25 May 2007 - Friday

It’s been more than a month since I last made an entry, but I have really been on the go. I'll split it into two separate entries so that I can include more pictures.

Saturday, April 18th, we move into our log cabin. We met Chayce and Bushman Bill for breakfast at the café and they helped us move. The move went much faster than I had expected. When we finished, no one was hungry for the pizza I had gotten. So, Bill and Chayce became our first dinner quests that evening. We also took a ride out Cranberry Ridge to see the property they just purchased, but the road was still too muddy.





(left - livingroom from front door; ; below left livingroom from kitchen)






(left - my bedroom; below right - woodshed)














On Monday I flew to Holy Cross to spend another week. This time I tackled the non-fiction collection. I returned on Friday evening only to leave for Beaverton, OR on the Saturday morning flight. While I was gone, Joyce did a lot of cleaning.


Heavin was in Beaverton when I arrived so I got to finally see her very pregnant. By the way, I took my beaver hat to show Charmin and Heavin. They both said that it was the ugliest thing they had ever seen. I don’t care when it keeps me so warm in below zero weather.







My granddaughter is beautiful as you can see. She and I made a spontaneous connection.








She is a very delightful baby, crying only every three hours when she is hungry, but laughing easily at other times. She especially loves being kissed on the neck and makes darling little squealing noises. I have so many wonderful pictures of her. I'm finding it hard to limit myself

Thursday night Godmother Heavin and Godfather Mitch arrived and on Saturday Grandpa and Grandma Shiely and Grandpa Bortz all arrived. We all went out for a fabulous fish dinner. Sunday, April 6th, Lorrell Lien Grace was baptized and then feted at an open house which hosted between 60 and 70 people. Vietnamese food was served. (pictures) Charmin bought a Vietnamese Long dress while waiting to bring Lorrell home and she wore it for the baptism. She was beautiful in her blue brocade dress over white pants.















I flew to Anchorage on the 7th, but one is always stranded in Anchorage overnight since the only flight of the day to McGrath is 8:30 in the morning. I chose to stay an extra day and get some shopping done. I’m know the expense of the hotel and a car eat up far more than the savings of doing the shopping there. It is the only way to get exactly what you want.


We celebrated Mother’s Day with a brunch at the Hotel McGrath with other mother’s without children. For the first time, I was taken a ride all the way out the 16 miles to the quarry. Although McGrath was still very brown, the scenery changed to green as we got out that far.


I love our log cabin. It is charming and it is ours, while we pay the rent and as long as the owner doesn’t sell out from under us. We have 3 bedrooms, one of which will be the sewing room (only 1 bathroom). We also have a futon and would love to entertain any who can make the trip to McGrath. Several have said they would love to come and they are very, very welcome.

15 April 2007

This is just a short message to show you my 4-wheeler and my beaver hat (flaps up). Notice the mud: it's mostly dried up.

Last night Joyce and I went to mass and this morning we attended the community church. In mass last night there were 11 people. The community church had a real crowd this morning with 19. Thirty people worshipping in a town of 387 isn't very good, but maybe that's about the national average.

One of Joyce's friends from Florida asked what she was eating up here, was it mostly fish. Mike recommended that she should have answered, "Mostly whale blubber followed by baked Alaska." Actually, fish is not easy to come by here. The Kuskokwim River is not particularly good for fishing and so fish has to be shipped in. But, this week, we eat with Mike and Laural on Tuesday and has tacos made with fresh vegetables that had just arrived on the day's plane. Wednesday we had pizza at the cafe; really loaded (what I call Chicago style). The restaurant is only open two nights a week, so on Friday we had the grilled steak dinner with baked potato and salad that is their other special. Today Joyce came home with me so we could microwave Banquet chicken and instead Laural invited us to join them for dinner. We ate on the patio and I will admit that by the time we finished eating, about 8:00, it was beginning to get a little chilly. We had baked chicken, with gravy; salad with fresh tomato, red pepper and cilantro, and brussel sprouts which they had blanched and frozen from their garden last summer - wow, were they good. So you see, we eat in Alaska about like you eat anywhere in the country. It's true that there is only one cafe in town (one more than the villages) and it is only open two evenings a week with no choice of menu, but home-cooked meals, especially when Laural is cooking, are wonderful. Pot Lucks or what they call Potlatches put those held elsewhere in the country to shame. You cook with what you have because you can't always go to the store and buy just what you want, but that doesn't limit the variety.

