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.