eric

Well, what should I expect...I do live in Alaska.

2012-02-03T11:15:00.000-08:00

It's cold here. Really, really cold. And has been since a week before Christmas. Currently, twenty-six below zero. But only a light wind, so that's nice. The consequences of the weather can be quite frightening. I'll start at the less so, and see where it takes us.

Upon returning after Christmas break, we in the BIA discovered that the pipes were quite frozen. Not all pipes, but the drain pipes. Interesting side note - when the drains are plugged, but not the supply lines, interesting fundamental lessons are learned. For example, waste pools at the lowest point. In this case - two teachers at the other side of the BIA - in their bathroom. Quite disturbing to see human waste returning through the drain in a bathtub to nearly fill the basin. No fear, the bucket brigade was put to work and overflow was kept to a minimum. And after only a week, the plumbing was working again fine.
School is difficult to have when the weather/wind/snow is so fierce. Since returning we have had a handful of late starts (I think last count was four) and one day cancelled completely. We nearly had school cancelled yesterday as all water lines at the school were frozen. They did thaw, however, and school went as planned - kind of.
Why kind of? Well, the thing is, we are running a high school at the moment with only 2/3 of our class. The remaining third - they've been stuck out of the village...since Saturday. They left for basketball tournaments (both the boys team and the girls) last Friday, and here I sit, the following Friday, and they still aren't back. So it's been a slow, quiet week.
The BIA suffered its latest injury yesterday. A pipe burst in the vacant apartment down the hall. This came immediately following a warning from our maintenance guy about keeping my apartment at a warm enough temperature (so much for saving the world(okay, in his defense, he probably had a point - there was a layer of ice in my shower and the water line was frozen...so...).
The final point is the most serious. Living in rural Alaska one becomes familiar with how dangerous life out here really is. In the past week, two people have died traveling over the tundra. Both became lost or disoriented and ended up freezing to death before search and rescue could find them. There are stories in Yup'ik lore that say that when the weather is bad, and refuses to let up, that the weather is hunting. It only lets up after getting its fill. I am not a spiritual or superstitious person. But chills run down my spine as I write this.

And with that I end this post on a brighter note. The weather is supposed to turn beginning tomorrow. We are expecting a fifty(!) degree change in temperature over the next thirty-six hours. Maybe the next post will be of me sledding or climbing the hills. I am feeling all cooped up and to be able to spend some time outside without worrying about frostbite would be amazing. Check back soon.

Apparently I just lived through a snowicane

2011-11-09T19:06:00.000-08:00

Not sure what to make of the major network news stations. I mean, the Washington Post says that, "A storm of historic intensity continues to pound the west coast of Alaska today. Twice the size of Texas, the storm is as deep as a category 3 hurricane." A hurricane?! Really? Did I just live through a hurricane?

I'm going to say nope. But it was kind of crazy. The weather itself was nothing out of the ordinary. The winds were high. The precipitation didn't fall (literally - it just traveled horizontally across the world). But these things are typical of Alaska storms. What was freaky was the potential storm surge. The flooding. Normally these storms happen in the dead of winter when the coast is protected by a mile or more of sea ice. High waves stay safely out to sea. The wind can't push the tide exceptionally high. Last night, however, without our safety ice, people were worried.

News of the storm was buzzing throughout the village the days preceding it. Reports and rumors mixed and anxiety slowly began to build. The storm was supposed to hit around 1:00 in the afternoon. School was going to go as late as possible. It turned out that 2:45 was that time. We dismissed early, sending students home with their parents. Almost immediately following dismissal, the school was reopened for families who wished to evacuate their homes. A storm surge of 10-15 feet would threaten to breach the sea wall, essentially flooding all of Downtown, including teacher housing where all of the teachers live.

Part of Downtown lost power around dinner time. At about 10:30 we received a phone call from our principal urging us to spend the night at the school as the water was continuing to rise. After sending three teachers to get a look at the ocean we made the decision to move up to school for the night. So all of us teachers from the BIA moved into a classroom for the night. Waking up a few short hours later a tired group of teachers began teaching a tired bunch of students. The weather is supposed to pick up again tonight. I'm hoping it doesn't. I need some sleep.

Great Pictures of TUNUNAK!
Washington Post article
Diane Sawyer and the NEWS!

We done got chickens (Part 1)

2011-10-10T00:27:00.000-07:00

Few weeks back my roommate, Adam, and myself ordered some chicks online. Careful now. I'm talking baby chickens. And they are the cutest little buggers.

First website wanted to charge us something like $40 for shipping cuz we had too few creatures. They huddle for warmth apparently and five is too few for adequate warmth generating. Without the extra brothers and sisters the company inserts some fandangled heating contraption. So we went shopping elsewhere. Found a site that would ship for less but warned that they may pack in some extra chicks (most likely baby roosters) to supply that needed warmth. Sounds good we thought. Clearly we didn't think that one through.

A few days later the mailman rang the doorbell. "Your chickens are here. You need to pick them up at the post office." Then he went into inquiry mode asking for details. He was interested. As everyone should be.

Well off to the post office we went. At the counter we waited for an eternity. Not sure where the little things were being kept but it sure was a long ways back. We heard them before we saw them. Chirp! Chirp! Awwww... In the box they shuffled and chirped. We carried them out and strapped them - oh yeah, we were on bikes - to the rack on the back of Adam's bike. A few bungee cords later and we were off.

Fifteen minutes later we were home. We open the box to check on our purchase. I was sure it would be bedlam. Poor chickens, two days in the mail, in the heat. I was worried. Those fears, thankfully, were for naught. A new problem was quickly realized. Remember those extra chickens for warmth? Yeah, we got, um, an extra eleven. Eleven extra chickens! So there were sixteen cute, fuzzy, multicolored chirpers in the box. So cute, but now a bigger problem. See, thing is, Bloomington ordinance allows for four hens (i.e. females). We'd ordered five hens and now we have, what we are assuming (as sexing chicks - careful typing - is much harder than it would seem), are an extra eleven roosters. Oh dear.

Oh yeah. And their food has not arrived yet.

Thankfully the book on raising chickens arrived.

It's never too late to learn.

I AM AN ARTIST! I am?

2011-10-10T00:18:00.000-07:00

Spent two weeks in Juneau, right before returning to Bethel for district-wide inservices, in what I look back on as Artist Boot Camp. I had applied last spring for the Juneau Basic Arts Institute, as it's officially called. I mean - it would be covered by a grant, I will get college credit out of it, and I get to learn some things that may be useful in my classroom. Oh, and there would be four other teachers from my school attending. Sounded pretty alright to me.

Then the syllabus came.

And I started to get some doubts. Dancing. Ummm... One out of the four classes would be devoted entirely to dancing. Yeah. That's a lot to ask. Turns out, however, dancing can be fun. Prancing around the room - yep - pretty entertaining. Maybe on the simple fact that I'm only moving one-fourth of the time - the other three-fourths I'm watching my classmates.

Just doing a little igloo building. Seriously.

In addition to dancing we did visual art, digital art, and cultural art. Teachers were all wonderful. Juneau was wonderful. I made some things that turned out pretty well. I learned some things that are proving to be quite useful. And I got to see Juneau.

That's all my art. Pretty. Great.

Juneau is a beautiful city. Located in Southeast Alaska, it is a major stopping point for the Alaska cruise ships. As a result there are a number of things to do - restaurants, bars, shops, but the major attraction is the geography itself. Mountains, rivers, the ocean, spruce trees, and the Mendenhall Glacier. Fantastic. So we hiked, climbed some mountains, saw about a hundred million bald eagles, about two hundred million spawning (ie dying) salmon. Yeah. Juneau is great.

Angie and Marcella after they ran a half marathon.

Hands down the best picture ever taken of me. Angie looks good, too. Email me - I'll send you a copy to post as your background. It's that good.

Seal Hunting! (Videos)

2011-07-28T22:46:00.000-07:00

Okay...so seal hunting happened months ago. But now that I'm back in Alaska the urge to blog has returned. The following two videos are phenomenal in their ability to show absolutely nothing about seal hunting.

Pretty though.

Summery things for summery times

2011-07-17T20:42:00.000-07:00

After a two month hiatus from blogging (AKA summer) I'm back. Summer is full of things to do.

Bike 1.0

School got out at the end of May. Spent a horribly boring week in Bethel afterwards mapping out high school math curriculum. Then flew home to Minnesota. Been living with a buddy and his girlfriend in south Bloomington. He doesn't have a car. I don't have a car. We are very likely have the lowest car to person ratio in the south metro. Our bike ratio, however is probably one of the higher (it's 2.67:1). Yeah, there are eight bikes in our garage.

Rode the MS 150 in early June. Third year for that. Team Night Bike raised $2695 this year for the MS Society. Not bad. The weather was unbelievable. Thanks to everyone who contributed.

Then Ohio for a few days then Kentucky for one (that state is terrible) where I visited the Creation Museum (easily the dumbest place I've ever been).

It's also been aggravatingly hot this summer. Today the dew point was 82. Heat index of 110. Stupid.

So biking, a little cooking (new obsession - Indian food), happy hours, dinner parties, lakes, grocery stores, biking, oh, I got contacts but can't put them in very well yet, subbing at the Y, swimming, reading, hammocking, and constructing...a chicken coop. Lots more on the chickens to come.

seriously, what is cuter than this?

Things are a little different here

2011-04-11T19:25:00.000-07:00

Things just aren't what I expected. After living here for almost two years (I know - it's really not that long) there are weekly, if not daily, things that occur where I am caught off guard.

Here's a recap of the last week and a half:

Thursday, March 31 - The other high school teacher gives me a quick overview of her sub notes - just in case (just in case the sub doesn't show up...seriously, this happens more than it should and all of a sudden I am teaching two classes). Then she shows me Monday's plans in case she gets weathered in Bethel (she has a meeting at the district office - 125 miles west by air). Whatever, I think, it's almost April...that weather is over.
Friday, April 1 - The sub shows, everything goes fine
Saturday, April 2 - The snow starts. Winds pick up. Visibility goes down.
Sunday, April 3 - Same as Saturday. In like a lion, out like a lamb? I thought that was March.
Monday, April 4 - No planes since early Friday. Looks like those sub notes will be important. The sub works up through lunch when my fellow teacher finally gets in. Actually, she landed in Toksook, the village seven miles from us and was picked up on a snowmobile by her brother because our runway was still closed.
Tuesday, April 5 - State testing begins. Blizzard warnings begin (see previous post). Fantastic. Still haven't gotten any planes.
Wednesday, April 6 - Day 2 of testing. Blizzard begins in earnest. By noon visibility is about 100 yards. The truest whiteout I have ever seen. We end up dismissing early to waiting parents. All students are signed out to ensure their safe journey home with a responsible adult. Overkill? Nope - we ended up summoning search and rescue about four times to find lost people. All were found, however two were at the bottom of a cliff. Snowmobiles + blizzards + alcohol is a TERRIBLE idea. They both lived, miraculously, but the snowmobile is a wreck. More on this later...
Thursday, April 7 - Day 3 of testing. Weather okay in the morning, but predictions of 70mph winds prompts the second early release of the week. Students again are signed out as the winds begin to gust. Not sure we hit 70, but... 50mph is still pretty intense.
Friday, April 8 - "Eric, there's a plane on the river!" Unbelievably beautiful day. It's about 40 degrees and sunny, but our runway is still covered in snow and ice. The troopers sent out a plane with skis to med-evac the cliff faller. Not sure on the extent of the injuries, but to get a plane to fly out and land on a frozen river, they must be fairly severe.
Saturday and Sunday, April 9-10 - Weather blows. Literally. Constant wind. Snow falls at times. The drifts are impressive.
Monday, April 11 - It's cold outside (about 8 degrees with 25mph winds). It's also cold in the school. Apparently the fuel pumps for the school boilers were turned off over the weekend. Thermometer read 42 degrees in the high school when I arrived this morning. I taught four periods wearing my boots, my parka, a hat, and mittens. I tried to warm the room by playing that fireplace video from YouTube, but had little luck. We released after lunch.
Tuesday, April 12 - I can't wait to find out what tomorrow will bring.

So this is terrifying...

2011-04-06T09:26:00.000-07:00

You'd think that state testing happening all this week would be bad enough, but nope, how about a "Special Weather Statement" from the National Weather Service. I keep getting reminded that I live in Alaska. This is one of those times. Here is the warning:

SPECIAL WEATHER STATEMENT

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE ANCHORAGE AK

230 PM AKDT TUE APR 5 2011

AKZ155-161-062100- 

...DANGEROUS ICE CONDITIONS EXPECTED TO DEVELOP ALONG THE ALASKA WEST COAST...

...POTENTIAL FOR COASTAL FLOODING ALONG THE SOUTHWEST COAST... 

A VERY STRONG LOW MOVING ACROSS THE BERING SEA THIS WEEK WILL RESULT IN DANGEROUS SEA ICE CONDITIONS ALONG THE WESTERN ALASKA COAST. 

IN BRISTOL BAY STRONG ONSHORE WINDS STARTING WEDNESDAY NIGHT AND CONTINUING INTO FRIDAY MORNING WILL CAUSE ICE TO PUSH ONTO BEACHES FROM DILLINGHAM TO TOGIAK. BEACH EROSION CAN ALSO BE EXPECTED FROM NAKNEK TO TOGIAK BAY. 

FROM CAPE NEWENHAM TO TOKSOOK BAY ICE SHOVES ARE LIKELY THURSDAY THROUGH SATURDAY. 

MORE INFORMATION ON EXPECTED ICE CONDITIONS FOR AREAS NORTH OF THE KUSKOKWIM DELTA ALONG WITH DETAILED GRAPHICS ARE AVAILABLE AT HTTP://PAFC.ARH.NOAA.GOV/ICEGRAPHICS.PHP.

IN ADDITION TO DANGEROUS ICE CONDITIONS THERE IS ALSO POTENTIAL FOR MINOR COASTAL FLOODING ALONG THE SOUTHWEST ALASKA COAST THURSDAY THROUGH FRIDAY. A LONG FETCH OF WESTERLY STORM TO HURRICANE FORCE WINDS WILL BUILD SEAS UP TO AROUND 35 FEET OVER THE SOUTHERN BERING SEA BY THURSDAY MORNING. STRONG WINDS WILL THEN MOVE THESE VERY HIGH WAVES TOWARD THE SOUTHWEST ALASKA COAST THURSDAY AFTERNOON INTO FRIDAY. THE PRESENCE OF SEA ICE DOES HELP TO DAMPEN THESE WAVES. HOWEVER...THERE IS STILL A THREAT FOR STORM SURGE DURING HIGH TIDES TO PRODUCE MINOR COASTAL FLOODING. 

THIS SITUATION CONTINUES TO BE MONITORED CLOSELY.

THE NEXT STATEMENT IS SCHEDULED AT 1 PM WEDNESDAY.

Seal! (My adventure hunting for seals)

2011-03-25T23:18:00.000-07:00

What? Where?

