Sunday, December 20, 2009

Halfway point (roughly)

B and I are at a bed and breakfast in Athol, on our respective computers, listening to a pack of howling dogs. We spent today in the Village, hoping to get out. All week we’d been debating whether to leave on Friday night or wait until today, Saturday. If we’d left last night we’d be safely out of the Village, but would have to spend two nights here in Athol, at least one at a hotel (and nothing is cheap here, including hotel rooms). Waiting until today, however, put us at a slightly higher risk of running into bad weather. Which in fact happened. We started calling the airlines at 9:00 this morning, and all day long it was, “We’re on a weather hold, call back in an hour.” It was actually sort of nice to have a day of just sitting around watching movies all day, but our baseline stress level was very high – if we didn’t make it out at some point today, we’d either miss our flight to Anchorage tomorrow, or have to pay to take a later flight. Finally at 4 two airlines decided to send planes. I couldn’t believe it – it really hadn’t seemed that bad out earlier in the day, a little overcast maybe, but calm. As the day went on, it seemed to get both hazier and windier. As excited as I was to hear that a plane was coming, I was dreading the ride.

Our neighbor drove us down to the airstrip. The plane was a big one, a ten-seater. We had to stop in the Bay first to pick up 7 more people including a few small children, one of whom was a baby with what smelled like a soiled diaper. All things considered, I guess the ride wasn’t that bad…I don’t know, I don’t like these tiny planes, I don’t like flying at all, and the wind made it bumpy and it was getting dark and it smelled, and I kept feeling alternately nauseous and light-headed. It was not a fun trip. I was very, very thankful when we finally landed in Athol. We took a taxi to a Chinese restaurant (a restaurant! No cooking! No dishes!) and called J, a very friendly lady who is our assigned mentor through the district. She had offered us a place to stay for the night, which we assumed would be her house, but which turned out to be the lovely bed and breakfast her partner built and owns. We passed an hour chatting with an older woman on her way out to visit her son in a different village, and are now settled into our very cozy room. The owner’s dog team is outside, and apparently something set them off, because they are all howling and barking.

This past week of school went pretty quickly, there were lots of holiday things to do, including a Christmas show and a feast yesterday. The kids aren’t really excited about Christmas, I don’t think many of them get a whole lot of gifts and I imagine it gets boring fast with no school. Two weeks of sitting around playing video games and watching movies really isn’t that fun, even to a kid. The teachers, on the other hand, were exhibiting varying degrees of giddiness yesterday afternoon at the prospect of getting out for a while. Even the veteran teachers seem to have some cabin fever, and I know B and I were starting to consider the possibility today that we might not get out at all, and feeling utterly depressed.

Tomorrow afternoon we fly on to Anchorage, and from there we take a red-eye to Boston, with a layover in Minneapolis at some unholy hour of the morning. Besides the obvious things like seeing our families and celebrating Christmas, we’re both also very excited to do some of the things we haven’t been able to do for months, like drive a car, drink some wine, impulse-buy some stuff, eat ice cream, see people we don’t know, and maybe even go to the movies. Pretty exciting stuff.

I wish I had some insightful or deep reflections at this rather important marker of our time, our halfway point, but not really. We certainly haven’t changed our minds at all about spending more than a year up here. We love the kids and we’re both learning a lot, but you know that already if you’ve been reading this blog. We’re looking forward to getting back to Portland in a serious way, and one thing that I hope will last is the sense of appreciation I know we’ll feel when we first get back there, for things we used to take for granted. We just cannot wait to ride our bikes, to play Frisbee in the park, to eat grilled cheese and waffle tacos and fried pie at the food carts, to drink tea (and coffee and beer) with our friends, to walk in Forest Park, to stroll down to Alberta Street for coffee and bagels on a Sunday morning with our dog, to shop at the coop, to go to vegan restaurants, to go running outside, to work in our garden…oh, man. It’s making me sad just writing this list.

I don’t think either one of us would say we’re sorry we decided to do this. We both have moments where we’re sort of miserable, but we had those in Portland every once in a while, too. I think in the long run we’ll be glad we had this year, whereas if we hadn’t come I think we would’ve regretted that choice. All the same, it’s a bit of a relief to be halfway done.

