a road trip and a job

For that last several weeks, I've been thinking a lot about work next year.  My original intention was simply to spend my three months here and then go home and look for a job in the Marquette area, which promises to be a challenge, especially right now.  But the whole time I've been up here, and even over the phone before I came, people have been intimating that I should consider a regular teaching position in the district.  Back in February I mentioned it to Carrie, and to my surprise she was amenable to the idea.  It would be an adventure for our little family, and it would provide us with a financial cushion to face the tough Michigan job market the following year.


So I began talking with Robert Stewart, HR director for the district, about where they might be able to use me.  He told me he'd put me to work, it was just a matter of deciding where, offered me a contract before he even knew what positions would be open.  I waited to see.


And then a couple weeks ago I heard about a job in Saint Marys, the next village upriver, which has its own independent school district.  More than one person who had gotten to know me insisted that I would love it there.  They do a lot of active learning, like hunting trips with the kids, and try to present subject-area material in ways that are meaningful for them, in the context of their culture and habits.  The village actually grew around an old Russian Orthodox mission school.  The people who moved there originally did so because they valued education, so the community has a good disposition toward school.  That doesn't mean there aren't problems, but certainly makes for an advantageous starting point.  Further, it is run by a guy who really values active education, getting the kids doing things, rather than just reading a textbook and turning in homework.  It sounded fantastic.


I got in touch with the superintendent there, Dave Herbert, and he expressed interest in meeting me or talking on Skype.  My mentor here, Rusty Clark, was a strong proponent of finding a ride and actually going in person, so when Dave and I talked on Wednesday and I found out he'd be out of town the rest of the week, I started asking around to see if anyone would be willing to take me up there that afternoon.


Dmitri and Teresa came through!  Dmitri called his son Jackie, and for the cost of a couple quarts of oil and a tank of gas, Jackie took me to St Marys, hung out while Dave and I talked, and brought me home.  Longest trip I've ever taken on a snow machine (the term snowmobile doesn't exist here, as I may have said before), and I had to figure out how to be a passenger on one.  It was fairly bumpy and tossy, and there was nothing to hold onto, so I put my hands on Jackie's shoulders, turned my toes out, and gripped the machine with my heels--just like riding a horse.

Dave and I totally hit it off; he strikes me as an absolutely first rate educator.  I think he has the right attitudes on so many things!  One of which, sadly for me, is the importance of continuity in an educational community--meaning he wants someone who is committed to spending at least two years there, which is a promise I can't make.  Of course, in theory I could say Sure, I'll be here two years, and then just back out after one.  I wouldn't be on a contract or anything, so legally that's possible.  But I don't think I'd be capable of lying like that, even to someone I didn't care about.  To someone I have quickly come to respect and admire very highly, it hurts my heart even to imagine such dishonesty.  Not that I know for certain I won't be up here more than a year, but I'd compare the likelihood of that to the likelihood of changing my mind altogether about teaching and going back to long-haul trucking:  Yes, the future is fundamentally unknown; but realistically, it's just not in the cards.  

What kind of breaks my heart about the whole thing is that I passionately support his position.  The kind of community he has built around that school, and will be working to rebuild next year, requires the kind of continuity he's looking for in his staff.  The deepest and best kind of learning is only possible with a deep-seated trust, and that arises only in relationships that are fostered and nurtured over a significant period of time.  So I had to back out, and I dearly hope he finds the perfect person for his school, who will love the place and the kids and the community, and stay for years and years.

The other big factor for me is the certainty available here in LYSD.  If I was totally on board with the time commitment, it still would only have made me  a contender for the position; it's not like he promised me the job.  Then I would have had to interview again, with the board there, probably over Skype, and because Dave is taking the time and care that really ought to be taken with such matters (again, doing it right), I wouldn't have known until I was back home.  And then if I didn't get it, I'd be stuck in Michigan with no promise of employment there or Alaska, and no access to the people doing the hiring up here.  

Contrast that with this:  After making the decision Thursday, I stopped by the district office on my way home and signed a contract.  Next year, I'll be teaching middle school math and science in Pilot Station.  Done.  That's a serious comfort.  If I was twenty-two and single, it wouldn't much matter; I'd figure something out.  I've lived most of my adult life below the poverty line, and it never much bothered me; I've always had nice stuff and been plenty comfortable.  But now I have real bills to pay, and a family to support, and scraping by on whatever comes along doesn't work anymore.

So I took the job here in the district, and I feel great about it.  There is a part of me that's deeply sad at missing the chance to work in what truly looks like a dream job for someone like me.  But that sadness is part and parcel of a great joy at knowing that school is there, that those people are there, in a good place, doing good work, furthering the greater good.  There is no more gratifying thought.  I hope hope hope that Carrie and I will have a chance to make it over there for a visit next year.  I was so impressed with Dave, and with the place, that I feel like I want to maintain a connection and know what's going on there, even if I'm not involved.

Oh!  And one other cool thing about the job in Pilot--Stacey, my current vice-principal, will be the principal there next year, which should be great.  I like her a lot, and her kids seem really cool.  I guess her older daughter is graduating, and her younger daughter is below my age group, but it will be nice to have a couple familiar faces in the halls at the beginning of the year.  It's an incredible relief to have a job lined up before I go home.  I am very grateful. 

a visitation

I just spent some time at a visitation for a little girl who died here in the village last Thursday.  I was nervous about going, unsure if I would be welcome, but I bought some oranges and asked a woman at the store if she thought it would be okay and where the house was.  It was pretty hard, but I'm glad I went.  I got to talk with the mom, Eskie, for a while; Acelynn was adopted from Pilot Station and had been having some ongoing health problems since Christmas--eczema, new allergies, and then she came down with pneumonia and I guess the antibiotics didn't knock it out.  Siri had pneumonia this year.  She's okay.

Bernie and Eskie are an older couple with some grown kids, and I'm not sure of the whole story--maybe they just loved kids and wanted more--but they adopted Acelynn some time ago, maybe when she was just a little baby, I'm not sure.  She would have been three next month.  I got to visit with their toddler grandson Clyde for a while.  He was interested in my hair and beard and glasses, charming and adorable.

Acelynn was laid out on a low platform on the floor with her little hands crossed on her stomach, a rosary wrapped around one.  I kept glancing over and imagining I saw her breathing; it was strange to watch closely and not see her chest move.  One of the impressions I got was that I was amongst people who were much more familiar with death than I am.

I stayed for quite a while, sitting quietly, saying pujas and refuges, and occasionally talking with people nearby.  I was offered some juice and a 7up, and I had a bit of fry-bread.  Finally I knelt down and put my hand over hers, said a final puja, and excused myself.

I don't really know what you can say about death.  A natural part of life, to be sure, but it's awfully difficult and sad to lose someone you care about.  Strange to think that a few generations ago, what happened here was a pretty normal thing that most families would have experienced.  Would it be less sad if it was more normal?
     -     -     -     -     -     -     -     -     -     -     -     -     -     -     -     -     -     -     -     -

A post-script:  Apparently, Acelynn had various health problems throughout her short life.  It was suggested to me that her biological parents may have been a little too closely related, which might have had a part in that.  Someone in town made a beautiful little coffin, as they didn't want to use a big one.  So now the body is lying in its final bed, wearing a lovely fur parka.