Of course at this point in time I was taking photographs of myself. I would like to reiterate that I am one of the worst hunters in the world. And in this situation it wasn't a terrible thing. I mean, I not legally allowed to hunt seals. Of course nothing is illegal about being out on the ice in close proximity to seal hunters. And so that's what Robby and I were doing.

Out along the point past the break up

Seal hunting is actually a lot more boring than it sounds. Unless you already know that hunting is boring. Then it's probably a little more exciting than other hunting. It begins with a snowmachine ride to the end of the ice. This is terrifying. The Bering Sea in March is very cold. And the ice shows signs of cracking off from the rest of the ice, and at times I was certain that I would be the sole inhabitant of the world's newest iceberg. Fortunately that did not happen.

That jagged white edge is about a mile out from shore - it was along this we traveled.

Once you make it to the edge you look into the water. I was supposed to be looking for the shiny head of a seal that has come up for air. Cruel - sure. Wait for the poor puppy-faced creature to come up for a breath of fresh, clean, Alaska air then BANG! Dead seal. So I wasn't the most observant watch for more than one reason. It's okay though, George has more sea spotting eyes than both Robby and myself combined and he spotted the first seal. This was the time that I was a few hundred feet up the hill taking photographs of myself. Meh.

Nope...no seals.

We watched for a while longer but see nothing. George leaves Robby and me and heads down along the break. Minutes later we see him crouched, rifle leveled. Does he see something? BANG! Then I see it - the back of a seal surface then dive. "TOO HIGH" I hear George yell. Oh. Too bad I guess. I can't really figure out if I want to see George get a seal or if I want the seal to get away. Doesn't really matter though, escape the seal did. Good for him (or her - I have no idea).

After getting bored of hunting I decided that a photoshoot was in order. I still have a hard time taking hunting serious. Oh well - my talents lie elsewhere.

Friday in Tununak.

What else do you think I would be doing?

A collection of things I think.

2011-03-06T15:57:00.000-08:00

A collection of things I think.
A collection of things, I think.

This year has been pretty awesome. Lots of the things are Tununak specific. I guess you had to be here. But many other things you may like.

Here are the somethings for everyone.

I have just realized that two of my favorite things differ by a single vowel. Biking and baking. here is a picture of me doing both (okay...I'm not actually baking in the photograph. That is the steak for the Philly cheese steaks I made - the buns were baked).

FYI -A fast bike does not speed up cooking

Seriously - one of the best things I have baked.

Okay, next thing.
This American Life is fantastic. Produced by Chicago Public Media and aired on NPR stations around the country, it tells some of the most excellent stories about people.

My favorite opening line from a recent episode (#419 Petty Tyrant) - "Of course there are tyrannical, manipulative bullies everywhere, but Steve Raucci was special, a virtuoso."

So good. So insane.

What else?

Oh, I climbed a mountain yesterday. Terrifying. Icy. Windy. Sunny. Beautiful. Steep. Tiring. Wonderful use of a Saturday afternoon.

Bering Sea. March 5, 2011.

Whoa! February is over

2011-02-28T23:13:00.000-08:00

Months fly by - it's very impressive. Next week is the end of third quarter. The sun began it's rise at 9:07 this morning in the middle of second hour. It always catches me off guard. I need to stop and watch it. I just like the sun so much.

It's been a strange year. Weather - bizarre. It rained snow last week. Then it dropped thirty degrees during the day. We've had two snow days - of those one was needed, the other changed it's mind and was kind of a free day. Of course those days will need to be made up so good bye vacation days in March. Mehh. It's not like I had plans.

I actually don't have plans of leaving the village until May. This could mark the longest stretch of time I have been in one place ever in my entire life. I mean I rarely travel more than a mile from my house. Maybe to the post office. Maybe on a jog. But definitely not much more than that. Just try and imagine that for a second - not leaving a circle one mile in diameter for four months. It's weird.

But come May I will be leaving. Will I be returning? That is a question I am toying with. I like it here. I like my students and the school and my coworkers are so great. But I am so far away from everything else. What to do? Any input would be appreciated.

Oh yeah. And my hair is getting long.

News

2011-02-11T16:50:00.000-08:00

Here is an article about Newtok that appeared in the November/December Orion Magazine. It's a pretty interesting article discussing the impact that climate change is having on the arctic region with a focus on indigenous villages.

Newtok is out neighbor to the north and many of our students have direct relations there. The article talks about the power of family in Yupik culture and this is so true - my students spent twenty minutes looking at the pictures in the article discussing the connections they have to the people (from parents to cousins to friends). I recommend reading the article.

Click the pic.

January in Alaska

2011-01-24T14:12:00.000-08:00

With a week left (and a snow day tomorrow) it seems like the perfect time for a recap. Might as well start with the present.
Temperature: -11 degrees Fahrenheit
Wind: 70mph
Windchill: -50
Fun factor: 7

So we won't be having school tomorrow. But we did get some nice footage of the fun. I don't know if you can relate to 70mph wind, but it's something that everyone should experience. Standing still is impossible. We rode the ice for about one hundred yards and only stopped because the road turned and our boots don't glide over snow as well. The video really says a lot more than I possibly can.

I also was given the wonderful opportunity to bring our junior high robotics team to Anchorage. See, the thing is, right before break we won our district competition granting us free passage to the state competition. A mixed blessing. The other coach, Derek, and I spent four days on the road. This was quite an experience.

Approximately half of our team had never been to Anchorage. They'd never been on a jet. Never been to a city. Never been in hotel. Never been in a real high school (my definition of a real high school). Needless to say it was awesome. I can't even begin to tell you the wonders of chaperoning junior high students in the big city. Another thing you should experience. Escalators, Walmart, swimming pools, buffets, helium balloons, full size gyms giving my team vertigo, traffic (not my definition - it was actually a stoplight), massage chairs, free refills, seatbelts, a Zamboni, 3-D movies...the list could go on, but all of these things brings back such memories.

And the competition. It took a backseat to everything else, but our students did very respectably. In the four judging categories (programming, teamwork, project presentation, and course score) our team took back a second place trophy in programming. Not bad. Not bad at all.

A little last minute programming

Competition

Winning district competition

Anchorage - State Competition

Univsersal Truth

2010-11-24T19:13:00.000-08:00

If you grow it, children will love it. I'd first realized this truth when working summers with the YMCA. I would bring in vegetables from my garden - zucchini, carrots, peppers, peas, and lettuce - and students would line up to demand more. They would devour lettuce - no dressing, no toppings, just straight lettuce. It would make me laugh every time.

And not it just happened here in Tununak. Three ten-ish year old boys were yelling from outside my window (a common activity when the everyone in the community is essentially neighbors). I plucked a few leaves from my kitchen table (the site of my lettuce growing hydroponics set-up) and offered each a leaf. All three ate their lettuce - and liked it. This from a group of students are even more averse to vegetables as children I know in the lower 48.

The power of gardening is impressive. It seems to make food taste better.

Usually I don't like to do this, but...

2010-11-23T23:41:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I have created any outgoing information from Alaska. I'm going to fall back on my standard excuse - I've been busy. Which is true, mind you, but if I were you, I wouldn't let me get away with such a petty excuse. So here it is, a condensed version of the past couple months.

Starting with the present day - it's Tuesday, November 23rd. The fifteenth week of school(!). Oh yeah, and it's been raining nonstop since last Friday. My travel plans over the weekend were canceled as a result of the weather and the snow (what little there was) has melted.

Which brings me to the next event: the weather. Had I written a week ago it would have been a very different story, for winter had come. Temperatures were well below freezing. Snow was beginning to pile up (we were receiving about a quarter inch a day - not much, but I'm not going to complain about that now), the river had frozen bringing with it the earliest ice fisherpeople, and I had been skating on the ponds around town. Even the bay was beginning to fill with ice. Of course, that's all gone now.

Before the snow had fallen, I did all the fishing I needed to do to get that bug out of my system. In a previous post I told the triumphant story of my first real successful fishing trip. The trip that followed was even greater. I caught three, THREE!, beautiful salmon. I finally got a taste (literally) of what fishing can be like, and I have to admit, it is fun. It's nothing I will be devoting great amounts of time to, but it was enjoyable and fulfilling to be able to bring back food that will last well into the winter. Robby partook in man's (not being sexist - it was literally us guys') triumph over salmon and we spent the afternoon vacuum sealing our beautiful fillets. Some of you may be lucky enough to try some if I can find a reasonable method to transport frozen salmon home. Ideas in this area would be well received (and I can see to it that if your method proves successful there will be a salmon steak in it for you).

Ready for the freezer

Of course, I've also been busy with school. Teaching is hard work. It has it's rewards, but there are days where all I want is a, umm, nap, or something like that. But I feel much better about this year than last. Hopefully subsequent years continue to get easier.

I have (rather wisely) opted out of coaching basketball this year. Okay, "opted" isn't the best word. It implies I was asked (or assumed) to coach. I was not. 0-14 is not a record that is sought after, even when the coaching competition is as slim as it is here in rural Alaska. Instead I will be enjoying my afternoons off. I might spend a day or two shooting hoops with the junior high, but the my teaching responsibilities will stay in domains I am proficient (and interested) in.

I am, however, coaching robotics again this year (read: math + computers = my interests). Our school's junior high participates in First Lego League - a pretty awesome set-up that combines Legos and robotic programming into a competitive team activity. Teams build and program robots to complete a series of tasks and also create a project centered around a theme (this year: medicine). We will be flying in to Bethel the week after Thanksgiving to compete against the other teams in out district. Winning teams move on to Anchorage where winning teams move on to the national level. It would be nice to get a chance at Anchorage.

Tomatoes that just might ripen

Last update - foods. My hydroponic experiments have had mixed results. Hydroponics is a bizarre world. My plants live a most artificial life - sixteen hours of light created by a 400W bulb, nutrients mixed in water delivered three times daily, pH tested every few days, temperatures adjusted, humidity monitored, the electrical conductivity of the water checked... And after all that I have tomatoes developing blossom end rot and pepper flowers that refuse to set fruit. Leaves tend to yellow, wrinkle, and fall while others are deep green, grow voraciously, never slowing to blossom, then snap in half because plants that are only half an inch in diameter cannot reasonably grow to heights exceeding six feet.

Basil, thyme, lettuce, and cilantro

That's all very frustrating. But on the other hand there have been the successes. I have eaten dozens of salads from my living room. I created the most delicious pizza with fresh basil. Out of control (in a good way) extra basil was turned into a jelly jar full of pesto. I've dried about a cup of cilantro. I guess it's a worthy experiment. I'm going to try another batch of peppers and tomatoes after Christmas. Ask me again what I think of hydroponics in April.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

I fish for fish, no other reason. Oh, maybe because of the competition.

2010-10-10T18:13:00.000-07:00

The Tununak River

I like to complain about fishing. It's fun for me - to complain. I'm sure I complain for the same reason anybody complains about anything - as a means to divert blame for one's ineptness. But this is not a blog of complaint. Rather, it is a blog of celebration. A celebration of fishing and how awesome it is. A celebration of salmon and their wonderful ability to find my hook, bite down, and end up as dinner on my plate. Ahhh, sweet, sweet salmon. To think back to those two days of fishing makes me forget what I dislike about fishing. Almost.

Robby and his giant fish

My success story started one evening. I had been invited to go up river by one of my students. Duh...I'm going. At the time, I'm thinking that even if I don't catch any fish, the river is fantastic to be on in the evening. Oh yeah - the mosquitoes had retired for the year (the last trip they were worse that anything I could have ever imagined. Northern Minnesota has NOTHING on Alaska mosquitoes. I'm not kidding). Anyways, I grab my rod, tackle box, and throw on my rubber boots. We pick up Robby (my neighbor) and head out to the boat. A twenty minute journey and we are at our little spot. And then the most amazing thing happened. Seriously, in the history of time, this is probably the single greatest thing. I cast my line out...and caught a fish. I had a fish on the end of my line before my fishing guide or Robby had even gotten to their spots let alone had the chance to cast. Oh glorious day. In the boat I had a beautiful silver salmon. The score, for those of you keeping track at home is now 1-0-0, with me in the lead. Of course, minutes later my guide gets a bite. I try to be a good sport. But his fish is so much bigger than mine - and it's bright red. Apparently the longer the silvers have been in the river, the less silver they become and they take on a beautiful red color. They are striking to look at. Raw score... 1-1-0. No big deal.

Perspective is everything

Fishing goes on for a while with bites and fights and fish interrupting the evening often enough to keep things interesting. Final score for the evening 2-3-2. I lost. It's okay though because I caught not one, but two beautiful fish: one smaller silver salmon and one trout (called a dolly vardon(sp?) for whatever reason I have no idea). Robby ended up with two nice sized reds (which are technically silver salmon). My host: four large reds. Figures.

It's amazing what this night did to my faith in fishing. Up until this moment I was convinced that there were no more fish in the river. I would be out fishing, share my opinion with my fishing partners only to have them catch a fish in the next five minutes. "Okay then," I would say, "now there are no more fish in the river. That was the last one, and you caught it. Time to go home." But this most recent event changed everything. Not only were there fish in this river, they were huge, and beautiful, and delicious, and best of all, they were willing to bite my hook. I needed to get out fishing at least one more time. That chance came that weekend, and is the topic of the next blog. Stay tuned...

The definition of satisfied

Nazi ghostbuster?

2010-10-06T22:35:00.000-07:00

I was creeping on my blog stats and one thing stuck out.

Someone found accessed my blog through a keyword search with the phrase "nazi ghostbuster". How frickin' awesome is that - that my name comes up as a possible match.

Man that's great.

Random story from a few years ago

2010-10-01T17:26:00.000-07:00

“Hey! Eric!” Someone was whispering urgently at me.

What time is it? The sun’s not even up yet. And then I remembered. Today was the day. The reason we were even in Spain. Adrenaline surged – my stomach doing a quick little somersault. I quickly dressed – bleach white pants, a white tee, my blood red sash and neck-scarf. It was too early to find any places open for breakfast, but that was okay – I probably wouldn’t be able to eat anything anyway.

We weaved through the cobblestone streets, were glad we’d decided to get such an early start. People were coming from all over. A white mass converging on a rapidly filling plaza. Being early ensured us a place in that plaza. Now we had about an hour to wait. Wait and contemplate our decision. Was this really such a good idea? Is that guy drunk? Yeah, he is definitely drunk. That doesn’t seem like a good idea. He better not trip. What if I trip? What if I get hurt? What if I get gored? That was the big worry. The I spent the most time trying to ignore. Gored?! We’d seen the bulls the day before. They were not small. Not even close. In fact they were huge. And those horns. The horns that tapered to point so fine one couldn’t be sure where the horn ended and the pain began. And then of course there were the horror stories of previous years. There were pictures of gorings, videos of tramplings. In less than an hour that poor, pain riddled face could be mine.

SCREEEECH!!

The sound of the first rocket being fired. All thoughts about what could be vanished. All thoughts about what had been vanished as well. The only thing yelling in my mind was the fact that the door had been opened. The bulls were coming.

SCREEEECH!!

The second rocket signified that all six bulls were out and running...toward us. Oh dear God.The crowd starting moving, filing along the narrow barricaded streets. Barricaded to keep the bulls confined, but I now realized how confined I was as well. Panic? Um, yeah. But this was nothing compared to what was coming.

