mAttLASKA

I'll be Nome for Christmas

2011-12-25T02:17:00.001-08:00

Do the Nome puns never end?! Answer: no. They never end. Here's how I spent Christmas Eve, giving out presents to all the good boys and girls in Nome, dressed as Santa Claus. Pretty solid costume, I gotta say. Ended the day with a lot of hugs and happy kids.

I'll blog more in 2012. Promise. Now go do something involving gifts, food, or loved ones. Off you go! Git!

sNOwMagEddon!

2011-11-08T23:20:00.000-08:00

Nome - and all of western Alaska - is in the thick of a huge storm right now. I could go on about it, but that's what I've been doing at work all day. Check it out at knom.org/news

For now, take a look at what a certain @akscojo took from Nome's Front Street. No, that's not poor quality; that's how intense/insane the snow was. I drove out to the Public Safety building to do a live report for the eight o'clock hour, and I couldn't see a damn thing. Ten miles and hour, moving from streetlight to streetlight as beacons.

Stuck in Shish

2011-11-03T23:26:00.000-07:00

I came to Shishmaref to get some elder interviews and follow up on a news story about truancy that has amounted to nothing. To be expected; such is the nature of truancy that I didn't expect the interviewee to, you know, show up.

View Larger Map

So there's an idea of where Shishmaref, and it's relation to Nome. It took just shy of an hour to get here. And of course, this being western Alaska, I came by plane.

Shishmaref is located on a barrier island, and so after crossing endless cloud-shrouded and snow-covered tundra, we came to the edge of the land and started flying over a bay (or inlet) that separates the island of Shish from the main body of the Seward Peninsula. Throughout much of the year, that bay/inlet is of course frozen, just like all the other rivers, lakes, and oceans/sounds/straits that make up Alaska's vast coastline. At this time of the year, though, substantial ice is just beginning to form.

There you can see the bay/inlet on the left, the Bering Sea on the right, and the community/village of Shismaref right there in the middle. The place has an "old" feeling to it, a sense of age in the buildings that reminds me of what it must have been like to first build permanent houses, churches, schools, and general stores in this part of the world so many years ago.

Shish also feels like it's a cozy town, with buildings unevenly and organically placed with no real order, four wheeler trails digging into loose sandy soil and snow-covered grass, crisscrossing serpentine paths between the two major streets in town. I walked those streets at ten this morning, still as dark as night, with a fierce wind cutting through my coat and hoodie and jeans; I'm still stubbornly refusing to break out the parka and thermal base layers quite yet. I was trying to make it to an elder's house for an interview. In a village as small as Shish, no one ever really needs to giver directions, so not one's too good at explaining just where they live; it's just known. So I found myself trudging across town, the aforementioned wind attacking my exposed face (and doing a pretty good job roughing up everything else that wasn't exposed), with a vague idea of where I was going and hoping I'd meet someone along the way.

And found them, I did. But with plenty of time to spare, it seems: I was to leave this afternoon, but bad weather in Nome has left me here for another night. I could think of worse fates, as I actually know some people here (a few teachers at the school), I'm traveling with fellow KNOM volunteer Bekah, and the people in Shish are very, very friendly. In wandering around town between elder interviews, I struck up quite a few engaging conversations.

Only problem is food: what I brought it gone, and the food in the local market is the same frozen pizza and processed crap that I avoid eating as a general rule. But economics wins out over idealism, as I've made a meal of Ramen noodles two nights in a row. It's not that I can't afford anything else, it's just, on the verge of taking a trip to the east coast, I'm weighing everything in east coast dollars. Do I want a good meal in the Lower 48 in a week, or a crummy snack in Alaska now?

If you want to take a peek at the paradox of America's food industry, look no further than rural villages in Alaska (well, that's about as far as you could look, really): the only food that can actually make it to shelves is processed garbage, chicken nuggets, and microwave pizza. Shishmaref doesn't have running water, and so you can spend ten bucks for a gallon of bottled water, or spend about the same for a twelve pack of Coke or Pepsi. Fresh fruit and vegetables? Here? They have a hard enough time making it to Nome. So crap comes in, subsistence harvesting diminishes, and obesity explodes. With such alarming precision, it's almost like it was planned.

Willowood

2011-10-09T23:40:00.000-07:00

I like the title, anyway; can't exactly be Hollywood above the permafrost line, where no trees grow! But we have willows. So when yet another film crew comes to Nome to film something - the third film crew I had encountered in about two weeks, only this time I was working for them - I felt Nome might need it's own Bollywood-esque renaming: Willowood. Or Willow-wood. Willowwood?

The call came to the station: a film crew working on a new ad for Alaska Airlines was looking for a PA (which, as was patiently explained to me, was a production assistant. Whew. First hurdle jumped!). $200 for a days work, mostly driving around a van full of camera equipment and lugging said equipment to where it needed to be. I'd have said yes in principle (not gonna pass up earning a month's pay in a single day), but that it was a camera crew working with really fancy-looking equipment, well, yes please.

The entourage of production people, ad agency people, and Alaska Airlines people were being corralled to locations throughout Nome by Richard. If you ever come to Nome, you owe it to yourself to a get a tour from him. Former Broadway performer, he will sing, dance, and two-step his way around town, spitting out anecdotes and stories and quips like only a New York performer relocated to one of the smallest stages in the country can. Richard drove the one (heated) van of ad agency "creatives," directors, producers, and assorted other folk around; I drove around aforementioned van full of gear and, occasionally, a passenger or two. Often Dan, a young cameraman from Alaska who had dredged for gold in Nome prior to going into film, was along for the ride in my van. Despite having an at-time patronizingly quick answer for everything, was a good guy who knew his stuff.

It took an entire day to capture the footage we needed, and with one very nice camera (once set up, I was told it weighed about eighty pounds and was probably worth over two hundred fifty grand). No audio required. I became a third assistant to the director of photography, the man who would actually control the camera during filming. His first assistant, Bob, was a Seattle cameraman who set up the camera. This took a lot more time and expertise than it might seem: screwing/unscrewing of lenses (both huge and small, for shots wide and tight), adjustments for tints, readying of portable monitors and batteries, hooking up power and monitors on the camera itself, assembly/disassembly of other camera components, loading up the proper 32GB memory card that images were captured on, and all sorts of other stuff that you probably wouldn't immediately think are involved with setting up a camera). Dan was the second assistant, my self doing anything else that might be needed: fetching cold pizza from the van for the crew, cleaning up once the shots were done, adjusting props, etc. Pretty basic stuff, and I was trying to ask questions of everyone who would answer them, about their role in the whole thing. They seemed like good people, but more on that later.

We filmed a local musher having his dog team pull him on a four wheeler; the landing and take off of an Alaska Airlines flight; and a long sequence involving the local basketball team. Also, the gimmick for the commercial is a present. I don't know, but the musher-cum-four-wheeler came to a stop by a meticulously-wrapped present amid the tundra, and the basketballers played ball before the ball became a present. I'm sure it'll make sense in post. They filmed other scenes in other parts of Alaska, too, so it'll have a state-wide scope. After a day of setting up and taking down (and eating lunch in the car because the van full of thousands of dollars of rented equipment had no locks), there was one final packout to the airport with all the camera gear, then dropping the visitors off for a drink on Front Street while I went back to help Richard replace the seats in his car. It was just half past seven; I had started work at eight that morning. Not bad.

Like I said, they were good people; never really had words with the ad agency folks, but the production folks/camera crew were friendly and accommodated my questions/inexperience. I wasn't really expect that. Despite having only lived in Nome for a year, there's a certain ... expectation when you hear about a group of people coming to Nome. Especially from a place like Seattle, and especially when it's "film crew people." I have not earned the title of "Alaskan sourdough," nor have I lived a life in Nome this past trip around the sun that has felt like I've been living on the razor's edge of the map. It's been different, it hasn't always been easy, but a grizzled Alaskan I am not. But the truth is, I've come to understand Nome and Alaska a whole hell of a lot better after a year here. And I expect people who don't know Nome well to be dismissive of this tiny cold town in the absolute middle of nowhere. I almost psyche myself up into thinking, "these assholes won't get it." So it's ... enjoyable, refreshing, when people can come to Nome and understand it a little bit better, and enjoy what it has to offer, and not just write it off for what it lacks.

Truth is, spending a day with people from the Lower 48 was like dipping my toe in the waters of Life Down There. That's the life I'll be returning to soon enough, when I head back east to visit some family and friends. And with the clock in Nome ticking down steadily to the end of Year 2, perhaps I'll be returning to Life Down There more permanently. I've enjoyed not sweating the small stuff in Nome, because almost by some unspoken agreement, no one in town seems to care about that. Fashion, trends, pointless ephemera, can all be safely ignored during your time in Nome, if you so choose. Nome's geography engenders an attitude of being almost untouched by the rest of the world. Being around people who live in that world was a crash course of Lower 48 survivability. Happy to report, I've still got it ... more or less.

汉语怎么说"Nome"?

2011-09-20T22:30:00.000-07:00

Tonight I was invited to a Chinese dinner in Nome. A group of Nomeites who have a connection to the Middle Kingdom. There were a few 外国人 like myself who were there teaching English. Oddly, those who had were in China in the 90s, in the southwest of Yunnan or so. They're a bit older than me now, and China seems to be just one thing they've done in busy, interesting lives. There was also Doctor Bill, who spoke with me about his work with Chinese dissidents and others opposed to the central government's actions. His wife Amy is 台湾人，Taiwanese, but she spoke Mandarin that I could understand mostly (save for the speed). It was a diverse group of people, as you often find in Nome: young and old, incredibly different backgrounds, different "roads to Nome" if you'll pardon the joke, but one very interesting thing in common. We gathered together for the first genuine Chinese meal I've had probably since leaving Jilin in 2008. Caribou "jiaozi" 饺子，虾米炒面 (shrimp chow mein, you'd probably know it as), salmon baked in that deliciously-with-the-bone way only the Chinese seem to know how to do well. We spoke mostly in English, but there was a lot of Chinese in there too.

I was surprised at how much I laughed. How much I understood, how much I recalled. Words that the more talented speakers at the table could throw out that flipped dusty switches of recognition in my brain. The smells of the ginger and garlic and soy sauce and the clang of chopsticks and shifting tones taking me back to Zhanjiang, to Jilin. The night was like throwing fresh sparks on the cooling ashes. I find myself filled with a profound longing to see China again, to immerse myself in a culture so different and so intriguing, in a language that I actually got the hang of halfway decently.

I left China after two years, thinking I was out of place there, that I was just not cut out to do it. Am I remembering only the good bits in my nostalgia? Jim and James and Nicki would surely be able to reminisce about the good times while keeping a firm grasp on the frustrations, isolation, difficulties. China is like that ex-girlfriend you remember having great times with, but at the same time, have to remind yourself why getting back together might not be the best idea. But tonight - and hopefully for other nights down the line, in the coming months - I'll be able to meet up with some people and reminisce about a place and time that seems like a surreal dream, in a language I suddenly want to practice again, and who knows where it'll go.

27 and Spoiled Rotten

2011-09-19T23:19:00.000-07:00

I turned 27 last week, and based on the numerous well-wishes, care packages, cards, notes and various other communiques, I now know two things: one, people treat me far better than I deserve when it comes to showing their mail-based expressions of love; and two, everyone must think I am an alcoholic, because the sheer amount of beer I received is almost enough to qualify me as a Dogfish Head distributor.

No, really. Take a look:

And that's after having a few last week to celebrate the old birthday and share some with friends! I mean, really people, I am overjoyed, but also a little bit ... disturbed at how well you know me. (And disturbed, perhaps, more because you know bottles of liquid joy are all I really want.) All told, I'd say I got a case of beer from disparate sources, and those giant 22oz wine bottles are like living miracles. How nothing broke just spits in the face of probability.

I can't offer my thanks enough to all the awesome friends and family who offered up Delaware beer, Augusta home-made goodies, Texas ales, California coffee, and cards and letters from all over. I realize now I should be a better friend/brother/grandson. To start, I guess I could at least blog more.

So you may remember when I shaved my head?