Going today was much easier than yesterday.  I had stopped at Lucy's house for a visit because she was out of town over the weekend, and she was there with her granddaughter Rayna, as usual, and also her daughter. It turned out they were headed over to the visitation as well, so I got a lift in a very nice borrowed pickup truck.  Showing up with some locals, and already being slightly acquainted with the family and the house and the idea of being in a room with a body, all made me far more comfortable than I was yesterday.  This made it much easier to just be in the space, share the grief, and try to realize compassion and wisdom for Acelynn and her family.

I took along a couple small boxes of food, the remainder of my too-large bush order, and again I was unsure if it would just be silly to offer them a bunch of raw ingredients, but they seemed pleased.  All in all, I'm amazed at how welcome I felt in their home.  There were loads of people there today, almost standing room only.  It was good to see, and I felt blessed and privileged to be a part of it.

appallingly obvious

This talk by David Brooks reminded me uncannily of a blog post I wrote last year about the apparent conflict between the realms of thinking and feeling, ego and id, Apollonian and Dionysian, head and heart.  My basic point was that I think the primary basis of our decision-making processes is not the rational mind, as we tend to assume, but rather the emotional core that underlies our conscious selves.  Brooks takes this much further, giving the idea a most affirming and clarifying boost, at least for me, by saying that "emotions are not separate from reason, but they are the foundation of reason because they tell us what to value."

But what's really interesting is that I came to this conclusion very much from the heart side--this is what I feel to be true--whereas Brooks approaches it almost entirely from the head side, via the modern scientific study of the mind and brain.  Yet we reach largely the same conclusion.

To repeat the quote from that older post:  Einstein said, "It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity."  In light of what Brooks has to say on the matter, I am suddenly wondering if our humanity isn't beginning to catch up--and how ironic that it should do so using the tools of technology!

of tea, and guspuks, and of course, more hiking

That was the best workout my legs have had in a long time.  I went up to watch the sunset and decided to head down the far side.  Well, it's a pretty tall hill, and while the near side is a long, gradual slope, the far is quite steep.  So I went down the hill on my back (ehem, maybe a couple times) and hiked along the base for a while, then needed to get back over the ridge to get home.  Luckily, more than half my climb was eased by a snowmobile track, but after that ran out there was a whole lot of climbing and sinking and scrambling and backsliding involved in reaching the top.  I think I'm going to feel that tomorrow.

Earlier, I paid a visit to Lucy and got a look at my nearly-finished guspuk--it is awesome!  And nearly finished; I'll post pictures wearing it as soon as it's ready, likely tomorrow.  I even got to try it on, and it's wonderful.  I took along some nice green tea that I brought from Marquette (haven't been drinking it very often, so there's plenty left, figured I'd share), and we talked for an hour or more about life and stories.  A few things bear repeating.

Most memorable for me was how she learned to sew and work with her hands.  Lucy went to an Indian school in Oregon for part of her childhood, and when she came home she discovered that her mother had contracted tuberculosis and had to be hospitalized.  If I understood right, she wound up being gone several years, so Lucy didn't have a chance to learn to sew from her mother, at least not at any length.  When I asked Lucy how she learned (and she really is quite brilliant at it), she said as a young woman she would look at other people's clothes and simply try to copy what they did.  Clearly, she has a real talent, and when I pointed this out, she explained that when she was little her mother (presumably before she left) sat Lucy and her sister down and told them to take a centipede and rub it between their hands until there was nothing left of it, for this was a way to ensure that the girls would be clever with their fingers and able to master the fine motor skills that were once critical to a family's survival, and remain an important part of Yup'ik culture.  Her sister was frightened of the little creature, but Lucy rubbed and rubbed until the centipede was completely gone, and she evidently attributes her knack to this practice.  She even said that down on the coast people used to use a spider in the same way.  Both make such sense!  If you want to be skilled in a very fine, small-scale task like sewing, what better creature to emulate than a centipede or a spider?  I have learned very little, sadly, about traditional Yup'ik culture, but this story is wonderful.

At some point, we were talking about baking bread.  When she was a little girl, they had a wood stove that they could bake bread in, and after their mother was gone, the kids were more or less on their own.  Their father would leave very early in the morning with his dog team, and he'd be gone until nightfall checking traps or gathering wood.  If there was a problem or argument at home, the kids had to work it out for themselves, and they had to cook and run the household as well.

Somehow the topic of bread reminded me of my great-great-grandmother coming over from Italy as a young woman and crying because there was no chestnut tree in the yard (Dad, is that right?) of her new house, so she didn't know how she would make bread for her family.  Of course that led me to the story my Great-Grandma Rosa used to tell about coming over on the boat, four years old, and having two younger siblings.  Since her mother's arms were full, Rosa had to hold onto her mother's skirts--she used to show us how she gripped a handful and twisted her fist around.  I did this for Lucy, and she seemed suitably impressed.

And of course, we talked about kids these days.  Her granddaughter Rayna (whom my parents met on skype) was across the room watching TV and snacking on Doritoes, and Lucy cast an occasional glance at her as she explained to me that she never spoke disrespectfully to her father, as long as he lived.  She even mentioned in passing that her husband was very abusive, and she would run away sometimes, but she always came back to him because she didn't want her children to be without a mother.  They say an executive in today's hectic business world needs an ability to make "tough decisions."  Lucy certainly seems to have had her share of experience with this.

Lucy grew up in a now-abandoned village some miles downriver from here.  Their old house is apparently the last one still standing up.  In her life, she has witnessed an astonishing transformation in her culture, and rather than reaching a 'new normal' the people can get used to, the pace of change actually continues to increase.  Not just here, or course, this is true all over.  It's a fascinating time to be alive!

a couple random things

This morning, for the first time, there was a distinct glow on the horizon as I walked to work.  It provided more than enough light to see my way along through the snowy field behind the Hilton.  Hitherto, except when there's a moon, I usually just stumble along over the faint and featureless snowscape toward the distant street lights, occasionally tripping over a fresh drift or sinking thigh deep off the edge of the trodden path.  It seems this will no longer be a problem.  We're still picking up some six minutes of sunlight with each passing day.

A very funny image, from Neil Gaiman's blog.  I'm a great fan of mistranslation, and this little menu or ticket or whatever is an absolute classic of the genre.  I just hope it turns up with adequate resolution to read.

And finally, I've been invited for a steam by my friend Jim, a contact from school and pickup basketball.  Jim is a white guy like me, but I won't hold that against him.  ;)   I intend to enjoy it immensely.  And I have to go.

close encounter

Since I got here, the only wild animals I've seen are birds, and not very many.  The scrub teams with little critters; there are tracks everywhere.  But I haven't seen so much as a rabbit, much less a coyote or moose.  Last night I took a hike up over the ridge to watch the sunset, and I sat down to watch the colors drift away, then meditated for a good long while in the slowly fading light.  Well, it seemed like a long while, but I haven't been sitting for long periods lately, so I'm sure it wasn't much more than twenty or thirty minutes.  When I was done, I got up and started fiddling with my clothes, getting the camera put away and slung across my back, turned to start back, and there was a red fox not fifty feet away, trotting briskly toward me.  He paused when I turned, but when I held still in a moment of surprise, he started toward me again and would have passed within ten or twenty feet of me had I not foolishly fumbled for my camera and popped the flash up.  Between the partial flash it uses to focus in low light, and me raising my arms up to hold the camera to my eye, I made myself sufficiently obnoxious to chase him off.  By the time I lowered the camera, he was a dark spot disappearing over a nearby hill.  I definitely wish I had just held still and enjoyed the moment.  Still, it was delightful to see him at all, and although the light was poor, he was close enough that I really got a pretty good look at him--nice and big and healthy.  I'm thrilled.

a surprise ending

An absolutely thrilling basketball game tonight to finish off the evening's festivities.  The middle school teams are at home this weekend; both the boys' and girls' teams played.  Last game of the night, the boys played Scammon Bay.  As the teams were warming up, I was thinking it looked like our middle school team was playing a high school team; nearly all of their players were dramatically taller than nearly all of our players.  Plus, they had a generous supply of substitutes; their team was probably a dozen strong, while Mountain fielded a total of six.  And of course those six had already played one game, in which they blew a huge lead and ended up losing because they were just plain spent.  All signs pointed to a crushing defeat.

