History lesson
The story of the Lutheran church on Alaska's Seward Peninsula begins
with a zoologist, a Presbyterian and a herd of reindeer. Read this
history lesson at www.thelutheran.org/0412/seward.html
Georgianna Merrill glances toward the sea that swallowed her mother's house — her childhood home. She's thankful it was dark during the last storm. That way "we couldn't see how scary the waves were," she says.
Like most of the 600 Inupiat Eskimos in Shishmaref, Alaska, 20 miles south of the Arctic Circle on the Chukchi Sea, Merrill is experiencing the hazards of global warming firsthand. Since 1971 overall temperatures in Alaska have risen by 2.7 degrees; in some areas they're up 7 degrees in the spring.
The rest of this article is only available to subscribers.
© 2013 Augsburg Fortress, Publishers
