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 […]
Category: Mostly Alaska: Life as an educator and citizen
Stories about teaching and living in Alaska
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 […]
Termination dust
Walking with my son, aka Younger Brother, on this mid-November day, I was startled to see snow on the top of Sunnahae Mountain. I immediately felt cold! Younger Brother kindly pointed out that the cold sensation might have been augmented by any number of other factors, including the wintery-flavored wind, my lack of a hat, […]
Fall flowers are nice too
“Let’s talk about the flowers that bloom in the spring,” my mother would say whenever someone started to drift towards coarse in their mode of conversation. As my sister Laura reminded me, one of us was pert enough to once ask her, “why can’t we talk about the flowers that bloom in the fall sometimes?” […]
An Alaskan ferry tale
These days, Prince of Wales Island is a really happenin’ place. We even have our very own ferry, with daily service to Ketchikan, which, in the local parlance, is our “hub.” In the bad old days, the Alaska Marine Highway (AMH) would occasionally throw us a line, in the form of a weekly ferry in […]
Water, water, everwhere
I have lived in many Southeast Alaska communities, each one smaller than all the others, and the availability and quality of the water has been a mixed bag. We lived in Coffman Cove for four years in the early nineties, and the “better not drink the water” notice was up more often that it was […]
Holding on for dear life
This morning, I woke up wearing a furry feline hat. No, I have not gone into the business of turning pets into designer fashion. What I mean is I woke up to find my beloved, twenty-something cat Socks wrapped around my head, claws lightly gripping my forehead. My perimeter-breach alarm was just beginning to chime, […]