Go to google maps and pick an area of the world where there seems to be absolutely nothing then zoom in some and then pan around until I find a town then read the wikipedia article about that town.
other
Once Upon a Time in Guatemala
When I approach a large change in life I begin to wax nostalgic about good things from times long past. A big change is coming in a few months and this time around the subject of my nostalgia is: my central american year. For every person you see below, there are ten more who were in the story behind the picture, for every smile caught by camera there were twenty more when the camera was put away…
Nondalton, AK
Four days ago I accepted a position in a different school district. In a month and a half I’ll be leaving Diomede, and in five months I’ll be beginning again in a new village, Nondalton.
Nondalton is located on the Alaska Peninsula, about 150 air miles from Anchorage.
Not gonna lie, it will break my heart to leave Diomede and the kiddos and my friends here. That said, I will also say that this new teaching position is an unbelievably perfect fit for me. Literally–it is hard for me to believe it is real, it seems too good to be true! I will have opportunities to pursue aviation all year round, not just during the summer. There is a National Park & Preserve literally a few miles away, there’s a beautiful lake and a pristine river. I hear about the village is that it’s a very pleasant place, the school staff is a solid group, and the district has an incredible reputation. I am honored to be joining their crew :)
Here’s an aerial photo: http://www.paulcolor.com/index.php#mi=2&pt=1&pi=10000&s=24&p=3&a=0&at=0
Yours truly
A handful
Of years, that is. It’s been a handful of years since I last left somewhere that really felt like a home. And it’s been that many years since I’ve been too stressed and sad to sleep at night.
To be frank I must admit that for ten parts of stress and sadness there is one part of excitement, the new and unknown.
But that one part is small and rarely on the front burner.
I do not like moving.
:/
Welcome to the world, Josephine
Dear Josephine, welcome to this beautiful world. You’ve got some big times in front of you. You will open your eyes and see the world, you will start to learn colors and who your family is, and in the blink of an eye you’ll be laughing and crawling. I look forward to meeting you soon, kiddo :).
Love,
Uncle Dave
My weekend: sad search and a poem I dearly love
I spent the better part of my weekend searching the island for Zora, Jori’s (one of my coworkers) dog. Zora is a wonderful dog who we all love and adore, and she took off for a walkabout saturday afternoon. I searched all saturday evening, late into the night, finally getting close enough to hear her, and I used everything I had in me to try to get her, but I reached a point where there was no safe option but to turn back and follow my own footholds in the wind-hardened snow back down to the village. Anything else would’ve probably resulted in a search and rescue operation for me. Ed and I went up today to look for her again, but the wind had since kicked up and the snow was worse: visibility was poor and even if she had barked for us when we called, we would not have heard. I am exhausted, ever muscle aches and many joints hurt, I am worried sick for her, and I fear that the sad and frightened barks and yelps I heard when I had to turn back will be the last memory I have of her.
Yeah, I know she’s just a dog. But still. God damn it.
I’m not sure how it’s related, but it also occurred to me to note that Birches by Robert Frost has been for some time and likely will continue to be one of my favorite poems. Below is an excerpt.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
Seven months, or The Tale of A Tub
Seven months ago (last August) I walked into a hobby shop in Anchorage and bought a hundred dollars of model rocket motors.
Most folks call it “The [Dreaded] Last Week of School,” but I call it “Rocket Week, the Most Awesome Week Ever,” Rocket Week for short. This bundle* of rocket motors was for Rocket Week.
Needless to say, this isn’t something I could bring to Diomede in my luggage. Rocket motors are considered HAZMAT and cannot be shipped by USPS, the only carrier which delivers to Diomede. In Anchorage I optimistically called all the Alaskan cargo airlines that fly to Nome, full of false hopes. Nothing. Nobody would ship a little tub of rocket motors.
I called the barge companies, hoping to drop off this explosive little tub at one of the docks to be shipped up to Nome (or if I was super lucky maybe even straight to Diomede!). I guess barge companies operate on a week by week basis, because after some very serious rounds of phone tag I had a “maybe. we will get back to you.” from one company and nothing from the other.
Asking dear friends for huge favors is generally something I save as a last resort, and I indeed was left with no other options. So I call Darla, who works with our school district and also happens to be a private pilot. She agreed to ferry the motors up to Unalakleet the next time she flew there from Anchorage.
