Stories about teaching and living in Alaska
When I was a teenager in the 1970’s, I worked summers at the Triple A travel agency in Richmond, Virginia. I was reminded of this experience by a recent conversation regarding fall foliage. In my day, long before the advent of the internet, before Google Maps Lady was even a glint in a rich man’s […]
It is 10:01 a.m. I am sitting on the steps of this bush Alaska teacher apartment, waiting for my ride to the airport. The plane, at last report, is due to land at 10:10. I have already called the local airline agent twice today. The first time it went to voice mail. The second time, […]
Or so I’ve heard. Friday was my last day of subbing in this small town. The regular teacher is back, smiling and restored to health, and I helped her move some of the classroom furnishings into the positions that she prefers to have them. Later she worried that she had offended me, and I did […]
It has been four days since I ran out of peanut butter. Never mind that I have eggs, cheese, and canned salmon. It is peanut butter that I want now. The cargo plane is, at last report, due at ten minutes to six. At twelve minutes to six, I jump into the school truck (not […]
It is 10:00 p.m., more or less. I’m sitting in the comfiest chair in my teacher apartment in bush Alaska, where I will be for two more weeks. In the bush, not in the chair. Although it is a pretty nice chair. . . But I digress. I hear a sound that at first I […]
The leaders of this rural Alaskan school district want what any self-respecting educational leader wants: uninterrupted learning for students, all day and every day. Who could argue with that? However. Here’s a shining example of what sometimes happens in a rural Alaska school. On this particular day, probably my third of subbing here, the phone […]
“There is no store out there,” said Human Resources. “You will have to bring all your groceries with you. Also, there is nothing in the new teacher apartment, so you will need some pots and pans and flatware. And bedding.” “OK,” I said. I was on my way for a month of long-term subbing in […]
I think often of my friend Frances, and more so in the spring and summer when I am engaging in yardwork and gardening. Frances and I met at a self-help group in Anchorage in the mid-eighties when I was 25 and she was in her middle sixties. She was a tiny, smiling thing, unabashedly sporting […]
Who doesn’t love a good old-fashioned meat-juice IV? Take my little back yard rhubarb patch, for instance. This often-misunderstood plant, with its poisonous leaves and delicious stalks, is a straight-up carnivore. To keep the plants happy, we learned to bury fish and crab carcasses close beside them; they would gobble that stuff up by the […]
I have decided to win this one. Many years ago, my husband and I identified the best spot in our yard for a garden, and began feeding it compost, thereby building up a raised area of rich soil that gets as much sun as one can reasonably expect in this part of the world. And […]