Saturday, we met a co-worker of Joyce's at breakfast who offered to give us a tour in the company van. In little McGrath, we probably took three hours, traveling every road and stopping at each of the three stores. Tiny had shown us just about everything when she asked if we minded picking up her mom, so we did the whole route again. No roads in this part of the state are paved and often the mud looked too threatening and Tiny would turn the van around. There isn't much beyond about 2 miles from the airstrip except the town dump and communications antennas, but there is a road that goes out 16 mile to the stone quarry. I've never gone more than about 5 miles because of the road conditions. The VPO (Village Police Officer) and his wife live out "on the ridge" somewhere out there. They have no running water and no electricity. A few people I know live up the river: during the winter they travel on the river by dogsled, or snowmobile, and in the summer they travel by boat, but right now, they have quit coming to town because the river is too unstable and has standing water on top of the ice. The children will not attend school now until the river breaks.

Department of Natural Resources has a large beautiful campus which operates in the summer training and coordinating fire-fighters around the state. They are beginning to gear up and get buildings operational. A man in church this morning told me that he had arrived in February to make preparations. This summer should be very busy for McGrath with DNR, and also the building of a new runway at the airport.

It is now 10:15 and twilight is waning, so I'll draw my dark curtains and go to bed.

12 April 2007

Lots of wonderful news.

I got the message today that Lorrell has been approved by the US government in Hanoi for adoption. I want so badly to send a picture of her for all of you to see, but don't know how to get them off their blog on to mine. Trust me, she's beautiful.

Jim and Charmin are anxious now to get home to Portland and be a real family in a real home, with their real dog (who, by the way, got himself lost for 24 hours from the house where he was staying) I will fly to Portland on the 28th and stay through the baptism on May 6.

I flew the mail plane from Grayling to Anvik on Wednesday and returned to McGrath on Thursday.


(leaving Grayling behind)





(Blackwell School in Anvik on left)

I didn't spend enough time in Anvik to come to any conclusions except that the library needs new shelves before I can do anything there. It's a very small village and all the teachers are related to the students and each other.


It was amazing the difference that 23 days had made in the weather and therefore the town of McGrath. We are now experiencing breakup. Because of permafrost, the melting snow has nowhere to go and everything turns to mud.

The other exciting news is that Joyce arrived in McGrath on Saturday. We couldn't find a place for her to live so she is in the bunkhouse, but in a private room. We have arranged to move into a three bedroom, log cabin on the 21st of the month. Since she lived next to Jim and Charmin for many years, I can share the excitement of the new granddaughter with her.


Others are awash in my excitement. Kaye, who has an office next to mine, posted a sign on my door - Warning, New Grandma inside, Be prepared for overwhelming, Pride..., Happiness..., and picture viewing eye-strain.

More exciting news - I finally got a 4-wheeler on Saturday, and my daughters will not be surprised to hear that I ran out of gas today. I had to bring some gasoline to get the machine away from the AC store where I purchased it, but then thought nothing more about gas until today - oh, oh! But, now I've learned about reserve gas. Every mistake is an opportunity to learn. I'm terrified everytime I have to drive through thick mud and mind myself that this is an all-terrain vehicle.

I hope you'll check back on the previous entry; I went back and added a lot of pictures of Grayling

1 April 2007 - Sunday

Goodness! I combined Thurday and Friday of the McGrath Iditarod race experience and didn't even tell you about Saturday as we waited with the last musher, Heather Siirtola, (yes, 2 i's) to complete her required 24 hour layover before closing the checkpoint. By that time many of the race officials and vets had moved on up the trail. I rushed on the last entry because I was due to leave McGrath for Grayling and now I have been here almost three weeks.

Friday of the Iditarod Race, they brought most of the mushers who scratched past Rainy Pass, through McGrath to fly them out. I talked with the woman who was lost for 36 hours, a rookie. She and another racer, a veteran, had taken the Ptarmigan Pass instead of the Rainy Pass which meant they travelled north rather than west and then had to come back southeast to reach Rohn. G.J., the man who went that route, told me that instead of going through the pass in a nice line, he and his dogs went through as a large tangled clump. When he untangled the dogs, he discovered that one of his dogs was missing. This automatically disqualitifed him. The day before meeting him, a race official told me that there was no way they'd find that dog - he'd either freeze or starve or be eaten by a wolf. So, it was very hard to listen to G.J. being so hopeful. Aafes was smaller than most of his dogs and his special sweetie. She was the dog that lived inside and slept with him. G.J. had terribly frost bitten feet. He said that he had the best possible boots, but when your feet are in ice water for over 12 hours, you have to expect that. I was so delighted when 11 days after her disappearance Aafes was found. She had made her way back to the Rohn checkpoint where she found left over dog food to sustain her until discovery and rescue.