Yep. Well, that was back in ... late June/early July, I think? It's made it's way back. I was almost hoping it would grow back wildly different: a darker color, thicker, curly, whatever. Here I am today:

So that's where I am. Was contemplating just not cutting it again until Year Two in Nome is up. Don't know what kind of mane that would give me, but ...

The new volunteer is here. From the east coast, so no more of those Minnesota freaks. The tundra has turned from glorious green to autumnal red and yellow and brown. It's interesting to experience fall at your feet, rather than above your head. The wild fire-red tundra plants are beautiful, and would be a welcome sight, if they didn't portend the coming winter. I remember getting used to Nome as it looked under feet of snow, and how ugly I thought it looked as it thawed. Well, now I've grown used to Anvil City Square without snow. I've gotten used to shorter days that nonetheless allow for hikes past the Penny River and up the far seaward hills for glimpses of Sledge Island. I don't even remember what last year was like when suddenly the snow was here and the town became a maze of plowing and shoveling.

I wanted to make this post a big thank you for all the love I received lately, but I slipped into Nome-thoughts again. Oh well.

I'll be back east come Thanksgiving. Hope to see you there.

Wales without Welsh

2011-09-02T19:28:00.000-07:00

After a dismal August (blog-wise, at least), I'm hoping to do better in September. So let's get things started. I'm in the village of Wales, a short plane ride from Nome, and I'm covering the King Ikmuit Dance Festival. There are groups from Teller, Brevig Mission, Point Hope, Gambell, even a group from Anchorage and each has a dozen people with them. There have been charter flights into town, and this weekend, the population of 150 residents may just double.

But first, a little bit of Nome.

En route to Wales, I got to see some of that gorgeous Alaska geography, with the tundra turning autumn red and fall yellow and, well, dead brown.

Then I landed, in WAA. Everyone was pretty excited for the weekend festivities.

Before festivities start, I wandered around town. It's a gorgeous place. Right on the sea, and the weather was all sea breeze and sunshine.

What's that big blue thing up there?

I was lucky enough to actually bump into one of the artists who helped make this piece possible. Lucky had my Marantz on me. I'll get that interview up soon.

That's all from Wales so far. More soon.

Post 93

2011-08-23T00:29:00.000-07:00

My one-year-in-Nome anniversary is coming up this Saturday. This being the ninety-third blog post since I arrived, it's somewhat pathetic I wasn't even able to crack a hundred posts in a year. Likely do to reasons elucidated elsewhere. Still, it's lame.

This is also only my second post in the entire month of August. I always find it kind of sad when you visit a blog for an update and see it hasn't been touched for a month. Or when you find yourself looking at a blog or website with a final entry full of life and enthusiasm and then, nothing. For years, possibly. Some blogs kind of write a farwell post, which makes it feel like something's at least ended. To visit a site that so eagerly and unknowingly wrote its final words, only to have it cut off in 2004 or something like that, is just depressing.

Let's see. What have I been up do? Let's just run down the list of things that have been on my mind lately.

Had a bonfire on the beach last night. Drank a gifted bottled of Francis Ford Coppola's pinot noir, grilled some brats, burned driftwood. Biking back home near the port, a herd of musk oxen were mere feet from me, scuttling between ditches and rusting shipping containers. There were alarmingly nonchalant about the whole thing. They were maybe twenty or thirty yards from me as I biked by; wow they're big and wow those horns could do some maulin'.

We have about sixteen hours of daylight now. By the end of September (or so Matty assures me), we'll be down to twelve. Which means we'll be losing an hour of sunlight a week from here on out. The loss which seemed to be measured in seconds and minutes not too long ago will slide down that exponential curve until it bottoms out into the long trough of mid-winter, where we'll be gaining seconds and minutes but still only have about three hours of daylight. At least I'll be going to the lower 48 sometime soon.

Oh yeah, the contiguous lower 48. Almost forgotten about you. (Does anyone ever use the word "contiguous" anywhere else? Didn't think so.) I'd sketched out my plans to go see mom and dad for Thanksgiving a while back. The question was, when in November do I leave? Since my good friend Matthew Q. Lawler (of podcast fame) has notified me - nay, implored me to attend! - the satellite festival of NERAX North, that is, the New England Real Ale eXperience. It's November 10th-12th, in Massachusetts, and if I'm gonna make it, I'll have to head to Boston (and its environs) in early November.

The list of cities I want to visit on this trip keeps growing, and they're all cities with people I want to see, and not just cities to visit just for shits and giggles. San Antonio, Tampa, Minneapolis/St. Paul, New York, Philadelphia, Altoona ... even Rehoboth, if I can. What can I say, even in winter, the devout must make their pilgrimage.

I have received from my friend Christy more excellent coffee, including a pound of cold-press coffee. Half of that will be going into a coffee porter that's fermenting downstairs right now. I cannot wait to taste this beer.

I don't think I've played an actual video game for more than an hour since, well, a year ago. I've bought a small handful of cheap games on Steam, attempted to play some other games I'd downloaded before I moved to Nome. But the draw just isn't there any more. This, to me, is akin to my father suddenly deciding that football just isn't for him anymore. Weird.

Coming up on my second year, I cannot believe how slowly time seems to be passing. The tundra was green mere weeks ago, and I'm astonished at how the sourdock has turned fire-red and the lichens are now a stiff, crunchy white and brown. But so many small changes have taken place lately that I feel the first year is still crawling by. I know this point one year from now will be here in a heartbeat, but right now, I can't believe how long year two feels as it lies sprawled out before me.

Work has felt sluggish and unproductive lately. I try to get two good profiles a week done; I've only gotten one a week finished for two weeks now.

Been re-reading Tolkien. Don't know why. Just finished The Silmarillion, got something new ("Unfinished Tales") from the library, and am going through The Hobbit again before I get to the trilogy.

I keep thinking about spectacular ways to spend my second year: start a Moth slam in Nome, take piano lessons, take some courses at Northwest Campus, start a writing club, dedicate time to writing fiction, practice the uke, eat only home-baked bread (and thus, learn to bake), study up and kick ass in EMT-2 ... the list goes on. And most days, I get home from the gym and have the energy to do none of 'em.

Here's to a second year.

August is the Least Cruel Month

2011-08-16T01:06:00.000-07:00

It's been a spectacular couple of August weeks in Nome. The weather, though somewhat rainy (and, in fact, breaking records for rainfall in July and August), has been a warm and steady 50º or more. While the rest of the country has been baking, we've been enjoying pretty much optimal summer temperatures. Bike rides have been numerous, hikes even more so. There have been beach bonfires, musical jam-outs in crowded Banner Creek cabins, trips to Tom's, visitors, berry pickings, beach walks, trips to Salmon Lake, beer brewings (coffee porter!), back-porch grilling (brats and chicken with a brown sugar rub that is criminally good), and the list goes on. Quite a full month. So full, in fact, that I haven't wanted to stop to blog any of it.

I think I have found the seasonal rhythm at last here in Nome. It's taken about a year. I remember arriving last August, and the idea of going outside to enjoy spotty sunshine on a mostly-cloudy day with a high of fifty sounded downright stupid. But a brief autumn, a frigid winter, a muddy springs, and a rainy summer has really made me cherish whatever sunshine I can get. I find myself literally craving time outside, doing almost anything at all, once work is finished. No point in staying indoors reading, listening to music, watching a film, or doing anything foolish like that. Outside! Like a kid on summer break. What'll the workout be today? A jog along the Norton Sound, east on the Council Road? Maybe a bike ride along the Beam Road, or through the dirt track that is the Newton Pas? I am loathe to do cardio at the gym when the day is so long and beautiful (despite wanting to get a lift in). I feel guilty for even watching the occasional Netflix disc (we get about one a week).

And just as Leah left, the cycle has moved on, and I have a new room mate. So in addition to basking in the glory of summer, I've been trying my best to help her acclimatize to the whole of Nome and KNOM. I have a mental list of projects to do and things to accomplish; but they keep getting delayed to a day when I don't want to spend as much time as I can outside.

mattlaska.ennui.blogspot.com

2011-07-31T00:56:00.000-07:00

July seemed to come to an end out of nowhere, and with August just around the corner, I'm getting closer to my year-long anniversary here in Nome. Looking back on this last year, it's been a pretty exciting, at times difficult, but ultimately very good year. If you were to look at the blog, however, you'd see more sporadic updates and an abundance of what I feel are bit too cheery posts. And that's kind of the problem, I guess.

With my China blog, I was eager to get online and share pictures, thoughts, musings, and happenings of China, of life there, of teaching and traveling and all the weird sights you see living in China. That continued on with the second year, a new school, a new city, and a lot more travel. I had the blogging bug something powerful back then, and I was eager to share my infection with anyone who wanted to read.

Nome ... well, not so much. Nome is a small town and (pretty much everyone) can read here; English, to boot. I'm no longer masked by the anonymity I had in China, where pretty much everyone I met couldn't access Blogger behind the great firewall, nor did they care what one random guy was saying about his small orbit in their huge, populous country. It was a way to share with friends and family and the random folks who stumbled upon it (like a woman who found my musings on Chinese words for Christmas a useful study tool, or a family that read my blog and then contacted me in their attempts to visit the orphanage in Zhanjiang where their future daughter was to be adopted from). I know that no one in Nome reads my stupid blog, but the fact that they could at any time has acted as a kind of filter and censor to sharing what I really feel.

And it's not as if I've got terrible, nasty things to say about Nome, either! The filter comes mostly from the purpose a blog serves me. (A blog, or, as most of civilization has done for years, a journal.) Writing things down, putting into word some of the thoughts kickin' around the old head, has a certain power. It solidifies things, processes thoughts into words, compresses the abstract into the concrete. Sometimes those thoughts are fine to share with the world; sometimes it's better to keep them to myself. In China, I was too naïve to immature to make the distinction. Now, I'm more inclined to write those things down for myself. And guess what? The journal I've been adding meager entries to since 2008 - just days after my return from China, just hours before the whirlwind European adventure - has finally been filled. A slim volume that took three years to fill; I'm starting a new one for my second year in Nome, and I aim to fill it before I leave.

Which means less blogging; or at least, about as much as I blog now. I'll still share the occasional post or picture or Profile or what have you. But the frequency with which I blog will probably stay the same, if not decrease. The differences between being a "volunteer" teacher in China and being a volunteer radio journalist/DJ/et cetera are numerous, a big one being that the radio gig is something where the reflections are better suited to a private journal rather than a public blog.

Podcast the Fifth

2011-07-29T00:52:00.000-07:00

Bit late on this one, thought I'd link to it. Podcasting is fun; five episodes in, it almost feels like a real show.

When James Came

2011-07-18T02:00:00.000-07:00

James Huang, you ask? That dude from Jilin? Yeah, the same. Guess what? He came to visit Nome. He was doing a medical rotation up in Kotzebue, and decided to take a little detour to Nome for a long weekend. A long weekend in Western Alaska takes some doing, but James is the kind of guy who gets things done, and his well-worn passport and penchant to go almost anywhere to see people he knows; after all, we're talking about the guy who endured a trip from China to Jamaica and then BACK TO CHINA. Presumably because he's a masochist.

But where to start? James came to Nome at the end of June. After picking him up from the airport, he and I promptly went on a good long bike ride to catch up. I ate dirt only once on that bike ride (until the very end, where I technically ate sidewalk). I talked James through Nome and what I know of its history. He came to work with me and watched me at my daily grind - audio editing and story writing, if you need a refresher - and even got to see my interview a guy at Nome's Visitor's Center about birding. That night James's boyfriend Ned flew into Nome, and we headed out to Banner Creek - that's the tiny little assortment of houses and cabins in the middle of the tundra a good couple of miles out of Nome, about as far as you can get away from Nome before you're just living like some hermit out on the tundra - with Matty and his sister Bre to hang out in the somewhat-wild-wilderness and enjoy the midnight sun.

That's Ned, James, Bre, and yours truly, hiking out to Dorothy Falls. We sawa moose.

We were out at Banner, between hikes. Bre brought her ukulele, Leah had her guitar, and I had my uke, so ... why not? Impromptu performance.

Note to self: find an appropriately-sized instrument.