The game started.  Scammon did not, as I had expected, leap immediately to a commanding lead.  To my amazement, Mountain pulled slightly ahead early on.  But I was still expecting things to blow up at any moment, and the blowout to begin.  It didn't, and it didn't, and it didn't.  I'm not sure either team ever led by more than four or five points.  Every possession was hard fought, every point hard won.  The Strivers were hurtling themselves around the court like madmen, and I kept thinking They can't possibly keep this up!  Incredibly, they did.  With just one sub to give an occasional short breather to one or another player, our kids were pushing themselves beyond themselves.  I found out afterward that at least one or two of our players were using their brief breaks to rush off to the bathroom and vomit, then returning and playing just as hard as ever.  They were amazing.

With eight seconds left, the score was tied, and Scammon had possession.  Mountain's headless chicken defense ruffled them enough that the inbound pass went awry, glanced off the hand of the recipient and out of bounds--Strivers ball.  Seven seconds on the clock.  Inbound the ball into a mass of scrambling madness that seems to use far too much time, they're dribbling down to the corner, the defense is closing in, there can't possibly be enough time to get a shot off, and somehow the Strivers slip a pass back out of the corner, and then...

And yes, the crowd went seriously wild.  Have I mentioned that these folks love basketball?

It was my enormous good fortune, at the very moment that shot went down, to glance over at the coach.  Leaping to his feet, arms hurtling skyward, face bursting open in wild disbelief, his entire body was an explosion of overwhelming, unadulterated, ecstatic joy.  He was like the Platonic form of the concept:  Victory.

after the fisheries

I never got a chance to attend the fisheries meetings, as they took place mostly during the day when I was working.  However, in honor of the event and the visitors, there was Eskimo dancing two nights in a row at the village hall.  The second night included a huge potluck dinner, Eskimo dancing, and then what is referred to up here as 'fiddle dancing' to polish off the night.

This was the first time I had seen Eskimo dancing, and I asked someone nearby if taking pictures would be considered rude or inappropriate in any way; he replied that the dancers would more likely find it flattering, so I snapped away, and the results are here.  Ah, I see the first picture in that set is Jan, a new friend who lives here at the Hilton most of the time.  She's an early childhood specialist for the district and travels around to the different villages trying to convince parents that they should talk to, read to, and play with their children.  As you might expect, she reports that many have no need of this advice because they're already doing it, while those who have the greatest need of the message are generally least likely to internalize it.  Like many high-poverty areas, rural and urban alike, the Bush sees many people having babies very young and frequently unprepared.  It also sees a great deal more involvement of extended family and community than you would ever find in the suburbs; they say it takes a village to raise a child, and these are true villages.  So there are advantages and disadvantages--a mixed bag, as always.  Getting back to the picture at right, this one is of Jan's new guspuk and gloves, just beautiful!  She was dressed up for the party.  The guspuk is a traditional hooded over-shirt with decorative trim and a large front pocket.  Nowadays they are made from all manner of beautifully colored and patterned fabrics.  There are local and individual variations in the general pattern, as well as how the pocket is structured and where the trim pieces are placed.

I made a batch of popcorn for the potluck with butter and salt and yeast and a little black pepper.  I definitely got the better deal--various dishes of rice and chicken and lots of wonderful fish.  Happily, my popcorn disappeared in short order, so I got to feel that my modest contribution was appreciated.

And then the dancing.  I had never seen Eskimo dancing and didn't know what to expect, but I found it beautiful and compelling.  Each song has a dance that goes with it, and together they appear to tell a story, although I have not yet learned any of the stories.    The accompaniment is from wide, shallow drums that are played in a firm, steady rhythm with what look like willow switches.  As you see in the pictures, the drummers/singers sit in a row at the back, and the dancers gather in front of them.  

Each song started with the man in the center beating a slow, soft one-beat and singing quietly.  He would go once through the song by himself before the other singer-drummers joined, and shortly after, the dancers would begin filtering out onto the floor.  Each dance consisted of a choreographed series of movements performed by all the dancers in unison.  Certain movements in the dances remind me of the stereotypical Hawaiian hula you might see in the movies; others called to mind Tai Chi, and overall, the closest thing I can compare one of these dances to is a kata. 

At first, the drumming was slow, the singing soft, and the dancing gentle and reserved.  The song might last only a minute or two, but it would be repeated numerous times before they finished, and with each successive repetition it grew louder and louder, the rhythm faster, the dancers more animated, the drums and singing more and more intense, until I could feel a bodily jolt with each sharp, shocking drum beat, and the more enthusiastic dancers were positively thrashing the air with their fans.  The whole effect was deeply compelling and moving.

I may be exaggerating somewhat; only a couple of the most intense dancers got really wild, and only in a couple of the most intense songs.  The lovely little old lady in the center above was a wonderful dancer, but although she finished each song with more exaggerated movements than she started with, she could not reasonably be said to 'thrash' anything.  Nonetheless, that steady drum beat, growing gradually to a crescendo, with the continuing repetition of dances that beckoned with hidden meaning, made for a very powerful experience.

One of the many visitors in town for the fisheries meetings was this man, an Athabaskan Native from the Alaskan interior.  He spoke at length about the meaning of his wardrobe and the traditions of his culture.  Some notable details that have stuck with me:  a ceremonial ladle made from a hand-carved sheep's horn; beads and fur trim on his gloves; and the front feet of a wolf hanging from his shoulders.  Unfortunately, I can't remember much about the headdress, the most immediately striking feature; I think it was largely fox and contained eagle feathers.

I remember a bit more about the drum, for he spent a good deal of time on the topic.  The painting is Raven, who created the world in Athabaskan tradition, hence the sun shining from his mouth, giving light to the creation.  He then explained that these days, when he looks at this image,

he tends to think of our responsibilities as stewards of the world we have been given.  If we continue to neglect and abuse our lands and our waters, he said, he imagines that one day Raven may simply close his mouth, and we will be left in the dark again.












Later in the evening, Eskimo dancing gave way to fiddle dancing.  The band might have been at home in an average Northern Wisconsin bar, playing a kind of country rock with the amps turned up way too loud for the small space.  The biggest difference would have to be that no self-respecting bar band would be caught dead playing a venue with no beer.  This being a dry village, there is no alcohol of any kind, in public.  (They make home brew, of course.)  A good solid band though, and the drummer turned out to be my basketball buddy Dmitri, who coaches the girls' varsity team.

