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 […]
Category: Mostly Alaska: Life as an educator and citizen
Stories about teaching and living in Alaska
Bell-to-bell instruction
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 […]
Bush mail
“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 […]
In which I remember a friend, and acquire a new toy
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 […]
Rhubarb, the other carnivorous plant
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 […]
Assault on Salmonberry Hill
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 […]
A teeny tiny act of kindness
“Would you like some fresh ground pepper on your salad, sir?” I ask dutifully. I am nineteen years old, far from home and family, and I am dressed like a tavern wench, complete with ruffled skirt and blouse, white stockings, cameo choker and mob cap. The scene is a since-defunct Anchorage restaurant known as Clinkerdagger, […]
Fight, flight or freeze
It is the summer of 1982, which makes me twenty-two, and not for the first time that summer I am afraid that I might die in about the next two seconds. The source of this fear is my participation in an Intermediate Mountaineering class through Anchorage Community College. At this moment, we are coming down […]
Beware the roving bantha
I have heard it said that a bear’s only natural enemy is a meteorite; perhaps the same is true of snowplows. On Prince of Wales Island, snowplows move fast on the narrow, unlit roads, sporting a vast array of blinking colored lights, outlining a shape vaguely reminiscent of a Star Wars pack animal. Sometimes they […]
Bee-arruh-arruh
I should start by explaining that “bee-arruh-arruh” is how you spell “brr” when you are laying on your Southern accent with a trowel. This was a favorite remark of my father’s when he would come in from a cold day, or when he would head downstairs to stoke the fire. During the winter of my […]