The saddest case I saw was Linwood Fiedler, a veteran, who earlier in the week had given me a big hug for the efforts of the kitchen. He came back to McGrath on Friday with the side of his head bandaged. The story is that while he untangled dogs, he got hot so he took his hat off. When he put it back on, he discovered that his ear was frozen solid. I hope he doesn't lose that ear.

When I arrived in Grayling, I found several of the mushers that I had met in McGrath.

(Dan Carter top center. Matt Rossi Left and right)

I had told Heather that I might see her in here, but I was working when she come through and I missed her.




(upper left - community hall)
(lower left - David-Louis Mem School)
(lower right - tribal center)

The news in Grayling, when I arrived, was that Karen Ramstead had a dog die here. I had read that she stratched to be with family members as they grieved the death of a team member, but didn't know if she meant dog team or training team. It happened so quickly, the dog seemed fine in the evening but during the night the vets (2 who had been in McGrath) found that Snickers had a bleeding ulcer. They even tried to give the dog a blood transfusion, from a litter mate. She died before morning. Skip, the maintainence supervisor here, built a casket for Snickers. The school children made condolence cards. Karen wrote a beautiful letter to the Iditarod News thanking the people of Grayling. The principal made copies to send home with all the children.

One of the male teachers had four single women teachers, including me, to his house for a salmon dinner. His rented house is painted candy stripped. David rewired the house, built cabinets, refinished the walls and floors and when the landlord saw how nice the house was, he decided he could get more for it and raised David's rent. I have also had dinner two night at the rented house of Trish, a special education teacher who has been here in Grayling for one month while her husband and 11 year old son are in Minnesota. She polycams with them every day.

Last Thursday, because of a 4 day weekend, the lower-elementary teacher here in Grayling rode her snow machine to Shayeluk to the dentist. She got lost coming back by herself and around midnight, when she discovered there was no longer any trail to follow, she built a fire to keep her through the 37 degree below temperatures night. Snow machines from three villages, and the search and rescue plane were all out the next morning, but she had taken the wrong trail and they weren't looking in the right place. She returned to Shageluk about 10:30 and was given escort back to Grayling. I had asked many of you to pray for her while she was missing, and she says that she felt the higher power waking her regularly to feed the fire that kept her alive.

For the last week, a new art teacher for the Yukon half of the school distict, from Wisconsin, has been here and stayed with Trish. I've enjoyed time with both of them. I also had a lovely dinner at the principal's house last Monday evening and then we watched Deal or No Deal because an Alaskan was supposed to be on. She was, for the last 15 minutes.



I have been sleeping on foam pads on the floor of a closet in the library and doing my meals in the teacher's lounge micro-wave. I've worked 12 hours a day for the past 19 days (no April Fool's joke) and am taking a little time today to attend church, write in my blog and relax. Besides the non-organization of this library, very few books had any spine labels so I have spent most of my time, finding the call number for non-fiction, typing the spine label, attaching the spine label and shelving the books. Friday the shelf unit that held the Alaska collection collapsed. The sides bowed out and the shelving dominoed. So Skip, detached it from the wall, pulled it out of its baseboard molding and screwed the middle shelf into the sides. Unfortunately, I told him the wrong place to put the shelf and now have lost the possibility of one more shelf.

Grayling is so beautiful and I have loads of pictures I would love to share - maybe I can fit them into other messages.

Wednesday, the book club for adults had its first polycom discussion. Four school sites were involved. I enjoyed hearing the opinions of other people about the book My Sister's Keeper. This group was the idea of Lori, the teacher from Holy Cross who attended my library aide training in December.

The big news in my life is that Jim and Charmin are in Hanoi to adopt a baby girl, my first grandbaby. I have my reservations to fly to Portland for the baptism on May 6th.

My other big news is that my best friend is moving to McGrath, next week, as a substance abuse counsellor. I had hoped to get a house to share, but being away from McGrath, it hasn't happened. The several possibilities I had have all fallen through. There are many vacate houses in McGrath but people seem to think nothing of leaving a house uninhabited. Many people have houses in several villages and possibly Anchorage for the occasions when they stop through. Pray that we find a house.

9 March 2007 - Fourth day of Iditarod in McGrath

Today we waited for the last of the mushers to arrive. Heather Siirtola and Ellen Halverson arrived about the same time since they had been traveling together. Then there was only one team to come in. We waited and waited and then got a phone call from here in town. "I have a dog team in my front yard without a musher." The snowmobiles went out again and found Eric Rogers about 2 miles up the river. When they brought Eric in, they said the dogs were standing in the man's drive way in perfect formation.

Since I am going out of town for more than a week, this and the final Iditarod report will have to remain until I return.