The speed of the mass slowly started to increase. Those around me were feeling the fear grow as well. It wouldn’t be long now. All I wanted to do was turn around look for the bulls. But if I stopped to turn around I would be run over by those behind me. Quick peeks would have to do. Each peek was terrifying because we were so closely packed. People around me had already stumbled and fallen - either on the uneven cobbles of the road or on the legs of the people in front of them. Those behind the fallen had to act quickly to prevent a serious pileup. Three or four peeks showed nothing different. People were jogging along, faces focused on not tripping. And then suddenly everything changed. Looking back over my shoulder I instantly saw that the look on peoples’ faces. The slight smiles of the joggers had been replaced with looks of sheer terror. This was the moment it all sunk in.

There were six, two thousand pound bulls chasing me, each capable of ending my life. In all likelihood, however, I wouldn't die. I'd merely be gored. A foot long horn stabbed through my stomach. Or I might trip and be trampled, my legs broken and chest collapsed as twenty-four hooves crash down around me. I’m sure my face changed at this moment to mirror those behind me. The panic raced forward as those in front of me, making their quick peeks, noticed this our faces. Hysteria erupted. People starting sprinting. Others merely stopped, frozen in fear. Collisions were commonplace. People were lying on the ground, scrambling to get out of the middle of the street. Bodies were tangling with bodies. Legs and arms were everywhere. Some of the runners were trying to climb over the barricades. This is when I caught my first glimpse of the bulls. They were massive. So much larger than I had remembered. The first to pass held its head high, horns at the level of my head, and it was moving so much faster than the crowd. The runners began to part, fleeing to the sides to allow the bulls to pass through the middle. Before I could even think the bulls were upon me. I watched in horror as the unlucky, still lying in the street, were overtaken by the stampede. One, two, three passed me. I was certain the people on the street were dead. Then the other three came rushing past. All six had passed allowing my mind to slow down enough to begin rational thought again. I was alive, but where were the other two I ran with? A quick scan of crowd and I saw Chris, his red hair standing out against the mass. It took a while longer to locate my brother. Chris and I scanned the injured, fearing the worst. Miraculously the injuries were all minor. Those who I had seen trampled were not dead. In fact most were up and walking around. My brother, however was not in that mix. His absence there was a relief, and our search continued. We finally found him outside the stadium alive and well. All three of us had survived unscathed. It was now only about 9:00 in the morning. The hardest part of our day was done.

Feria San Fermin is a nine day festival taking place annually in Pamplona, Spain starting on July 6^th and ending on July 13^th. The encierro, better known as the running of the bulls, takes place each morning of the festival. I ran in the summer of 2006 with my younger brother, Bryce, and friend, Chris.

A follow up from before

2010-09-12T17:49:00.000-07:00

I wrote a while back about the baby seal that was rescued (?) from its dead mother. Anyway, here is a little blurb from Alaska magazine.

To be a hunter takes a lot

2010-09-05T21:43:00.000-07:00

As many of you know, I have become a hunter. Well, at least up until the very last aspect of a hunter. I have all the required things a hunter needs: a gun, a camouflage jacket, a hunting accent. I even have a great hunting pose and a pretty good hunting creep. Yeah, totally a hunter. I’ve got everything – except a kill. This is the story of my attempt at a first kill and thus my induction into the world of hunting.

The rain eased up enough today to allow Robbie and myself to get outside in search of some ducks or swans or geese or anything else that my license covers (read: snowy owls – no joke, also no limit). Robbie is the husband of one of our new teachers, hailing from Idaho, and has slightly more hunting experience that me. We were ready to get some dinner. Wandering through the tundra brought back memories of last year walking to Toksook. Ben in that deceivingly deep puddle…good times. Karma to follow, however when I, while watching an airplane, took a step backwards into a knee-deep hole.

I was excited to try out my new image. Robbie was trying out a new image of his own. Being in the Wild West, Robbie was packing some serious heat – a .44 mag pistol strapped to his hip. John Wayne – yep, that’s Robbie. Umm…a 6-5 red haired version. Turns out, neither of us lived up to our attempted images.

Sometimes I wonder why I am such an unsuccessful sportsman. Reflecting on these thoughts always bring me to the same answer. I have yet to go fishing, and now hunting, without any irony. Always it follows along, scaring away any potential prey, obviously. Perhaps it’s a safety net for my inevitable failure, or perhaps it’s my response to the cognitive dissonance I feel with a gun of my own cradled in my arms. Who knows.

I’m learning a lot of things about the great outdoors. Each trip teaches me important lessons. For example, safety glasses are awesome. But a more recurring lesson that I’m slowly coming to understand is that I am the worst sportsman in the world. I’ve been fishing about six times since getting back here in early August. I have caught nothing – except my leg. And that while trying to prod George with the end of my rod. The latest reminder came today, while hunting. I took one shot with the shotgun. I hit nothing - except my face. Seriously. Some freak ricochet sent a shotgun pellet back at me and struck me directly in the right lens of my glasses.

And so now I sit, waiting for my hamburger buns to rise – or I should put more accurately, my black bean burger buns to rise because that is what I am having for dinner. My induction has been put on hold – in all liklehood indefinitely. It’s okay. I’ve come to a realization. I’m not a hunter. I never will be. I may kill some animals. But I’m not a hunter. I also am not a fisherman. I may catch some fish, but that won’t make me a fisherman. Guns, rods, reels, cammo, accents. These are just things sportsmen have. And me I guess, I also have those things. The big difference between those people and me, however, goes beyond an image. I don’t want to be a hunter of a fisherman. My constant irony and sarcasm are proof enough. The real reason those are there is because I’d rather be doing other things. To a true hunter or fisherman this, of course, is never true.

I have friends who give me a hard time for my less typical Alaskan subsistence activities. Things like breadmaking and a hydroponics garden in my living room, not to mention my vermicompost and semi-vegetarian diet. Weird maybe. Unusual sure. But if I had to survive on my sportsmen’s skills alone I’d be dead or at the very least very hungry. And so I’m okay with my way of life.

Tununak Round Two

2010-08-09T23:37:00.000-07:00

Am I excited to going back to Tununak?

While I wasn’t looking forward to leaving Minneapolis on Sunday, the oppressively awful temperatures made things a little easier. I don’t believe it is possible for humans to survive in weather like Minnesota has been having. Mid-nineties, dew points over seventy…miserable. Sixty in Bethel will be a welcome relief.

I am in the process of traveling, process being the key word. Yesterday was the day for bulk mailing, listening to the postal clerk telling me eleven days all the while knowing that twenty is a much better estimate. And my bike. My bike is in the mail. Right now, somewhere, my bike is being handled by the United States Post Office. This should offer me three to four weeks of stress. And now I am in between two of the three flights necessary to arrive in Bethel where I stay for a few days for district-wide inservice then one final flight to the village. Days are needed to get to my final destination.

Going back for the second year will be nice though. Teaching many of the same classes as last year, I am anticipating less time spent planning. Of course that will probably prove to me wishful thinking, I have made a number of interesting investments over the summer to fill the empty (here’s to hoping) time in my upcoming year.

As I noted before, my bike is coming along this year. Jokingly I had told people I plan on just wanting to look at it. This probably has more truth to it than I want to admit. And coupled with the fact that there aren’t any paved roads it is a little hard to deny. But if all things work out I will be getting a stationary stand for it for endless hours of going nowhere in the gym.

My other two investments deal with food. My forages into eating more vegetables and less meat has initiated a number of impulse hydroponics system buys. The first was a system I purchase from our outgoing principal at the very end of last year. The second system I purchased just earlier this week. Fresh salad in December, tomatoes in February. Maybe.

The second food investment is a shotgun. Ignoring the above goal of reducing my meat consumption, I have borrowed a twelve gauge shotgun (don’t call it a rifle) from my grandpa. After an interesting conversation with the salesman at Gander Mountain about shells (don’t call them “bullets” or “things to shoot out of my gun”) I believe I have everything I need to take down some ducks. I acquired both the hydroponics system and the shotgun last week. It is impossible to describe how different they feel in my hands, yet both will be used for the same purpose: to provide me with fresh food.

Those things should keep me somewhat busy. And of course there is teaching. Second years aren't known for being unbelievably easier than first years. So that's it - year two is all planned out. We'll see how that goes.

This is what summer was made for.

2010-07-14T20:28:00.000-07:00

I am loving summer. This is my first summer since the summer after ninth grade where I haven't had a job. I mean sure, I've been putting in random hours at the Y, but you can't really call bowling with first graders work. Ahh the benefits of teaching. So what have I been doing?

Well I arrived home in Minneapolis in late May. I spent the next couple weeks on a spending binge - food, drinks, things, groceries. Not sure what all I bought, but it had been months since the simple pleasure of immediate gratification could be fulfilled in the shopping world. The instant return on my wants was, well, intoxicating. Following that bender, I set off on another binge of sorts - biking.

I missed biking. A lot. And so I went on some bike rides. I spent a weekend riding from Duluth to Minneapolis with the fund raising event known as the MS 150 (a charity ride for the muscular sclerosis society). This was my second year completing the ride and, as before, it was nice. Our team raised over $2300 (thanks to all who donated by the way) and rode about 100 out of the 150 miles in a light
drizzle.

Using the MS 150 as a warm up, I left a week later on the Amtrak with two friends, Aaron and Adam, headed for Portland. Our bikes safely boxed were stowed aboard ready to carry us south down the Pacific Coast. Unbelievable weather (a total of zero days of any form of precipitation and a considerable tailwind) followed our trek to San Francisco, approximately 850 miles up, down, and around the coastal mountains. Elaborations on this ride will follow in future posts, for at the moment I am letting the experience ferment a while longer before getting into it. Needless to say, bicycle touring is one of the most incredible ways to travel. For anyone interested, Aaron, one of my riding partners has a nice little blog where you can read and see some nice bits of media from the ride here: The Western Expanse.

Now I am down to about three and a half weeks left in Minnesota before I return to Alaska. I have many things I still want to get done, but am actively looking for more things to add to that list. If you have any ideas, want to hang out, or whatever, get ahold of me. I am in.

Twenty-four hours, four planes, and two seasons later

2010-05-24T16:14:00.000-07:00

I left Tununak yesterday with Ben and Sara about twenty-four hours ago. The temperature was near freezing, the clouds were about 300 feet off the ground and intermittent fog reduced visibility to under a mile at times. All three airlines were on weather hold. After two hours of stressing out, communications with the airline hinted that a plane would indeed be landing. We loaded up the trailer and instructed Brett to avoid the puddles. He failed. Not that anyone could have done any better. The house-high drifts recently had a path plowed through them resulting in a knee-deep puddle that
stretches from the BIA, through the village, almost all the way to the airport. Pretty great. Our flight was uneventful, and we caught our next flight to Anchorage without problems. After a quick meal at the Anchorage airport I said goodbye to Ben and Sara and rushed off to my gate. Ten minutes to spare - no big deal. Yeah, last to board is pretty awesome. Then Denver, now Minneapolis.

And now summer. Serious summer. The sweatshirt, coat, hat, gloves, and boots I wore out of Tununak were no longer needed. In fact, I'm pretty sure clothes in general are not needed. The thermometer states 100 degrees right now. I can't quite handle it. I am melting.

Took a journey down to the garden (about a mile downhill) on my bicycle. So good. Strawberries are raging. Tomatoes are trying to sort out the seasons, which is nice to see that I'm not the only one. Peppers are loving it. A few rogue bean stalks are erupting from the earth. Tomorrow the work begins. Trellises need to get back in, fence needs to be creature proofed, and obviously, the plants and seeds need to get in the ground. Exciting. Maybe it'll be 70 tomorrow. Probably not. Better get sunscreen.

Left the garden and thought I'd take the long way home. Here I realized some things. Biking downhill with the wind is way easier than biking uphill into the wind after nine months of not biking. I seem to have misplaced my legs and lungs. Of course the heat didn't help. I have a bit of work to do to get back in bike shape. The five miles I rode today were annoyingly hard. Good thing I have the summer off to get some things done. Teaching is awesome.

Chickens, dogs, and wind

2010-05-20T19:46:00.000-07:00

Necessary background information needed for this story:

My principal has eight sled dogs
He also has chickens
He also has rabbits

The other weekend our principal was out of town and needed help tending his creatures. Fellow teacher, Ben, had been enlisted to help, and I offered to help Ben a few times. Most of my help consisted of staring at chickens and taking pictures for this here blog. Yeah, I am helpful.

After attending to the animals we took a jaunt up the hill. We were escorted by one of our students. I believe she enjoyed going down the hill a bit more that going up.

But pictures will speak louder than words, so here they are. Enjoy.

Class of 2010!

2010-05-17T22:58:00.000-07:00

I am proud to announce that this past Friday we graduated our four seniors from Tununak High School. Congratulations Paul, Harry, Virginia, and Carl!

Probably the coolest thing anybody on the planet is doing right now.

2010-05-17T13:41:00.000-07:00

My two good friends left Minneapolis this morning atop their bicycles. They are headed out to Portland via Yellowstone. I plan to meet up with them there and then on to San Francisco via the redwoods. Here is their blog if you want to keep tabs.

The Western Expanse

I am so jealous right now.

*Note - I stole these pics from their blog

On zombie movies

2010-05-16T23:17:00.000-07:00

I have had a good deal of time to sit around over the past nine months. Often, while sitting, I find myself watching a zombie movie with my neighbors. Here's an annotated list of what I've seen.

Night of the Living Dead
Best to start with this one. This 1968 black and white film is a must see in zombie movies. NOTLD is responsible for creating the zombie that we know and love today.

Fido - Speaking of loving zombies, Fido is set in the 1950s. Radiation from space has been turning the recently deceased into zombies. Rather than fighting zombies, a corporation known as Zomcon has developed technology that blocks the zombie's need for flesh thus turning them into docile servants helping out around the house and even playing a game of catch with the son whose dad is too busy. Yeah, this movie was awesome.

Shaun of the Dead
Also awesome, this movie exploits the comedic slowness of zombies. Lots of dead zombies result. (Dead? Redead? Not sure what you call a zombie that is killed).

Zombieland
This gem includes a set of rules to survive the zombie apocalypse and a cameo appearance by Bill Murray complete with the a Ghostbusters reenactment. So good.

Død Snø
A Norwegian film (with English subtitles) with Nazi zombies. This film had promise (zombies, Nazis, many scenes depicting intestines being extracted from non-zombies, and chain saws), but I thought it was kind of a dumb. My critique was dismissed based on the simple fact that this was a zombie movie, and by definition, kind of dumb. Whatever - it ranks lowest on my list.

May 7th, Alaska.

2010-05-07T09:16:00.000-07:00

Nine days of school left. On the last day we have this planned: "Thursday morning we will have school clean up around the building if the snow is gone. If not, we will stay in our classrooms cleaning and organizing."

Legos!

2010-05-06T20:10:00.000-07:00

Huh, look at this Lego kit:

It's Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater. There is also a Guggenheim Museum and some other models in their architecture collection. Who new?

