Photo: My kids Kahlil, Ursala, Lily, posing for a photo by my niece Rowenn. August 28, 2026 at the reunion picnic and birthday party hosted by SueAnn and Gene Randall.
Below is a rainy-day photo taken from my daughter Lily’s front porch on Saturday morning, following a sunny Friday picnic-and-birthday-celebration in Juneau, Alaska.
Today, Monday, is Day Five of the Hudson-Haas-Hope-Kalman-Salas family reunion.
Persons with the last name “Hudson”: My son Kahlil and his two children, Tavi and Violet… and my sister Cecilie and my daughter Ursala, both of whom kept their maiden names when they married… and myself, Bill Hudson.
Persons with the last name “Haas”: Ursala’s daughters Amelie and Simone.
Persons with the last name “Hope”: My daughter Lily and her five children, Nicholas, Mary, Louis, Ella, and Anastasia.
Persons with the last name “Kalman”: Cecilie’s husband David and their children Samantha, Adam, and Rowenn. (Rowenn retained her maiden name…)
Person with last name Salas: Rowenn’s daughter Aisley.
Missing from the reunion for various reasons: Kahlil’s wife Miki Ellis, Rowenn’s husband Luis Salas, Lily’s ex-husband Ishmael Hope, Ursala’s husband Chris Haas.
Why would a family plan a reunion in Juneau, Alaska? Of all places?
Glad you asked.
Clarissa and I met, fell in love, and got married in Juneau, and Kahlil and Lily spent most of their childhoods in Juneau. Lily still lives here with her five kids… and when Ursala decided, last spring, to schedule a four-month cultural experience for herself and her two daughters, Lily got the bright idea to invite the Kalman clan to visit from Seattle… and also brother Kahlil from Santa Fe… and grandpa Bill from Pagosa Springs.
The first ‘reunion’ in about 10 years, since my mom’s funeral.
It’s been a little over 30 years since I moved from Juneau to Pagosa Springs, and so far — over the past week — I’ve run across only a couple dozen of folks I knew from 30 years ago. Mostly, the town is full of new faces.
When a few of us went to Karaoke at the Crystal Saloon on Thursday night, I didn’t recognize anyone in the room other than my own family members.
Clarissa and I left Juneau in 1993, and the downtown was already in the process of changing from a government headquarters (it’s the state capital) into a tourist-driven consumerist wasteland dominated by gift shops hawking jewelry, t-shirts, and cheap souvenirs.
On a typical day, the harbor hosts up to six monstrous cruise ships that resemble seven-story floating hotels. The downtown sidewalks are packed elbow-to-elbow with tourists eagerly filling their shopping bags with proof that they once visited Alaska, and the narrow streets are flooded with tour buses headed to the Mendenhall Glacier or to a helicopter landing pad for flights over the “ice fields”.
Most of us with the Hudson-Haas-Hope-Kalman-Salas reunion could, of course, be classified as “tourists”. We’ve fulfilled some of the required tourist activities already. A visit to the state museum. Hiking at the Mendenhall Glacier. Shopping at The Trove — a crowded downtown gift shop that specializes in silly, cheap gifts that appeal to children and tourists on a budget.
Near the Mendenhall Glacier Visitors Center, a rock face scoured to a smooth surface by centuries of moving ice generated a photo opportunity for my son Kahlil and his daughter Violet. If you hold your phone at just the right angle, a person who is actually laying down in the rock can appear, in the photo, to be hanging dangerously on a vertical rock face.
Other reunion activities were less likely to be enjoyed by tourists. A big multi-family picnic at Gene and SueAnn’s house on Douglas Island. Dinner and video gaming at the arcade at Bullwinkle’s Pizza Parlor. Accidentally running across the “Dolly Walk” through downtown on Saturday afternoon, held in honor of Dolly Parton. Making sushi at the Kalman Family’s airbnb.
This morning, the sun is threatening to show its face after a night of steady rain. Thus far, an idle threat.
Friday, however, was one of those glorious sunny days that come along occasionally in this temperate rain forest. There’s hardly a place on earth, I suspect, more beautiful than Juneau, Alaska, on a sunny day.
Or as green.
It’s also green on a rainy day, such as today, but a more subdued shade of green.
The rainy days far outnumber the sunny days here. Juneau averages about 65 sunny days per year.
I came to the realization, shortly afte the move to Pagosa Springs, that the gray, wet weather in Juneau, and especially the long winter nights, caused many people to suffer from a low-grade depression, which could also be described as “quiet desperation”.
To try and remedy that condition, people typically resort to one of two possible solutions.
Alcohol.
Or a constant stream of social gatherings.
Or both.
The social gatherings often include seafood dishes — salmon, halibut, crab — and music. Also, storytelling.
And jokes. Teasing. Laughter. Making fun of one another.
I never lived in a community where shared humor played such an obvious and important role in the overall culture.
Humor doesn’t seem to play quite as prominent a role in my current hometown, Pagosa Springs. Maybe people in Pagosa aren’t suffering enough from low-grade depression?
But maybe it’ll play a larger role in Archuleta County as time goes on…
Read Part Two… tomorrow…