'Fiddle dancing' itself is a kind of lopsided two-step with an odd pause that leads to stepping on the off beat during every second measure.  This looked kind of strange to me, but they do it very well.  The band played some familiar songs, some not so, and I think it must have been a mix of classic rock and 'new country' because at one point I realized I was sitting through 'Achy Breaky Heart,' my all-time least favorite song.  Strangely enough, I didn't mind it at all, because they played it in exactly the same style as all their other songs, making no attempt at all to 'sound country' or mimic the detestable voice of B____ ___ _____.

The lead singer, incidentally, was a showman extraordinaire.  Below, red baseball cap.  I can't possibly begin to describe him, so let it simply be said for the record:  he was awesome.

They played a bunch of different stuff, some faster, some slower, a couple of nice waltzes.  Mostly couples dancing, but on one occasion I think everybody was doing the Electric Slide; on another, country line dancing.  (I kind of closed my eyes for that one.  I have my own prejudices I guess.)  My favorite part by far was when, in the middle of their set, they played a loud, rockin, upbeat Eskimo song.  The singer started singing in Yupik, and the ladies all rushed up to dance.

No, wait, my favorite part was seeing one of my students, a sixth-grader named Travis, dancing up a storm all freaking night.  He was up there repeatedly during the Eskimo dancing, and as soon as the band started I saw him dancing with an old woman I figured must be his grandma.  Then I thought twice when I saw him dancing with a different old woman, minutes later.  Maybe both grandmas?  But lo, over the course of the evening he danced with a couple different middle aged women, some very attractive young women, and finally even a girl his own age.  How cool is that?  Well, it's past my bedtime, so I'll finish this beast with a little photographic ode to Travis.  (Sadly, I've just discovered I didn't get a shot of him dancing with his classmate)

ma bell redux

Got a response from Jane Pierce about the google phone thing, and wound up writing a rather lengthy and excited reply about this new-found toy. Here 'tis...

Actually, the service was developed as a way to centralize a person's various telephone numbers--home, cell, work, pager, whatever. You can either get a new google voice number, as I did, or port a number you already own into google's system. The magic trick is that you can then connect all of your various phones to your google voice account (you do this online, and there's a process of confirming that you really do control a given phone number), after which you can give out just that one number, and when someone calls it, it rings all of your phones, and you can answer on any of them.

Or you can set it up to ring different numbers at different times of day, or according to who is calling, or you can have a particular caller always go straight to voicemail, or whatever. So maybe your immediate family rings all your phones, while work acquaintances only ring to your work phone. And you can check the voicemail on your computer, listen live while someone is leaving a message, and even answer the call on your computer while they're leaving a message if it turns out to be important, just like the good old fashioned answering machine.

I'm kind of wishing I had known about this before, because over the past year or so I've saved maybe eight or ten voicemail messages that Carrie left me with Siri--the oldest has her just barely beginning to talk, then later messages gradually become more clear, and she's saying things like, "Love you Papa," and "Hiiii!" They're completely adorable, and I want to keep them forever, but I couldn't find any way to get them out of Verizon's voicemail system. I had to play them and re-save them every week or two because verizon will delete any message more than three weeks old, and when I came to the Bush I knew I wouldn't have any cel service, so I wouldn't be able to do the little saving game any more. The only thing I figured out to do was play the messages on my phone and record them with the chincy little microphone on my laptop; I did it in Anchorage the night before I flew out here. This dramatically reduced the already shoddy sound quality, but at least I still have them. If I'd had google voice right along, not only would I have been able to keep them as long as I wanted, I could also could have downloaded them in reasonably good quality, and even shared them with other people via the handy email link in the message folder.

The introduction video I watched said they started out by thinking, what if the telephone were reinvented right now, what would it be like? Seems like they came up with an awfully good answer. Hell of a cool service. Hmmmm, I think I'll post this little blurb to my blog. :)

fishes and dances and basketball

Last week was an eventful one here in Mountain Village.  First off, the annual meeting of the Yukon River Drainage Fisheries Association was held here Monday through Wednesday.  Representatives came from the entire length of the river (close to two thousand miles upstream) and a wide range of perspectives, including commercial fishing, environmental issues, and native subsistence rights.  For three days they met and discussed the river and its fishes, management plans, and community outreach.  I got to sit in on a presentation by an anthropologist who is collecting wisdom from elders in different villages regarding indicators of when, where, and in what numbers the fish will arrive (such as which plants bloom when the salmon are beginning to run in a particular location) in order to incorporate these traditional environmental indicators into the modern scientific study of fish movements and behavior.  Her hope was to make officials and scientists aware of these additional tools, and also to perpetuate traditional cultural knowledge in the various communities.  To this end, her group had assembled a children's book about these traditional signs and were distributing it to classrooms, along with a bin of activities and lessons for teachers to use in class.

This was wonderful to discover, as I have spoken with friends (Johnny Mattis, I think, and Randy Swaty) as recently as December about the disconnect between the supposed experts on the ecology of a given area--field scientists with extensive theoretical knowledge--and local people who experience the place on a daily basis over the course of years, decades, and generations.  One of my students back in Big Bay, Hunter, went into a fervent description one day at school of the stream by his house and how much it had changed with the unusually high flow the previous spring.  He described in great detail how large the normally modest river grew, how the bottom and banks had changed following the heavy flow, how the course had shifted; he even compared the depth and volume with another nearby river to help convey the scale of the event.

Much as I would love to see Hunter go off and get a doctorate, then return to study his little river and keep it safe, I don't think his life plans include the stuffy halls of academia--he'd rather be outside.  But his profound awareness of the natural world and firsthand knowledge of that stream would be invaluable to any scientist who wanted to study it.  If only anyone would ask him.

Well, that turned out to be a bit of a digression.  The dancing and ball games will have to wait.  Spoiler:  we lost, but it was loads of fun!

what i'm doing

What I'm actually doing up here (not sure how much detail I've gone into on the topic) is tutoring a targeted group of students who were generally pretty close to passing their state tests last year. The hope is that with some individual attention to their specific areas of need, most of them will 'make the grade' in the testing this spring. Before coming, I had imagined I would be working with the lowest performing students, but that isn't the case at all--definitely mid range students who just need a little extra help.

So I set up a schedule with their teachers to take four or five at a time, mostly from the 4th-6th grades. I've used last year's test scores to focus on the particular areas they've had trouble with, and my two assistants and I provide individual coaching through exercises in reading and math, as these have been selected as the most critical areas.

I was ridiculously busy the first couple weeks, learning the systems and customizing work for each student according to need, but it's definitely been time well spent, as learning so much about the particulars of state standards has enabled me to focus my efforts and hopefully be more effective. Also, in terms of my own professional development, these are extremely useful skills.

Things have settled into a pretty good rhythm now, so I'm blessed with the time to start going back through my student list and making adjustments to the work we're doing. My two assistants are both relatively recent graduates of the school, and they do a great job with the kids. Both have been creative in working with students, as well as proactive in helping me keep things running smoothly--attendance and such, which is not my strong suit.

At the moment I've got a nasty cold that began over the weekend, but it seems to be getting a little better now. I have gone in to work in spite of being sick because I was concerned about how things would go without me. Being sick has made me aware of one glaring omission in my planning thus far: sub plans. My assistants could certainly manage for a day, but their attendance has been a little spotty as well. One has a baby who was sick for a while, the other has been sick herself a couple of times and then had a family emergency, so they've both missed a few days here and there, and I was anxious about having things go well.