Here’s one list a few of you might be interested in: the books I’ve read since we arrived. Some of you may recognize titles as ones you recommended in response to my earlier request. Some titles are books that were at the BIA (our housing unit), some were sent by friends or families, and some we brought with us. They’re in the order in which I read them:

Death, With Interruptions by Jose Saramago (I started this one on the east coast)

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

Anil’s Ghost by Michael Ondaatje

City of Tiny Lights by Patrick Neale

Mindset by Carol Dweck

Accordion Crimes by E. Annie Proulx

The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

Volcano by Shusaku Endo

Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America by Elliott Gorn

The Man in the High Castle by Phillip K. Dick

Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Road to Wellville by T.C. Boyle

Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle

Coming into the Country by John McPhee

Jonah’s Gourd Vine by Zora Neale Hurston

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

Disobedience by Jane Hamilton

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Hanna’s Daughters by Marianne Frederiksson

The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs

The Geographer’s Library by Jon Fasman

The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff

Run by Ann Patchett

The Know-it-All by A.J. Jacobs

The Way the Crow Flies by Ann-Marie MacDonald

Teaching What Really Happened by James Loewen

Nothing to be Frightened Of by Julian Barnes (I’m about halfway through this one)

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Q&A

A good friend of mine sent these questions because he wanted more details. I sent him back some answers:

do you watch a lot of Internet tv? No. The home Internet connection is too slow and we can't use up that sort of bandwidth at school. We download (through iTunes) the Daily Show and the Simpsons overnight. S gave me the complete Six Feet Under for my birthday so we're working on that. We also rock the Netflix. You can get spotty satellite TV here but we don't do that.
have you had any fish? Not really. I think there was some in one of the akutaqs I had. I caught a fish though.
are you lesson planning all night? No. I only teach one class that I have to lesson plan for. Otherwise I help out in other people's classes or see kids in small groups or one-on-one. S has three classes to lesson prep for but she's been getting that done without having to go in on the weekends lately. Most of the other teachers come up to school on the weekends. We have to turn in our lesson plans every week to the principal which can be pretty time consuming. I spend a lot of time doing paperwork but I know when all that stuff is due literally a year in advance so I just get it done early.
are you and S at each others necks? We were for a little while. There was a two week period in October or so in which we were really driving each other nuts. We spend a huge amount of time with each other and we have known for a long time that this doesn't really work for us. We each need to be doing our own things at times. That doesn't happen much here. I started teaching afterschool in the evenings twice a week in November and S just started coaching basketball. Things had gotten better before that but now we have some time apart so we're doing really well. .
are there B&B igloos you can rent for a romantic retreat? No igloos of any kind any where here. No B&B's, restaurants, movie theaters, cafes, bars, etc. Not in the village. I think there's a B&B in Athol. Athol is not romantic. We'll be in Anchorage for New Year's and staying in a B&B. That should be good.
where will you be for winter break? In MA/NH from this Monday to the 31st. You?
what are you reading? I just finished Guns, Germs and Steel. It took me forever to slog through it but it was worth it. I read the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (or Cavalier and Klay - one of those). It was a great, great book. Just started two books: Lost at School (Ross Greene) and Coming into the Country (about Alaska in the '70s). What are you reading?
what's the last fresh thing you ate? Every week we actually get a box of fresh veggie/fruits from a CSA from Washington state that broke into the business of shipping their boxes to rural Alaska by freight. It's expensive but it rules.
did you run out of anything? Besides fun stuff to do and people to talk to? We run out of stuff at times. We order most of our food from Azure Standard or Fred Meyer. Some also from Vegan Essentials who will ship cold stuff (like soy butter).
like tea bags or soy butter? We bought a case of earth balance sticks and a case of earth balance tubs. It's lasted so far. We get loose tea from the Tao of Tea in Portland.
is there anything you have way too much of? Almonds. We have two cases. We were going to make almond milk but our soy milk maker works so well we don't need to. We have almonds with lunch every day and put them in salads, etc but we we're only 1/2 through the first case. Also, chick peas. We used to eat them all the time but the ones we bought were dried. We soak them for a day then boil them for hours and then have to individually peel each one. We did this a few times and then gave up. We have 25 pounds of chickpeas hanging out here.
what's the one thing you brought that was a huge waste of space that you never use? Shorts. I brought them because we went right from the west coast to the east coast in August and then I thought I would wear them some up here. I wore shorts maybe twice. They just sit in the drawer. S was smart and left hers on the east coast. Not much else actually. We tried to bring very little up here.
do you have windows? Two big ones facing the school (with a third boarded up - it was broken last year and never replaced).
do you wish you didn't? No. We can see the sunrise and watch the weather and people go by on Hondas. But it was kind of pain when the weather was nice and the kids would come by every day to look in and see what we were doing.
where does your poop go? Good question. We have flushing toilets. I think there's a big septic tank. Not all of the village has this however. Many of them have honey buckets that they empty into the ocean. Now that it's frozen the contents of the bucket just sit frozen on the ice.
have you seen wildlife? Some. Lots of birds and fish. We saw musk ox from the plane. There are foxes around now but we haven't seen any yet. The ones that come into the village are usually rabid. Moose don't hang out here- they were killed off by hunting.
have you eaten with local families? We haven't been inside anyone's house. No one really gets invited over. We have had community feasts. This is mostly the school feeding everyone. We have one coming up on friday.
have you decided to never return to portland? No. We can't wait to get back there.
do you have a beard? No. Maybe after Christmas.
any music that you've come to listen to more than anything else? S and I were listening to a lot of Mountain Goats, Songs Ohia and Iron & Wine. Also Animal Collective and Panda Bear. Lately we started listening to Bon Iver and the new Bill Callahan. I've really been enjoying Sigur Ross lately and trying to get into the Arcade Fire with limited results. Rudresh Mahanthappa is a saxophonist that I've been liking lately. I'm trying to like Yo la Tengo and that's going pretty well. I need some new noise and free jazz stuff. I've struck out a bit lately finding any thing I'm really excited about.
any music that you've come to hate? Nothing I could name. The kids play this one song all the time that I hate. I can't even remember how it goes or who it's by. It's very bad hip hop/R&B crap.
how's S? Good. About the same as me: ready for a break from this place. I think she's enjoyed doing some special ed stuff but I think she also misses having hear own class all day.
do you love being her boss? do you boss her around? is that working out? I'm not really her boss of course. I'm in a full time special ed position, S is in a 1/2 general ed and 1/2 special ed position. Special ed is new to S so sometimes she asks me about working with certain kids. I do all of the sped paperwork and run the IEP meetings. I'm hardly her boss. I do enjoy saying that I'm the head of the sped department though.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Global warming