I've been listening to an interesting podcast - Stuff You Should Know - and they are discussing Legos right now. Pretty awesome.

Here are some facts to amaze your friends:
4 million children and adults will play with Legos this year
Lego is the number one producers of tires in the world - 306,000,000 tiny tires
On average, there are 62 Lego bricks for every person on Earth
People will spend a combined 5 billion hours this year playing with Legos
Lego has 150 designers on staff (fyi my dream job runner up - after playing baseball for the Twins)
There are 4 billion Lego people on the planet
Eleven people have been certified as Lego professionals
Lego is a combination of two Danish words: Leg Godt meaning play well
Coincidentally, Lego also means "I put together" in Latin

Sea lions are neat.

2010-04-24T17:16:00.000-07:00

Here is just one more reason why National Geographic is phenomenal.

Octopus vs. sea lion

Shark vs. octopus

So if octopus > shark and sea lion > octopus, what is the relationship between sea lion and shark?

All videos taken from National Geographic's website

The baby seal that almost wasn't and how I missed it

2010-04-14T22:35:00.000-07:00

"There's a baby seal in the hall." This is the first thing out of my tardy student's mouth as he enters a room full of studious writers silently pecking away. "We should go see it."

"Sit down Ken. What are you going to work on?" This is the first thing out of my mouth in response to this interruption. My initial reaction is that there is no way a baby seal is in the hall of the school. In my teacher mind I am analyzing the credibility of this student against an attempt at getting me to lead a class of twelve high school students into the hall in search of a non-existent baby seal. I take the safe route. I convince myself there is no seal, most of my class seems to be okay with that decision, and class proceeds as normal.

Only later in the morning do I find out that there was indeed a baby seal in the school. A living, breathing baby seal. The story of its arrival is quite amazing. With the coming of spring comes the beginning of seal hunting. The warmer (a relative measurement) weather and longer days make traveling out to open water more desirable and the prospect of bringing home a seal (dead all cases but this) is an opportunity thats siren's call is impossible to ignore for many of the males in the village. This story starts on a day like this: The day before Ken's interruption in my class. His grandpa had gone out hunting and shot an adult seal. Upon the butchering of the seal they found that she was pregnant, and more importantly, that the seal in the womb was alive. Removing the baby from its mother they found that it was mature enough to survive outside the womb and that in all likelihood it would be able to survive into adulthood with proper care. It was this baby that found itself miles from open ocean, worlds away from its mother, and in the hallway of a school surrounded by large-eyed children.

And I missed it. By the time Ken's story was corroborated to my satisfaction the seal was on a plane headed to a rehabilitation center in Southern Alaska. Man...

Spring is in the air

2010-04-11T13:17:00.000-07:00

The blizzard warning expired this morning but not before it could unleash its power. As the wind picked up yesterday afternoon the snow started to fall. I fell asleep to the sound of wind ripping across the tundra, pounding on the walls and windows of the BIA.

The dance festival that Tununak is hosting started yesterday as well. Dancers from the surrounding villages began arriving by snowmachine throughout the afternoon and evening, eventually filling the gym at the school with traditional song and dance and the subtle smell of dried fish and seal oil. Dances usually go late into the night, sometimes ending well after midnight. I arrived slightly after nine and was told that what I was seeing was the last song of the evening. Apparently the worsening weather had delayed the arrival of some of the dance groups. As I helped usher people out of the school for the night I noticed that many of the men in the village were suiting up in their winter gear. A group coming south from Newtok had not arrived. With near white-out conditions and night approaching, things could quickly become very dangerous. A search and rescue group was organizing. Living in my isolated bubble, rarely leaving teacher housing or the school, let alone the village allows me forget the harsh realities and danger that lurk just beneath the surface of tundra life . When that danger makes itself present my stomach flips and I get a guilty feeling from forgetting my surroundings- a cardinal sin of living up here. I went home to my house, the thought of what dying of exposure on the tundra would be like.

Today, Saturday, when I woke up the wind had died down. The lost party from Newtok was found. There was an unmeasurable amount of snow spread across the tundra making Tununak look like a cake frosted in white by an amateur baker. Bare spots showing next to drifts five, even ten feet tall. The stairs leading up to the school are completely blown over with the railing on the bottom half of the flight completely covered with fresh snow. Wind lips and cornices have grown on the hill itself drawing my adrenaline-fueled high school boys with their snowmachines. As the morning wore on, the clouds cleared exposing blue skies and a spring sun growing stronger everyday.

How beautiful it is, spring in Tununak.

Coastal Living

2010-03-27T17:34:00.000-07:00

I stumbled across a magazine today titled Coastal Living. Before rational thought could intervene, what came to mind was "Hey! I live on the coast." While true - I do live on the coast, my coast is not the coast portrayed in the magazine. The coast portrayed in the magazine looks lovely: particularly lovely being spring break season; particularly lovely me being in Alaska in the middle of the winter (regardless of the fact that it's officially the second day of spring); and particularly lovely that it's fifty and sunny in Minnesota and everyone there feels it necessary to advertise that fact all over the Internet.

Whatever.

Here's to my coast. While swimming in the water is unrealistic, walking on the water is quite nice. Frozen solid, the Bering Sea is quite striking. Walking out from shore shows a vista of Tununak that is quite impressive. The cliffs to the north and the hills to the south shrink the village in comparison. The fact that I am truly isolated on the edge of nowhere in rural Alaska asserts itself again, reminding me of a reality I still have trouble grasping. Unable to grasp this fact may explain the trouble I have expressing the feeling that comes over me whenever I glimpse my reality.

Whatever.

Here's to my reality. Unable to grasp my reality I cannot evaluate my situation. "How's Alaska?" is a common question. I have know idea. I'm employed. That's good. I am not unhappy. That's good. I'm not unreasonably homesick. That's good. I'm learning a lot about everything. That's good. And so my response is typically "Good." Recently, upon receiving next year's contract and using this response, I signed on for another year. That's good.

Yep.

Another year should be good. Good for my teaching, good for my students, good for my long-term professional goals. It's just a hard decision to make because it isn't good for many other things I want to be doing - things I spend a lot of time trying not to think about. Things like hanging out with friends and family. Things like biking and gardening.

Huh.

I am a high school math teacher.

2010-02-28T22:39:00.000-08:00

I think it's time I come to terms with this statement. What an interesting group of people I am joining. When I think back on all of the math teachers I have had I really don't see myself in that group. Recent circumstances are making me question that view.

I fully view myself as a teacher, and take great pride in that identity. But math teachers...they're just so, well, let me give you some examples from my past. Take one of my high school math teachers with a hair cut that looked like a wide cone - some sort of physical representation of the subject she was teaching. "Now to calculate the volume of my head..." Or the other one who would blast WLTE - light FM - before class started. As if being forced to learn math at 7:20 in the morning wasn't bad enough that my teacher felt so inclined to add a little Celine Dion. Or my calc professor in college, teaching in the former sanctuary of a church the U of M converted into a lecture hall, that would cough extremely loudly, every ten minutes, into the microphone poorly punctuating his lecture and scaring me every time or another math professor that linked every sentence with a southern drawling "...thaaaat is..." making the number of sentences in any lecture equal to one or the one that used the word "notion" at least ten times per class. I will stop here, but believe me, I have more. Do I want to join that group of people and assume that identity?

It is something that I have been consciously aware of since switching majors my freshman year. I started my college career in the Institute of Technology at the University of MN with the goal of becoming a civil engineer. My classes were filled with your typical high flying math nerds (hfmn). Good people, but one afternoon I came to the realization that maybe the math joke I was laughing at may not be how I want to spend the rest of my life...standing around a water cooler with the "guys" (ie hfmn) going over our really cool math pick up lines like "I wish I were your derivative so I could lie tangent to your curves" that to date has worked on zero potential dates (full disclosure - this is actually the name of a Facebook group with almost 100,000 members of which I am a member, but more on my hfmn credentials below). And so I switched majors, began taking education classes, and became immersed in the world of elementary education which happens to be , by the way, about as anti-math as you can get. The math classes required to teach elementary school rarely tackled content more challenging that adding fractions with unlike denominators and my math nerdiness slipped into what I thought would be the past. Accepting this job in Alaska, teaching high school math, has opened the door to this particular skeleton in my closet. Only recently did I realize that the skeleton was out and about. Denial can be such a powerful thing.

I mean, everyone, from time to time, goes onto Amazon and buys three books from the 70s on number theory with such inviting titles like An Adventurer's Guide to Number Theory. I do, after all, identify with adventurers, so why shouldn't I have this book? And everyone, from time to time, gets completely baffled by the look of boredom on their students' faces after going through a thrilling lesson on divisibility rules and how amazing it is that such things like divisibility rules exist at all in a system (i.e. numbers) invented by humans. Physics and nature follow a set of perfectly beautiful rules of their own, but math , unlike the latter two, is a human construct. And who doesn't get excited about the math education blog in the NY Times or a podcast by some guy calling himself mathpunk (thanks Ben). Everyone does these things, from time to time. Right?

Yeah, probably not. Just a select few. People like those high flying math nerds I escaped in engineering school. And people like high school math teachers. Whatever. It could be worse. I have to decided to pick up where I left off on my trip down the math nerdiness road. I will continue to find things that only a minority of people find interesting or funny. But hopefully I will also find things that are universally interesting. Things that make teaching math fun for me and interesting for my students. Things that turn my students into hfmn. Because you know what? It's not that bad. And if I ever need to, it packs away nicely into any closet.

What's been in my (metaphorical) pockets

2010-02-22T21:58:00.000-08:00

I have been picking things up as the days go by. Here's a sample of a few of the things that I have collected.

It's pretty much just a bunch of random pictures and videos from my recent travels. The past three weekends have sent me with the junior high basketball team to three other villages. We flew to both Newtok and Chefornak, but took snowmachines (ie snowmobiles) to Toksook Bay.

Vehicles waiting to take us to the airport.

Sunrise ~ 10:00 in the morning.

Snowmachines waiting to take us home.

Convoy of eleven snowmachines heading back to Tununak.

Snowmachining part one

Snowmaching part two

Walking to the store in Newtok

I guess that's it.

Pop music is so bad.

2010-02-22T12:13:00.000-08:00

Here's a sample of what I have been listening to while stuck with seven junior high students over the weekend. I will post some of the more amazing specimens of Top 40 lyrics for your enjoyment. So unbelievably terrible.

"Shawty's like a melody in my head
That I can't keep out, got me singin'
Na na na na everyday
It's like my iPod's stuck on replay, replay

I can be your melody
Oh girl, I could write you a symphony
The one that could fill your fantasies
So come, baby girl, come sing with me, hey"
-Sean Kingston "Replay"

And here's another gem

Wish I could stop by (sounds like bah) and maybe say hi (sounds like hah)
Wish I could by, and lay by your side
-Akon "Keep You Much Longer"

So bad.

How to make bbq musk ox ribs.

2010-02-17T22:10:00.000-08:00

This is the tale of my friend and neighbor, George, a Native Alaskan and husband to fellow teacher, Heidi.

Step 1:
Stand in line for many hours for one of the 40 tags issued by Fish & Game.

Step 2:
Wait for the right day to go out hunting. Weather must be good. Musk ox must be relatively close. A good friend must be available to help.

Step 3:
Suit up and cruise off over the tundra. Recon the herd. Select an appropriate target. Attempt to get target to break off from the herd. Shoot to kill.

Step 4:
Load in snowmachine trailer and drive home.

Step 5:
Dump musk ox and prepare for cleaning. Using a knife and/or ulu (traditional knofe) begin to skin the animal. Remove skin from body and legs but leave under animal to prevent it from freezing to the ground.

Step 6:
Slice open the animal taking great care not to rupture the internal organs, especially the stomach. Remove innards. Take a small fist-sized chunk of the animal's liver, and if applicable the liver of the unborn fetus (in this case, cut open the womb, remove fetus, cut open the fetus and obtain liver). Mail liver(s) to Bethel for testing to obtain health of animal and possible baby.

Step 7:
Remove the four legs from the body and set aside. Cut ribs away from the backbone and place with legs.

Step 8:
Cut remaining fur away from the lower jaw and remove tongue. Place tongue with other meat.

Step 9:
Bring desired amount of ribs inside, coat with BBQ sauce, place in oven at 350 degrees for required amount of time and enjoy!

Just another weekend in Alaska

2010-02-17T20:26:00.000-08:00

"The plane will be here in twenty-nine minutes." The mix of feelings rushes through me along with a quick little jolt of adrenaline as I hear this from the school secretary. Nothing is for sure out here, but the odds of leaving just got a whole lot better. All morning the wind had been howling and the prospect of getting seven junior high basketball players and two coaches (myself included) to a village thirty miles north seemed poor. But this recent message from the secretary means that all the preparation - bags packed, sub notes and substitute standing at the ready - may pay off this time. I grab my things, give final directions to my class and the sub, and rush out to check on my team. They have assembled in the entry way and are in the process of suiting up. I join in the process: snowpants, boots, parka, hat, mittens, goggles ready if needed for the four-wheeler ride to the runway. We pile our bags into the trailer behind the snowmobile and we pile into the second trailer behind the four-wheeler. I am thankful that our ride is with the wind but worry at the same time knowing that this will mean we will be flying pretty much into or across the wind to Newtok.

After putting our bags into the belly of the Cessna Caravan we pile into the cabin. The Caravan, while larger than the 207s I have spent more time in, is by no means large. It does fit us nine and the pilot comfortably - think conversion van - but still in the single engine category. I am hoping that this nominal increase in size will keep us from getting too tossed around in the air too much. Our pilot's words prior to take-off do little to quell this fear, "Buckle up, it's going to be a bit rough." As the engine roars and we lift off, the increase in elevation provides an excellent view of the bay and frozen Bering Sea below us. It truly is a sight that photographs cannot begin to capture. Of course I tried, but gave up after a few shots through the fog gathering windows and grew content just looking out. While all this was happening I realized something else. The flight was remarkably calm. Not even the tiniest bit of bouncing around. We landed in Newtok twenty minutes later where another trailer and sled was waiting to bring us to the school.

Our arrival coincided with the ending of the mellowest pep fest ever. After the pep fest we were treated to a delightful school lunch (one thing that is identical to anywhere else) and then the request to go to the store picked up. Fine, to the store we must go. A quick journey into the wind brought us to the first store. After only a few quick minutes, requests began coming in to go to the other store. Maybe, just maybe, there would be something of great rarity at the other store. After visiting both stores it turned out that there was not, in fact, anything in either store of great rarity. Oh well. We were here to play basketball after all - not shop.

We were slated for three games Friday one final game Saturday morning. Our team has developed an unfortunate habit. They go out and play a strong first quarter. After that the level of play comes down a bit, any lead we had evaporates, and things begin to crumble. Frustrating to watch, frustrating for the players, and overall not good for team morale. Long story short - we lost four games bringing our cumulative record to 0 and 8.