We took a hike up Bear Mountain after some lunch and music. Ned was exhausted from flying, poor thing, so he and James stayed back while Leah, Matty, Bre and I hiked up Bear. Bear is a mountain of a ... mountain, one I've wanted to hike for quite some time. Once you cut through the willows (and, hopefully, don't encounter any actual bears), it's all just a matter of approaching from the south and keeping to the wide-ish ridgeline. But to even get to the willows, we had to do a river crossing, basically walk upstream ... and then, well, cross the snow.

That's snow in June, ladies and gentlemen. It's mid-July, and I'd wager it's still there.

At the top of Bear Mountain.

Obligatory Lion King/Pride Rock shot.

But wait, this post is about James, isn't it? After a weekend out at Banner, we had to head back to town. I worked Sunday, and James and Ned disappeared on a day-long bike ride. That night we drove out and did the Last Train to Nowhere, out towards Council; saw some musk oxen, nearly saw a fox, got rejected from a beer at Safety Roadhouse because Ben didn't have his ID, and basically went on a nice drive out into Alaskana. We had to be up early the next morning, though, because James, the marathoner that he is, wanted to run in Nome's annual twelve-and-a-half-mile Fourth of July run up Anvil Mountain. Alas, with having to do a partial day and my airshift (noon to two), I missed his no doubt bravado performance. In a field of nearly thirty runners, James came in tenth! Not bad for just kind of stumbling on the race. Sadly, the only picture I have of Nome's Independence Day celebrations (which included closing off Front Street for a pretty huge parade, bike racers, egg races, a re-enactment of a bank robbery outside the actual bank, and a bunch of other "only in Nome" craziness) is a picture of the unicycle race. Behold!

Having a Fourth of July barbeque for a vegetarian like James was ... a little tricky. He and Ned made curried lentils and race. I made moose chili and barbequed reindeer hotdogs. It's called compromise.

Homebrewed IPAs, and a reindeer hotdog with moose chili. That's Fourth of July in Alaska.

Sadly, the weather took a turn for the worse as James's stay came to a close. We got a decent tundra hike in, for a good view of Salmon Lake and Grand Central. We went on a tour with the Bering Land Bridge preserve; learned a bit about lichen on that hike, I can tell you. As the weather worsened, it was sadly a lot of Scrabble and a movie. Which isn't all that bad, I guess. As much as I want to make anyone's coming to Nome worth it, Nome is what it is. The weather does not care how difficult or expensive your trip was out here, and ultimately, seeing a familiar face in Nome was enough for me, be it on a hike or over a Scrabble board.

Well, that's one friend to Nome. Who's gonna step up to the plate next? Jim and Ashley? Ric? Brother and/or sister(s)? Alaska awaits.

Lease is Up for New Friends

2011-07-17T02:34:00.000-07:00

I moved to China not really knowing what the hell I was going to do or what it was going to do to me. Two years after moving home, working and teaching and all that, I signed up to move to Alaska for KNOM, and I had a better idea of what I was getting myself into. Another volunteer program? Check. Move to a strange new part of the planet? Check. Take on a new job you only dream of doing? Check. Throw yourself into a new group of people? Check. Start a lease on some new friendships? Check.

And today, I can tick off another item on that list: losing someone you've grown to care about. Check.

I tend to find myself being the one who leaves. Whether that's pure chance or unconsciously choreographed by some deep psychological need, I don't know. But today my good friend Leah left Nome. I don't know when I'll ever see her again. And it makes me sad.

It's a very strange thing, coming to an experience like this. Presumably you have a lot in common with the people you're with; I mean, you were all drawn to go teach in China or go work at a radio station in Alaska, right? So while you move to a new place and start a new job and move in to a house full of strangers, it's a house full of strangers that you're inclined to think share something if what you value. And life becomes a crucible, suddenly finding yourself living, working, and spending a large chunk of what time's left hanging out with those very same strangers. You find new friends in the community, in the house, at work. You see who you click with, and why. And you come to see, faintly at first but soon as if it were chiseled in stone from day one, just what limits you'll both (magically and without discussion) set for this new friendship. Just how much you'll share, just how much effort you'll put in to making it grow, just how honest you'll be with that other person.

And in Leah I found a friend who I was quite honest with. In a way that shocked me (and especially her), we were honest with each other. Bluntly so; combative, at times. But rooted in deep respect for each other, in the other's values and beliefs and experiences. A good, dear friend. And now I feel her loss sharply. I'd chalk today up to just spending too much time in that crucible. Live long enough with anyone and you'll inevitably get close and miss 'em when they're gone, right? Well, no; I know that's not it, because, well, I've done this before. People come and go; good people, friends, co-workers. But like work or school or volunteering or any of those other experiences in life, so many of those good people, for whatever reason, simply become the "extras in the movie adaptation of (the sequel to) your life." So it's a rare thing to find someone who brings light and laughter into your life the way Leah has in my first year in Nome.

And maybe that's just it: she's gone, and I've come to value her friendship, and so I rage against the fate of fading into the background. And I don't want her to fade into the background, either. I have no idea how to do that; life goes on, I've got another year in Nome, she'll be living her life in other corners of the globe, and there feels like a certain inevitably that drives it all to just chaos and Christmas cards. And just now I don't really feel like trying to explain it any more. Leah's gone - my lease on a new friend is up - and I am sad to see someone like her go.

Weather Balloons

2011-07-08T21:45:00.000-07:00

Today I launched a weather balloon with NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. And by NOAA, I mean my friend Wes. But first, an update:

Apologies for the unintentionally moody, angst-ridden picture (and, now that I look at it again, WHOA!, that is one over-the-top wannabe-badass not-smile! I swear I just turned the camera on myself and snapped a photo!), but that's what you get with a photography crew of one using a borrowed point-and-shoot (thanks Matty). The hair is slowly growing back, and no, I won't continue to shave it, because unlike some baldies in denial (ahem, Jim), the hair grows back far too quickly and I just can't be "bov'erd." (Bothered, that is, for my American friends.) If it would stay at the freshly-shaved nothing-but-skin level for a while, I would honestly consider keeping it bald. But it grows back far too quickly (and thickly, and lusciously, Jim), so I'm letting it grow and we'll see what happens in a couple weeks/months.

Also, one more "before we get started" picture, something you'll likely see as soon as you enter Nome on your drive in from the airport.

Welcome to Nome! Those metal baskets are dredge buckets, from the hulking colossi known as dredges that were used to dig up gold around the region. The dredges themselves, along with countless dredge buckets, litter the landscape (and, as you can't see in this picture but can probably extrapolate, can be used during the (all too brief) summer as flower pots).

On to the balloon!

So my friend Wes is a meteorologist with NOAA, and he let me sit in on his weather balloon launch this afternoon. And by sit in, I mean, launch the balloon. In an inauspicious building close to Nome's airport, he and I set up for the daily weather balloon SPECTACULAR! Above, you can see him taking the balloon out and setting it in a trough of sorts, where he connected it to a weighted nozzle and tamp before filling it up with (I think) helium.

Here's Wes getting the balloon ready.

... and thar she blows!

Arise!

This is the actual instrument Wes was sending up. It has a GPS beacon, and using information from it's measured rise and drift, they can calculate wind speeds and, I'm sure, all sorts of other weather-data. That little lightbulb-filament looking antenna is actually a thermometer of sorts, taking temperatures as the balloon rises.

Totally harmless! ... that's just what the government WANTS you to think!

That's the weight. Once its up, the balloon has enough lift to be launched.

Now to attach the transmitter/beacon/thing ...

Due to the wind, Wes attached this kite spool "tool" to the balloon. The wind could have caused the balloon to go off course and perhaps slam the beacon on the ground. The spool would use gravity to slowly unspool. All in all, the equipment was profoundly simple. The data they gather and the computers used to crunch it may belong to the twenty-first century, but the actual balloon and tools used to launch it could easily have been part of the nineteenth.

This little guy beeped to let us know the beacon was actually transmitting.

Checking the GPS coordinates before launch. They didn't budge while the beacon sat in the next room ... success!

Ready to launch.

Let's step outside and launch this mother.

Yours truly, ready to launch and also sporting the new KNOM 40th Anniversary hoodie!

Off she goes!

Wes then showed me around the NOAA offices and even let me record the marine weather. (KNOM plays that marine weather several times a day, and we at KNOM have to edit it ... so whoever edited it tonight heard an unexpected familiar voice.) It was a fun little tour of the weather service here in Nome, and of course, they make all the air travel and stuff that western Alaskans rely on to live out here possible. Keep up the good work, boys!

And oh yeah, my friend James - that's right, that James - visited me in Nome with his boyfriend Ned, last week! But sadly, those two are hoarding all the photos of the trip, as I was without camera. Maybe if he reads this he'll deign to share some of those pics and let me put them on the blog?

A Day in the Life

2011-07-08T01:50:00.000-07:00

Arrived at work at ten of eight this morning, somewhat early for me as I'm usually dragging my ass into the station at eight on the nose if not just a few minutes late. Kicked off the muddy slip-on New Balances and put on the pale brown and worn Hush Puppies I wear around the station. Contemplated if saying "the station" instead of "the office" really means anything, or if its just a psychological trick to convince myself I don't work a desk job. Decided to stop thinking until I had my coffee. Ground some beans and made coffee.

Sliced a banana into little mushy white coins over my granola/strawberry yogurt/almonds/raisins breakfast. (Fairly typical breakfast, in fact.) Schlepped into my office - "the batcave" - and turned on my computers (PC for editing, Macbook for everything else). Got right to work this morning - didn't check my email or browse the big Alaskan news outlets for any stories - because I had spent all week gathering and editing interviews that I was now going to tie into a nice little bow of completion, framed into my own little narrative (and linked together by my own voicework, or as I call it, my "narration," which somehow sounds more like the work of a novelist than an aspiring journalist). Found myself editing furiously on the PC, spinning in my chair to write and check notes and emails on the Mac, edit on the PC, write on the Mac, edit, write, PC, Mac. Refilled my coffee cup. Chatted with coworkers briefly. Returned to work. Edit, write, PC, Mac.

Bathroom break.

Coming back downstairs (don't ask) I answer a call; news story set to take place Friday got canceled. No big deal. Back to work; just past ten. Gotta start thinking about my twelve thirty to one airshift; today's Thursday, Thursday Themepark Lunch, what should it be? Raining, crappy weather, rain: Tom Waits, "Make it Rain," Blind Melon, "No Rain," Ctrl+F to search the system for more with "rain," far too many hits with "train," screw it. Focus: get the first profile done before noon.

Read what I've written aloud, mentally playing back the hacked-and-reconstituted words of my interviewees when it's their cue (a big fat space on the word doc that says CUT). Editing as I read, come to the end of what I have, and then (all together now): edit, write, PC, Mac, back, forth. Re-read one last time; sounds good. Time to add the narration. Refill of coffee (and giant stainless steel water bottle, too); return to desk, shut window, close door, turn down AM signal, pot up mic, clear throat: read. Phone rings. "Oh for fu-;" it stops. Read, re-read, edit script on the fly, improv. Recorded, saved; noise-reduction filter, saved, imported, doubled. Align "narration" with previously prepared voice CUTs. Work on alignment, transitions; add intro, outro; listen to the whole thing. Sounds good. Mix down as a .WAV, hard limit, save, copy to thumb drive, load it into the system. Profile one is done. Two more to go today to make this week feel worth it.

It's quarter past eleven; must get airshift music! Drag in Tom Waits (my own add), Blind Melon (it's in the system already), fill up the rest of the hour with enough random rain-related songs that I like. Filter for country, anything too hard; some REM in there I guess, why not. Briefly consider trading ukulele for a guitar; like guitar better, maybe that's what I should play; screw it, big hands, try the piano. Music for the hour selected, I move on to working on the script for Profile Two. I get just far enough into it to be annoyed when I have to give up and go DJ at noon.

DJing at noon goes well. Lot of fish reports. Play the music, leading the theme of rain; a little heavy handed. Who knows if anyone is even listening close enough to actually hear the theme. Accidentally play a Christian song; "Love Rains Down" got really heavy there for a second, how'd that happen? Moving on, finish the hour, it's one o'clock on a Thursday, so that means staff meeting.

