Parallax

Posted on October 8, 2015 by Keely

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

Posted on October 7, 2015 by Keely

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

Posted on October 4, 2015 by Keely

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

Posted on October 3, 2015 by Keely

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.

Equinox and Fox Walks

Posted on September 27, 2015 by Keely

A fairly typical scene from last week, before the snow fell.

Cosmically speaking, there are a lot of neat things going on these days. The aurora is supposed to be good on Thursday, which is exciting as it hasn’t been spectacular for a while. The equinox was a few days ago, launching fall in other places and winter here. Last, but not least, there is supposed to be an eclipse tonight. I am going to have to go out this evening to watch the eclipse. If last night’s moon is anything to judge by, it’s going to be pretty spectacular. The moon is supposed to be rising mid-eclipse, which could be really strange and special, but might be hard to see. Some thoughtful planning is in order. I wish I had access to some high ground.

Last night’s moon over the slough.

Yesterday, Terri, Ben and I went for a hike out beyond the gravel bar on a quest for a view of the mountains. We never really got there, but we had a nice walk and a campfire dinner of baked potatoes and apples. On the way out, a local guy on a four-wheeler stopped to talk and warned us about leaving the village without a gun. We were carrying bear spray and making plenty of noise, but folks here are very cautious about wildlife, and he hated to think of our needing a gun and not having one. We did see grizzly tracks and scat, and the bears are known to hang out by the gravel bar where the dog salmon are spawning now. After our friend took off, we stopped by the gravel bar for tea and to watch the fish, which are huge and numerous. Apparently, a large portion of the world’s population of these salmon come back to our slough. They’re called dog salmon because folks around here use them for dog food. I let two kids out of school early the other day to take in nets and feed dogs. The fish are clearly tired out, sometimes rolling a little sideways in the current. They’re two feet long, and all muscle. They have to thrash a bit to get through the skinny water, and they sound like a herd of caribou splashing through the shallows. Sometimes you can see their dorsal fins sticking up out of the water, even when they’re completely still and silent. It’s totally strange. Our friend found us there, watching the salmon drift in the shallow water, and pressed a rifle on Ben, just in case.

The three of us walked a while beyond the gravel bar before we lit our fire. I wanted to hike to someplace new, and the weather was perfect: forty at least, with day-old snow on the ground and blue skies and sun.

We found a hole in a tree

and fairy sparkles

and the sky looked like a bomb pop all the way around, the east more pink and violet, the west more peach.

We wound up walking home in the dark, which I haven’t done before. I walk within the village after sunset often, but I haven’t ever been out beyond the firebreak after sundown before. It was new, and new was just what I wanted from my day yesterday.

Friday’s snow has stuck, the first to last more than a few hours. We’re due for more on Tuesday, so this may be it, folks. My kids begged me for a hike on Friday, and I gave in with pleasure. There’s something magical about walking in falling snow, and it’s not something to miss out on when the opportunity comes knocking. When we got back, I opened the classroom windows and we watched snowflakes blow in and dissolve on the carpet.

After school, I went out alone and followed fresh fox sign around a pond beside the old airport runway. It’s the kind of thing that has to be done alone, a very personal pleasure. I walked out to the pond on purpose, knowing that there’s a fox that hangs around near there, thinking I might pick up his trail. After some bumbling around, I did, with deep satisfaction. The snow was only a few hours old, so I knew with certainty that the prints were fresh. I followed the fox’s tracks until they doubled back on themselves and I lost them under my own garbledy old boot prints. By that time, I was ready to move on to other things anyway, so I walked on up the runway.

I love the way ravens’ wings make that whipping sound, a weighted rope swinging beside your ear. I like the way they leave wingprints in the snow.

The snow is still so new. It’s a change in the landscape, for now, and I’m seeing it fresh. It’ll be with me a while, though, and after a while, I’m sure, it won’t seem so sparkling. Still.

I’ve been eating well, and walking out often. School is great and I’m mostly happy. I miss having friends around, but some of my favorite people have called me up lately to say hi, and that’s been awesome. If you tried me yesterday and I missed you, try again! I still can’t make outgoing calls, but I’m in touch with the phone company about it, and when their technician gets back from moose hunting, I think the issue will be resolved.

Gideon sent me a box of honeycrisps, which arrived just after school dismissed on Friday. I can’t wait to share them with the kids on Monday. The two who were still around when the box came in said (and I quote) “wow! How juicy!” and “I think… that is the best apple I have ever eaten.” They go crazy for fresh fruit, and really fresh really good fruit is unheard of. It’s freaking awesome. Here’s a picture of apples in the snow:

mmmm! Picnic!

Microgreens!

Today, Jake and Shannon are taking me out shooting, and I’m excited about it. If I’m going to be an Alaskan, I guess I should learn to be comfortable with firearms. Later, when there’s more snow, I’m going to learn about snowmachines. Terri and I are talking about going in on one together, and now that my boat’s sold I think I can commit to that. Why not? I’ll for sure be able to get out to the mountains if I’ve got ski power, and that could make all the difference.

Arctic love,

Keely