Besides playing basketball and watching basketball our team found time to hang out with, chat with, flirt with, and all the other things one can do with friends and family they rarely get to see. And of course Friday night I got one more opportunity to experience the life of a chaperone of teenage boys. Not great. Here's a quick outline of how it works. Lights go off. Everything is quiet, but no one is trying to sleep. All are waiting for someone to make the first move...or sound. And then it comes. A quick little arm fart. Again - utter silence. Who will make the next move. A reprimand, laughter, nothing? In this case - nothing. And then another fart. Braveness from darkness. Anyone with an arm and a desire can join. What fun. Fart. Laughter. Long fart. Longer laughter. Oh this is so funny. Or totally not funny. I find that the level of hilarity is inversely correlated with age. The younger you are the funnier it is, but as you advance in age the comedy begins to fade. Factoring in the time of night and the proximity of the wake up call also affects one's opinion of how funny things are. I am realizing, much to my dismay, that I am no longer finding these things funny, but rather getting quite concerned over how little sleep I am bound to get after all this farting has passed. Thankfully my boys were not part of the problem and thankfully/eventually the fun wore off bringing a time for a bit of rest.

Morning came early, as it always does when traveling. Breakfast consisted of a product I had never had before - pancakes individually wrapped. Peculiar the things that come in bags. Two pancakes sandwiched together with something resembling strawberry jam in the middle. You know they are bad when you have kids complaining about them. At this point I am praying that the weather clears if merely to eat real food again. The weather, however, is as deaf to my prayers as always. We find out that we are on a weather hold. High winds in Tununak are preventing the airplanes from flying. Arrgh.

We settle in. The frustrating thing about flying in rural Alaska is that no one has any idea of what is going on. Rumors fly, phone calls are made, reports conflict. It is an experience of what seems to me to be a complete and utter communication failure. What is worse for me is that the airline, for some baffling reason, is also just as confused as we are. Here is a typical conversation.
Us: "Any news on the charter from Newtok to Tununak?"
Them: "Still on weather hold. Call back in an hour."
-one hour later-
Us: "Any news on the charter?"
Them: "They just left."
Us "Left Bethel?"
Them: "Yes. They are going to Chefornak, then Toksook, then Newtok. Should be there in an hour and a half."
-one hour later-
Us: "Is that charter still on schedule."
Them: "What charter?"
Us: "The one that was coming to pick us up in half an hour."
Them: "Two caravans just left Bethel to pick you up."
Us: "When will they be here?"
Them: "One hour."
-half an hour later-
Us: "Is that charter still on?"
Them: "Yes, pick up ten minutes."
-forty-five minutes later-
Us: "What happened to the plane that was sent?"
Them: "One is leaving Toksook on its way to pick you up."

Seriously, this is not an exaggeration. To make things more annoying, remember that we have been wearing snowpants the whole time anticipating that all-of-a-sudden ten minute warning.

In the end we did end up securing a plane. Our flight, while quite a bit more turbulent was safe and short. The views flying over the frozen Bering in February again took my breath away. We landed on our runway with the school snowmachine and four-wheeler waiting with their drivers to pick us up. On the drive back to the school and our housing I am struck again at how good it feels to be home.

The life of a theoretical physicist

2010-01-30T18:15:00.000-08:00

A quote from theoretical physicist, Sean Carroll, talking with Ira Flatow on Science Friday.

Ira: Sean, I’m wondering how you spend your time. I mean, do you sit there thinking big thoughts with a pencil and piece paper?

Sean: Well that is my day job, yes. That’s not the only thing I do, but I am a theoretical physicist so I don’t look through telescopes or build equipment. I don’t even do computer simulations. I leave that to my graduate students. And I sit there in Starbucks or at the wine bar with a pencil and paper and I, you know, draw pictures and draw equations and try to see how to fit different ideas together. Happily, you know, it’s actually a very social occupation where we work together and we bounce ideas off each other so it’s a lot of fun.

Sit around talking physics, drinking wine, doing some math. File this under jobs to do in future lives.

Science Friday website

This week in awesomeness.

2010-01-16T18:34:00.000-08:00

Rather than write about my past week in Tununak with school being canceled Monday due to high wind, canceled Tuesday due to frozen pipes resulting in honeybuckets Wednesday, a trip to the health clinic Wednesday to be tested for strep (negative), a relatively mellow Thursday, and bad weather Friday canceling flights for both the JH and HS basketball tournaments this weekend I wanted to share a few things I found or revisited from the outside that are pretty great.

The first is a blog by George Orwell. Kind of. The blog consists of postings from Orwell's journal posted exactly seventy years after Orwell himself wrote them. An obsession with farming and how many eggs his chickens laid each day...double plus good.
http://orwelldiaries.wordpress.com/1938/07/

The second is another blog - this one with with a collection of six sentence stories. A little longer than the well known short story by Hemingway ("For sale: baby shoes, never warn.") these are nonetheless good fun to browse.
http://sixsentences.blogspot.com/

One last blog of note is a collection of terrible library books submitted by librarians. Great.
http://awfullibrarybooks.wordpress.com

Snow retired.

2010-01-11T10:52:00.000-08:00

I have heard of tremendous snowfalls in Tununak. Snow accumulations of six, even eight feet of packed snow. Of course, I don't believe it. It doesn't snow anymore. I mean, maybe it did, once upon a time. I have heard elders speak of times when they were young. Even I have stories like that from my childhood. Like the Halloween we received two feet of snow and a squirrel, so confused with the weather, climbed up my terrified, costumed friend. But that doesn't happen anymore. Snow retired.

Okay, to clarify, it does snow. But remember, it's retired. So it isn't that Snow completely stopped, it's just not that concerned with doing its job at the same frequency or intensity. It often gets caught up in long conversations with Fog or Hail up in Cloudville only to realize that it's now 8:30 and the nightly news is due on as soon as the ball game finishes and, provided it stays awake through the whole game (not likely), it will be much too tired to do much afterward. Snow also, it seems, acts like many of the snowbirds I know - and seems to head south for the winter. For example, Orlando reported getting a dusting of snow two days ago. I guess the winter can be too cold for anyone, even Snow.

So while Snow is in Florida, who is picking up the slack in Tununak?

Ice. Ice was always just a seasonal worker. First getting to work in late fall, Ice would get the ground cold enough so that Snow would have a good foundation on which to do it's job without the risk of melting. Ice might pick up a few hours over the holidays some years if Snow was tired or busy elsewhere, but after a few days Ice would be on it's way and Snow would resume it's work. Now, however, Ice has been thrust into full time employment in Tununak. Where Snow normally covered roads and tundra, Ice has filled in. It's not for lack of effort, but Ice is a poor substitute. Ice is slippery and very dense. Riding a snowmachine over ice is dangerous and painful. They just weren't made for that. Ice skates in the other hand...

Wind has also moved in to help in Snow's absence. Where Ice is trying to help, Wind is exploiting the situation. With the new ice roads (and boardwalks, stairs, hills, railings, etc.) Wind has discovered that if it blows hard enough it can move humans. There have been days (like today) where without my ice cleats I would be in very real danger of being blown downwind and stuck until the wind dies down (had I have been blown downwind when the wind started last week, I would currently have been stuck for about eight days with little hope of making it home any time soon).

I hate Wind. I have for a long time. It makes life so difficult - whether biking, or snowboarding, or just walking, the wind pushes me around. It's just a bully, aware that I can't do anything to fight back against its heat robbing fingers. Even now it is outside pounding on my walls, trying to intimidate me, threatening me, reminding me that if I try to make it up to school today (school was actually cancelled today due to high wind - 85mph gusts) it will make my walk across the ice a constant challenge.

I hope that I am wrong. I hope that Snow is just tired and taking some time off. That it will come around and realize that it misses its old job. Maybe it will see the mess of things Wind and Ice have made and feel the pull of obligation to return things to their just order. I mean, what fun is a wind day? What am I going to do - make wind angels and windmen? Have a windball fight? Come on Snow. Please...

A weekend with a dozen teenagers may sound like a lot of fun, but... (Part 3/3)

2010-01-07T22:21:00.001-08:00

"Note: I published part 2 and 3 to this post tonight so if you haven't read part 2 yet, I recommend doing that first. Simply scroll down to find part 2. Part 1 is further down still if you want to read that as well. -Eric"

We were returned to Gladys Jung, having only been gone about twenty minutes. A few other schools were likewise stranded and we went about resituating ourselves in the classrooms. With the robotics competition over, the gym was clear of Legos and we spent most of the afternoon playing basketball, throwing footballs, and running around. We also got in our promised one last trip to the store. As the students spent what they had left, I took advantage of a produce section to stock up on a few rare items – fresh tomatoes, avocado, cucumber… The walk back was interesting as now my hands were full holding a box of vegetables and other snacks for our team. The rain that had been lightly fallen had taken to changing states as the temperature dropped. If I slipped I was going to end up with produce all over the road. I also now have an irrational (actually, it’s probably pretty rational) fear of denting my face after hearing another teacher’s horror story of slipping on the ice and fracturing his cheek to such a degree that his face was visibly misshapen. Step after careful step I safely made it back to the school with all of my food. We rounded out the night with ice cream another teacher bought for the team and another round of gym time. We went to bed hoping that the weather in the morning would improve enough to allow planes to land in Tununak.

A quick breakfast and thorough cleaning of Gladys Jung and we again were ready to give the airport another try. We made it to the airport this time before learning that planes to the coast were on a weather hold. While preferable to an outright cancellation, a weather hold is still a bit too much when you have a dozen additional people you are responsible for. I should also add that the word airport means quite a bit less that what a conventional airport would mean. The airport I am referring to is in fact the Grant terminal, a small room with a ticket counter and baggage check similar in size to an old rural train station. There is a row of benches along one wall, a picnic table, and a small coffee shop upstairs that runs strange hours. Needless to say, in the event of a long weather hold there is very little to do. And we may be in for a while. The thing is, a hold doesn’t guarantee anything. I have known people that have ended up spending the entire day in the airport only to find out that the weather has not improved enough and to come back the next day and try again. And so, we settled in to wait.

As the hours went by we received little information from the airline. Typical for Alaska; aggravating for me. I have been conditioned to a constant stream of information. I like to know the details. What is the wind speed on the coast? Is it a crosswind? What about the temperature? Is that playing a role? Maybe fog? Low clouds? Earthquake? Tsunami washing the runway into the sea? Anything! But that isn’t the way things work. And so I wait, trying not to concern myself with answers that will not be answered. It seems I have spent the past ten years working with children in a variety of settings strengthening my patience. I am tapping into that skill now. From time to time a pilot will emerge, announce a village, rattle off a list of names, and then load up a plane and head off. Each time a pilot emerges, the entire airport full of people, all waiting quite a bit more patiently than me, eagerly strain to hear the village and the names, wishing, most of the time, in vain. It is only in moments like these, as I watch small groups of people have their names called to fly off to more weather friendly villages, when I find negative thoughts about Tununak milling about in my head. Why would anyone settle in a region with such brutal weather? How crazy must people be to continue living in a place where the wind is always blowing? And then, suddenly I hear “Tununak! Name, name, name, name, name, Eric!” and those negative thoughts flee my mind to be replaced by a sense of excitement and pride. I am going home. As we get in sight of Tununak I am reminded of the things I love about the village I have been placed in. We are one of the few villages (literally) that have significant hills and we have a river and my home is a mere hundred yards from the Bering Sea. Not to mention the best robotics team in the district.

A weekend with a dozen teenagers may sound like a lot of fun, but... (Part 2/3)

2010-01-07T22:19:00.000-08:00

Within minutes the requests start coming. “Can we go to the store?” “When are we going to the store?” “Are we going to the store?” “When can we go to the store?” “Let’s go to the store.” This is the continuation of a conversation that had started the week leading up to this moment. And now, here we were, so close. I am beginning to see why traveling to Bethel, and really, just traveling in general, is such a huge deal for my students. I wrote in an earlier blog my desires to get out of Tununak for a bit. I can only imagine that that desire is even stronger in my students. Don’t misinterpret this to think that they don’t like life in Tununak. They do. Most have spent their entire lives here or in a similar village and have friends and family here. They are familiar with the ways of village life and enjoy many aspects of it like being able to hunt and practice other subsistence and cultural activities. They feel safe walking around at night, aware that they know everyone in the village. They like the consistency and routines that life in a small village has to offer and they take pride in that knowledge. But they are also American teenagers under all of the same pressures that adolescence has to offer from raging hormones and a sudden acute interest in the opposite sex to a desire for independence and breaking away from total parent control to battling to define themselves amidst the identities being forced on them by the media, mass marketers, dominant Western culture, and their own unique Yup’ik culture. And so travel allows them a chance to get out and experience life in ways that are not possible in Tununak.

We hold off the horde long enough to get our bags and things situated in the room and then we set off to the illustrious “store.” On the way to the store we stop at Subway for dinner home of the five eight dollar footlong. You see, the fine print that accompanies the irritatingly catchy five dollar footlong jingle comes into effect in Alaska and Hawaii. Instead we have the eight dollar footlongs. It wouldn’t really matter though. At this point I am ready to pay twenty. I have no idea why that is. Back home I make it a point not to eat at Subway. I find their subs mediocre. Passable, but there is so much better. Months without options lower my standards however, as does the fact that I have to do nothing more than hand over some green paper (another thing I haven’t done in months) before eating. So much easier than cooking! And so delicious. The textures and flavors! Fresh sliced veggies, cold cuts, pepper jack cheese, white bread encrusted with intriguing spice blends …Oh the experience. I don’t care what anyone says, this is not normal food – there is something in these subs that elicits irrational responses in the human mind. And if I’m not proof enough, our team seemed to react in a similar way. Suddenly aware of the plethora of options, many had difficulties making decisions. Staring at the sandwich artist some could only mumble, “I want that one,” pointing in the general direction of the menu. One was thrilled that all had to do in order to get as much pop as one could drink was to buy the cup. What a world we are in!

After finishing up dinner we walked across the street to the store. The store, Alaska Commercial or the AC for short, according to its website, is “A retail company providing groceries and general merchandise in stores.” The AC, now a statewide chain began over 130 years ago as a series of trading posts offering early traders, miners, and missionaries food and supplies. The history is a bit more romantic than the stores are today. Ownership has changed hands a number of times and the current version looks very similar to any other big box store. It is, in a minor way, the rural Alaska’s equivalent to a mall. New fashions can be browsed, candy and pop can be bought and consumed, and people watching can be done. While waiting for all of our team to finish shopping came again the question “When can we go to the store?” We were still in the entryway to the building.

Gathering everyone up, counting and recounting, we begin our walk back. We are supposed to be at dinner at seven o’clock – a time fast approaching. What? Dinner? What about Subway? One word – teenagers. Metabolisms like they are going out of style. Not that I'm one to talk. Anyone that knows me knows that if I don’t eat, often, I will die. So after a quick meal of lasagna served from the Home Ec room at Bethel Regional High School (complete with lockers, hallways, subject specific classrooms…the real deal) we head back to our room at Gladys Jung. The gym is set up with about a dozen identical Lego courses so that the teams can perfect their programming. We are here for a reason – to compete in this competition. Time is running short and our two teams need as much time as possible to dial in their programs. A few hours later as the lights in the gym are cut, we return to our rooms for the evening. Of course, anyone who has ever been a chaperone, or maybe even a teenager before, knows that the night is still young. In fact, the night will stay young for three nights straight. Mornings come progressively early, but more on that later. For the moment we have movies to watch, annoying pop music to blast, and enough teenage humor to fill a dozen terrible movies.