An hour later, I know about the station's 40th birthday and other events. We fold special-order hoodies; I choose a mocha/brown one as it looks better with jeans. Back to the house, house meeting. Swift orders of business, some laughs, quick lunch and a French press and it's back to work just after three.

Profile Two finishes remarkably quickly; too quickly; is there enough meat there? It's short, but that's the point, right? The middle part of a series of three. Move on to Profile Three. Check email as I do; random Google Alerts and not much else. Hash out the first half of the third script easily; off to help reload the back of the car with emergency supplies and EMT trauma pack. It's four and I won't get this done by five. I get back to work - edit, write, PC, Man - and it's five of five. I'm on call at six. Damn it. I bolt out of work (but not before taking another fish report), arrive home, run upstairs and get dressed to run. Was that an eastern wind I felt?

Bathroom break.

Listen to This American Life as I run. East wind is insanely strong running into it; a quarter mile outside of Nome I turn and go off into a north by northwest route so the wind will be pushing me forward. Loop around the entire town, only having to run east once more, briefly; a good half-hour run. Shower, change into EMT gear, grab radio and pager and head back to work. Stop to vacuum lint out of dryer; holy hell, we're lucky we didn't start a fire. Back at work, it's quarter past six. Quickly now: edit, write, PC, Mac, back, forth: done. Read it aloud; sounds good. Recording: shut window, close door, turn down AM signal, speak, correct. Save, filter, import, edit. Snips here and there, done; save, copy to thumb, import to system. Walk away at eight; will write the accompanying news stories later.

At home, I drive the house - Ben, Matty, Leah, Matty's sister - down to the beach. The cigar fish are in, swarming the shore, tiny little silver-black torpedoes. Even just wading ankle-deep in the water Ben catches a dozen with his net. Back home, ready to go for a call, waiting, BSing with room mates. A call comes. Bolt out the door, drive dangerously to the garage. On scene, to the hospital, back at the garage, restock and go home. It's nearly eleven. Sit around and talk with room mates; realize house dynamic will change when Leah leaves; feel sad briefly. Joke some more, us all talking about what makes someone a Nome lifer. Differing opinions; any among the group? Recall I've been called "I lifer, [I] just don't know it yet." I sincerely do not think this is so; year two already a gaping chasm of time ahead of me. But then what? For now, more laughter, more jokes, about work, about Nome.

Do some dishes. Head up to my room. Realize I haven't blogged for a while. Turn on computer, head to blog, begin writing. Finish blog post; going to bed.

The One Where He Shaves His Head

2011-06-29T02:19:00.000-07:00

I've talked about this for a long time. It's been coming, it was only a matter of when. That day came June 11. I tell some people I was bored. Or that I just wanted to see how round my skull was. In truth, I just wanted to shave my head and see what that was like. So far, it's been going pretty well.

What ... what're you gonna do with that?

Taking standard precautions ...

Oh ... my ...

Smile! I call it the NOhawk. Get it? NOhaw- ... all right then.

Coming along nicely.

Oh ... it's real, Matthew.

It's all coming off.

I get by with a little help from my friends. (That's Lindsay, and it her/her husband Scott's clippers.)

Contemplating a bird's nest.

Oh yeah.

'
Triumph!

But oh no, we are not done. The goal: naked scalp.

It almost looks like a swim cap or something.

Commence the cutting!

It felt strange, like having your braces off. I couldn't stop rubbing it.

So there you have it. It's growing back quick, but I may just keep it ...

Fourcast

2011-06-26T17:52:00.000-07:00

Look, I'll be blunt: the blog has been lacking this month of June. And I'm gonna say, reader, it's almost entirely your fault. Feedback, reader, I need feedback! How can I know what to post if you don't respond to what I write?! It's not that hard. What do you want, stunningly well-written,, poigant essays on life in Alaska, or do you simply want photomontages of the Great Land? More audio clips of my Profiles and work, or more puzzling as to what it's all about by a young green cheechako?

I'll tell you what. You just give a listen here to the Matt Matt & Matthew Fraducast the Fourth - the "Fourcast," if you will - and think about it a while. I'll post again soon with what I've been up to this month.

Some Stories

2011-06-23T02:09:00.000-07:00

It's been a quiet month in Nome. The solstice was Tuesday, with a full twenty-one hours and thirty minutes of daylight. We had been gaining incrementally every day for months, and this morning, I got to read the weather and tell everyone listening that we are now losing daylight each day. Just seconds at first, but it's all steps toward a long and dark winter.

I've had some good stories in the past few weeks that I'd like to share.

Nome recently passed an indoor smoking ban. Co-worker/room mate/person who hates being mentioned on this blog Leah worked on a Profile about it.

The Midnight Sun Folk Fest was last weekend. I didn't perform - I've really been slacking on the ukulele practice - but I did get to interview the tribal funk band Pamyua (pronounced Bum-you-uh) that headlined the event this year.

And the GuysRead program brought a lot of readers from the community into the classroom to read to the fourth graders. Profile on that, too.

In addition to Profiles, I've been filling in a lot of DJing duties and news duties lately. You can hear me reading the KNOM Update News for the past two days.

So that's work. Life otherwise has been ... hmm. Well, maybe more on that later. For now, enjoy some of my work. And please do give me some feedback.

PicDump

2011-05-31T02:50:00.000-07:00

As May draws to a close, it's sometimes hard to believe I've been living in Alaska for nine months now. Nine months! Somehow it feels like it's gone by incredibly slowly and also far too quickly. I wonder what I was thinking nine months into China? With nine months behind me (and another fifteen to go), I thought I'd share some pictures of the last three-quarters of a year here in Nome. In no particular order:

My room mates under the burled arch during Iditarod (that's Linda, Ben, and Matty).

A little Matthew under the burled arch action.

This is how they remove snow in Nome. All year.

This was the KNOM garage (with the big red fuel tank) and the KNOM volunteer house (where I live) in February. Did I mention Alaska is cold?

This is me, most likely making some ingenious observation or journalistic breakthrough. Notice the furrowed brow.

Walking on the ice, I spent quite a few hours cathartically destroying these icicles. They always came back, though. Damn you (or thank you), melting!

Leah during Iditarod. It could get exhausting!

Filling up (at $4.99 a gallon) before heading to do some race coverage. Note the bunny boots!

Think this was Hans Gatt's partner. "Partner," she said, "and you can take that to mean ... whatever!"

Makin' pretzels for our Relay for Life fundraiser. Only a few weeks ago, this one.

Climbing Anvil Mountain in February. Why I don't have my parka on, I do not know.

Somewhere near the top of Anvil.

So after bragging about how much I love turkey and how awesome I am at making it (it's all in the brine!), Leah got me a turkey for Christmas. I finally made the thing a week or so ago, and we had a Thanksgiving in May Dinner at the house. I'm wearing the Turkey Forecast apron, which was part of the present, too, so I had to wear it as I cooked. It reads:

Turkey Forecast!!
Turkeys will thaw in the morning, then warm in the oven to an afternoon high. Near 190*F. The kitchen will turn hot and humid, and if you bother the cook, be ready for a severe squall or cold shower.

During the late afternoon and evening, the cold front of a knife will slice through the turkey.
Causing an accumulation of of one to two inches on plates. Mashed potatoes will drift across the one side while cranberry sauce creates slippery spots on the other. Please pass the gravy.

A weight watch and indigestion warning have been issues for the entire area with increased stuffiness around the beltway
During the evening, the turkey will diminish and taper off to leftovers, dropping to a low of 34*F in the refrigerator.

Looking ahead to Friday and Saturday, high pressure to eat sandwiches will be established. Flurries of leftovers can be expected both days with a 50% chance of scattered soup late in the day. We expect a warming trend where the soup develops. By early next week, eating pressure will be low as the only wish left, will be the bone.

Leah and I frying some cheese curds a few months ago.

Leah and Linda prepping some crab Ben/Leah got crabbing off the Norton Sound. That means, yes, we walked a hundred yards to the ocean and got the crab there. Alaska has its perks!

Matty and Leah at Airport Pizza. I should add that nearly all of these pics come from Matty.

Erin, myself, and David at Airport that same night.

Well, I think that's about all the pics I need to dump at this point. Nome is warming up now - I biked and hiked in the 75*F heat last Saturday and actually got quite the farmer's tan. But it was down to 40*F again today, and while that might still seem frigid, our snow is gone, the ocean has melted, the sun is up for close to twenty hours of daylight, and things are getting better every day.

Fraudcast The Third

2011-05-27T01:34:00.000-07:00

Brief note: the continuing saga of recording myself wasting time with my friends has been posted in "episode three" form, "Influential Turtles and Music." Enjoy?

Fraudcasts 101 and 102 and can be found by, um, well, clicking the hyperlinks. I mean, c'mon, where else would those links lead? Why would I link to anything but the respective podcasts there? Are you still reading this? Why?

Wildlife

2011-05-26T02:06:00.000-07:00

Some friends and I drove east on the Council Road yesterday - the only other way out of here by car is west on the Teller Road to (wait for it) ... the village of Teller, or north on the Kougarok Road to, well, nothing, eventually - and we drove east looking for seals. The sea ice is nearly gone here in late May, the tundra slowly draining the final million gallons of snowmelt, causing the whole thing to look like a miles-wide wad of drab brown hair you might find lurking over your drain in the shower, flat and pathetic as the water whips it spinning with the final drops as it all goes down the drain. Despite being able to see ocean again (still no waves, though ... could it be the ice, floating distantly on the horizon, absorbing the waves?), there was a little bit of sea ice left a few miles out of town. Seals love nothing more than to sun themselves on the ice and slip into the water through a tiny, unseen hole. We had heard that those conditions were just so only a few miles outside of town, so off we went looking for seals.

And we found them. We couldn't get too close, as they were a good two or three hundred yards from the shore, basking in the evening sunlight on ice far too thin for us to tread on. (I'm sure they would have disappeared down one of their little escape hatches if we got too close.) We walked away from the road and to the edge of the beach and looked out with binoculars to see blurry brown-gray-white ovals doing a whole lot of nothing on the ice. Occasionally, one moved. It was my first time seeing a seal in the wild, but it was kind of ... well, ho-hum.

Yours truly, Leah, and Matty, looking out on the ice at the seals.

We drove a bit further down the Council Road, aimlessly, if you can call going in the only possible direction "aimless." We were taking in the well-kempt camps with unmoored wooden decks and Caribbean paints that stood alongside miserable shells of woodrot and decay. So strange that one house might have an ensemble cast of benches, chairs, and driftwood pulled around a fire pit, bikes and snowmachines and life jackets and all sorts of accoutrements that delcared "someone lives here," while others, buildings that looked just as nice or nicer, were so clearly dead, or at least left to die. I saw one house with a puddle that surrounded its simple square frame on three sides; maybe it had slowly sunk into the thawing muck as it the weather warmed; whoever was last there didn't even bother to take down the red and blue checkered curtains.

We were getting to that point in all long aimless drives where someone inevitably says "let's turn back" when we saw a moose sitting somewhat awkwardly less than fifty yards from the road. We slowed and the moose looked up at us, it's ears pointed skyward like an alert dog, but eventually it ignored us. It's always cool to see wildlife here in Alaska, from the occasional moose to the fairly mundane muskox. Matty and I had gone on a hike a few days prior and had seen an even bigger moose ambling even closer to the car, stopping to stand stupidly at the edge of a small pond before deciding to take a drink. This wasn't the biggest moose I'd seen or even the closest I'd been to one, but it was pretty close, so we stopped the car and watched.

But there was something ... odd ... about how she sat, that moose. And we soon learned it was indeed a she, because there slowly emerged from her side, seemingly rolling out from under the drooping nape of her fur, a very small and very new calf: it's coat was a soaking-wet dark drown, it's ears and face so slick it looked like a wet dog, with incredible, bizarre legs whose proportions in relation to the torso put you in mind more of a giraffe than a moose, but whose angles and joints were so spidery it was creepy. The baby moose looked like it was standing on those stilt-like legs, but no: it wasn't standing up fully, merely bending forward on its front legs; when it rose to its full height, we could see just how tiny it was, just how long its weirdly-jointed legs looked, and as it took a step towards its mother, the clumsiness of its gait clued us in: this was a new-born baby moose.