8 March 2007 - Thursday - Third Day of Iditarod in McGrath

The highlight of Thursday was meeting Gary Paulsen. The upper elementary teacher at McGrath School had connected with a teacher in Minnesota and they had their classes exchange power point presentations. The teacher from Minnesota was coming with Paulsen to the Iditarod and he agreed to speak to the children who came back to school during their vacation time.

Before most people arrived, I told Gary that I had to tell him about my literary disaster because it involved him. "What," he said, "Were we once married"? I told him how when my daughters were in junior high, I had substituted a lot for the school librarian so she invited me to come hear an author. I asked her who it was and when she said Gary Paulsen, I said, "Na, Never heard of him". Within the year I had read at least eight of his books and was using his books in tutoring.


This picture proves I finally met Gary Paulsen.









Only four children came but the room was full of adults - teachers, public broadcast interviewer, and others. He was very interesting and said that most of his books are based on his own experiences. He referred to himself as extinct because publishers don't always want to publish what he wants to write. One person asked him what one should do to become a published writer and Gary said the only way is to sell your soul. He said that everything else in your life has to be abandoned and even that isn't really enough.

Gary believes that dogs are smarter than people. He related that during the first Iditarod he ran, he had stopped and just sat on a pile of snow and told himself that he couldn't go on, that he just couldn't do it. Finally he realize that he had to go on or freeze so he had a talk with his lead dog to the affect that he would take care of her, feed her, tend to her needs, if she would get him out of here. He then gave her her head and she did just that, while he just rode along with her. He said that dogs instinctively understand calculus and human feelings better than humans do.

I asked about his bad heart and that I had heard he couldn't ever run the Iditarod again. He said that when he was told that, he sold his dogs and bought a boat on which he lived for about three years. But, a friend who has a business giving dogsled rides, offered him a ride in his sled. After first saying no he got in. Within the first half of the lap he had decided to sell the boat and get dogs again.

The teacher from Minnesot shared a couple of her power point presenations and we saw the three producted in McGrath. The children were amazed to hear about a school that has four 4th grade classrooms when there are only three 4th graders in McGrath





I took off the second half of the day and returned to the checkpoint. It was a day when a lot of mushers stopped in McGrath and I was able to talk to many of them.

Teams arrived in McGrath on the Kuskokwim River and about a mile west of town came up onto River Road, then prodeeded into town. When they left, they went back down to the river right by the city building. Here's what it looked like when they left. This, by the way, was Tommy Lesatz leaving McGrath.

7 March 2007 - Wednesday - Day 2 of Iditarod in McGrath

Walked to the checkpoint right after work.

We begin to really hear the horror stories coming from the mushers who stayed in McGrath. When I asked the musher from Argentina, Hernana Maquiera, how the race had been up to now, he told me that the last 20 miles had been fun; up until then he had never been so scared in his life. Rainy Pass was steep and icy. He said the team was going far faster than he felt comfortable, but there was no way to slow them under those conditions.

Most told about the blizzard in Rainy Pass. One guy tried to go through but before he reached the summit, he couldn’t see his lead dog and when he checked on them, he found most of the dogs' eyes were frozen shut, so he went back. One told how he had been blown off the trail and had to ice hook his dogs and go looking for the trail. About a mile away he finally found about 1 inch of the five foot pole sticking above the snow, so he went back and got his team and proceeded. By that day, 14 teams had scratched at or before Rainy Pass. When Dave Tresino came in, his eyes where so badly swollen shut and his dogs were sick. He stayed in McGrath longer than his 24 hours hoping for an improved condition in his dogs but had to drop 6 or 7 dogs because of the illness. He would return about 5 hours after he left McGrath the next day and scratch. He said that when they started the incline, he discovered that only 7 of his 9 dogs were pulling. With 9 pullers, he would have gone on.

That evening, one of the mushers, Linwood Fiedler, gave me a great big hug of appreciation for all the kitchen staff. He said the food and hospitality were wonderful in McGrath. I would see him again on Friday when they brought most of the scratched racers to McGrath to be flown out. That visit he wasn't as friendly; he had such a badly frostbitten ear that he will probably lose it. He told that he got hot as he untangled dogs so he took his hat off and his ear was frozen solid when he got back to his hat.

That night Gerald Sousa's sled came in with a passenger. Matt Rossi had lost his team. He said that after such a grueling course, he was relaxing coming into McGrath. When the sled hit a bump, he fell off and the dogs kept going. Snow mobiles took him out to find his dogs about 8 miles from McGrath. They were right where he expected them to be. But, he had done the right thing. The mushers have every kind of survival gear, but without the sled, they have nothing. So he decided to stay on the trail and was soon picked up.

