other – Page 11 – Front Porch Coffee

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Dear trend: eat my dust

That trend? The one where whenever I have a great day, it’s followed by a bad day? Crushed it. Thursday was a great day, and I knew friday was gonna try to be bad. So I came in swinging one two one two. Start of the day: ‘ok kids. whoever has the best day gets one of my mega twix bars.’ Five minutes of free time at the end of class if they work hard. You name it. Super patience in my tone and bearence, but no tolerance for breaking classroom rules. Full night of sleep. And oh it tried, and tried, to be a bad day, but it wasn’t. It was a good day.

Victory.

And then what happened today? Another day. Tomorrow, be what you may, i’m pretty content right now.

Typewriter style, this post. no edits (well, except for one. and two typo corrections), type it out and post it. why? miles to go before i sleep, miles to go.

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East of Eden

I suppose there’s a good reason that the ‘great books’ are called great. East of Eden was incredible.

And I feel that a man is a very important thing–maybe more important than a star. This is not theology. I have no bent towards gods. But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed–because ‘Thou mayest.’

-John Steinbeck

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One of those kinda trends

I’ve noticed this unfortunate (or maybe not? depends on the causality, I think) trend. On a given night that I feel great about my job, where I am, and what I’m doing..the next day is difficult like nobody’s business.

Today, no exception to be found, only one more observation, sorta a lemma: the better I feel, the tougher the day. And I felt GREAT last night.

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One of those kinda times

Handwritten last night. By the time I’d taken in the northern lights dancing through the stars and across the sky, walked up to the duplex and back down to the helipad with my camera and tripod, the cloud cover had blown in, and through it the lights showed still. Incredible. It sorta came through in the photo.

Early out, kids run free from school at 2:00pm, teachers meeting two-thirty to three, we move three pallets of canned food into the school kitchen from a connex (shipping container), human chain Hey-Oh Throw a box of #10 cans of apricots up to the next man on the stairs, boss mr. willis. Done with that at 5:00, hungry enough to eat a horse.
Half a bag of BBQ Lays and a full-to-the-brim bowl of beef stew later, I’m comatose in the recliner. Veg for two hours. Espresso at 9 and back at it, get those lesson plans done through thursday. I’m finally on it, finally moving past the hell of day-by-day lesson planning at ten at night night-by-night. Feelin real good. Done at 11, call it a night and step outside. No, not this way, the shortcut straight up to the duplex, no, tonight a short walk through the village. Back through school and out the front door, singing out loud Angel At My Door, and I look up and the sky’s all lit up with the northern lights like I’ve never seen them before.
I think I’ll sleep in a little bit tomorrow.

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Another week

Another week goes by, work work workin’. Hoping dearly for a full day off next weekend. Knock on wood, cross my fingers.

Two goals for this week:

1. Stay ahead on lesson planning.

2. Take pictures.

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I hope you can read this up there

I found a rockstar in the most isolated town in the us of a, found one and bought it for five bucks, drank it and watched the wild waves crash in and thought about you. Miss you, Joe.

-Dave

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Bush Order

What’s a bush order? Food. Bought at Costco in Anchorage, packed by a bush-shipping expediter, shipped up to Nome then helicoptered out to Diomede.

The mail came, finally, after a long wait. It came on thursday, and it made me happy for two reasons:
1. because the second half of my personal belongings (two rubbermaids) are now here instead of sitting in Nome
2. because part of my bush order came

Only three boxes (total: 60-70lb) of my 400 pounds of food made it before the chopper was grounded in Wales with a Check-Engine light. But in those boxes there was joy. Coffee. Fifteen pounds of it. In one of the rubbermaids, my coffee grinder and my espresso maker. In another of the three boxes, California Dates. Pure joy.

The chopper’s supposed to come again on wednesday, weather permitting, with (knock on wood) aprox. 320 more pounds of food in boxes with my name on them.

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The first week

Well, I survived the first week of school. Thousands have done the same, some haven’t. Lots of hard work and a few small victories, and one big victory.

Ring Theory was the hardest class I took in college, and up till now it’s been the toughest work I ever did. Dethronement happened: lesson planning has taken first place, and we’re not talking winning by a millisecond, this is an all-out Usain Bolt style annihilation. The competition wasn’t beat…there was no competition.

Head down, keep your legs moving, and don’t forget to breathe, dave.

ganbatte.

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Long time coming

You know that feeling two thirds of the way through a great movie or book when you feel the story coming together, the pieces find their places, the characters find their strides, the story picks up, things start to get good..yeah, that feeling.

I’ve got it burnin’ in my bones and man oh man does it feel good.

Editors note: the last post, albeit true, was a wee bit deceitful. My actual commute is a long staircase down a rocky hillside, at the very far side of the picture above, which was taken from the helicopter that dropped us five teachers at Diomede yesterday.

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Commute

I rode a helicopter to work today.

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Keep your heart young

Keep Your Heart Young, by Brandi Carlile

So take a picture of the one you love and put it in a locket
Go dig up your time capsule and the blueprints for your rocket
Keep in touch on a fake CB, that same old tic-tac box
Pack your snowballs a little less tight
but in the middle still put rocks

And keep your heart young
Don’t go growing old before your time has come
You can’t take back what you have done
You gotta keep your heart young

You gotta keep your heart young
Sometimes you don’t die quick
Just like you wished you’d done
‘Though love is a loaded gun
You’ve gotta keep your heart young
You can’t take back what you have done
You gotta keep your heart young

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Skyhawk

Darla the Great, the district librarian, took me up in her plane today. Flying in a tiny plane in the bush is pretty much exactly what I’d expected, except two to three times more awesome. The best part? Darla took a picture of me flying.

PS: this has a LOT to do with how I plan to spend next summer :)