Mama and her new baby.

And as if to prove a point, the mother's hind legs, still sprawled out on the tall sandy-yellow grass of the not-quite-back-to-life tundra, began to twitch. I don't know what drew my gaze, but I focused on her hind hoof and just knew something was moving ... incorrectly. In a way that didn't jive with how the rest of the animal was moving. Maybe that wasn't the hind leg at all, but some long, droopy, decidedly un-mooselike tail flopping around in the mud ... and then it hit me. Another pair of closed eyes and droopy wet puppydog ears came bursting forth into the world ... this moose was having twins. And we had arrived just in time for the second delivery.

This was taken just seconds after the second calf was born.

It happened so quickly that I don't know which occurred first: either the second calf made it all the way out and the mother stood up immediately, or the mother stood up and caused the second calf to slip out. All I remember is a standing momma moose, a loose trail of amniotic fluid falling, arching to to the ground, and an absolutely drenched calf, curled up in what I can only assume is the standard moose fetal position, trying to come to grips with what the hell just happened. We all stared in genuine awe, whispering thoughts and hopes and predictions, out loud but mostly to ourselves. The mother quickly sat down again, and while I don't really know how to read moose, I got the sense she was exhausted. She stood again and turned, the first calf standing by now, the second just barely beginning to stretch its legs and open its eyes, and as momma moose came crashing down again she nudged the first moose enough to make him fall. We thought she had sat on the firstborn, but soon realized it was fine.

You can see both calves clearly in this one.

The photographer (my friend Bre) got a little artsy with this one, but it looks great.

This one Bre actually took through the binocular lense. Turned out pretty good!

And there's Bre, showing just how close we were.

We sat there in the car, a stone's throw away, watching through binoculars as each calf took its first tentative steps. The mother simply lay there, licking with what I can only imagine to be swelling maternal moose-joy. Each effort to stand and then to walk looked so tiring, so awkward, and as the baby moose inevitably crashed to the ground we couldn't help but give a car-wide "awwww" like the audience of some terrible tear-jerker sitcom. We watched the first few moments of these two baby moose in this world and realized just how lucky we were to be in that very place at that exact time. Seeing wildlife in Alaska is always a thrill, but seeing new wildlife being made, well, it's a rare sight indeed.

I'm Going to Show You Two Videos

2011-05-20T11:52:00.000-07:00

Here's two videos that resonate with me for very different reasons. I hope you enjoy them, too.

This first one is about, despite the seemingly insurmountable problems that surround us, the last 100 years has been a time of remarkable good health, longer life, and increased wealth. Something to keep in mind.

And this next one is a rather famous presentation by the late Carl Sagan, that some people simply call his "Pale Blue Dot" speech. There are a lot of versions of this video online weighed down with emotion-tweaking non sequiturs, cutting to movies or overlaying music; they aim to enhance, but ultimately brutalize, the elegant beauty and truth of Sagan's words. I like the sobriety of this one.

In Search of Fleeting Time

2011-05-19T01:15:00.000-07:00

Without sounding too much like a pretentious jackass, it's rare that I come upon an item that I feel I really want. That sounds strange, but cars, clothes, iPhones, giant TVs, a home of my own: these things do not really interest me.

(OK, sure, I spent a lot of money building a computer last year, but I realize now that, aside from enjoying a few hours of PC gaming over the past few months, the hulking "rig" has seen less use in Alaska than my work-issued laptop. Granted, I probably couldn't - and wouldn't - game on my laptop, but what else has this big expensive PC brought me? High shipping costs to Alaska and not a whole lot else.)

Yes, I have a cell phone and an iPod. And it's somewhat ridiculous to claim to be some fake zen "I do not know want" paragon when I already have some of those expensive and unnecessary gadgets. What I'm trying to say is, I don't do a lot of window shopping. And that has certainly decreased over the years. My actual desire to own things has just kind of evaporated. Maybe it's because I've made substantial, globe-spanning moves several times over the last few years and been forced to ask myself, with a rather imminent deadline, what do I really need? But where I once collected, wanted to own and preserve, where I once feared even lending a book to a friend for fear that it might be slightly less pristine when returned, I now largely do not care. Borrow the book, take it; you want it, keep it, it's yours. I've read it, I likely won't re-read it, I don't need it. I sloughed off many personal possessions upon moving to Nome, old books and movies and stereo equipment and Xboxen. I am more content now to not seek these things, and if that sounds like a load of BS, please try to understand that the sentiment at least comes from a true and honest place.

That said ... as a watch wearer, if I had an iPod nano and one of these bad boys ... damn.

I came up to my room this evening after sitting downstairs and having a good long rambling conversation with my room mates and some friends from town. I had left my window open earlier in the day, as the temperatures here are finally inching toward fifty. Walking into my room, the lights off but the room nonetheless illuminated by the cool yawning blue sky and sunlight still pouring into the window at eleven, I looked out into the distance and saw a sight that took me immediatly back to my first day in Nome. Maybe it was that endless horizon crossed by inky ribbons of purple-gray clouds; maybe it was that my window screen had blown onto my bed, just as it had during one of my first days here; or maybe it was the light - that mid-afternoon light at midnight, that light which so easily tricks an east coast brain into thinking the day really has been that long, that it's barely evening - that brought me back to the the first day in Nome, that first day where I ever saw the sun in the sky when I knew it long ago should have disappeared over the horizon. Whatever was my madeleine and tea, it brought back a flood of those memories from those initial days.

Strange how new and alien this place was then. I wondered how I would live here, how this year would play out, who I would meet and what I would see and do. I wondered when it would feel "normal" to be here, when the place would no longer feel new. I wondered what a routine would be here, when I would get bored, what work I would do ... it was a time of transition, a time of change, of scary, limitless potential. I sat and looked out at this new place, through the same window I am looking out now. Nine months later and the world of Nome, my life here, has taken shape around me.

I will look back on this day - on these days - and remember this view. The well-worn street signs on the corner of Steadman St. and W 3rd Ave; the laughter of friends on the couches; the cracked wet pavement, wet, always wet, as if there always were and will always be an unseen snowpile finally melting in in the latent spring air; trying to play Sweet Jane on the ukulele with middling success; the music I listened to (Blue Spotted Tail) as I looked down on the wide muddy "lawn," grass struggling to even be. Will I look back on this view in two years? In five? In ten years, twenty? Will this view of brilliant, limitless sky and midnight sun flash before my mind before I die?

Relay Delay

2011-05-16T00:58:00.000-07:00

Forgive me ... I was delayed. Relay for Life and all.

Being co-captain of KNOM's Relay for Life team was a process that quickly came to consume a lot of my mental energy these past few weeks, so I'll skip a repeated apology for not blogging much lately and just jump right in. (And a note: forgive any rotten links in this post, the Relay website is profoundly awful.) Room mate, KNOM'er, and all-around good guy Matty Guiffré (on the far right) has been my co-captain of the KNOM Relay Team. It all started as one of those "gee, I'd like to become involved in some way" moments (Nome seems to engender these feelings, because if you don't get involved, you may literally suffocate). One meeting later, and Matty and I, novices at Relay, were in charge of the KNOM team. It was a new challenge, it was fun and for a good cause, and even if every idea we had fell flat, we could just learn from it and move on. We set a modest goal of raising $1,000 (and by "modest" I of course mean it was the pre-set minimum goal). We secretly harbored the hope that we'd surpass $2,000 by the time the Relay itself rolled around in mid-May.

That's Ben, yours truly, and Matty.

So we asked ourselves: how could KNOM, the radio station, raise money? Bake sales and stuff, yes, but what can KNOM do as a radio station that no one else in town can do?

Believe it or not, we didn't come up with a lot of amazing ideas. But we did come up with a few good ones. We could talk up the Relay, of course, each on-air mention raising people's awareness of the event itself and of KNOM's involvement (and team) in particular. But we also realized we could offer people the opportunity to do something that, deep down, I think everyone would be interested in doing: a chance to come on the radio, (co) host a show on-air, and play some music of their choosing. And so we created the "Be a DJ!" on-the-air auction, where people called in and placed bids on the chance to hang out with a DJ (be a "second mic" as we "in the industry" like "to" call "it"). It was a chance for anyone in Nome who wanted to be on the air to donate money for a good cause for just such an opportunity. And it was an auction that people outside of Nome - people in villages that couldn't psychically come into the studio - could do, too, by calling in and hosting over the phone.

It was a novel way to raise money, in a way only KNOM could. But it took a surprising amount of trouble-shooting and thought to hammer out all the details. We had five DJs you could bid on, and each DJ had their particular air shift: Leah (8am to 10am), Ric (10am to noon), Linda (noon to 2pm), Kelly (2pm to 4pm), and Matty (4pm to 6pm). We had to work out a surprising number of contingencies and what-ifs to realize that the simplest auction was the best. No one's work schedule would be disrupted, no DJs would have to take on extra work by offering their services for the good of our auction. Basically, when bidding, it came down to a simple choice: do you want to bid high on a particular DJ to co-host with, or do you want to bid high on a time slot that works better for you? We pushed the concept with a well-polished spot that aired a week prior to the auction itself, and last Wednesday, we had the auction.

And it was ... slow. For a while. Matty and I got on-air with Leah during her morning show to push the auction, encourage bids. I willingly made a fool of myself a few times: the crying supplicant who just oh-so-badly wants to have a shot at radio fame; the Vaudeville promoter that just wants to make all the budding DJs out there ~~world~~ Western Alaska famous!

And in the end, it ... actually kind of worked. We had boyfriends bidding as presents for their girlfriends, a $100 bid for an air shift as a graduation present, and slow out-bidding by random callers that eventually got decent bids for every DJ up for auction. All told, we raised more than $350 from that auction alone.

We had some other chances to donate, too. Perhaps you remember that every month I get to play a few songs as my Crew Picks? Well, for a $10 donation per song, we offered Relay Picks to our listeners. Just a small donation, and we'd record you explaining just why you like this song, why you wanted to play it, and why you wanted to support Relay for Life. The response wasn't overwhelming, but between generous donors who donated many times more than the minimum $10 and others who simply donated and said "I don't want to choose a song," we made over $400 with our Relay Picks.

But perhaps the biggest lesson I learned through all of this is that, to raise money in Nome, hold a bake sake. Because Nome loves bake sales. I first learned this back in May, when I was doing a Profile on a Native Alaskan actor who made it big in Hollywood back in the 20s and 30s named Ray Mala. The film festival was a pretty big thing, a new book on Mala's life has just been published and they even had footage Mala shot in Nome of the serum run, with Balto and all. I just happened to ask the organizers who was going to do their snacks, and they had no plans for any food at all, even though they were staging a two-movie screening. I signed up the KNOM team to do it for them and with some amazing help from my room mates we put together a great-looking snack bar that cleaned up over $300 at intermission.

Where else can you make that much money off a bake sale? In a town with no Wawa or 7-11, no cheapo Entenmann's or donut shops or even fast food restaurants to satisfy the snacking urge and the sweet tooth, the regular bake sales are the place for people to scratch that itch. Which means two things: one, whoever opens up a bakery in Nome will print money, and two, we decided we had to have another bake sale before fund raising was over.

And so last Friday, the KNOM team - still Matty and I organizing things, but a ton of help from co-worker Kelly as well - put together a combination bake sale and box-bid auction. The bake sale is self-explanatory: we baked goods, people bought them, and presumably ate them. "Donors" stopped by and got a dozen cookies on their way to work like you'd get a dozen donuts anywhere else. We burned through baked goods so quickly, in fact, that plates of cookies and muffins were gone within minutes, before they could cool, before we could get the whole batch out of the oven and on the table. Final score on the bake sale: just pennies under $500.