So I went to work sick, oops. I've been washing my hands constantly and trying not to get too close to anyone, so hopefully I haven't spread my illness to anyone new. Cross your fingers for me!

WHAT did he say?

» Video of President Obama's speech at NMU in Marquette » Absolute Michigan

Last fall, having finished my education coursework at Northern Michigan University, I went north to student teach in Big Bay at what must be about the nearest thing to a one-room schoolhouse still operating in this country. Thirty miles north of Marquette, Powell Township School serves local kids from kindergarten through eighth grade and houses about fifty students in all. My classroom held the combined seventh and eighth grades with a total of eleven students.  Anyone at all familiar with education will know how unusual and how special this is.

I cannot enumerate all the things I saw being done right in this school; I'd have to write a book, and I'm sure I'd forget half of what ought to be included. But one of the things they do right is to make excellent use of their magnificent location to get kids out into the natural world and get them moving around in it physically, engaged, learning by doing.

For instance, each school day begins with a walk.  Not just once 'round the school or some such pittance, but a mile-long walk--two laps around a big park in the center of town, then back to the school (the little kids do just one lap).  Yes, it's time-consuming, and the students aren't being fed curriculum during this time.  But they are seeing the shifting of the seasons day by day, the sunrise, the clouds, feeling the wind and weather (and complaining about it), interacting with each other and their teachers, improving their health, expending pent-up energy that can otherwise lead to disruptive behavior (ever seen the Dog Whisperer?), and generating some good blood flow to their brains to prepare for learning!

So that's one example.  Then there was the 29th annual seventh- and eighth-grade class canoe trip, an all-day paddle down a little river to Lake Superior and back again, with a couple hours in the middle for picnic and play on the beach.  And then, there was the hike.

In the midst of the exquisite U.P. fall colors, we went on an all-school hike. The entire school got on a bus, rode out to the base of a nearby mountain, and hiked to the top, all together. Each of my seventh and eighth graders was introduced to a very real, practical, human sort of responsibility by being assigned a little kid to hold hands with and keep track of on the hike--except for Kyle, who got two. Kyle sometimes struggles with his studies and can be a bit disruptive in the classroom, but in real-world situations he is alert, considerate, dependable, and great with kids.  It thrills me that his teachers know him well enough to understand this.  It thrills me that the school board entrust their students and staff with this responsibility, rather than shying away from such trips as so often happens in this age of fear and prudence and liability insurance.  Better still, Kyle chose the students he would chaperon without a moment's hesitation and with utter confidence.  It thrills me that he, in turn, knows the little kids in the school well enough to choose two who would be manageable together--one quiet and easily kept in hand, the other a wild child--a perfect pair.

You may have guessed I'm rather fond of this little school.  So you can understand why, sitting alone in my room here in Mountain Village, I let out a very loud WHOOP when I heard the sitting U.S. President mention "Powell Township School in Big Bay" during a policy speech delivered in my favorite little city, Marquette.

See, Mr. Obama popped up to ye olde U.P. to give a talk furthering some aspects of his State of the Union Address.  Among them was a proposed plan to provide high speed rail to most of the country within a couple of decades (good idea!) and a plan to provide the vast majority of people across the nation with access to wireless broadband internet within five years (another good idea!).  The latter was the primary focus of his talk, and it was the reason he chose NMU as the location.

Northern has been issuing laptops to all students since the late nineties (lousy ones for the most part, but still) and every campus building had fast, effective wifi by the time I got there in 2008.  In 2009 they made partnerships to blanket the entire community of Marquette, plus a few miles outside of town, with 'wimax' service--wireless broadband that has the reach of a cell phone signal.  I'm told it is the equivalent of G4 cell service for smart phones.  By last fall, when I first received a wimax-capable computer, they had added Negaunee, and although Northern's tech people warned it would be slower than the on-campus wifi, the service was still dramatically faster than my own DSL, so I wound up using the wimax at home instead of the AT&T service I was actually paying for.  More than once last fall, with Siri fallen asleep in the car, I would park by the Lake and do school work, check email, or watch streaming TV on my laptop so she could get a good long nap.

The 'Laptop Initiative' has a bad, and pretty well-deserved, reputation around campus.  The computers they issue have traditionally been cheap (in every way) and loaded with superfluous software that just slows them down.  My understanding is that the university got into a long-term contract right off the bat with a manufacturer that didn't deliver a good product.  My first laptop (you pay a lease and get a new one every two years while you're in school) was a hunk of junk, slow and full of bugs and glitches.  However, I was issued a new one last fall, just in time for student teaching, and it was a huge improvement--not state of the art, but competent and practical.  And being able to connect from anywhere in town was fantastic.  To my mind, the wimax is an excellent service, and the new computers are much better than previous models, so perhaps it just took a while to get it right.  In any event, this level of connectivity is not something that's being done at most universities, even fancy famous ones, and this is why the President decided to give his speech at Northern.

And in that speech, he happened to mention that while at NMU he had been video conferencing with people at schools in a couple of nearby towns, one of which was Powell Township School!  You see, one of the other things they are doing right there is investing considerably in technology.  The students have a technology class each week, like music, art, and PE.  Each student is issued a laptop, like at Northern, only with nicer machines; there is reliable, fast wifi in the school; and apparently there is now wimax in Big Bay!  So my old crew got to chat with the President over the computer.  Way cool.

Efficient wireless connectivity is a big deal even in a major city, and it's an even bigger deal in a remote town like Big Bay, but out here in the Bush it is positively transformational.  Consider this:  coming out here ten years ago, I would be spending three solid months without seeing the faces of my wife and daughter unless they sent me photos.  We would have been restricted to an occasional, brief, expensive phone call.  (Not to mention further back, without email, without phone, etc.)  In practical terms, this means that ten years ago, I would not have made this trip.  What made it doable for us as a family was simply this:  I talk with Carrie nearly every day on skype, where I can look at her face and her growing belly, see and hear how Siri is developing, even lean in to the camera and pretend to eat a bite of cookie that she holds out to me, or reach my hand out and pretend to tickle her neck as she looks up at the ceiling in invitation.  She always laughs obligingly.

Internet communications are giving students here, and all over the world, unprecedented access to places and cultures most will never see in person, which enables them to humanize even the most distant people in a way that has heretofore been possible only through wide travel or the most diligent study and imagination.  No longer passing mere information, the internet can now facilitate a genuinely humanizing contact.  One of my plans is to skype with my beloved students from Big Bay during the school day and let them talk with my Mountain Village students so that they can learn a little about each other's lives.  My guess is that they'll see they have a lot in common.

I like to think of myself as a pragmatist and a skeptic.  Political speeches, on the whole, do not move me.  Well, that's not quite true; they usually move me to turn them off, and sometimes to heave.  Maybe I'm softened by the thrill of someone famous being in 'my' town; maybe I'm a little giddy at hearing him mention 'my' school; or maybe it really was just a hell of an inspiring speech.