Others that came in and stayed a while were Rich Swenson, who wasn't as macho as I had expected. He looked more like a libarian. He told the head of McGrath food and hospitality that the veterans love to stop in McGrath and are not telling the young fellows about it because they don't want it to get too popular. Let the rookies go on to Takotna and the steak dinner.

Tommy Lesatz who had the biggest smile and hearts throbbing in young and old females, and Andy Angstman, whose parents were here from Bethel to spend time with him; his sister was here from college in Minnesota.

I told Tim Osmar that in his rookie year, my daughters were attending Tustemena Elementary when he visited his old school. He barely made the age limit that year. He now has four children and one of them is about the age my daughters were back his first year.


The pictures show how the dogs are bedded down around the check point and also extra sleds sent ahead for the mushers.

Some of the more competitive racers will change sleds because of different conditions. Others just send ahead in case their sled breaks. The first night, Mackey came in with a broken runner. Matt Rossi took parts off the sled stored here and repaired the sled he had been using

A worry that night was that one of the rookie women mushers was lost. When she was finally found and gotten to Rohn, she and her team had been out in the blizzard for over 36 hours. She and J.G. Jones, both took Ptarmigan Pass north instead of Rainy Pass west to get to Rohn. They both came through McGrath on Friday when they were transporting mushers out of the bush. She may have wanted to continue, but the vets wouldn't let her take the dogs out so soon and that put her too far behind to be competitive.

J.G was disqualified because he lost a dog. He told me that instead of going in a pretty line of dogs, they went through the pass in a big bunch. When he untangled them he discovered the missing dog. He was very hopeful of the dog being found and said that she was the one dog who sleeps with him. One of the officials felt that the chances of finding the dog were very slim, what with hunger and wolves. J.G.'s feet were so badly frostbitten that after his shower, he asked for plastic bags to put over his feet to go out to the garage which was serving as the dorm because he couldn't get his boots back on.

Lots of wonderfully interesting men and women involved with the Iditarod.

March 6, 2007

Tuesday evening, the 6th, I went over to the City Building which was the Iditarod Race Check point and helped prepare dinner. I had asked for a ride to the check point, but then someone in the library asked for help with the computer. I was helping that person when I got the urgent signal that we had to go. I grabbed my purse and left, forgetting my beaver hat and snow pants. All I had for my head was a pretty neck scarf that I had received for Christmas and it was 20 below and with a rare wind off the river. There was a lot of waiting for teams to come in. they would estimate time of arrival from the time the teams left Nikolai, but that meant some waits were over 30 minutes. I snapped a lot of pictures in the dark and hoped that the flash would pick somthing up.

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I nearly froze waiting for teams to come in, especially because McGrath had an unusual wind to add to the chill factor. When I finally went home about 2:00AM I had to take a shower to get the chill out of my legs and the next morning my thighs itched like crazy until I rubbed them with lotion and then they burned.






Before any teams arrived in McGrath we were already getting reports about the horrible conditions in Rainy Pass. Doug Swingley had to scratch from the race after being thrown from his sled and breaking several ribs. We also hear that Deedee Janrowe had scratched but I didn't know until later in the week that her sled had careened almost the same place as Swingley and she also had broken ribs.

Martin Buser was the first musher into McGrath and chose to stop for a dinner and a rest. His face was badly wind and cold burned. I got to serve him and he was a really nice person, but I was a little afraid to talk to the mushers that first night. I have heard many stories since then about what a wonderful man he is. Most of the other leading teams went through McGrath and went to Takotna to have steak dinner. When Martin's team arrived, I started to cry because his team was so absolutely beautiful. I saw a lot, a really lot, of dogs during the week, but none as beautiful as his.

Later in the evening while I worked in the kitchen area, a man staggered up to me and asked where he could wash his hands. I pointed out the two restrooms at the top of about five steps and watched as he went in the women's room. I thought, "What is that drunk doing here." To my personal embarassment, it turned out to be a very tired John Baker. He was the only other musher that stopped on that first night.

I didn't get a picture of Martin Buser's team arriving, I was a little late getting outside after going inside to try to thaw out. As he was getting ready to leave, I asked if I could take his picture, and I got a few shots as he worked for an hour changing sleds. He was about the only musher who stopped for several hours that evening. I really wanted to get Martin's team as they left, but my camera froze up, actually froze from the cold, which it did several times during the eveing.



(upper left - Martin Buser having supper)
(upper right - Martin poses for me)
(right - Martin Buser changing sleds,
which took about an hour)


I want to write each day's experience in a separate blog, but since I have to go out of town on Tuesday for a week, I may not get it all reported in a timely manner.