That is correct. Five hundred dollars. But wait! The box-bid auction! Essentially a silent auction, we had a lot of great "high-value items" - a somewhat new iMac computer, a kid's bike, a gift basket full of everything a sewer or knitter could ever need, a brand-new Nokia cell phone, an iPod shuffle - that we offered for bids. But it was kind of like a silent auction, except you dropped your bid in the box that corresponded with the item you were bidding on. You had no idea who else had bid, or where the high bid stood. Your only chance of winning, really, was to just write your high bid down, drop in the box, go about your day. (And just in case we had identical bids, we had every bidder write the time of their bid, with the first to offer the high bid the winner.)

All told, twenty or so items ... we made nearly $1500. All told for Relay: over $3,000.

Wow. WOW! The Relay itself was last night, and the KNOM team took shifts from walking the Relay route from 4pm to 6am. We walked all night ("we" as in, the team: I walked for nearly five hours and went to bed around three in the morning; I work Sundays), and all day at the station I was collecting donations and handing out items to winning bidders.

Three thousand dollars. The generosity of this community never ceases to amaze me. Next year, we'll have to double down on the bake sales.

News and a Profile

2011-05-04T19:16:00.000-07:00

Got to read the news today, something I do somewhat often but not always during the cast that gets recorded and posted to the KNOM.org website. So, give my newscast a listen here!

And I also had a Profile air today, this one about Anchorage artist Shala Dobson visiting White Mountain. Listen to that one, too.

I also read the news this evening and recorded the weather for tonight and overnight; again, not that unusual, but that's more Matthew on the air than usual. And I've got a Crew Pick on Friday! (If you're curious: at last, it's from The Wire.)

And I've been on the air talking up the KNOM Relay for Life team!

Western Alaska gettin' a whole lotta Matthew Smith this week.

Podcast Too?

2011-05-02T19:48:00.000-07:00

Sure, why not? Here's another "episode" of the Matt Matt & Matthew "fraudcast." Not a bad way to start off the month of May, eh? OK, I'll stop.

April is the Cruelest Month

2011-04-29T00:46:00.000-07:00

And that's especially true in Alaska: the boundless hours of sunlight have returned, bringing joy and vitamin D while destroying your ability to gauge time. A glance out the window and my brain says, "Ah. Six o'clock again, judging by the light. It's certainly no later than seven. And there's just no way the sun is that high in the sky, that there's that much light out, anywhere near eight." Jokes on you, brain: it's eleven, and the sun is just now beginning to set at 11:28 as I type these words. Even past midnight there's the eerie pre-dawn greenish blue hanging in the western horizon, like the sun didn't even set and it's more nature, Gaia herself, is trying to mess with me.

Another reason April in Alaska is a mixed blessing: yes, the snow that has simply been the world for the past few months is melting. But note the present progressive: it has not melted, but rather is melting. Which means a lot of mud, a lot of drainage, small unnamed rivers snarling through the streets, and still so much snow remains. The weather is reaching above forty, not a cloud in the sky and no wind, the perfect weather for a hike! But the snow still remains knee- and waist-deep on the tundra, or anywhere worth hiking really, and the few brief hikes I've gone on have seen a few bouts of (hilarious, potentially injurious, slow, and) obnoxious falling through the snow. Not once, or even ten times; just constant, unpredictable collapses into cold, white morass.

It's getting better. It will be green soon. And then I won't feel so profoundly insane for signing up for a second year.

My resolution in April was to cut home use of the internet out of my life. And I think I succeeded fairly well; I'm almost done Anathem, I feel like I've had a bit more time to do other things, and (Portal 2 being a once-a-year exception), I've just had less time staring at a glowing screen. But that's been somewhat disastrous for this blog. I'll try harder in May, but in truth, I've rarely felt compelled to blog lately. I've been more interested in just doing, rather than taking that step back and writing, analyzing. Old habits, though, so back at it next month.

For now, enjoy this video postcard from my recent trip to the village of White Mountain.

Where I Want to Go: Diomede

2011-04-10T21:21:00.000-07:00

Alaska has a lot of places I want to visit. Some of them because they are said to be stunningly beautiful, some of them are near-mythic in their grandeur (like Denali), and some of them are just so far on the edge of the map that what lures me is, quite simply, the desire to go there and say I've been. One place that definitely falls into that latter category is Little Diomede, the US half of the binary Diomede Islands The other half of that system, Big Diomede, is less than three miles away from it's smaller sibling; but those miles cross the international dateline, meaning they're a day in the future. The island is also Russian territory, which means you're less than three miles from Russia on Little Diomede.

Here's a map to get us started:

View Larger Map

That's Russia on the left of the map, Alaska on the right. The Diomede islands are just right there in the middle, cut in half by the imaginary line that separates east from west. The following pictures, by the way, are courtesy of the Diomede BSSD page. Check it out, and get a feel for what it's like to conduct classes on a place so remote.

There is no permanent runway on the island: the only way to land a plane is to wait for the sea to freeze and carve one out of the sea ice. That's why Diomede is such a difficult place to get to: a company out of Oregon suspended helicopter travel there, and those ice runways are only good for a handful of months out of the year.

And this picture is kind of why I wanted to write about Diomede: if you ascend the mountain that more or less is the entire island, you get this view: across the thin streak of frozen Bering Sea, the ice runway just peaking out, and in the distance is Big Diomede. And that hazy outcrop of rock on the horizon? That's Mother Russia, baby.

And here's a video that I randomly stumbled upon on YouTube showing someone landing on Diomede's ice runway.

Yep, so Little Diomede. I'll get there eventually.

A Double Dose of Audio

2011-04-03T13:58:00.000-07:00

A duo of dynamic audio for you to kick of April.

The first is a Coffee Pot Mystery, an April Fool's Day Profile for KNOM. I can't get the embed to work, so head on over to KNOM's dedicated page to hear this "no-file."

And the second bit of audio to share is the first "real" episode of the Matt Matt & Matthew podcast, which I hope will soon find a second episode (so long as the three Matthews can avoid the inertia of laziness). The three Matthews, by the way, include: yours truly, Fitz, and Lawler. Is it a podcast, or just a way for three friends to reconnect, record conversations, and act like they're making a podcast? Well, why can't it be both, you fascist?

Fair warning: the podcast involves discussion of movie ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, the Iditarod, and a movie-guessing game. It also contains a lot of cursing. Fitz, dirt bag that he is, has promised to reduce the raw number of curses and go for a smaller, more effective use of swear words in future 'casts.

So there's some audio to start April off on the left foot.

March Has Been a Long Month

2011-03-30T23:22:00.001-07:00

Long, indeed.

The first half was the highlight of my time in Nome so far: full-on Iditarod coverage, a lot of excitement in the air, regular updates that provided a new routine at work, and an overall positive energy and excitement from the whole town. Watching the mushers arrive one by one was intense at first, as those videos below can attest; Nome had never seemed busier, and it was strange that for a minute, this tiny little speck of a town way out on the edge of the map was the focus of so many eyes and ears. As the crowds shrank and the middle-of-the-pack mushers came in, it started to feel very surreal: Nome, this town defined by its distance from so many things, was seeing a slow trickle of more than forty people who had chosen probably the hardest, longest, most anachronistic way to get here. But even after the top ten arrived, each musher felt like a unique oddity to behold, like watching a horse-drawn carriage trot down the highway. To have just willed themselves and a team of dogs this far was such a huge accomplishment, I think anyone who witnesses it can't help but entertain the thought, however briefly, that the wild romance of miles of Alaskan wilderness and the splendid solitude of the trail just may be something worth doing ... is it something I could do? Surely stranger things have happened, as many mushers who cross that finish line can attest.

Some of the middle-of-the-roaders were people like Martin Buser, who was finishing his 28th Iditarod, whose all-time speed record had been shattered by first-place finisher John Baker just days before, and whose legacy with the race seems almost as big as the race itself: the Iditarod has only been run thirty-nine times, and Buser has run nearly thirty of them. I got to interview Buser as he arrived in Nome, so click this little egg and scroll on for a few pictures courtesy of KNOM.

Buser and his team make it into Nome. This man has been breeding dogs for decades and racing them almost as long. I would hazard a guess that his team is well cared for, and they certainly looked strong.

That man loves his dogs. I asked him (and you can hear in the clip above and see in this photo) if I could ask him some question as soon as he jumped off his sled, and he simply said no; not without tending to his dogs first.

That is indeed me holding up the mic. You can compare mittens for authenticity here.

One of Buser's sponsors was the Rotary Club, working to permanently end the scourge of polio. "As long as there's one human host, polio is a danger to mankind" (or something along those lines) was said by some Rotary folks at the finish line. You can read more about his work with Rotary and the fight to end polio here.

He came in eighteenth place, but he was all smiles. And with so many mushers talking about retirement under the burled arch, Buser said that at nearly thirty Iditraods, he was just getting started.

Those pictures are all courtesy of (the wonderful, newly-designed) KNOM.org via KNOM's Flickr page, and the KNOM On the Trail Blog. And a personal aside, David Dodman took nearly all of those photos, and they're fine work indeed.

There's so much more to say about Iditarod and the huge, wonderful awards banquet that ended it all, not to mention the red lantern (that is, last place) coming in the weird hours, and more. But as March is drawing to a close, I'll probably bring my Idita-blogging to a close as well. It was a lot of fun and a strong argument for staying for a second year, but once April arrives, I think it's time to move on. The blog has been a bit lackluster this month, but I'll try to do better.

As for what else is going on: I'm now the proud owner of a new ukulele. It sounds nice and I even learned a few new songs. It will be some time before I have the guts to perform or even attempt to write my own songs, but all in due time.

I'm running with the ambulance, and that has brought a lot of adrenaline-spiked joy to my life, usually upon reflection and less so in the heat of the moment.

I'm resolved to journal more and blog more in April, and I've nearly finished the journal I arrived with. (That it was nearly finished when I arrived here is beside the point.)

The beer brewing has been going well. Our pale ale was good, our brown ale was better, the oatmeal stout had some questionable fermentation but should still be worth drinking, and the ESB we just brewed Monday should be a good primer before we attempt a hoppy-as-hell-IPA. If none of this brief paragraph makes any sense, please read on.

My April resolution will be simple: no internet at home. Since I can't swear off the internet entirely due to work, I will remove it from my home life. Oh how alarmingly easily a simple check of Twitter or the dreaded Book of a Thousand Faces can siphon away hour of my life. I hope this will facilities more time for other things: more time for books, ukulele, journaling, writing, talking ... you know the important stuff.

The days are long once again. At ten in the evening, there was a lot of light in the sky. The days are only going to get longer ...

Hans Gatt at the Finish Line

2011-03-16T11:47:00.000-07:00

I got to interview third-place musher Hans Gatt at the finish line under the burled arch yesterday.

Hans has been talking about retiring from mushing for a while, but I asked him there and he said this would be his final year. His kennel is down to only twenty dogs and he doesn't feel like he can be competitive with so few. This year was Hans's 11th Iditarod, and his best finish was last year, when he got second place with a total time of 9 days, 1 hour, 4 minutes and 2 seconds. This year he got third with 9 days, 0 hours, 24 minutes and 24 seconds. Any other year, that not only would have gotten him first, it would have set a new record. But this year it got him third, and as someone who's raced this Last Great Race for over a decade, it was great to talk to the man at the finish line.

It was also weird to have other news organizations stick their microphones in my face as I asked the questions. Being able to ask good questions about Gatt's carefully-bred team, his run/rest schedule over the last few checkpoints, and which dogs on his team stood out were easy, as we've been covering Iditarod every step of the way. I really do think KNOM and our On the Trail blog is some of the best coverage of the Iditarod out there. Those photos, of course, are courtesy of KNOM and the blog.

Sebastian Schnuelle Arrives in Nome

2011-03-15T23:51:00.000-07:00

That crazy-looking musher from two blog posts ago? He arrived in Nome, and I was there.

We're in 24-hour mode for Iditarod. Things are kinda crazy, but they'll die down once the first 30 mushers are into Nome. For now, it's a lot of run being on Front Street, in the news room, in the spotter vehicle a few miles outside of town, and running the board 'till midnight.

I'll do some non-Iditarod posts later.

John Baker wins Iditarod 2011!

