in them thar hills, he discovered, but more panning is done by north country film critics than by adventuresome treasure seekers. Putting the lie to a crop of Hollywood fiction, Shel found nary an igloo, but did find an array of Eskimos weary of flicks about intrigue in the ice domes.” The cartoonist himself said, “Shooting a moose out of season is considered a worse offense than shooting your wife.”
As shown by his cartoons, Silverstein expected a wild country of subsistence hunters, trappers, and assorted wild men and women. Instead, he found pinball machines, electricity and overpriced food. A cook tells him in one cartoon, “OK, OK, so the hamburger was tough. What do you expect for a lousy $3.75, anyway?” After accounting for inflation, $3.75 in 1960 is about $40 in 2025 money.
Silverstein also worried about how the layers of garments affected relationships. In another cartoon, he tells a woman, “Sure, it would be fun, but I’d have to take off my outer parka, then my fur parka, and then I’d have to take off my sealskin vest, and then my sweaters, and then I’d have to take off my flannels, and by that time I’d be too tired.”
This Alaska trip occurred four years before “The Giving Tree” was published, and 21 years before “A Light in the Attic.” Playboy collected the “Shel Silverstein Visits” articles, including the piece on Alaska, in the 2007 book, “Silverstein Around the World.”
To put it simply, the Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) had a different perspective on the world from Silverstein. Solzhenitsyn was an artillery officer in the Red Army during World War II. He was an intellectual sort, deeply scarred by the wartime horrors he witnessed and increasingly critical of Soviet leadership, particularly Joseph Stalin. Unfortunately, he put those criticisms to paper, leading to his arrest in February 1945 and a sentence of eight years in the labor camps, the back-breaking, soul-crushing gulags. The person he might have become was erased, ground into nothing and reshaped by the dehumanizing experience. Yet, the morbid twist is that his subsequent fame and literary relevance were built, in large part, upon those dire years.
Stalin died in 1953. In the years immediately following, the concentrated powers that be in the Soviet Union strove to undermine the cult of personality surrounding the former General Secretary. This de-Stalinization included the previously unthinkable, the publishing of material critical of him and his oppressive regime. And so, under the express permission of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, Solzhenitsyn’s first novel was released in 1962.
That book, “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” is a dire, unsettling account of life in a labor camp. Indeed, its title is literal, following the eponymous main character through a day, seeing the stark limits of his agency, seeking only to ensure the arrival of the next minute, grabbing at the smallest increments of success. At the end, the hero gained an extra bowl of mush and a metal scrap that would minutely ease his labor, bricklaying in freezing conditions. It was his best experience in recent memory; “Nothing has spoiled the day and it had been almost happy.”
The gulags were a central aspect of Stalin’s long rule, one of several heavy sticks that ensured obedience. Petty criminals, real and imagined dissidents, ethnic minorities, political rivals, and intellectuals were dispatched to these prison labor camps. Millions passed through the camps. “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” was the first time such an open account of Stalinist gulags was published in the Soviet Union, and it became the way many Westerners first learned of the camps’ existence. In 1970, Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. In his acceptance speech, he stated, “During all the years until 1961, not only was I convinced I should never see a single line of mine in print in my lifetime, but, also, I scarcely dared allow any of my close acquaintances to read anything I had written because I feared this would become known.”
But times changed in Russia. Khrushchev was toppled in 1964, and his more open approach to Soviet history was abandoned. Solzhenitsyn’s subsequent works were published abroad. And that Nobel speech was mailed in. He dared not leave the country, afraid he would not be allowed back in. In 1973, he published “The Gulag Archipelago,” a three-volume nonfiction series on the gulag. The next year, he was arrested and deported, sent to live in West Germany.
On May 27, 1975, Solzhenitsyn landed at Ketchikan and stepped onto American soil for the first time. He had been travelling in Canada, but his arrival in the United States came without fanfare and little notice. From Ketchikan, he and his wife, Natalia Svetlova, rode the ferry to Juneau, where they checked into the Baranof Hotel. Father Cyril Bulashevich, minister at Juneau’s St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church, acted as guide.