Here's an interesting entry from the NY Times blog Green, Inc about how global warming is affecting Native Alaskans. A slightly more in-depth perspective than B's student.

Monday, December 14, 2009

Iqmik

Iqmik is widely chewed by students at The Village school. One of first days here, students were openly chewing when we were hanging out by the river. E thinks that a lot of the students start to have withdrawal symptoms part way through the day causing grumpiness that leads to the students getting themselves in trouble. I don't know how many students chew - estimates range but in the area it seems to be around 10%. Parents openly share with children including teething babies. Here's an article about it:

"What is iqmik?

That's the Yupik word for a mixture of long-cut, fire-cured Kentucky tobacco and the ash of a fungus (Phellinus igniarius) that grows on birch trees in the Y-K Delta [Yukon-Kuskokwim] . Locals mix ash from the fungus, commonly called "punk ash," with tobacco for chewing. Often, they pre-masticate the mixture and place it in a small box, where it is shared with others, including children and sometimes teething babies. If birch fungus is not available, they might use the ash of alder or willow.

The practice is not new. European traders introduced tobacco to Natives in the Y-K Delta in the 1700s. By the 1800s, its use was widespread. No one is sure how long Natives have used iqmik, but it is prevalent in the region.

Users believe iqmik tastes better and is healthier than commercial chewing tobacco because it has no additives. Researchers estimate iqmik users outnumber commercial tobacco users 2-to-1.

But iqmik is actually more detrimental, said Caroline Cremo Renner, director of nicotine research and control for YKHC [Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Center]. She called the "high" or "buzz" users get a form of nicotine poisoning. Researchers believe the ash raises the pH level in the mouth, which increases the dose and enhances delivery of nicotine to the brain. In effect, the user is freebasing nicotine.

Overall, the smokeless tobacco use rate among Y-K Delta Alaska Natives is 52 percent versus 2 percent nationally. . .

Renner called tobacco use in the region a "pediatric epidemic." In research for a masters thesis, she found iqmik use common among teens and children as young as 5. Tobacco contributes to poor oral health, and some users have lost their teeth in adolescence, she said. Because Yupiks sometimes name babies for someone who has recently died, infants are occasionally given iqmik, in belief their namesake would still be craving it.

Even more disturbing is that YKHC research of medical charts shows 82 percent of pregnant women in the region use tobacco -- 61 percent chew iqmik or a commercial tobacco and 21 percent smoke. Nationally, the smokeless tobacco use rate for pregnant women is under 1 percent. . .