2011-03-15T12:56:00.000-07:00

Kotzebue's John Baker arrived in Nome in 8 days 18 hours 46 minutes 39 seconds, a record finish in Iditarod 39! Baker was the first native to win the Last Great Race since the 1976, and also the first Inupiaq to win! What an amazing finish, his dogs were strong as hell in the chute and it looks like he could have gone another hundred miles. So much energy in the air, traffic jams, people and press from all over, and KNOM is the radio station everyone else is looking to for the good questions. Amazing!

It's a Good Thing Nothing Happens in Nome During March

2011-03-14T19:06:00.000-07:00

March is nearly half over, and I haven't blogged much at all this month. I guess it's just laziness, because certainly nothing happens in Nome during March.

Oh, yeah. The Iditarod.

Iditarod has been taking up my time since the race began. There are a couple of reasons for it: KNOM has a long history covering the Iditarod, and so work has been focused on the race (our awesome "On the Trail" blog has been streaming audio and updates during the whole race); our news director is on the Iditarod trail, following the mushers checkpoint-by-checkpoint, and so we're getting frequent updates direct to KNOM that are pretty much the best coverage for the race out there; and five times a day, at nine, noon, five and eight, two KNOMers do live updates for the mushers, play cuts from our interviews, report on trail conditions, dog health, weather, speed, and all sorts of other details. As the race's back half is in our western Alaska neighborhood, we're well equipped to talk about the trail and the race as the mushers make their way to the burled arch in Nome.

But really, one of the reasons I haven't been blogging too much is because I am finding the Iditarod a hell of a lot of fun to follow since the mushers left Anchorage (or, more accurately, Willow) just over a week ago. It's weird, because I haven't really cared about sports since I played them with some regularity in high school. I've never been a fan of professional sports (much to my dad's chagrin), and even college basketball March Madness was interesting only as far as Villanova went (which, admittedly, often went pretty far; but outside the team, and even within it, I rarely care enough to follow players or teams or understand the mechanics of the games being played). But the Iditarod has really sunk its teeth in me.

One reason: Sebastien Schnulle. That's "Schewl-nuh" if you're reading aloud. What other sport has a German-born, Canadian-living, hardy and cheerful manic like this? Observe, from 2010:

Leah has dubbed him the "European Cookie Monster," and he really does sound like that. Look at that guy! He's cradling that adorable dog and petting it with tenderness like he's at a United Kennel Club dog show. But this man lives with these dogs, on the trail, for days and weeks at a time, months out of the year. He eats snow and spits ice; when mushing the Yukon Quest and a fellow musher went through a frozen stream miles from civilization, Sebastian here stopped his dog team, helped him out, made him a new pair of boots, and continued the race only after he knew the effected musher was OK. Mushing is more than a sport, and these men and their dogs are more than just amazing athletes. They are like a lost breed of humanity that harnesses one aspect of nature and then battles the rest of them on a sled.

What else about dog mushing, and the Iditarod, has captivated me? The way these mushers go weeks on the trail, living off bacon sandwiches at checkpoints separated by hundreds of miles of frozen wastes; the way they go without sleep to get into that next checkpoint; the way they all know one another, and yes they compete, but they are really out to enjoy it. And the way each and every one of them puts the health of their dogs above a race purse; to a man (and a woman), they all say their dog's well being comes before anything else.

So thats's why the blog has been silent. I've been heavy into Iditarod. But what else has been taking up my time? Well, there's Nome's high-octane snowmachine race, the Nome-Golovin 200. A small, regional affair, but important to Nome and our listeners in western Alaska, requiring a kind of media blitz of hyper-local coverage when we're already in high gear for Iditarod coverage. There's been the sun, which was decided to return in a big way to western Alaska. It stays out to nine at night now, and the minutes of daylight continue to increase. And with increased daylight time comes more time to do things like, oh, snow shoe out on the sea ice.

That, my friends, is the edge: the edge of the sea ice, a mile or two distant from the shore. Walking over the frozen sea, the ice feet thick for miles, gentle pressure ridges peaking like frozen waves where the edge once was. And suddenly the ridge is there, maybe three or five feet high boulders of ice and snow, and the thick ice just stops. Like a line drawn a map, beyond the ridge is just soup: snow, ice, water, slush, miniature icebergs floating amid car-sized ice sheet adrift and slowly moving. Out there yesterday, with no wind, was complete silence: and if you sat and looked, sat and listened, you could see one of the most amazing moments of nature I've ever seen. Huge slices of ice, moving sideways in long, thin chunks like mute freight trains, and in the silence you could hear the soft squeak of crushing ice, the dull echo of packed snow, the distant boulders of underwater collisions between hundreds of thousands of pounds of ice.

Matty and I sat there in silence and took in the sounds and sights of the sea ice edge, and it was awesome. The first musher is due in Nome tomorrow morning, on pace to break the record for the fastest time to Nome. My job is to obsess over this race and be there when those mushers pull on to front street.

Oh my good god do I love Alaska.

Change and Becoming

2011-02-28T23:23:00.000-08:00

Back home on the fridge is this little quote from some transcendentalist American writer, maybe Emerson or maybe Thoreau, I'm not sure. "Thing's don't change; we do." And this is of course true. "Don't ever change" is about the worst curse you could wish on someone, because change is growth and improvement and novelty. Anything else is stagnation. "You haven't changed a bit!" should be an insult. But sometimes I think that for all the change I've invited and embraced over the years, I think I've changed very little.

Waking home from the gym yesterday, I wondered how many gyms in how many different cities and towns have I walked home (or driven home) from? How many times have I set my day, my routine, around going to some giant room to run in place or lift heavy things in deliberate ways? Sometimes I think about my routine here in Nome and I almost have to ask what moving to a frigid corner of the globe accomplished. Right now, in the middle of winter, I spend my days at work, some time at the gym, then back home ... really, that's it. There's some variety, of course, but those may be the only buildings I enter for a few days at a time. Maybe I'll be at the post office or something, but small as this place is, routine can almost make it feel like anywhere else.

Almost.

When I think about it, there's more to it than that. And I know it. It's the undefinable things that are different, that really add up, that make this a trip worth taking. The mortar between the bricks of every day life, where daily routines between home and office can be similar no matter what your job or where you live. Sometimes there are remarkable similarities between my routines in Zhanjiang, Wilmington, and Nome. But I walked to the gym today in an amazing hoarfrost fog, a delicate matrix of ice crystals and snow covering every surface, gleaming in the setting sun and warm hazy glow of streetlights. I helped move a friend's mattress that involved taking it from an outdoor shed, scrambling over a snowdrift that started to sink up to my waist, and simply laying it on top of the car while we drove on the ice-slick and snow-packed roads back to the house. It's a different way to move a mattress, a different way to walk to the gym, a perhaps dull routine that is nonetheless magical for being where I am.

So sometimes things do change. Sometimes we do. And maybe sometimes something external can change - job, geography, home - that really will affect change within, or at least give you a reason to embrace new opportunities and excuses to learn. I would be lying if I said I didn't miss parts of life in the lower 48. But we are shaped by our experiences; who we are is as much a product of our environment as it is a product of who we our as a person, in our own mind. So this rambling and perhaps pointless entry comes after a day of wondering what the hell I'm doing here on this tiny beacon of humanity nearly lost in a sea of snow and tundra. And I remember: I am becoming who I want to be.

Price Check

2011-02-26T00:01:00.000-08:00

So Nome has had some pretty intense weather lately, we saw the Iron Dog come through town (complete with an in-the-flesh Sarah Palin sighting!), and we've even had an ivu (ice overflow) along the frozen Bering Sea. So what are we blogging about today?!

That's right, groceries. And the expense thereof. (And no, I didn't get those dark chocolate almonds.)

I went grocery shopping today, something that my room mates and I do with some reluctance. Matty had been going on his own during his free Sunday afternoons, but after eating the cupboards bare, we really needed some food. So I went this afternoon, as I have Friday off.

Shopping in Nome is interesting. For one, I'm shopping for a house with a shared food budget. We accommodate culinary indulges, but only to an extent: we may get avocados for guacamole, but cilantro is rarely worth it; we buy milk, an expensive item at $6-$8 a gallon here, but we'll use powdered milk for baking. And above all we're shopping in Nome, so everything is just more expensive, the selection is limited, and things are just ... well, Nomish.

So what did I get today? We spread our shopping out among two or three different shops here. Some have cheaper canned goods, another the place for produce; one might be the place for yogurt, milk, and cheese, the other gets a random assortment of bulk Kirkland-brand items like granola or almonds. Just a sampling of what I got today, and it's Nome-price.

Granny Smith apples for the mulligatawny soup, $2.89/lb, $8.44 for six.

Bananas, yellow but fading fast, $1.59/lb, five bunches of about five bananas each, $12.64.

A five pound block of cheddar (who can afford shredded?) for $21.59.

Cans of frozen orange juice concentrate (Tropicana?! Please!) at $2.55 each.

Five pounds of hamburger, $13.15.

A two pound block of mozzarella cheese, $7.91.

Gallon of 2% milk (bad weather kept the skim from coming in, I guess, along with the mail for most of the week), "2 for $12" deal.

Random gamble with house money on a half gallon of dark chocolate almond milk, 50% off, for $2.20. It was damn good and we'll probably get it regularly now.

I realize this could be quite possibly the most boring blog entry ever. But I thought it might be interesting toss this info online, so people can get an idea of what "cost of living" means in a place like Nome. Combine that with gas at five bucks a gallon, fuel oil to keep your house warm being bought hundreds of gallons at a time, and the crushingly expensive barge and freight prices for shipping anything you can't find at the store up here (like a car, furniture, or pallets of coffee and other specialty commodities), and you can realize just how expensive life here can be.

And so that's why eating out here just doesn't make sense. And that's why there's all the more reason to homebrew, because it actually saves you money. And that's why I've been cooking with canned food alongside donations of Alaska-caught salmon and locally-hunted muskox. It's just how you live up here.

Just Checking In

2011-02-20T11:51:00.000-08:00

My EMT class had it's exam yesterday, and I now feel almost giddy with the idea that the class is over. I have my equipment (pager and walkie talkie) and as soon as some glacially slow paperwork gets processed, I'll be able to go on runs and actually do something with the training.

The test was ... long. There was a morning written test, for which I arrived promptly at 8:45 for the 9:00 start. Of course, nothing much happened for a while and we had to change rooms to the firehouse across the street due the number of test takers, and so I don't think the test really started until about a twenty past nine. This I have learned is "Nome Time," an unhurried pace of life that falls somewhere between deliberately antagonistic and apathetic when it comes to set times and schedules. I think even three or four years ago I might have found this infuriating, but I now find it quaint and even enjoyable. It's taken some unlearning of my East Coast tendencies; even community-wide events and movies at the lone one-screen cinema have this elastic sense of beginning and ending.

It seemed most people were done the test by half past ten, maybe a bit later. The room slowly cleared until I was only one of two students left. As eleven approached, and I wasn't even done the test yet, and or course I needed time to go back and re-check (the uncomfortably numerous) starred questions whose answers were in doubt. I had the time - I could test until nearly one - but my slow pace started to get into my own head about the test, my answers, my competence: I'm not a fast test-taker by any means, but I'm rarely the last one in the room. Why was this taking me so long? What vital knowledge was I missing? Even the easy no-sweat questions were beginning to blur with the more advanced ones ... but in the end, I knew that BLS, the basic live-saving skills I was learning in EMT-1, were (truth be told) not all that complicated. And after months of class, I knew them. So taking a little longer with the test was ... well, whatever it was, it wasn't bad. So I finished and went home around noon before the afternoon skill test.

(An aside: I came home to a house full of blueberry sourdough pancakes and bacon as my room mates were planning an event over breakfast ... it can be good to have room mates.)