Gov. Jay Hammond hosted a small dinner to honor the author. Some press were there, but to their explicit irritation, Solzhenitsyn asked not to be quoted and granted no interviews. As far as he was concerned, this was a “private vacation.” In the gap of actual facts, rumors spread that he was looking to settle in Alaska or perhaps tour the Russian Orthodox churches here.
To be frank, Solzhenitsyn was deeply critical of many, many things about and all over the world, including the inquisitive nature of the Western press. In his 1978 commencement speech at Harvard University, he denounced “the shameless intrusion into the privacy of well-known people according to the slogan: ‘Everyone is entitled to know everything.’ But this is a false slogan of a false era; far greater in value is the forfeited right of people not to know, not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk. A person who works and leads a meaningful life has no need for this excessive and burdening flow of information.”
Back in 1975, Solzhenitsyn unsurprisingly struggled with English words. In the most entertaining anecdote from his short stay in Alaska, he was having trouble pronouncing “process” during the Hammond party. He and his wife disagreed on how to say it, and he tossed her their little travel copy of a Russian-English dictionary. The great writer assumed the text would verify his version. Instead, she was right.
They visited Sitka and, on June 1, 1975, left Alaska. In keeping with his private nature, they did not announce their destination or further travel plans. Under perestroika and glasnost, the cultural and political thaws promoted by the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, many of Solzhenitsyn’s books were legally published in the country for the first time. In 1990, his citizenship was restored. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he finally returned to his homeland in 1994, where he lived out the rest of his days in a home on the Moscow outskirts.
True to form, he complained that the country had gone to hell, that there was “too much freedom” and crime. He declared, “It is Gorbachev’s glasnost that has ruined everything.” Gorbachev responded, “Well, without glasnost, he would still be living in exile in Vermont chopping wood.”
Silverstein was 29 when he visited Alaska, still in his physical prime, if before his eventual fame. Solzhenitsyn was a worn 56, lines carved deeply upon his face, the ravages of imprisonment, disease, and fear readily apparent in his movements. Two authors so widely different, yet they both found a reason to visit Alaska.
In exchange for living in what is perhaps the country’s most beautiful state, Alaskans sometimes have to do without: professional sports teams, Trader Joe’s and, well, sunlight for half the year. But we make up for it with the Iditarod, reindeer sausages and chasing the aurora borealis. In other words, we often have to make our own fun. And by “fun” I mean “beer.” Those words are interchangeable, right?
Beer is a big part of life for Alaskans. We hike with it, camp with it, boat with it, cook with it and pair it with foods like the stuffiest of sommeliers. We throw it monthly birthday parties like the First Tap events at Broken Tooth Brewing Co. (otherwise known as Bear Tooth Theatrepub and Moose’s Tooth Pub & Pizzeria), complete with national musical acts like Modest Mouse, Clinton Fearon, and Norah Jones. We even occasionally do yoga with it (at downtown’s Williwaw Social). In other words, we take it everywhere and we take it seriously.
Beers from the state’s biggest brewery, Alaskan Brewing Co. based in Juneau, might already be in your refrigerator if you live in one of the 25 states where it’s available. Established in 1986 by Marcy and Geoff Larson, it was the 67th independent brewery to open in the country. With a steady line of signature brews, including their most recent “Wildness” beer, it’s the most well-established of all the state’s breweries. Expect seasonal specialties that incorporate ingredients like cranberries, raspberries, locally roasted coffee, locally grown white wheat from the Matanuska-Susitna area and even Alaska spruce tips. Ubiquitous around Alaska, this is our Papa Beer, if you will (I’ll show myself out).
But Alaskan Brewing is just one out of the more-than 50 breweries, distilleries, meaderies and cideries in the state (for an excellent list visit brewersguildofalaska.org). And while almost half of them are in Anchorage or within a short drive of our state’s largest city (including the relatively populous communities of Girdwood, Eagle River, Palmer and Wasilla), some of our most remote ports of call and tiniest towns are also in on the brewing action (I’m looking at you, Cooper Landing Brewing Company in Cooper Landing, population 231).
