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.