A few months later the weather was right and the stars aligned, and sure enough Darla managed to help the rocket motors on the first leg of their journey to Rocket Week.
Then came a long period of waiting and hoping. Sure enough, a month ago a teacher from Nome–the Legendary Mr. Nate–happened to be passing through Unalakleet, so I emailed him and crossed my fingers. Darla brought the bomb-like box to the District Office that morning, and Janice–a great friend and a teacher in Unalakleet–made the handoff to Mr. Nate. He got the tub onto his flight from Unalakleet, and when he arrived in Nome he made the handoff to Erickson Helicopters (previously Evergreen), the airline that services Diomede. The absolutely wonderful staff there jumped through god-only-knows how many logistical and legal hoops and one and a half weeks later on the helipad here Hank (Diomede’s Erickson agent) handed the box off to Mr. Willis, our principal.
The final leg was carried out by Jason and Raleigh, two of our adorable 1st grade students. Those two little whippersnappers hauled the box up from the elementary to my classroom and made my day absolutely as brightened as it could be.
Here is the tub at the end of it’s journey:
*I should mention that I tossed in a few bottles of HEET with which to make miniature jet engines. Not terribly relevant, doesn’t really have any line in the story, but nonetheless a part of how things went down.
Mr. Miyagi Say
Remember Daniel-San, best block, no be there.
Daniel-san, karate do, one side road, you safe. Karate do not, other side road, you safe. Karate guess so, you like grape in middle of road. You squish.
Iiiiiich Daniel-san. Never keep woman waiting.
From four weeks ago
First thing: I love to teach. Second thing: I love to teach because it is fun, challenging, intricate and fulfilling. Of course it is like any other trade–it has ups and downs, some days are good and some days are bad, and there are just plain regular days too. Well, this day was one of the great up’s. Maybe even the greatest up day I’ve had yet.
What was great? Well it’s this thing that happens once in a while when the stars align. It begins with waking up in the morning well rested and ready to take on the day. I love those mornings. And it only gets better. My students all seem to be equally well rested, they eat a great breakfast too. My lesson plans work like clockwork. The students are engaged and fascinated and they ask great questions. We talk about science, we go on silly tangents wondering about scientific things. ‘Mr. dave, what would happen if the sun was bigger? what if the sun went away? how would we get energy then?’ brilliant discussion with my middle schoolers! And a great chat with one of my high schoolers about the philosophical and ethical facets of teaching chimpanzees to communicate with humans. One middle schooler spontaneously tells me that I should stay here until they all graduate because I’m a good teacher. At the end of the day, my students are happy and their minds are active and they run out of the school to go play.
I sit down in my chair and look at my classroom, gaze out the window at the sea and the ice and the blue sky and I smile inside. I don’t know what to do with myself. It is that pure type of contentment that is positively splitting just like heartache is splitting. I guess that’s because it is a type of heartache. It’s too beautiful. I don’t want to work on prep, I don’t want to go take a nap, I don’t want to read a book. I want to sit and feel and I don’t want the feeling to go away.
If I had to summarize why I teach I would say it is days like today. And I’ve been thinking a lot about that. If you know me even just a tiny bit, or if you simply peruse this blog, you’ll know that I have this thing for flying. It is the dream I have had for my whole life. And the little bit of flying I’ve done has been even better then I hoped. When I fly there is a beauty I feel, beyond words, but it is no heartache like I feel now*. So there’s my quandary.
Yes, I would love to be a commercial pilot. I would love to wake up in the morning knowing that I would be flying an airplane that day. And the staggering magnitude of the craziness of being able to fly for a living would last me some time, maybe months or maybe years. But sooner or later I know that I would feel something missing. The heartache of that perfect day of teaching. I’m sure flying has some sort of equivalent ‘best day ever’ scenario but it could not match the smiles of my students after a perfect day here.
So–what do I do? I have a few vague ideas involving flying in the summer and teaching during the school year; but I’m not sure that’s sustainable. Flight instruction is a near-certain possibility, as is flying commercially during the summer and teaching during the school year.
So–what do I do? I don’t know, really. Thankfully I have time to think of and percolate ideas. If I keep up my summertime flying, it will be a good handful of years, five at least, before I could be a commercial pilot.