I fell asleep around 2:00am. Derek, a little before that. The boys? Not sure. I can assure you it was after 2:00. Also after 2:00 we discovered something very peculiar with the classrooms in Gladys Jung Elementary. All the lights become activated by motion. What a wonderful (security?) system. Every trip to the bathroom, every toss in sleep, possibly even every dream of movement, turned on the lights. The nice part about staying up so late is that I was dead tired and slept through all the light flickerings. Derek could not and faithfully turned off the lights after each movement violation. This would set the pattern for the following nights. I would be awake until around the time the terrible dance music died down with Derek taking up the watch around the time the lights took on a life of their own with the end result in neither of us getting much sleep.

While our nights filled with little sleep and too much bad music, our days were filled with robotics. The competition is made up of four parts: the performance of robot and programming of course, and then each team is also evaluated on the technical aspect of their programs and robots, on a team work activity, and on a presentation they make highlighting a problem and a solution that is related to the theme picked by Lego. The theme for 2009 was transportation and our teams investigate transportation issues prevalent in Tununak including fuel efficiency of snowmachines (Alaskan for snowmobile) and airplanes. These four evaluations took place throughout Friday and Saturday giving our teams a bit of time in between to continue perfecting techniques and exacting programs.

At the end of two days of competing and not sleeping the results were in. Kind of. What I can tell you is that we did not win. At least we didn’t win overall. I am still kind of confused over the scoring process, but our junior high team did place high enough in one event to take home a medal. At our teams’ robots’ programs got progressively better over the weekend. Happy with our performance, a little bummed about not getting to go on to Anchorage, we were ready to head home. With bag lunches in hand we exited Gladys Jung immediately following the awards ceremony en route to the airport where a small fleet of planes were ready to fly us home. Unfortunately the weather was not ready. We made it to the parking lot of the airport before word reached us that Grant Air was not flying to the coast. Oh the joys of Alaska. Our students were have cheering half moaning – split between another trip to the store and more time in Bethel to visit with friends and relatives from other villages and that of being away from home one more night, sleeping on the floor of an elementary classroom. My feelings, were not split. I was tired. I had lessons to write for Monday. And I was worried that if the weather didn’t let up my sub notes might not make it through another whole day. Nothing anyone could do though, so worrying or complaining made little sense. Another night in Bethel.

It's a good day.

2009-12-21T19:19:00.000-08:00

Today is the winter solstice. Nine more seconds of sunlight tomorrow. Five hours, forty minutes, and nine seconds. Pretty awesome. I am in Minnesota at the moment so I won't be able to report on the affects, but I can only assume the would have been good.

Global warming. Yikes!

2009-12-15T20:59:00.000-08:00

This is a recent article from the NY Times discussing global warming and its effects on Native Alaskans.

Green Inc.: At Copenhagen, Native Alaskans Urge Action

By By LARS KROLDRUP

Published: December 15, 2009

Alaska’s indigenous people are seeing erosion, rising waters and melting permafrost – and they have sent representatives to Copenhagen to raise the alarm

And here is a related article about some of the specific problems facing Native Alaskan villages. The particular village in the article, Newtok, is part of our school district and the Nelson Island that they plan to move onto is indeed the Nelson Island that I live on. The article states that they are some of the first American refugees of global warming. That's a crazy thought.

Victim of Climate Change, a Town Seeks a Lifeline

By WILLIAM YARDLEY

Published: May 27, 2007

The permanently frozen subsoil, known as permafrost, upon which many Native Alaskan villages rest is melting.

In the words of one wise student "It's global warming really super hard."

(A note: I owe much of this post to B and S, from whom I got the article and the quote)

A weekend with a dozen teenagers may sound like a lot of fun, but... (Part 1/?)

2009-12-08T23:48:00.000-08:00

This past weekend I had the privilege to chaperone a group of twelve adolescent students as they went to Bethel to compete in the end of the season robotics competition. It wasn't as bad as it sounds. I know that to most people, the thought of 48 consecutive hours with a dozen teenagers sounds torturous. Of course, some parts were ("Chocolate milk makes me fart"), but the insight I gained into my students’ lives was rewarding. The insight into how all of my chaperones must have felt after nights of being responsible for me was, well, I wouldn’t say rewarding, but, rather, karmic.

Along with another teacher, Derek, we have been coaching our school's robotics team. Using Legos and laptops, the students are given a task to be completed by a robot created from the Legos. It is truly fantastic stuff. Lego has been involved in robotics since I was in elementary school, but I hadn't seen any of their kits since then. Technological advances have done wonders for the possibilities now available to student programmers. As well as standard programming like making motors move forward and backwards and variable rates, students also have at their disposal light, ultrasonic, touch, and sound sensors. Programs can become incredibly complex incredibly fast. A sample program and robot students made was fashioned like a guitar and made different pitches as the student moved a Lego platform up and down the neck of the guitar. For the past few months our team has been designing and programming their robot to complete a series of tasks in a specified time frame. This is a nationally recognized competition and a win would take us to Anchorage for State with an opportunity to continue on the Nationals in Atlanta.

Our plan was to leave Thursday afternoon. A total of fifteen of us were traveling: 12 students, Derek and myself, and our female chaperone, Monica. Travelling for school sports and activities is slightly different here in Tununak. Being 150 miles from Bethel, and without roads, piling into the trusty yellow school busses is not an option. Instead, we pile into a series of small planes. The order goes out to the airline and they send whatever planes they feel would work. This all seems pretty simple, but what I am coming to love about working here is that absolutely nothing is simple. Variables abound: weather (wind, rain, snow, etc.), availability of planes, God's Will, random miscommunications... The list goes on. So the plan is the make your plans then be ready. You never really know what will happen until the call from the plane comes over the VHF radios that lace the town.

"Ten minutes."

At this point the mad rush begins. The plane will be on the ground in ten minutes. This usually happens plus or minus an hour from the time the you and the airline had decided on. Students are plucked from classes. I am plucked from class; my sub had been standing by. Don full winter gear for travel: district policy - you never know if you will need to land in another village to be shuttled home by snowmachine (ie snowmobile) should bad weather close your runway. Boots, snowpants, winter coat, hat, mittens, the whole kit. Students pile into the sled behind the snowmachine with their bags, me on the snowmachine. Cruise down the frozen river to the airstrip. Cram into a Cessna 207 for the hour flight to Bethel. Seat belts on, unzip coat, engines roar as the plane takes off.

Once landed in Bethel we gather our luggage and pile into one of the district school busses. We are shuttled to the district offices (DO) to wait for school for the elementary school across the parking lot to end for the day so that we can move in. Keeping up with the pragmatic way of life out here, we will be sleeping on the floors of classrooms in Gladys Jung Elementary School. If you think this is strange, you may find it even stranger that this is common practice for everyone travelling in the district: special education itinerants, social workers, mentors, etc. as well as all travelling sports teams and coaches. At any one time in Tununak, we usually have a few guests a week camping out on the floors of our rooms. As our students mill about the DO I am informed by more than one person that a large cold front is coming in and that the airports aren’t planning on flying back out to the coast until Tuesday. Just a reminder that it is currently Thursday. That would mean six days in Bethel. As excited as I was to be in Bethel, that seemed to me to be about three days too many. As four o'clock rolls around and we gather our bags and hike over to the school. I thank the teacher for offering us her floor and promise we will have everything back in place in the morning (they have school after all).

It's a small world after all

2009-11-29T22:20:00.000-08:00

On Thursday I am scheduled to leave Tununak with one other teacher and twelve junior and senior high school students. We are coaches of the robotics team - an academic extracurricular activity involving Legos and computers that culminates in a competition in Bethel. This trip marks the first time leaving Tununak since September 26th. A month and a half in once place. About 55 days. And this place is small.

When thinking about moving here I tried to think about what life would be like. I had thought that I would get incredibly bored and watch a lot of movies. So far I haven't watched a ton of movies. I thought I would get sick of the people I work with and with my students. At this point I am no more sick of either as I probably would have been anywhere else.

I knew that I would miss everyone who reads this. My family and friends. And because I knew that I was able to prepare myself. It doesn't cure the longing to see everyone, but it makes it bearable. What surprises me the most are the things that I am missing that I hadn't predicted. They are a strange collection of things. And some of the following things are things I didn't even realize that I valued.

Things I miss...

Grocery shopping - being able to go into a store and look at fresh food and then being able to buy it and immediately eat it. A two week plus delay in payment to food delivery is a constant aggravation.

Options to do things I wouldn't do anyway like whether or not to shop on Black Friday for example. I enjoy not buying anything on Black Friday - anything I can do to prevent from trampling someone to death over a DVD player. It doesn't have the same feeling protesting something when you know that you didn't have a choice anyway.

Ice cream. Okay, this I probably could have predicted. But how I miss it. And Eskimo ice cream is not a substitution. There is no cream and no ice. Instead, with the main ingredient Crisco, it is little more than greased berries.

Meeting people my age. I quickly met my peers (as in the other teachers) in the first week of residence. Since then it's been slim pickings. I'm afraid that I am going to get stuck in some hypnotic trance at the sight of the first attractive girl my age I've seen in months.

Talking for an hour without mentioning school or students. When you live and socialize exclusively with the people you work with your professional life never leaves. I have always enjoyed the chance to escape work. Here it is an impossibility.

On Thursday I fly to Bethel, population 6000. In my previous life, 6000 is a small town. Very, very small. But 6000 is nearly twenty times the population of Tununak. And Bethel has two(!) grocery stores with frozen sections. So while Bethel may not cure all my longings, I've never been able to complain while eating ice cream.

It better get colder than this. Or as George Bush once said, "Bring it on."

2009-11-14T16:57:00.000-08:00

I walked to the post office today. It just snowed about three inches yesterday and the temperature was hanging out in the teens with a light breeze from the north. I decided to try out my new winter kit. Cabela's has some nice gear. I happily own some sweet black overall snowpants and a real parka complete with a coyote ruff hood. Oh yeah, I felt Alaska-y. I also felt hot. I knew before leaving my home that I was probably pretty overdressed, and I was. Point being, it better get colder. I want to be able to use my new stuff and not be sweating excessively. If any of you only needed one more reason before you start doing your part to stop global warming let it be this - that I want cold weather so my new stuff isn't a complete waste money. Get those CFLs and turn them off when you are not in the room. Turn down your thermostat at night. Walk somewhere. Bike everywhere else. Give me a reason to wear my gear.

NY Times - blowin' minds

2009-11-09T21:53:00.000-08:00

"The solar sail receives its driving force from the simple fact that light carries not just energy but also momentum — a story told by every comet tail, which consists of dust blown by sunlight from a comet’s core. The force on a solar sail is gentle, if not feeble, but unlike a rocket, which fires for a few minutes at most, it is constant. Over days and years a big enough sail, say a mile on a side, could reach speeds of hundreds of thousands of miles an hour, fast enough to traverse the solar system in 5 years."

Setting Sail Into Space, Propelled by Sunshine

By DENNIS OVERBYE

Published: November 10, 2009

"Light bulbs, bottle caps, toothbrushes, Popsicle sticks and tiny pieces of plastic, each the size of a grain of rice, inhabit the Pacific garbage patch, an area of widely dispersed trash that doubles in size every decade and is now believed to be roughly twice the size of Texas."

Afloat in the Ocean, Expanding Islands of Trash

By LINDSEY HOSHAW

Published: November 10, 2009

"Every Sunday morning, the deep, melodious voice of State Senator Rubén Díaz Sr. rumbles across the congregation at his Bronx church. On weekdays, it echoes across the Senate chamber as he rails against Medicaid cuts or abortion. Earlier this year, it enthralled thousands at a boisterous rally against same-sex marriage.

But ask him about the gay people in his own life, and Mr. Díaz’s voice grows quiet. His smile vanishes.

Two of his brothers are gay, he murmurs, one of them recently deceased. So is a granddaughter. There is an old friend who works for him in the Senate. And a former campaign aide.

“I love them. I love them,” says Mr. Díaz, who grew up one of 17 children in Puerto Rico. “But I don’t believe in what they are doing. They are my brothers. They are my family.”

His voice rises again. “So how could I be a homophobe?""

New York Gay Rights Foe Sees Nuance in His Stand

By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and JEREMY W. PETERS

Published: November 10, 2009

A case for indigenous languages

2009-11-02T20:01:00.000-08:00

"Wherever a Yup'ik comes from in the southwestern region of Alaska, he or she can communicate orally with other Yup'ik speakers from other areas (whether from St. Michael or Togiak) regardless of those slight differences in pronunciation and in vocabulary which occur from place to place. Likewise a person who can read and write in Yup'ik can communicate visually with other people in other places without any difficulty. Language unifies people.

Language is not merely a vehicle of communication, however. It is the nucleus or core of the people's culture. Language is one - perhaps the most important - thing that distinguishes one people from another. The distinctive culture which has developed from the days of the people's earliest ancestors is to a remarkable extent deposited and reflected in the language, as is the environment in which they have lived. Many things, feelings, and concepts specific to the Yup'iks could not be accurately expresses in any other language than Yup'ik.

Of all aspects of culture, language is the most resistant to change and loss. This implies that, when the Yup'ik language is lost, the distinctive Yup'ik culture will be totally and irretrievably gone. Once the Yup'iks are culturally and linguistically deprived to the marrow of the bones, all Yup'iks will be lost in the mosquito-like swarm of Kass'aqs and will be no more than additional few Kass'aqs, even if they do not look white. The people's identity could be kept and consolidated most effectively through language.

Like the other Alaska Native languages, Yup'ik had been moving dangerously close to extinction for almost a century especially because of the federal policy of "English only in American schools". But the tide is now changing. With a resurgence of interest in the language and culture among the people, Yup'ik has been slowly regaining viability since the start of bilingual education which was launched in 1970 in the Kuskokwim area."

Preface to Yup'ik Eskimo Orthography by Osahito Miyaoko and Elsie Mather in 1979

Interesting things I now know

2009-10-31T20:17:00.000-07:00

Living in rural Alaska affords me quite a bit of time to do, well, I guess I would call it nothing if I were living somewhere else. But of course I spend very little time doing nothing. So what am I doing? The simple answer is learning even more random knowledge from a variety of awesome sources.

The first is National Geographic. In my opinion, this magazine should be read by every single person on the planet. Or at least paged through by every single person. Where else can you learn about prehistoric crocodiles, the civil war in Somalia, and see a picture of grieving primates watching the burial of a beloved elder? And did you know that at the turn of the twentieth century 180,000 mummified cats were shipped from Egypt to Liverpool to be used as fertilizer for English fields?