The ever-expanding Denali Brewing Co. in Talkeetna (population 997) may be a small-town hero, but it’s anything but small. Their four signature beers — Mother Ale, Chuli Stout, Single Engine Red and the ever-popular Twister Creek IPA, as well seasonal brews like Slow Down Brown and Flag Stop Milepost #3 — are year-round mainstays of summer barbecues and winter bonfires around the state.
This brewery is also home to the more recently established Alaska Cider Works, Alaska Meadery (featuring “Razzery,” a mead made with raspberries, sour cherries and apples) and Denali Spirits (featuring vodka, gin, whiskey, and “smoke” whiskey), because when you’ve fermented one, why not ferment them all?
(Denali Spirits’ canned cocktails, especially their blueberry mojito, have been so popular in Anchorage that at one time there was a Facebook page largely dedicated to tracking them down. Luckily, supply has since caught up with demand.)
Some breweries are even more remote. Ports of call and island hopping here can be one way to get your fill of hops. Breweries can be found in Ketchikan (Bawden Street Brewing Co.), Kodiak (Kodiak Island Brewing & Still, Double Shovel Kodiak Cidery, and Olds River Inn), Homer (Homer Brewing Co. and Grace Ridge Brewing Co. for beer, and you can also check out Sweetgale Meadworks & Cider House for hard cider and locally sourced meads featuring ingredients like nagoonberry), Sitka (Harbor Mountain Brewing), Seward (Seward Brewing Co. and Stoney Creek Brewhouse), Valdez (Valdez Brewing and Growler Bay Brewing), and Skagway (Klondike Brewing Co. and Skagway Brewing Co.).
Of course, many trips to Alaska begin and end in Anchorage. And if, during your travels, you’ve foolishly left some beers untasted, you can make up for lost time in our state’s biggest city which boasts — let’s face it — a ridiculous number of exceptional craft breweries.
Downtown’s Glacier Brewhouse specializes in oak-aged English and American West Coast-style beers, 13 of them, from blondes to stouts. Beneath the floor of the Brewhouse is a “Wall of Wood” comprised of casks of special release beers that are conditioned in oak barrels once used to age wine and bourbon. The history of the oak imparts “mother tongue” flavor characteristics, like vanilla and coconut, into these limited edition brews. Opt for one of these unique beers or choose from their flagship choices like raspberry wheat, oatmeal stout, imperial blonde, Bavarian hefeweizen or a flight that includes them all.
Down the street is 49th State Brewing Co., which expanded into Anchorage from its original location in Healy, at the edge of Denali National Park and Preserve. If you are unable to visit their flagship location, where you can sip beer while playing bocce or horseshoes on the lawn, you can catch up with them here. There’s a unique selection that includes beers like Smok, a smoked lager, as well as seasonal offerings like the Tiger’s Blood Sour, an homage to shave ice described as ”ferociously fruity.” Or there’s “Apple Fritter Ale,” with hints of cinnamon, icing, caramel, and vanilla. This location also boasts some of the best views in Anchorage and an expansive outdoor rooftop patio.
Just about all of the full-service restaurants in downtown Anchorage proudly feature some variety of Alaskan beers. In the heart of downtown, Humpy’s Great Alaskan Alehouse prides itself on a huge selection of beers, both international and local. Tent City Taphouse offers a diverse and carefully curated list of 24 rotating local brews, including their house beer, Tent City Tangerine IPA brewed by Glacier Brewhouse. Tent City regularly hosts “Taste of the North” beer dinners featuring Alaskan brewers. One, in collaboration with Grace Ridge Brewing Company, featured smoked salmon canapes with Black Pepper IPA, classic beef Wellington with an Oystercatcher stout and roasted honey lamb chops with a Winter Cranberry Ale.