Mayo Clinic staffers have traveled to Bethel four times this year, and senior leadership officials of the regional hospital in Bethel have been to the Mayo Clinic. Hurt said Mayo Clinic staffers also met with the Alaska Native Health Board in Anchorage."

I talked to a student recently about iqmik because I caught her chewing in class. I told her that it's cancer causing and that she has to be especially careful when/if she is pregnant. Her response, "Our mom iqmik'ed with us and we're fine." She is fine actually - good grades, stays out of trouble (this incident aside) and in the right grade for her age. But that's beside the point. Unfortunately, at 15, your personal anecdotal experience trumps science.

Sunrise

10:34 am. My kids have already read 2 chapters in their novel, written in their reading journals, practiced our song for the holiday show, had a lesson on how to use Microsoft Word, and started typing their book reviews. The sky over the northern hills is just beginning to glow pink.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Do qassaqs liq?

So a few days ago in class, one of my students leaned over a little and ripped a giant fart. Not uncommon. Unlike kids in other places, the kids here are totally unembarrassed about bodily functions. They cough up big wads of phlegm loudly, they belch and yawn and fart and announce, "I have to anuk (poop)!" On the one hand I kind of like this, you know? Screw being embarrassed about stuff your body just does naturally. On the other hand, ew! So anyway on this particular day this student farted out loud, then kind of laughed at the sound, and I gave her one of my teacher-y LOOKs. She said, "Excuse me," and I started to go on with the lesson, when another student called out, "Do qassaqs liq?" I know the word qassaq, it means white person, but liq (pronounced sort of like "luck") was a new one. "Do qassaqs what?" I said. "Do they liq - you know..." and she gestured toward the student who'd farted. "Do we fart? Um...of course," I said. "Well how come we never hear you?" she asked. "Uhh...I guess I try to keep it to myself." "Why?" "Uh...um...SO, about long vowels..."

It's certainly interesting how strong our social conditioning can be. I would have JUST DIED if I'd ever farted out loud in school. And even now, I'd certainly be embarrassed (depsite my students' "encouragement").

What's also of note is this idea, this perception that the kids have, of qassaqs being completely other. I guess I figured, they've met plenty of white people, we won't be that exotic. But they have lots of questions about qassaq stuff, and I've been called out for being "so qassaq-y" (can't remember what I was doing at the time to warrant that comment, probably nothing I'd think of as super-white). It's not a totally new feeling for me, though. When I worked in Harlem I had plenty of moments where I realized the kids (mostly Hispanic, African-American, and African) saw me as a representative of basically a different species. Despite living in one of the most diverse cities in the world, they had very little understanding of the idea of all people sharing some fundamental sameness.

Many Native cultures have names for themselves that reflect a self-concept of their own ethnic group as more authentic versions of people - names that essentially mean "people" or "real people." I believe the Nez Perce called themselves "Mahopa" which means "people" and Yup'ik means "real people." This idea, of being somehow more "real" than other people, combined with continued insularity (insulation?) from other cultures (no matter in the city, the suburbs, or on the tundra) is what creates and perpetuates the sense of other peoples as "other" people.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

"It's global warming really super hard"

This is what one of my 9th graders said to me yesterday. The students are saying it's more like May than December with a high of 40 the other day and temperatures above 30 for most of the week (that's without wind chill factored in of course) and all of the sea ice melting. That doesn't sound like May to me but I agree that it's global warming really super hard anyway. (Though random fluctuation of day-to-day temperatures is not really evidence of global warming, of course.)

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Looking forward

Unlike in the other school districts I've worked in, the winter break really is the half way mark for the school year. I have to say that I'm looking forward to the two weeks off more than I have in a long time. I'm really psyched to go some place that is not The Village or Athol and I'm really looking forward to new things. I know "things" is a really vague term but it's accurate nonetheless. There is not much 'new' here on a daily basis. It's the same people and the same place and all of the same objects. This is probably why I've taken to listening to a ton of podcasts and doing a lot of Internet reading - at least I can get some new information and ideas. I'm really looking forward to seeing people I don't know at all, eating food I haven't had in months, seeing unfamiliar landscapes or really anything at all.
So I can't wait to be in the Anchorage airport and then the Minneapolis airport. That sounds amazing to me. Lots of people and places to go! I nearly wrote that "I am built for cities" but that's not the whole story (though most likely that's a part of it). You have to hunker down in Alaska during the winter or you have to be psyched about being cold. Really, really cold. We've opted for hunkering. I'll be very happy to un-hunker for a bit while on vacation.