I also spend a lot of time listening to podcasts. These internet packets of audio information have become my TV. To add to my list of things every person should do is to listen to the following programs. Both from the amazing world of public radio. Radio Lab is a bi-weekly broadcast that is amazing and covers many areas of science (parasites, randomness, birth and death), and This American Life is broadcast weekly and features about four stories on a common theme (price fixing, the Devil, the health care, children being cruel). The glory of these programs is their diversity of topics and they means of weaving them into the awesomeness of humanity. I highly recommend both. Here is a nice little video from a recent Radio Lab episode.

The last thing I will mention at the moment is a magazine called Good. The thing is, the magazine is just okay. It's aimed at the neo-greenies in America that frequent Starbucks to get their organic fair trade soy lattes in double walled carboard cups with plastic tops, but each issue has a series of graphics they call Transparencies . This little set has some of the more interesting manipulations of data into graphics I have seen. Here are two examples both on the topic of fuel efficiency. Another point for the efficiency of humans.

Click image for full size image
And add a point to biking - the most efficient form of transportation invented. By the way, they have a transparency up stating that Minneapolis is currently one tenth of a percent behind Portland at 3.8 percent for bike commuters. Booyeah.

I am not freaking out.

2009-10-26T21:55:00.000-07:00

I'm not. Really. Know why?

Because last week:

it got cold. Actually, that word should be reserved for a later time, but "cold" is, and always will be a relative term. Maybe I'll revise that to say that it felt cold. About 20 degrees. Fahrenheit. Really not a bad temperature, but then again, it is October. What really made it feel cold, what made it hurt, was the wind. We endured 35-45mph winds for three and a half days straight. My nostrils hurt walking from school to home.

the planes stopped coming. For three days. There was no mail, or packages, or fresh veggies and fruit - for three days. The wind was too strong to land a small plane. So they didn't come.

the river froze. Overnight. It froze. You could walk on it. People were. On the ice. And people were ice fishing. In October. On a river.

the bay froze. It looked like the Arctic. The Bering Sea was frozen. Salt water, with a freezing point below freshwater, was solid. A seal climbed out of the water and sat on the ice.

sunrise hit 10:00am. That would be midway through 2nd hour - US History.

And then this week:

the wind stopped. Calm. It is wonderful. Planes land. Planes bring packages and mail and food. My nostrils can breath happy knowing that frostbite is still a ways off.

the sun returned. Shocking how powerful a face full of sun can be regardless of the temperature. Shocking how it can warm your back as you sit awaiting a fish to bite your hook.

high tide came and swept the sea ice back out to sea. Blue water is again my view. The river also lost much of its ice. Not all, but enough to put the ice fishing opener on pause.

the sun was still shining when I left school at 6:00pm.

And so I am not freaking out. First of all because things have righted themselves. The weather became more Octoberly acceptable. But the main reason I am not freaking out is thus: like cold, I believe that phrase should be conserved for a time where its meaning is needed and it hasn't been watered down over weeks of me being overdramatic. So maybe I should end this with a caveat.
I am not cold...yet.
I am not freaking out...yet.

A sudden thought

2009-10-21T22:33:00.000-07:00

I haven't seen a pair of UGGs since I got to Alaska. You may be dying to know, "How do girls in Alaska find appropriate footwear to go with their miniskirts then?" They don't wear miniskirts.

My life is so much less stressful having to analyze this one less oddity of the teenage girl thought process.

Thoughts on a Tuesday night

2009-10-13T23:32:00.001-07:00

Today I received ten pounds of Peace Coffee. I made four jars of strawberry jam with frozen strawberries that got melty on their plane ride to me then froze into a brick. I coached robotics and played with Legos. I corrected some math homework and read some short stories. I listened to Bill Clinton's interview with Fox News on YouTube. I got YouTube less than twenty-four hours ago. It came with the internet - a two month process. I listened to a new Built to Spill song. It was okay. I watched Andrew Bird on the Current's website. It was awesome. I watched the rain fall - I think. It was blowing sideways. Maybe it never fell. I tried to call Citimortgage, but ended up in the automaton maze pressing numbers after the computer failed to recognize my a clearly enunciated "two"s. I listened to a podcast about Vlad the Impaler and what happens when you are impaled. I drank some peppermint tea with my neighbors. I got three postcards: one from the Phillipines, one from China, and one from Vermont. I got a piece of mail addressed to the math chairperson. That's me. On a Tuesday.

Tundra misconceptions - Pt 3/3

2009-10-09T15:29:00.001-07:00

The last thought on the tundra is how little I know about the tundra. This should be apparent from the previous two observations, but this short story should cement my lack of knowledge. Over Labor Day weekend there was the annual Blackberry Festival in Toksook Bay, one of our neighboring villages. Toksook is the closest village to us, a little more than six miles away, across the tundra and up over a hill. We planned on leaving Saturday morning and were getting all packed and suited up for the journey. Our hiking party consisted of my two neighbors, Ben and Sarah, Heidi and her husband George, and me. Ben and Sarah are teachers from New Yorkegon (umm…they taught in both New York and then Oregon before moving up to Alaska). Heidi is a teacher from Michigan who married the fourth member of our team, George, who is Yup’ik and grew up in Newtok, another village on the delta. As Ben, Sarah, and myself were putting on our hiking boots George came by to check on our progress. “You guys aren’t wearing rubber boots?” Sarah and Ben didn’t have any, while I did but hiking in them is literally a pain. Needless to say, our minds were pretty much already made up. We politely responded, feeling maybe a little nervous now, but still pretty set on our previous decision. “Why, should we?” George’s response only supported our lack of concern and unwillingness (in my case) in our footwear situation. “Well, you don’t need to wear rubber boots.” We left it at that.

Our hike began walking through uptown. Tununak, being the size it is, has both an uptown and a downtown, and entered the tundra. From here we had about a two mile hike to the “bridge” then up and over the hill into Toksook. Everything started fine, but about ten minutes into the tundra we began seeing reasons why both Heidi and George were wearing rubber boots. We had been following the four-wheeler tracks across the tundra. Tundra is similar to grass; the more you drive on it, the less of it there is. And like grass, underneath is mud. Now mud is not a huge problem. We were used to mud. Walking the dirt streets (yes, I can say streets because there are two) of Tununak is a weaving, dodging, at times leaping activity, but rarely a wet activity. What we were beginning to experience out in the tundra was that while it was possible to go around the mud puddles in the four-wheeler road, the surrounding tundra had the consistency of a wet sponge. Wetness was quickly becoming an issue. Lessons were being learned the hard way – when someone native to the area questions your decision not to wear rubber boots, you should also question that decision. And when a person native to the area is himself wearing rubber boots, you should not only question your decision, but change your plans. Too late though. A mile from Tununak, ankle deep in muck (which, by the way, is the Yup’ik word for water – how’s that for double entendre), we were on our way.

Having George with us proved to be a great benefit that became increasingly apparent on the walk home, but more on that later. With George in the lead, he used his experience walking through the tundra to guide us from if not dry, drier, spot to drier spot. By the time we got to the “bridge”, which turned out to be little more than a plank over the stream, we were wet, but not miserable.

Our hike back home, however, was a different story. Without our guide, we needed to apply our new knowledge of tundra navigation. Everything was going fine. I was leading when suddenly I looked up, and we seemed to be at a dead end. The trail kind of disappeared into a muddy, rutted out quagmire. I thought I saw some supportive spots and made my move. Nope, wrong. About a foot deep. Cold tundra water rushed into my non-knee high hiking boots. The nice thing about waterproof boots is that they keep water out. The bad thing about waterproof boots is that they keep water in. I could feel with every step the half-cup of water sloshing around in my boots, but we made it through the first challenge.

Ben took up the lead now and was doing a fine job. We were beginning to get pretty confident navigating dry spot to dry spot, correctly identifying which spots of tundra were stable and dry, and which were neither. All was going well, I was watching my feet to make sure I didn’t slip in the mud, when I heard Ben up ahead. “Oh! Oh! Oh no!” then Sara “Get the camera! Get the camera!” I stopped walking and looked up expecting to see the thing that she wanted Ben to take a picture of. By this time in our journey we had discussed that you can only get so wet. Well this is true, but I guess we were only referring to our feet. Ben, knowing that his feet were already soaked, was doing what we had decided was the most expedient way to cross the tundra: charging it through the puddles. It was faster this way, and again, you can only get so wet. But what none of use were expecting was a three foot deep puddle. Ben had unknowingly stepped off solid ground and his foot found ground three lower. Sara’s yell meant to save the camera, not the moment. In the moments immediately following I am grateful that the puddle was not deeper because we were laughing so hard a rescue would have been impossible. Ben’s step into the sinkhole quickly redefined our idea that you can only get so wet. Watching Ben wade out of the puddle he had found Sara and I, not wanting to follow Ben, found a, while longer, significantly less wet. The next twenty minutes over the tundra passed quickly without incident and I was celebrated our return to Tununak with an emptying of the boots of tundra water and a warm shower. Here’s to paying more notice to the subtle nuances of a new culture. Cheers.

Tununak more remote than the Amazon

2009-10-05T20:23:00.001-07:00

My good friend Christoph just sent me an article on a study done on the remoteness of regions in the world. The scientists studied how long it would take to travel by road, rail, or water from an area to the nearest city of 50,000 people. So if you live in a rural Minnesota it would be a calculation of drive time to that nearest city, let’s say Minneapolis. Things get interesting when either (1) you are very far away from a city of 50,000, or (2) you lack roads, or a combination of the two.
* picture taken from
According to this study a number of things jumped out at me. The first is that a vast majority (90%) of the world is no more than two days from a city of 50,000. That goes for the Amazon and the Sahara and every other part of the world (not including Antarctica). The next thing is that the most remote place on the planet, a spot on the Tibetan Plateau, is three weeks from a city of 50,000. Three weeks! The study says one day by car, the rest, all twenty of them, on foot. The last thing to stick out to me is that Tununak, where I live, is in that ten percent; we are more than two days travel to the nearest town of 50,000. That is crazy. We are more isolated than nearly all of Africa, including much of the Sahara. Than nearly all of the Amazon.

I haven’t really figured out what this all means. At the moment we are able to travel in and out Tununak of by plane. Really that is the only way. There are no roads linking us to any other town, not even Toksook Bay which is only six miles away. I am told that the true isolation, the true remoteness will kick in during the winter as snow and weather close our runway down for days on end. Last year they went nearly three weeks without a plane landing in Tununak. Food, mail, packages – everything stops, gets backed up in Bethel.

I don’t have a whole lot more on this topic at the moment, but I will follow up in a few weeks. I came to the realization today that I won’t be leaving Tununak until Christmas unless I travel chaperoning sports (which I may still get talked into). That would be about three months not leaving an area not much bigger than one square mile.

Read the article though – the graphics are amazing.
Where's the remotest place on Earth?

Tundra misconceptions - Pt 2/3

2009-10-04T19:26:00.000-07:00

The second misconception that I am in the process of revising is that tundra is a solitary, monochromatic lifeform. What I have come to see is that the tundra is a solitary, monochrome lifeform only from the air; a solitary, but colorful lifeform from about six feet up (me standing); and an incredibly dense, diverse multitude of life and color when you are only inches from it. This conceptual revision came to me the first time we walked up the hill right outside of Tununak. We were heading up to the rock people. I had mentioned wanting to know where the berries were - I had heard they were everywhere and yet I had seen none. What I learned was that I was looking for something that does not exist - bushes. There is very little on the tundra that grows higher than a few inches, the berries included. I had not realized that I had been walking over berries for the last hundred feet. Upon closer inspection I saw that the berries truly were everywhere. Small blackberries, looking and tasting nothing like blackberries back home, were growing nearly everywhere I looked. I also noticed for the first time how incredibly varied the tundra was. I can't make a good estimate about the number of different plants growing in a patch of ground, but it has to be dozens of species in dozens of colors spanning the spectrum from deep reds and purples to all shades of green. The flowers come in bright blues and purples, yellows and whites, and then there are berries coming in red, white, orange, black, and blue. Hardly a monotonous place.

On food

2009-10-04T19:08:00.000-07:00

I wanted to cover a topic rather close to my heart: food. Simply put I love food. All aspects of food, and it seems that with each year I become more in love with food. And maybe about now I should switch the word love to obsessed, but I must remember that I am trying to keep up the front of sanity.

My love with food began with eating it. As I grew, my experience in food expanded, and I found that I really like eating food and trying new kinds of food. I have been striving toward authenticity in my eating for a while now – getting experiences that most resemble what they are advertising. For example think of Taco Bell’s image of Mexican food and a legitimate taco at a small taco shop owned and operated by Mexicans. Authenticity. More recently my search for authenticity has evolved to search for ways to actually eat food. Too many of the things claiming to be food is really anything but, and as a result has begun to terrify me. I recently heard of a dessert made at a fancy restaurant that has for ingredients not a single actual food – it is all artificial ingredients (ie chemicals). Interesting science fair project – horrifying gastronomic project.

Then came my love for preparing food. This is tightly linked to the first love: eating food. People, for some reason, are surprised that I like to cook. But my response has been the same for a while. “I cook because I love to eat.” It’s a means to an end at times, but the more I do it, the more I am taking pleasure in the process. To combine the ingredients and to end with a mouthwatering, eyeball watering masterpiece is magical.

Most recently came my love of creating food. I recently began a garden back home in Minnesota with my mom. It was a modest 20’x40’ plot that we rented from the local garden center. It started out as a brown rectangle with considerable chunks of dirt and an intimidating amount of clay. I was convinced nothing I wanted would grow and the weeds would reclaim my rectangle. But, to my infinite surprise, food came. Slooowly at first. And then, out of nowhere I had zucchini the size of, to steal a comparison, baby seals. And beets, and beans, and beans, and beans, and tomatoes, that I heard are too prolific, and potatoes, and strawberries, and hot peppers, sweet peppers, peas, watermelon, cantaloupe, squash, and lettuces, and lastly (I think) carrots. All these edible items erupting from a previously cracked, clumped, clay riddled patch of dirt.

And so with all of these aspects of food present in my life, my move to Alaska involved a high sacrificing all three of these loves for an unknown amount of time. At our new-teacher inservice before school started they asked us to write a fear down that we had for the upcoming year. I am not lying: I wrote about eating good food. The thing is, Tununak is 125 miles from Bethel, accessible only by air (or boat), and Bethel is another 400 miles from Anchorage, also accessible only by air. Our food options are incredibly limited. Limited and extremely expensive. You have never really experienced sticker shock until you walk into Swanson’s in Bethel. Ten dollar bags of Doritos…seven dollar Oreos…good thing I don’t eat much of either of those. But nine dollar gallons of milk, eight dollars for five pounds of flour. Add that to the fact that the native culture doesn’t value fresh fruit and vegetables limiting further access to such in the two stores here in Tununak. I was a bit worried.

Saving graces began trickling in, thankfully. Most of the teachers out here order bulk through distribution companies specializing in shipping to bush Alaska. My neighbors tipped me off to a company in Oregon, Azure Standard, that specializes in organic and natural foods. Here is where I got my 50lb bags of beans, nearly 100bls of flours, and pounds of dried fruit in addition to a lot of other real food items. We also heard about a CSA (community supported agriculture) farm based out of Washington that ships to bush country Alaska. Kind of contrary to the typical CSA philosophy, but the Full Circle Farms has brought fresh, organic produce into my life again, and for that fully forgive any corruption of the ideal they may be causing. Love number one is safe – I have access to real, authentic food.