Schools Of The Frozen North

I just came across an article on the logistical challenges of building schools in the Bush. The term for the native people is pronounced and spelled differently in different places--here it is Yup'ik, upriver it's Yupiit. This isn't the whole article, but I pulled quite a few paragraphs that I found interesting because they hint at not only the difficulty and complexity of such a project, but also the scale of the investment in these new schools and how central they are to the communities they serve.

Two new schools for the native Yupiit people are challenging the Anchorage-based building teams... the $23.1-million, 41,491-sq-ft Marshall Replacement School, and the $20.9-million, 31,900-sq-ft Russian Mission Replacement School.

“Like all Bush Alaska, everything you need, from a bolt to food to a Band-Aid, must be ordered six to eight months ahead of time to come in on a barge or you have to fly it in on small planes,” says Cal Myrick, Neeser’s project manager.

The nearest town to both villages is 6,000-population Bethel, about 118 mi away. Anchorage is 384 mi. Marshall and Russian Mission each are home to about 350 people.

Carl John, director of capital improvement projects for the owner, the Lower Yukon School District in Mountain Village, agrees that contractor mobilization and materials availability are two major problems in the area. He says the third is permafrost winter conditions typically registering temperatures as low as minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

On 3.1 acres, the approximately $22-million Russian Mission school will accommodate about 108 students. [How cool is that?] The building is characterized by two wings in a V-shape because the community’s native name translates to “people of the point” in reference to the village’s location at a bend of the Yukon.

Each school has an elementary playground and exterior exercise areas. At Russian Mission, there is a concrete half-size basketball court with a curb, allowing it to be flooded in winter for skating. Marshall has a play field but no concrete basketball court because permafrost causes concrete to crack and settle.

Russian Mission is built into a hillside on conventional concrete footings and cast-in-place stem walls, with structural insulated panels, HardiPlank siding used on the exterior envelope and composite roof shingles. Aggregate and backfill was mined from an island in the Yukon River, while similar material at Marshall was excavated from a former runway.

Both buildings incorporate approximately R-30 in the walls and R-40 in the roof systems.

Working crew logistics are unique in rural Alaska as well. The subcontractors live in containerized camps set up by Bering Pacific and Neeser. At Marshall, Neeser’s crews work seven 12-hour days, six weeks on and two weeks off. “We fly in perishables and barge in canned and dry goods,” Myrick says.

For both rural Alaska communities, the schools are essential hubs—community centers as well as educational buildings.

“It’s not only the largest building in town, it’s the most important,” Burkhart says. Because of this, completing them on time depends on keen collaboration, he says. “The school district, the design team and the contractor must communicate and coordinate effectively to resolve the inevitable challenges that arise in such remote environments.”

and now the boys

I've learned a bit more about how they manage visiting teams; they stay at the school, and they get fed breakfast in the cafeteria the next morning.  Have I mentioned they post big signs in the gym wishing good luck to each visiting team?  Did that happen in Rhinelander?  Because I don't remember it.

This week the high school boys played here for the first time since I arrived.  Their third game of the evening ended less than an hour ago; it is now approaching one in the morning.  Yes, I'm saying they played until about midnight.

I saw the 5:00 game, in which our Strivers were outscored more than three-to-one in the first half, yet pulled within about ten points during the second half, which I found an impressive show of spirit and actually made for quite an enjoyable game.

Then I worked the concession stand for several hours.  That was insane.

Fortunately, we closed it in time to watch the final game of the night, which was an absolute nail-biter.  My jaw actually hurt from being clenched so hard for so long.  Our team is unexceptional, really, but they truly played their hearts out against a bigger and generally more athletic team.  And lost by one.  It was awesome.

For most of the first half, they trailed by a varying single-digit margin, but once again they came out fierce after half-time and within minutes took what I believe was their first lead of the game.  They were up by four, down by two, up by three, down by four, see-saw all through the third quarter.  Then, to up the ante, through the entire fourth quarter it seemed like nearly every basket resulted in a lead change.  Turnovers, fast breaks, clever passes, fumbling butterfingers, critical three-pointers, blocked shots and brilliant shots, botched plays and beautiful plays.  And in the middle of it all, occasional high-fives between members of opposing teams.  Fantastic.  Enthralling.  Wonderful.

Each team played three games tonight, finishing up about midnight.  A bunch of players had to be chased out of the gym by the vice-principal so she could lock up--they were, what else, hanging out after the game shooting hoops.  Then to bed on the floors of classrooms, or home for the lucky home team.

First game tomorrow morning?  9am.

These people      love      basketball.

ghost story

Fred Beans (Howard's brother, actual, distinct, separate person) posted this to the all-staff mailing list the other day.  What a taste of home!



This happened about a month ago just outside of Douglas, a little town in North Dakota .~ It sounds like an Alfred Hitchcock tale.

This out-of-state traveler was on the side of the road, hitchhiking on a real dark night in the middle of a snow storm. Time passed slowly and no cars went by. It was snowing so hard he could hardly see his hand in front of his face.~

Suddenly he saw a car moving slowly, approaching and appearing ghost-like in the snow. It slowly and silently crept toward him and stopped. Wanting a ride real bad the guy jumped in the car and closed the door; only then did he realize that there was nobody behind the wheel, and no sound of an engine .

Again the car crept slowly forward and the guy was terrified, too scared to think of jumping out and running. He saw that the car was approaching a sharp curve and, still too scared to jump out, he started to pray and began begging for his life; he was sure the ghost car would go off the road and into a nearby lake and he would drown!~

But just before the curve, a shadowy figure appeared at the driver's window and a hand reached in and turned the steering wheel, guiding the car safely around the bend. Then, just as silently, the hand disappeared through the window and the hitchhiker was alone again! Paralyzed with fear, the guy watched the hand reappear every time they reached a curve.~

Finally the hitchhiker, scared to near death, had all he could take and jumped out of the car and ran and ran until he got into the town of Garrison. Wet and in shock, he went into a bar and, voice quavering, ordered two shots of whiskey, then told everybody about his supernatural experience.~

A silence enveloped the room, and everybody got goose bumps when they realized the guy was telling the truth and was not just some drunk.~

About half an hour later two guys walked into the bar and one says to the other, 'Look Ole, ders dat idiot dat rode in our car when we wuz pushin it in da snow.'


Fred Beans, Head Maintenance.
Ignatius A. Beans Sr. Memorial School Complex.
591 2829 , ext. 2804

Carpe Diem!

native food

My first taste of native food was dry fish ("DRY-fish") my second week here.  This was smoked in the traditional fashion, salmon I think, and you peel it away from the skin to eat it.  Maybe the hardcore eat the skin; I don't know.  It was greasy and chewy and delicious, reminded me of jerky without the salt, although apparently some people do salt their dry fish.  It was seriously yummy.

My next taste of native food was not so yummy.  Eskimo salad, a gift from one of my aides, Leandra, who got it from a relative.  Apparently, this is a dish from the coast that most people around here haven't even had, so I once again felt very privileged to be given some.  It consists of dried seal, dried walrus, dried black whale, and some kind of dried fish, all cut into little laces half the thickness of a french fry and tossed in seal oil.  It was too much for me; I managed to finish the bite I took, then gave the rest to Daisy (an Americorps volunteer who works with the middle school kids) who enjoyed it thoroughly.  To me, it had the aroma and flavor of rotting fish, the texture and consistency of strips of cartilage.  Still, I chewed it up as best I could and swallowed it.  And the next time I'm offered traditional food, I will be honored, and I will try it.

more basketball

Friday night there was basketball here again, this time the elementary team.  A couple of things stood out to me:  one, that the boys and girls play together seamlessly; and two, that even these young kids play with remarkable sportsmanship.