*I have a hypothesis: I think it has something to do with the glittering instrument that is the human soul (thank you, steinbeck, for those words) and the act of loving others, a thing that is not central to flying.
What is the best way to spend a sunday afternoon?
Aviating, obviously!
Stop children, what’s that sound? That’s the sound of me not owning an airplane and not living within doable distance of a flight instructor. Don’t get me wrong, I love where I live. But every place has it’s upsides and downsides, and Diomede’s lack of aviation opportunities is a downside for me. Not a life and death sort of thing, doesn’t make me love it any less, but it is what it is.
So now back to the original question again. What is the best way to spend a sunday afternoon–if not flying?
Simple.
Pretending to fly!
I practiced calm takeoffs/landings, navigation by VOR, and crosswind (10 gusting to 15) takeoffs/landings. Next session: more crosswind practice + nighttime navigation by VOR. I had my reservations about spending money earmarked for flying real life airplanes for this simulator set up, but one afternoon of practice cleared out my apprehension. Flying a Cessna 172 with this setup is astonishingly life-like. I found myself making the same errors which I was working on scrubbing out at the end of my flight lessons last summer.
For the curious–that is a Saitek Proflight Cessna Yolk & Power Quadrant, Pedal Set & Trim Wheel, and the simulator is X-Plane 10. The thermos is a Stanley 1.1 quart filled with delicious black coffee.
Why not?
So this one time, a guy barged into a yacht club. Really, I mean, he just sailed into that place.
bah-dum-duh tsshhhhhh.
A beautiful morning
Well, ok..no, it wasn’t really morning, and technically it wasn’t breakfast seeing as we ate at around 1 o’clock, but by george it was a beautiful morning and it was a beautiful morning all because of breakfast. This breakfast. It was THAT good. The bacon was thick and delicious, the french toast perfect, the maple syrup was the real stuff (and good quality real stuff, at that), the potato and onion and red pepper fry was exactly as delicious as it sounds like it should be, the OJ was cold and zingy and the coffee fresh brewed and hot out of the thermos. It has become something of a saturday afternoon tradition for the four of us here: a big hearty breakfast sometime after noon on saturdays, usually a similar sort of thing..pancakes or waffles or french toast, bacon or sometimes sausage, eggs often and/or when the supplies afford it, fried potatoes and onions and bell peppers.
You know, routines and habits and doing the same old thing sometimes get a bad rap. Don’t settle into a rut, don’t be afraid of change! Do something different each day. Do something that scares you! Well I am good with doin’ something scary and I do believe that complacency in most parts of life can be deathly. But I’ll be damned if I don’t love sleeping in till just about the same time on Saturday and then eating the same-ish perfect breakfast in the afternoon and then sitting back with a cup of coffee to enjoy the ensuing food coma.
Home sweet home
Two nights in Nome and four nights in Wales, waiting on the weather, wishing we could sleep on our own beds instead of other peoples floors and beds. And now we are here, home sweet home.
But that is not all.
Here is the stage: we are outside the school in Wales loading a big sled up with our coolers and luggage, to be towed with a snow machine over to the airport, which is about a mile away. Catherine jumps on the passenger seat on the snow machine and Willis and I look at each other–who’s mushing?
“Do you want to mush?”
“Hell yes I want to mush!”
So Willis jumped into the sled and I jumped on the back and we set off over the frozen tundra to the airport. Halfway there we here the chopper coming. The fellow driving gunned the gas and we took off. We zoomed up to the hanger and zoomed around the corner just as the Huey was setting down 30 feet away on the helipad. How did that feel? AWESOME.
But wait, there’s more. They generally do not let passengers ride left seat (copilot’s spot) because this particular helicopter does have standard controls, pilot’s and copilot’s. But today there was a HUGE amount of mail to haul so they packed that chopper to the gills and when it was time to board Simon, the flight mechanic (who usually rides copilot) looks at me and points at copilot.
And my face morphed completely into a giant stupid grin.
And THEN when we got back to the island and there was mail for us! So we unpack, then the four of us exchanged christmas gifts. So to recap. I got to ride musher-style on a sled and ZOOM up to meet a helicopter AS it lands. Then I got to ride co-pilot in a very, very awesome helicopter. And then it was Christmas gift time!
AND we are finally back home after a week of waiting.
Was today a good day? Yes.