If you have transportation around the city, treat yourself to a brewery tasting-room tour. Found in unassuming little side streets in the more industrial areas of Anchorage, some of our best beers can be sipped and savored at the source. Finding these funky little spots can feel like being invited to a secret party. And it’s a glimpse into Anchorage’s most authentic beer culture.
In midtown, Onsite Brewing Co. has unique, small-batch brews in a funky relaxed environment. Further south, King Street Brewing Co., Turnagain Brewing, Cynosure Brewing, Magnetic North Brewing Company, Brewerks, and one of our newest, Ship Creek Brewing Company are all within a stone’s throw of one another. If you’re lucky, you might run into one of Anchorage’s popular food trucks parked outside, so you’ll have something to wash down with your flights. Depending on the day, you might find reindeer sausages, pad Thai, cheesesteaks or pupusas. On the weekends, Anchorage Brewing Company features a top-notch in-house pop-up restaurant, called Familia, with a rotating menu featuring local Alaskan ingredients.
One of the newest and furthest south breweries, while still in the Anchorage bowl, is Raven’s Ring Brewing Company, which is a brewery/winery and meadery. From a traditional IPA to a Concorde grape wine called Grape Juice to a rotating Vintner’s pour like Sweet Peach Jalapeno mead, this ambitious operation is challenging the notion that you can’t please everyone.
Other Anchorage points of interest for non-hoppy but still home-grown adult beverages include Anchorage Distillery, Zip Kombucha, Double Shovel Cidery and Hive Mind Meadery.
If your travels are over and you still haven’t had your fill, check out the Silver Gulch Brewing & Bottling Co. inside Terminal C at the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport on your way out of town. An offshoot of the flagship Silver Gulch brewery in Fox, Alaska (about 10 miles north of Fairbanks), this location has a bar and restaurant, and a retail shop carrying growlers of their own brews as well as those of other Alaskan brewers and distillers. Last-minute souvenir shopping never tasted so good.
Before you start your great Northern beer safari, bear in mind that tasting rooms often have limited and varying hours, so always double-check before planning a visit.
Whether your travels take you to fine-dining restaurants, low-key alehouses or even rustic cabins in the woods, make like an Alaskan and fuel your adventures with one of our beloved, home-grown brews. When in Alaska, drink as the Alaskans do.
Mara Severin is a food writer who writes about restaurants in Southcentral Alaska for the Anchorage Daily News.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Coast Guard announced Thursday that the first two Arctic Security Cutters will be homeported in the State of Alaska. Anticipating delivery of the first Arctic Security Cutters by the end of 2028, the Coast Guard has begun planning to ensure necessary infrastructure and support are in place to receive two icebreakers. Ensuring these vessels are supported by trained and ready crews, and ready homeport facilities including housing, will be essential to delivering full, enduring operational capability required to meet emerging Arctic security challenges.
“Homeporting these two Arctic Security Cutters in Alaska is a decisive step forward in securing America’s Arctic frontier,” said Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin. “I want to thank President Trump for his bold leadership and vision in directing this critical investment, as well as Senator Sullivan and the entire Alaskan Congressional delegation for championing the funding that made these icebreakers possible. These vessels will deliver the enduring operational presence our nation needs to protect sovereignty, deter foreign adversaries, and safeguard vital resources for the American people..”
The homeporting of the first two Arctic Security Cutters in Alaska builds on the historic expansion of the Coast Guard’s icebreaker fleet and underscores an unprecedented investment in the Arctic. This announcement marks a national milestone in U.S. Arctic capability, following contract awards for up to 11 Arctic Security Cutters. Fueled by $3.5 billion in funding in the Fiscal Year 2025 Reconciliation Bill and facilitated by a groundbreaking Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the United States and Finland in October 2025, the acquisition of Arctic Security Cutters will fulfill President Trump’s directive to rapidly deliver America’s newest icebreaker fleet.