Don't get me wrong, they play very hard!  But there were hardly any fouls because even when rushing like mad to cover someone who was about to take an open shot, these kids rush up with their arms in the air, going for the ball, rather than reaching in or slapping at the opponent's arms or hands.  In two whole games, I think there were four or five fouls total; they play hard, but they play clean--amazing to see in such young players.

They also play very selflessly.  Even the 'star' players seem always to have the team in mind rather than any personal glory, foregoing an outside shot to send a pass in closer to the basket, whether the player there is a girl or a boy, a good shooter or a poor one.  I haven't seen a single ball hog here.

Now, the passing is not what you'd call 'crisp.'  These games were about as sloppy as you'd expect for the age group, but the fact that there is a passing game at all is amazing to me.  And I never once heard anyone jeering a teammate for a bad pass or a missed shot; I never noticed them showing any preference for gender or individual, they just pass to who's open.  The same holds true at the other end of the court; they play hard, clean defense, regardless of who they're defending.  

Competitive sports can be terribly hierarchical and divisive, but basketball here, at least in this age group, somehow seems to be incredibly egalitarian.   

Howard Beans

Another cultural observation.  (?)  I met a wonderful guy named Howard, who seems to give everybody shit pretty much all the time, with just a moment of sincerity here or there--blink, and you miss it.  He's head of maintenance for the district, I think, or maybe technology, a local Yupik native and a classic example of what seems to be a very particular sense of humor peculiar to this part of the world.  We met my first day at school, and when I told him I live in Michigan, he launched into a diatribe on how much Michigan's college football team sucks.  This I took in stride, and with no small amusement, as I don't pretend to know anything at all about college sports, and very little about professional sports either.  After a few minutes of giving me a vigorously hard time about that and several other things, he told me to let him know if I needed anything.  Later, after he got me the key to my classroom, I caught him in passing and thanked him.  He teased me mercilessly about Michigan for a while longer, then parted with, "I'm here to help people."  He didn't say this with any kind of emphasis or melodrama; it seemed a casual statement of fact, so obvious that it hardly needed mention.

Yet, casual though it sounded, this simple statement struck me as nonetheless quite profound and far-reaching, as though he were putting his whole life and world-view into a nutshell to let everybody know what he was all about.  I'm probably reading my own views into it, at least in part, but I can't help feeling that this was more than a mere statement of professional responsibility.  It struck me as a very casual expression of a very deep, personal sense of purpose.  It strongly reinforced my first impression, that this is definitely a guy I can get along with.

At least one teacher has actually warned me off of Howard as a racist.  I believe the line she quoted was, "White people are trash."  Given my own impressions, I have to wonder if she simply failed to catch on to his decidedly dry and forceful sense of humor.  This past Saturday, he and his wife stopped by the Hilton to pick up something from the chest freezer, and since I was home they stayed to BS for a while and gave me a nice hunk of sheefish, an Alaskan delicacy that is apparently related to whitefish.  I felt very honored to be given such a treat--when people here ask if I've had any native food, sheefish is always one of the first things mentioned.

Deservedly so--it is wonderful.  I cooked it up tonight, baked in foil with lemon pepper and a drizzle of olive oil.  Light and mild, flaky and tender, moist, savory, delicious!  Again, I may be dramatizing things unnecessarily, but I feel very strongly about being given food, particularly food of a kind prized by the giver.  There is something powerfully humbling in such a gift.  It makes me feel...  accepted, that's part of it, valued, welcome in some quiet, profound way.  Actually, now that I think about it, this feeling reminds me of having a bunch of high school and middle school kids ask if they could come into my room to do homework after school; the implicit sentiment is, "You're all right."  I'm delighted and honored to be accepted as even a distant and tangential member of this community.

My craving for acceptance has always been a bit of a weakness, for I crave it from everyone, deserving or no.  But I wonder if this 'flaw' doesn't also carry a little blessing, in that it lets perceptive people see my sincerity of purpose and my profound desire to be of help.  So perhaps in some circumstances my tragic longing for acceptance can help to bring about its own fulfillment.

the hood

One of the most interesting cultural discoveries I've made is that the village is more than a little gangsta.  The high school boys wear baggy clothes, crooked baseball caps, flashy sneakers, gold chains, I've actually heard teachers in the school hallways saying, "Hey, no gang signs in school," the works.  Wait, one exception--their pants generally ride above their buttocks rather than below; perhaps they're a little behind the times.

Joking aside, I don't know quite what to make of this.  It would seem that similar social and economic phenomena couple with the ever-increasing availability of popular media to cause these kids to identify with the culture and behavior of 'inner city' youth.  In both cases, life shows little promise of exit from a rather bleak and directionless world.  What is there to do?  Where is there to go?  What's the point?  I don't know what the suicide rate is like in our big cities, but in this village of 800 I know there were at least four or five last year.

Visibly, superficially, life here could hardly be more different from life in the city.  From the nation's highest population density to its lowest; from the omnipresent press of humanity in every direction to being able to look beyond the edge of town and see not a single sign of human endeavor in any direction; from the interminable roar of cars, buses, subways, to the distant, echoing whine of snowmobiles.  The lifestyle here would be unimaginably foreign to a kid from the projects.  And yet, deep down, I get the sense that their experience of life must be profoundly similar.

ball

I had a chance to play basketball last night, with several other staff members from the school, against the high school boys' team. It was a great time, some much needed exercise, and I played well enough to get some respect from the kids, which made me feel good.

Before the game, looking at my cheap sneakers, one the HS players offered to let me use his extra pair of proper basketball shoes. They turned out to be too big, but I was pleased as punch at the offer. These kids really are pretty damn cool.

our best idea

As I was preparing for this trip, one of the things I looked forward to was time for reading.  Trouble is, books are heavy.  But data weighs a good deal less than paper, so I packed along just a couple of real books, and loaded several audiobooks on my computer for transfer to my phone/mp3 player.  No cel service here, but I've been listening intently to an absolutely inspiring book on the national parks.

It's a companion book to the Ken Burns documentary series, "The National Parks:  America's best idea."  True to form, Burns tells the stories of grand historical events from a deeply human, even spiritual perspective, focusing on the lives of individuals and their personal experiences with the parks.  Listening to the most eloquent, impassioned quotations from the most eloquent and passionate supporters of the park idea, I often feel just a little inadequate for my lack of personal experience in national parks.  For though I regard myself as a deep lover of wildness and nature, I have not made the effort in my own life to see these most wondrous places.  For this, I feel a little ashamed, as if I have not made good on my own ideals.  How can I presume to be a supporter of the park idea, the idea of untamed wildness as valuable and worthwhile in its own right, when I only occasionally make the effort to take a camping trip, and have never traveled to the most scenic and magnificent places in my own country?

I have found an answer, and a kindred spirit, in a brief and unattributed quote from this wonderful book.  In an interview, naturalist Terry Tempest Williams mentions a young man who once attended a hearing on the proposed expansion of the national park system in Alaska in the late seventies.  He was blind, a piano tuner by profession, and had taken a bus from Austin to Denver to be at this hearing.  Standing, he said:
"I will never see wild Alaska.  I will never see these parks.  But when I'm in Texas, tuning those pianos, it will touch my heart, knowing they are there."

