Category Archives: Alaska
Parallax
Our earth science textbook tries to explain parallax by showing two diagrams of the stars: the stars as seen in January and the stars as seen in July. One of my kids raised her hand and pointed out, giggling, “Um, you can’t see stars in July. Duh.”
I about busted a rib laughing. To her, that textbook was just some stupid crazy talk.
Today, after half an hour of bickering and needling and intentional provocation on both parts, a male student pretended to punch the aforementioned female student in the face. He didn’t touch her, but he came within centimeters, and she burst into tears and claimed he’d hit her. Later, in a private conversation with me, the male student, with a grin on his face, called the girl “a bitch” for arguing with him and “a pussy” for crying.
I’ve never, ever felt especially one way or another about those words. Sean, actually, has always been more aggressive about attacking sexist language than I have. To me, those words weren’t any more potent than the unisex “jackass”. Suddenly, though, that anger fell into place for me. This kid was using those words to describe this girl explicitly as justification for getting into her personal space, mocking her, and intimidating her. To him, it was okay because she was “a bitch” and “a pussy” and it was so clearly okay that he expected me to forgive his actions on the grounds that she deserved it. I was flabbergasted.
I don’t know where I’m going with this except to say that I’ve learned something. I see how those words shape and reflect the brutal reality that my students come of age in, and I really don’t like it. I’m the most present adult in most of my students’ lives (they see me eight hours a day, every day) and I want to offer them a different paradigm, but sometimes the obvious eludes me, and communication requires rewiring. There are no stars in July, obviously. Obviously it’s okay to hurt her if she’s being a bitch.
We’re having a winter dance in December. The girls came to me yesterday to set a date. It’ll be snow-themed, and instead of a night full of stars (which was the theme of our prom in May, when there were no stars), we’ll hang glittery snowflakes from the ceiling, sip hot cider, and watch the aurora dance.
My favorite thing about the prom was the way planning and carrying it off empowered my girls. This little corner of the earth needs all the girl power it can get, so I’m glad the prom committee is back in action. Look out, world, we’re working on the sequel!
10/7
A ctenophore the size of the sky just reached out of the stars and swallowed this planet I’m standing on! I’ve never seen purple in the aurora, or a whole sky of pale pink. I stretched my arms out and looked up, and from fingertip to fingertip, all I could see was frothing, billowing curtains of northern lights. My crappy pictures don’t begin to do it justice, but maybe they can feed your imagination a little. 
This was one of the most magical things I have ever seen. This rivals the Cataloochee fireflies and the dolphins making comets of themselves in the bioluminescent indian ocean. Nights like this swell my heart, blow the top off my imagination, and make my ribs resonate with the blast like a pipe organ.
Whitescape escape
Ben and I went skiing today! 
I hadn’t really been before, so it was pretty exciting. We covered some miles and got a little lost when we tried to bushwhack a way to the airport. I’m sore and delighted, and I only wiped out once. I have officially commandeered some skis and boots from P.E. storage to live in my kitchen until further notice. It felt so good to get outside for a few hours and break a sweat doing something new and having an adventure in unexplored territory.
The sky was a little gray today, and the snow and aspens were strikingly rich in that white texture that makes this place so subtly splendid in winter. I still can’t quite accept that it’s only the first week of October, that the fall color hasn’t come in yet in New England. My world looks like this, though it feels like spring when the sun comes out and we wear our t-shirts outside and the eaves drip.
I love how the seasons change here. Some places have four, but I think we must have at least eight: each day is so different from the one before that there should surely be names for the gradations: fall-with-snow, summer-with-yellow-trees, frozen-eyelashes-winter, shadows-cast-again. If you pay attention, every day here marks some end and some beginning. This week the eaves drip, next week, they won’t. Soon the wet hems of my jeans will freeze solid, and I’ll have to trade my bean boots for baffins.
Unbeautiful things and beautiful things
The other night, two of my girls showed up at my door with a puppy. The puppy was whimpering inside C’s sweatshirt, and it took a minute for me to process the situation. My knees nearly buckled and I emitted an involuntary “eeeeee!” when she pulled the fluffy little butterball out of her jacket. He’s about four weeks old, so he was a little shaky on his feet, and just starting to think about playing. The stubby little tail wagged drunkenly and he wobbled across the floor, taking it all in.
We brought the little critter over to Jake and Shannon’s place to visit, and sat on the floor playing with him for close to an hour. When it was time to go, I came home, and immediately after I closed the door, there was a knock.
“Can I use your bathroom?” A asked.
“Sure. You could’ve asked Jake and Shannon, they would’ve let you.” I told her.
“No. That’d be weird.”
It doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it kind of is. The girls trust me enough to use my bathroom. They trust me enough to take off their socks and let me look at the weird oozy bumps on their feet, or to listen when I say “I think you’d be an awesome engineer”, or to bring me neighbor toddlers and toddling puppies when they visit, or to knock on the door just to tell me “the moon is outstanding! can I borrow your camera to take a picture?”
Beautiful things.
I went for a walk in the village this morning and a student stopped me. He was there, and two other boys, along with the two girls who brought the puppy, when someone was brought to the clinic last night. “Seven cuts,” said the boy. The man died.
PFDs came in this week, the big annual dividend check that all Alaskans receive. Predictably, things have been a little wild.
I try not to dwell on it, but there is ugliness here, in good measure: alcoholism, drug abuse, domestic violence, sexual assault, child abuse, neglect, hunger. Most of the time, the community keeps these things quiet. It would be easy to hear very little about these realities: these are the things everyone (else) knows and no one ever talks about. The teachers live a little apart from the rest of the village, and we aren’t intimately connected the way the other members of this community are. We don’t share blood and history and secrets. It’s rare for these things to come knocking at our doors, so a lot of the time, we don’t know.
When things like this do come knocking (a message from a little girl on my answering machine telling me that a man I knew has died, someone coming to my door to make a wildly inappropriate suggestion, a high schooler pointing out his blood in the snow from when a drunk man hit him the night before, a middle schooler casually mentioning that he’s witnessed a violent death) they are the more shocking for their incongruousness. Most of the time, life in the village is quiet as snowfall. It drifts down and covers the broken bikes and beer cans and candy wrappers caught in the willows.
Unbeautiful things.
chasing piggens 