“Homeporting Arctic Security Cutters in Alaska underscores the United States’ leadership as a maritime power in the Arctic,” said Adm. Kevin E. Lunday, commandant of the Coast Guard. “By strategically positioning these state-of-the-art icebreakers in Alaska, the Coast Guard will maximize our ability to defend our northern border and approaches, while reinforcing America’s maritime dominance in a crucial region of strategic importance.”
Through contract awards to Rauma Marine Constructions Oy of Rauma, Finland, Bollinger Shipyards Lockport, L.L.C., and Davie Defense, Inc. of Vienna, VA, the U.S. will immediately benefit from our Finnish partners’ icebreaker expertise while coordinating the onshoring of that expertise and shipbuilding to the United States. Under the MOU, Finland will construct up to four ASCs for the U.S Coast Guard. U.S. shipyards will build and deliver up to seven additional ASCs. Delivery of the first Arctic Security Cutters is expected by the end of 2028.
Arctic Security Cutters will form the backbone of a revitalized U.S. icebreaker fleet, strengthening American maritime dominance in the Arctic. Fielding specialized capabilities, these icebreakers will defend U.S. sovereignty, secure critical shipping lanes, protect energy and mineral resources, and counter foreign malign influence in the Arctic region. A robust icebreaker fleet will enable the Coast Guard to control, secure and defend U.S. Alaskan borders and Arctic maritime approaches, facilitate maritime commerce vital to economic prosperity and strategic mobility, and respond to crises and contingencies in the region.
Acquisition of Arctic Security Cutters supports the Coast Guard’s ongoing modernization, through which the Service is transforming into a more agile, capable and responsive fighting force.
Memorandum on ASC Homeporting
###
Alaska
‘We never forgot her’: Friends, family of longtime Alaska teacher gather for 100th birthday celebration
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – Phyllis Sullivan has certainly led a life worth celebrating.
Born in 1926, Sullivan moved to Alaska with her husband and three children in 1959 to teach, first in the village of Kwethluk in Western Alaska and later at Wendler and Mears Middle Schools in Anchorage.
All the while, she left strong impressions with countless students and acquaintances, some of whom gathered in the basement of Anchor Park United Methodist Church in Anchorage Saturday to celebrate Sullivan’s century of life.
“Education has been the primary thing in her entire life,” her son Dennis Sullivan said. “She’s always been a school teacher and she’s been one of the sweetest people in the entire world.”
As a slideshow featuring vintage photos from her life and time in Alaska played, Phyllis, wheelchair-bound but high in spirit, stopped to chat with every new person who entered the room, some of whom she hadn’t seen in years.
“It’s impressive that this many people are here,” she said. “That’s very encouraging. Makes me think maybe I did something right along the way.”
Aside from family members, most visitors were there because of the impression Phyllis Sullivan left on them during her many years in the classroom.
“She gave us this one assignment: to memorize a poem,” former Mears student Tina Arend recalled. She said Phyllis Sullivan was her 8th grade English teacher.
“And when she gave us the assignment, she said, ‘I’ve had students come back many, many, many years later and recite the poem to me.’ And we actually still remember the poem,” Arend said of her and her husband, who was also in attendance. They both went on to become teachers at Mears as well.
Matthew Nicolai, whom Phyllis Sullivan taught in Kwethluk, has similarly fond memories.
“The Bureau had ordered that teachers do corporal punishment for speaking Yup’ik,” Nicolai remembered. “Even though we spoke Yup’ik, she never did that, never cracked our hands. Other teachers did, but not her. That’s why we never forgot her.”
In addition to teaching, Phyllis Sullivan also found time to open her home to those in need. She and her husband once took in a family with seven kids who had been displaced by flooding in Fairbanks in 1967.
“It touched our heart because they bought us a lot of stuff that we needed because we lost a lot of stuff during the flood,” David Solomon, one of those seven kids, said. “We stayed there for over three years.”
Phyllis Sullivan said she is enjoying life and is doing fine.
“My mother made it to 103,” she said. “So, I’ve got a while yet.”
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