This book has inspired me to try to see more national parks in the future than I have in the past, but this simple quote from a blind Texan piano tuner has reassured me that I don't have to try to see them all--an impossible task.  To love these places, these refuges of wildness, even without knowing them; to take comfort in the simple knowledge that they exist; that is also good, also worthwhile.

If the book is any indication, the PBS series must be magnificent.  I intend to see it as soon as possible when I get home, and I encourage anyone and everyone to seek it out.

enjoy the weather

Okay, now it's cold. Have to get out for a hike today, just to see if I can.

Mountain Village, AK
-22°F

Current: Partly Cloudy
Wind: N at 12 mph
Humidity: 69%

Negaunee, MI
9°F

Current: Partly Cloudy
Wind: NW at 7 mph
Humidity: 55%
Sat

The moose.

So some of the eighth graders went moose hunting on monday; the principal went, along with a couple other adults, but I think it was one of the kids who carried the rifle--and they got one! One enormous leg is currently laid out on a table right down the hall from my room, being butchered. I'm about to head down there, say a quiet Puja, and see if I can help out at all.

after-school visitors

This week I added ten or twelve middle-schoolers (gr 7-8) to my list, and they've initially been far more... reserved (to put it nicely) than my 4-6 graders. More armor. LOTS more armor. I didn't know where to find them all at first, so it's been kind of a gradual roll-out; Monday I got just a few, more yesterday, and today was the first day with a full house for both time slots. It's getting better already, but there are only a few in this age range who readily accept help with their work; I'm feeling a lot of resistance from them. Not that this is in any way a surprise. As kids approach puberty, they become more fearful, less trusting; more rebellious, less eager to please any kind of authority figure. Anyway, school got out an hour early today, and five or six different students in the middle school to high school age range, some of my tutoring students and some I didn't know, came in and asked if they could work in my room. Several even asked for help with their math or with information about various diseases (science homework). Some came and went, but for close to two hours I had students in my room, doing schoolwork, entirely of their own accord. I was so thrilled I got teary-eyed, more than once! It made me feel like the space I've created here is coming to be perceived as a welcoming and comfortable place to learn. I can't think of any greater accomplishment.

The teachers and administrators here have been great; they've gone out of their way to let me know I'm taken care of and to give me the support I need. But to have students come into my room, to study, of their own free will: it's the most welcome I've felt since I came to Alaska. By far.

garbage garbage garbage

EVERYTHING goes in the trash here. No recycling whatsoever. I've become so accustomed to recycling, office paper in particular, that I'm finding it quite hard to adjust to. There's a dump outside of town. A little troubling; I feel terribly guilty whenever I accidentally print an unnecessary page or have to print a new copy of my schedule because something has changed. It's genuinely troubling; I feel it in my heart.

On the other hand, how much fuel would it take to ship any meaningful quantity of recyclable materials OUT of here. Hmmmm...

Mother Moon

I've been wondering why the moon seems to be out for so long the last few days. It hangs in roughly the same plane as the sun, so shouldn't 6 hrs sunlight mean about the same for the moon? Then I realized: DUH, when it's full, the moon is on the opposite side of us from the sun, so the same tilt that shortens the days up here by leaning us away from the sun has the inverse effect on our exposure to the full moon--ie, Alaska is leaning toward it. Ergo, 6 hrs sunlight = 18 hrs moonlight. Hello mother!

The beginning

I need to begin telling the 'whole' story, but I keep putting it off because I don't know where to start. When in doubt, begin at the beginning.

I did my student teaching this past fall in Big Bay, as most of those likely to see this already know. Early in the semester, Carrie got an email from our old friend Arica, who had taught in the Bush for a year before moving to Marquette. It was a forwarded message from her old administrator, who obviously thought the world of her, asking if she knew anyone who might be interested in a tutoring position starting in January. Carrie and I talked it over and agreed it was at least worth looking into, and when we had more information--dates, location, pay, conditions--we agreed it was a good idea.

Not an easy decision, as it meant me being away for three solid months, but ultimately the benefits outweighed the costs. Personally, it would be a marvelous opportunity for growth, discovery, and adventure, as well as a chance to help kids who really needed it. Professionally, it would be invaluable, both in terms of experience and practice, and in terms of subsequent resume building. And the kicker, for the sake of our young and growing family: it would pay off nearly my entire student loan in one fell swoop.

So we decided to go for it, and a few short months later I was in Anchorage taking pictures of a moose at a range of about two yards; welcome to Alaska! I have lived in the UP for several years and have only ever seen tracks, but one day in Anchorage (when I was supposed to be grocery shopping) and I had a real close encounter.

I am now the new 'intervention' teacher at Ignatius Beans Memorial School in Mountain Village, Alaska, a town of less than a thousand on the mighty Yukon River in southwestern Alaska. Google maps will not tell you how far away I am or how to get here because there are no roads that lead here. If you want to go to a nearby village, you take a snowmobile, and if you want to go further than that, you fly. The tundra is spacious and beautiful, but also a little monotonous.

'Intervention' means I'm a tutor. I am working exclusively in reading and math, and mainly with students who are likely to fall short of 'proficient' on their state tests in one or both subjects without some extra help. In the last two weeks I have learned all about Alaska's official education standards (Grade Level Expectations) and how they are reflected in standardized tests. I despise standardized tests. But they do give me lots of information about what my students need to learn and practice. So from within the Belly of the Beast I work to help the individuals being processed there. Broadly speaking, this is exactly what I want to do with my life. Spread the love.

Some things I've encountered have meshed well with what I imagined a little school in the Bush might be like. My classroom has no windows and can be stiflingly hot, so I asked around to see if a fan might be had; another teacher loaned me a nice big one, but it has no shield on the front, so I had to put up on a filing cabinet out of reach. Many of my students are indeed quite poor, and live in very small houses with very large families. On the other hand, the school itself is startlingly well provided for. I have a fancy new printer/copier and five brand new Dell computers with 19" flat screens and wireless keyboard and mouse--pretty fancy! The building is quite new as well, half of it built only two years ago, with triple-pane windows whose handles turn ninety degrees to swing open from the side, or 180 degrees to open from the bottom.

I didn't know what to expect from the people, either native or newcomer, but I have been pleasantly surprised on all fronts. The teachers, by and large, are caring and idealistic. The principal is passionately devoted to his students' success, both in school and in life. And the students! Well, they are active, certainly, but also sweet, receptive, willing to work hard and to learn. They've made me feel right at home. I love them already.

on AK

Well, since I already have a blog that I haven't used lately, I may as well simply resume. Appropriate, I guess, since I am here for educational purposes. So here's blog post number one from Mountain Village: I had cereal for breakfast. Good old flaky, somewhat sweetened, cold cereal with organic whole milk. The milk I brought from Anchorage with me; the cereal I picked up at the store here in Mountain. It's a pretty nice little convenience store with prices not as bad as expected--expensive, but not absurd. So I will indeed place a bush order with Fred Meyer for all my staples, but I'm happy to know that I won't have to use powdered milk the whole time I'm here. And even more important, I won't have to use 'creamer' in my coffee because (drum roll) they have heavy whipping cream at the store. WOOHOO!

And now I'm off to plan lessons. Yay.