The second love – preparing food, was totally dependent on clearing the first hurdle. With that done, I could prepare world-class food. True, I am still terribly limited. Back home I could run (literally) to the store and pick up a missing ingredient, but here that is not an option. The reality is that it takes about two and a half weeks from placing a food order to receiving the food. Which means I have to plan my meals out at least that far in advance. This has required a total shift in thinking for me, one that is full of frustrating disappointments when my mind, still stuck in MN thinking, comes up with a great meal idea (Indian) only to remember that I don’t have any rice – or cumin, or cilantro, or lime, etc. The final result, though, is a positive one. When I plan accordingly, my life is awesome. A recent dinner consisted of roasted fall vegetables (potatoes and squash mailed from my MN garden, beets and zucchini from our CSA); chicken breast (that I acquired on a recent trip to Bethel); salad with red peppers, cherry tomatoes, and carrots (all from our CSA), and bread that I made. Life is okay thus far.

I am still working on the third aspect – creating food. It is possible, and in fact, our principal has a grow room in his house where he gets fresh greens and herbs. I am still trying to iron out the details. I first need to procure soil. I had plans of getting a worm bin (using a couple thousand earthworms to compost food wastes) to create compost, and it still may happen, but our weather is cooling off fast and I worry about having worms shipped and arriving alive. Any advice here would be appreciated.

Even without the last being fulfilled, I am incredibly happy about the first two parts of my obsession. Being able to attain and eat good food is a comforting fact. Seeing our box of fruit and veggies arrive in Tununak is such an oddly pleasing sight, but I should have expected as much. I love food.

Tundra misconceptions - Pt 1/3

2009-09-29T20:01:00.000-07:00

The tundra holds a mythological appeal for me. It has always been something of a surreal landscape, something that I know exists but is so exotic that it can’t really exist. It ranks with the rainforests and the corral reefs of the world. Glaciers rank up there, too. These geographic features define an area above and beyond the landscapes I am used to seeing. These geographic features also hold an ecology so foreign to me that anything I read in books or see on television cannot possibly prepare me for what those features actually are. As of this moment in life I have now had contact with three out of the four I listed - corral reefs, glaciers, and now the tundra so I know that they do exist. But with each a similar feeling overwhelms me as I observe them.

After describing how much I read and how much I watch, nothing can educate me as much as how much I experience, I feel that some things need to be shared so that you can get just a slight feeling for the tundra. And I feel obligated to share a few things that people need to know about tundra that was lacking in my conception of tundra before experiencing it firsthand. My conception of tundra was that of a cold, foreboding environment, dry and brittle, light green to brown, invoking if not death, at least despair. This, I now know, is wrong on all accounts. After a few trips around Tununak across the tundra my initial reactions were centered around number one - how soft it is, number two - how many different plants they are growing in any square feet, and three - how little I truly know about the tundra.

Let me expound on these thoughts. First of all, walking in the tundra is like walking on a mattress, albeit a chunky mattress. Each step involves the constant monitoring and calculating of where to best place your foot next, a process similar to hiking a mountain trail. Then you modify your calculations with a certain margin of error due to the uncertainty of how much your foot will sink. This is one part of walking in the tundra that is unlike walking on anything else. One step may be on relatively sturdy ground when the next will involve sinking close to a foot. There are also rocks that speckle the landscape that themselves are speckled in lichens and mosses giving the rocks a type of tundra camouflage adding a very sturdy step to the mix.

Random thoughts on solar sanity

2009-09-22T08:56:00.000-07:00

Today, September 22, at 5:18 pm, marks the autumnal equinox. At this point in time the Earth is at one of the four key points in its orbit around the sun. At the two ends of the orbit are the summer and winter solstices marking the points in our orbit where the our hemisphere, due to the Earth’s slant, is closest and furthest away respectively from the sun. The equinoxes, however, mark a tipping point. At the equinox, each hemisphere is equidistant to the sun. After that moment, we in the Northern Hemisphere will no longer be slanting toward to sun, but rather, away from it, each day being more pronounced than the last. What this means is that everyday between now and the winter solstice we begin to get less and less sunlight day to day. Its significance to me is that it is also the tipping point between my relative daily sunlight and that of everyone else I know. You see, the further north you are located in your hemisphere, the more severe the difference in sunlight becomes. At 5:18 I will switch from having more sunlight per day than everyone back home to the more depressing less sunlight per day. Here ends the astronomy lesson.

To mark this milestone, this beginning in a way, I wanted to set some baseline measurements with which you will be able to measure my sanity as I enter winter. I am doing this in an attempt, half facetiously, to make sure that if anyone notices a slip in my sanity, they immediately direct me to my sunlight imposter lamp sitting unplugged in the corner of my house. The way that I want to establish these baselines is to make a few statements indicating what I have come to see as normal living in Alaska. I feel I should also make a few statements indicative of the random thoughts already floating about in my head. Shall we begin?

I do not have a TV, DVD player, radio, and at the moment internet in my home. In addition, alcohol, from cooking wine to vodka, is prohibited by village ordinance in Tununak.

I feel that it is perfectly normal to buy twenty-five pounds each of two different kinds of beans and/or one hundred pounds of flour.

I feel that it is perfectly normal to consider buying twelve packs of Newman Os, and am quite taken with the fact that they are 15% off this month only! on Azure.

I look forward with great anticipation to getting packages in the mail, regardless of the outrageous cost of shipping.

I refer to four wheelers as Hondas regardless of manufacturer in the same way I call all tissues Kleenex.

I am in the process of procuring worms for a worm compost bin for my food scraps with the intention of creating compost then using the compost and my sun imposter to grow fresh vegetables.

Okay, a break, because I am beginning to think that I am already too late. But in the (butchered) words of Joseph Heller, “Those that know they are insane cannot possibly be insane because consciousness of insanity is the definition of sanity.” Perhaps there is still hope. And now I return to the random thought part of my baseline assigning.

We romanticize the Native Americans for their concepts on waste , regarding in high esteem the fact that after killing an animal they leave not a part unused. However, in our culture we regard the modern equivalent, a hot dog, as anything but romantic.

If someone were standing on the North Pole, every direction he or she pointed would be south. How would you give directions to that person?

Two jars of salsa are worth three boxes of cereal.

My knives are sharp. I have now cut myself twice – once slicing beets, once picking the seed out of a melon. I need to stop cutting myself until I am back in an area that has medical facilities I trust to stitch me up.

Eleven days equals twenty-one. Six to seven days equals never. Overnight equals the day after tomorrow. My brain just broke.

And that is that. Baselines set. Stay tuned. Hold on. It begins.

How not to catch a fish

2009-09-11T17:12:00.000-07:00

Here in Tununak we have a river that weaves through town. I live on one end of town, and where we fish is near the bridge crossing the river on the other side of town. A week ago now I planned on getting a bit of fishing in with some of the other teachers. We were going to eat dinner and then gather our things and make the ten minute walk to the bridge. Midway through dinner we were interrupted by the knocking of children on the kitchen window.

This has come to be a common occurrence for we, the teachers, apparently, are objects of great interest to the local inhabitants under four feet in height. And we, being teachers, all know that if you give a mouse a cookie they will never go away...but, really, how can you ignore the sweet requests of children when all they want is to know what we are doing? And so we cave and we open the window and we begin talking to these miniature humans. And as we do we let slip that we are going down to the river and they quickly ask if they can come and we already know that this question is not really a question but merely a statement and that we will have a small escort of three children. Okay, we think, no big deal.

So we clean up dinner and our escort is awaiting at the front door. Only it has grown to about six children in the short time we were washing dishes. Alright, five fisherpeople and six local experts under four feet. Still not a big deal.

Our journey to the river begins. But as we walk, children with eyes of eagles and ears of owls, notice our journey and our escort becomes an entourage. Not only have they grown in number, but size as well. We have now acquired the junior and senior high. As our number grows, so does the noise, and as the noise builds more and more children are attracted. I believe we have reached critical mass. It's only a matter of time now. By the time we got to the bridge we are approaching thirty. Let me remind you that the entire school only has 120 students. So here we are with nearly a quarter of the school, none of which happened to bring fishing rods. Now some may be already making predictions as to how our fishing trip panned out. Let me mention a few more things to solidify those predictions.

First is that everyone of these children has more experience fishing in a single finger than our entire teacher party had combined. Second is that when someone, anyone, is near water without a fishing rod but with an ample number of pebbles and rocks, they are prone to throwing those pebbles and rocks into the water. And last is that fish are shy, skittish creatures by nature and don't respond well to loud, splash inducing children.

And so our night of fishing turned into a night of casting poorly to the chagrin of laughing natives only to reel in, repeatedly, an empty hook due in part to our inexperience catching fish and helped along being ensured that none of us got lucky and snagged a fish because all of the fish were far away from us after the onslaught of rocks and pebbles. And so we did not catch any fish (unless you count the the measly devilfish), but the weather was great, the moon was full, the sunset over the Bering beautiful, and the children, while unable to bring us any fish, did bring a night of smiles and laughter. Not too bad for a Friday night in Tununak.

Settling in to the bush

2009-08-29T18:01:00.000-07:00

I am approaching a month in Alaska, and life is starting to fall into a routine again. New teacher orientation and district trainings are over (for the moment) along with the flights to and from Bethel. School has begun, my boxes I shipped have arrived, and my food I ordered is now here. Life in Alaska has begun.

Up until the last moment my teaching schedule was in flux. But on that first day of school it looked like this:
Period 1 - HS Math
Period 2 - HS US History
Period 3 - HS Math
Period 4 - HS Writing
Period 5 - JH World History
Period 6 - JH Math
Period 7 - JH Art
My classes have between 9 students in the junior high and 15 in some of the high school classes. Almost all are from Tununak with a few from nearby villages (Newtok, Toksook Bay, etc.). Getting acquainted with the curriculum, materials, and routine has consumed nearly every minute of my previous two weeks. Each day my grasp on all of that has become a bit tighter. I hear by the tenth year it is quite a bit easier.

In postal news, all of my boxes (I mailed six) arrived. Cookware, clothes, books, bedding, alarm clock, and all my other things arrived over the course of two weeks. Of course none of them made the eleven day estimate (calendar or work days) that the post office made, at least they made it.

My food also arrived, again over the course of two weeks. I am becoming increasingly interested in being able to see the journey my packages make. For one, why would boxes shipped at the same time arrive days and, at times, weeks apart, looking anywhere from absolutely perfect to absolutely appalling. But it is all here, and I guess that is something. And I acquired some bonus products. One company (Span Alaska) accidentally shipped me a box with nine bottles of vegetable oil and a 25lb bag of white sugar - yippee I guess. Azure, the other company I ordered from, added a 5lb bag of muffin mix - a bit more exciting, especially with the prospect of picking some of the wild blueberries that are growing in the tundra.

Food items that invoked unexpected emotions are thus:
12 - 12oz bags of Ghiradelli chocolate chips (Extreme joy)
25lb bags of kidney beans, black beans, and dried corn (Um...that is a lot of small things)
4lbs of yeast to share with my neighbors (Hmmm, look at all those creatures)
the unexpected veggie oil under the 25lbs of sugar (Wait, there is no way I ordered this!? Or did I? Nope, definitely not.)

Other than school and unpacking boxes I spend quite a bit of time hanging out, eating, talking, and everything else with the other teachers. Walks up the hill to the stone people, or over the tundra to the cross, or along the beach in search of fossils also dot the weeks. I have been making a conscious effort not to think that it is cold or windy. Because from what I hear, this is not cold, and this is not wind. That will come. Until then, I am going to go fishing, and berry picking, and hiking, and save my comments on the weather for the times that actually deserve the observation
.

I understand the physics of flight, but...

2009-08-15T20:43:00.000-07:00

but in a plane the size of a mini van barreling down the runway, prop spinning, engine roaring, pilot pushing buttons as various bells and dings go off makes one question Bernoulli's principle informing me that a couple thousand pound vehicle can leave the ground in a controlled manner. And then on top of that you know that your flight is at its weight capacity because you have been forced to leave behind all but two of your bags to be sent out on a flight the following day.

Sure enough though, regardless of my skepticism, the small plane's nose begins to lift and then the wheels, which I have been watching with with nervous anxiety leave the ground and away we go, the rapid acceleration as the plane climbs pushing me back in my seat. As I begin to relax a patch of turbulence throws me back into thoughts of plummeting back to Earth.

It really is an amazing way to travel though, all things considered. On one hand it is the only way to travel to Tununak - there are no roads leading here, but it offers a glimpse of the landscape, untouched by humans in any way except for the occasional village or fish camp scattered about the tundra. This is such an awesome sight for me that all three flights I have now taken keep my eyes glued to the landscape beneath me.

Tununak lies within the Yukon-Kuskokwim Wildlife Refuge, a 19 million acre refuge home to a wide range of wildlife - migratory birds, ducks, muskox, caribou, bear, moose, many types of fish in the rivers and streams, along with the marine life that thrives on the coast such as several type of seal, walrus, whale, otter, beaver, and halibut to name a few. Approximately 25,000 people share this land as well, primarily located in small villages like mine. Of that number the majority are Yup'ik Eskimos.

Week One

2009-08-10T15:21:00.000-07:00

I flew in to Bethel on Monday the 3rd of August. Bethel is a small town of about 6300 340 miles west of Anchorage on the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta. The town is situated along the Kuskokwim River, the lesser known of the two rivers the delta is named after.

New teacher inservices started the day after I arrived. I am one of 53 new teachers to the district - out of 350 teachers total. We are told that this turnover rate is good for rural Alaska districts. Most of the new teachers are from the northern of the lower 48 states, a few from Arizona or California. Those from Minnesota are not hard to come by. Apparently we think that our winters are no different than the ones here. I am starting to question that assumption.

After three days of inservices I flew out to Tununak with the two other new teachers at my school and our principal. We flew out on a Cessna 207, a single prop plane that seats six. This truly is a fantastic way to travel - 500 feet above the green tundra potholed with meltwater lakes and ribbons of blue water going here and there. At one point a small group of musk ox inspired our pilot, knowing that this was our first flight, to circle back, getting low to the ground to get us a better look. This act of kindness acted on my stomach more than anything. In about an hour we landed on a gravel strip in Tununak. We walked along the beach to our housing arrangements that are a converted BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) school. Our housing sits less than one hundred yards from the water and at the bottom of a hill that has our school, Paul T. Albert Memorial School, at the top. Not a bad spot at all.

That night, without any of my boxes having arrived yet, I went out cast netting with one of the teachers who grew up in a village nearby called Newtok. I watched him throw the net bringing up one, two, and even three whitefish at a time. In about ten throws I netted one. Apparently fishing is more than luck.

The plan

2009-07-31T20:53:00.001-07:00

I leave for Alaska to teach high school math in 64 hours. Small coastal village 500-some miles west of Anchorage. No cars, no roads, no stores, 120 students in a PreK-12 school. Fresh salmon. Yup'ik. It's going to be a change.