The skills test began at one, which on Nome Time meant that we didn't enter the building until a few minutes after one, skill stations weren't set up until maybe half past, and actual testing got underway around two. "Nome Time." Everyone had six stations to clear; trained EMT proctors were at each station, taking notes and being stone-faced as we followed protocol; all skills were pass-fail, and not even the proctor didn' know if we were passing at the end of the station. And since I can't really talk about the test itself, let's just skip ahead to six o'clock ... and I'm done. I passed all stations on the first run, save one, and that I passed on my second try. And I was the first one from my EMT-1 class to finish all the skills, the first one done and out the door. Which means I went home and had a homebrew, heaved a deep and profound sigh of relief, thanked my room mates for putting up with my complaining and bitching about EMT and class and homework lo these many months, and thanked them again for being my patients as I practiced my skills in the days leading up to the test.

Well, it's over. I know I passed the skills test; we'll see how I did on the written in a few weeks.

Profile - Governor Sean Parnell in Nome

2011-02-14T12:00:00.000-08:00

Another, shorter piece about Governor Sean Parnell visiting Nome in early February.

Profile - Quittin' Time Open House

2011-02-13T13:58:00.000-08:00

Trying something a little different with this one. Let's see how SoundCloud handles the no doubt colossal bandwidth demands of one of my profiles!

St. Matthew Island

2011-02-10T23:56:00.000-08:00

No, it's not a clever pun about the blog author and a saint and an island. It's just a simple and very well-done online comic about an island here in western Alaska, St. Matthew Island. A big thanks to Stuart at Recombinant Records. He's got a lot of similarly great cartoons for your viewing pleasure.

Just for reference, this map shows Nome (the northernmost pointer), St. Matthew Island (the southwestern most pointer), and Anchorage. Yes, the geography is that huge.

View My Saved Places in a larger map

And now for the comic:

New Years Revolution: January Vegitation Experimentation

2011-02-06T02:28:00.001-08:00

I didn't make too big of a thing of it, I guess, but I decided some time in December that one of my New Years resolutions was to try going vegetarian, at least for a while. And with two vegetarian friends here in Nome warmly if not subtly encouraging me on my quest - beef became "dead cow," ham became "dead pig," and the common refrain being "I can't eat that, it has dead stuff in it" - I figured January would be as good a time as any. And so it came to pass that I took up being a vegetarian for the month of January.

And I have to say that it was one of the easiest dietary changes I have ever made. In fact, with my "vegetarian" diet allowing milk, eggs, cheese, and fish, I very rarely felt like I even altered my diet at all. (It would have been difficult, I suppose, during holiday times like Thanksgiving. I just don't know why anyone, however committed to not eating things that have kids, would give up succulent turkey.) In fact, thinking back on a month of beans and rice lunches, potato-and-onion dinners, breakfast burritos of eggs and cheese and peanut butter bound snacks, I can count on one hand the number of times I felt like I was even making a change. Once, going out to eat for a special occasion at a local restaurant that specializes in pizza, I found myself opting out of pizza (which, obviously, can be enjoyed in a veggie-friendly way) as I just assumed I'd have thrown meat on there. Instead, I was able to try something I've never had before, something I enjoy doing, and so I went for the reindeer and shrimp gumbo over rice (subbing mushrooms for reindeer) and it was a pleasantly yummy meal that I otherwise never would have tried. Score one for going meatless.

Other than that, I can barely remember moments when I had to go out of my way to avoid meat. Maybe the room mates cooked something up in some free time that had chicken in it? No sweat, I just didn't eat it; plenty of food in the house. We went for sushi once, at the tail end of the month, and were generously given a free appetizer of some chicken tempura in a little spicy sauce; I would have liked to try one, but no big deal. (Odd how these stories of being "tempted" by meat mostly involve going out to eat, when in reality I've gone out to eat maybe five or six times since September). And, honestly, I think that's about it. A month without meat, and that's the entirety of my meat-lust memories. I never had a moment of craving flesh, never once felt my diet was deficient in protein or taste, never once felt deprived by sticking to my diet.

But I also didn't feel like a karmically perfect being of enlightenment and justice, nor did I feel awash in warm fuzzy vegetable magic from cleaning out my wretched meat-eating body with leafy fibrous greens. So if my conscience is clear, and my health is no better or worse on a vegetarian diet, what arguments remain against eating meat? The only one I can think of is, essentially, environmental: the choice to eat meat comes down to accepting the meat available (potential salmonella contamination and all) from the massive agro-industrial complex, or reject it as a product of that food-producing machine simply because it comes from that machine. This will leave you very hungry indeed, because that same system is producing your grains, your vegetables, your beans and tofu and cheese and milk and all sorts of other non-dead stuff. If my soul feels no better or worse for eating meat, forgoing meat based solely on its source is being arbitrarily selective about your food, rejecting only parts of the food system you're an enmeshed part of. And, for better or worse, is the system most of us are a part of here in Alaska.

Yes, I am aware that the agro-industrial complex is unnatural, unsafe, horrible, and unsustainable. I have read those books and seen those documentaries too. If it were possible to eat outside of the industrial food system, I would. And, in a small way, I do: despite the sea of petroleum it rides on to get here, my room mates and I get a box of organic fruits and veggies once every two weeks. If fresh meet were possible to get here - and, if I had a gun and the right permits, it arguably is - I'm sure we'd go for it. But ultimately, I have neither the ability nor the money nor the inclination to pursue this option further. By choosing to live in Alaska, I have made many trade-offs, and one of them is severely limiting what food is available to me. And meat will continue to be a small part of that diet.

So what have I gained from a month without meat? Well, I think two things: For one, I've realized that I don't eat as much meat as I might have thought. If giving it up was so painless, it must have been a small part of my diet already. And maybe a diet with a lot less meat - minimal to none, even - is a good idea. If I felt fine without meat, maybe even a little better without any of it, I'm certainly not about to dive into a world of pastrami-and-meatball sandwiches. But then, as I've redefined my concept of health over the past few years, without even thinking about it, meat has gradually become a smaller part of that world. That said, I did make some mushroom, onion, and bacon mac-and-cheese the other day. And at a community event with free food on Saturday, I did indulge in two pretty yummy reindeer hot dogs. I can't remember the last time I had a hot dog.

The other thing I've learned is that I think I enjoy this iterative process of New Year resolutions. I've got some year-long goals of course, but taking up something new each month is an interesting twist. Twelve little mini-resolutions. January was going meatless. By necessity, February will be dedicated to EMT stuff, and learning in that way (test in two weeks!). And March? Who knows. Write more, write those songs on the uke, sit down and learn to play something at that piano, formulate some new recipes. Who knows? I've got a month of cook up the next one.

Going meatless in January wasn't a big deal. Easy, in fact. And I recommend it to everyone. You might be surprised at how little you actually miss the dead stuff on your plate. But if you're like me, that dead stuff will find it's way back on your plate eventually, and, sobered by your abstinence, you'll still enjoy it.

Koyuk

2011-01-31T23:34:00.000-08:00

I realized that I had posted some rather nice pictures of my trip to Golovin (and back), but I have neglected to share my pictures from Koyuk a few weeks prior. I was in Koyuk at the beginning of January to (and this should come as no surprise) interview an elder and to do a story on their recycling program. Koyuk also had something we rarely see here in Nome (and I know I'm repeating myself here): trees. Small little conifers, maybe spruce or fir, lightly dusted with snow, creating almost a caricature of winter beauty. They weren't very tall, but if I looked long enough and didn't think too hard, I could almost feel like I were in the Poconos of Pennsylvania.

Anyway, Koyuk: another small rural village of about three hundred people, more or less only accessible by air, along the Koyuk river (that empties into the Norton Sound, which you'll remember is really just a fancy synonym for the "Pacific Ocean"). The river, of course, was frozen when I arrived in early January, and the angle that the sun rises at this time of year (almost, but not quite, east) allowed for another stunning Alaskan sunrise over Christmas Mountain.

That's another sky-burningly beautiful Alaskan sunrise.

Yes, that is certainly a frozen river.

And there's that sunrise again. Always worth a second look.

Subsistence - that is, truly living off the land - is a way of life here. Preparing for a Sounding Board show a few months back about hunting in Alaska, I learned that this state is one of the few places left in the US where more of the people than not pile their tables and stock their larders/freezers with wild food from the land, be it fish and crabs, tundra berries and greens and mushrooms, or (of course), meat: from musk ox and moose and reindeer and ptarmigan (I've eaten the first three, and moose has been by far the tastiest), to walrus, seal, and whale (seal oil in particular is a vital ingredient to the native diet). Other big mammals are hunted and even eaten, including bear (brown, Grizzly, the exceedingly rare polar) and wolf and lynx and fox, but they aren't usually hunted exclusively for meat. (Again, I'm no hunter: this is all what I gather from people I know.) That in mind, it's not uncommon to see the byproducts of a subsistence lifestyle, both in Nome and in villages: boats sleeping idly in the snow as they await the thaw of summer, crab nets/pots, musk ox hides drying in the cold wind, maybe to be gleaned for qiviut, and on occasion the odd hoof or still-bloodied leg of a musk ox staked like a trophy in the snow (I've long sing become blind to the myriad mounted antlers).

One of the elders I visited very clearly was subsisting off the land. Outside her house were draped lines of frozen fish, and more.

I'm told these fish are, in Inupiaq, "quock" or "quwaak." Those large yellow bladders are filled with eggs that are also a major part of the native diet.

More fish, more yellow egg-filled sacs.

And on their porch, unsecured and so close to the door it might have become dinner, was a rabbit.

You can't really see it here, but there are two dogs poking out of that tiny doghouse. There were a lot of dogs in Koyuk, but alas, didn't see a dog team.

In preparing for my trip, I ended up speaking with a very nice woman from Texas who had recently been hired by the Bering Strait School District to work on Koyuk's Head Start classroom. I had stayed overnight in Koyuk, and with my other interviews concluded, I had some time to kill before my flight, and so I made my way over to the classroom. It's hard to convey just how small the scale is: the Head Start room was single large classroom, maybe as large as a large trailer classroom, and that (I guess) was big enough for all the kids in Head Start throughout the entire village (I'm almost certain it's free/subsidized). Across the street was "the big school" for all other grades K-12, and like Golovin, we're talking small classes, with only a handful of students per grade. After speaking with the Head Start folks, I was informed that there was another teacher in town, at the big school, that I might want to chat with. Her name was Emily, she had taught Head Start for a while before moving on to kindergarten, and before she moved to Koyuk, she had taught English in China for a year.

What are the odds? Our paths could have crossed in China, she was there for at least one of the years I was, and it takes Koyuk to bring us together. What a fascinating world. When I arrived, Emily was already pretty busy with her students: she had decided to take them skiing, and despite the plethora of snow, skiing isn't as common as you'd think up here. So for most of Emily's kindergartners, it was their first time skiing.

Luckily, I was there to help. Though you can just barely tell it's me.

It was a lot of getting the kids back on their feet, and a bit of "French fry! No pizza!" When they got dispirited, I told them to grab my arm and I raced them a few yards at high speed.

A few hours later, despite strong winds and heavy fog in Nome, my plane home landed. I was expecting to be in Koyuk for an extra night - I had packed for it, in terms of clothes and gear - and I was relieved to get a call telling me the plane had landed ... and would be leaving in twelve minutes. I'm certainly not a sprinter, and with those gargantuan bunny boots on and an awkward if not heavy pack laden with extra clothes and a sleeping bag, it was ... fun, hustling to the runway as my plane back to Nome taxied to a standstill.

So that was Koyuk. And that was January. A damn fine month here in Alaska.

Golovin to Nome by Air

2011-01-27T00:36:00.000-08:00

Well, I guess it's about time I start using my mAttLASKA Picasa space, eh?

Today I was in Golovin, a small town on the southern Seward "not sea-ward" Peninsula coast. I was there to interview an elder for the monthly program "Elder Voices," (I've talked about Elder Voices on here, right? I hope so) and to cover a career fair at the school with the hopes that it might turn into a story.

Golovin is a small rural village of about 150 people. Like many communities in western Alaska, it's only accessible by boat and plane, but realistically, you're only ever going to get there by air. Golovin is very close to Nome, and so when the flight that came to take me back to Nome was filled to the brim with all of the career fair folks, I (more or less) happily waited for another plane that was due in soon, also Nome-bound, and took the time to enjoy the fresh air and the dazzling sunset. After landing and getting a ride into town (I've found it's usually a decent walk from any airstrip to the town or village, but luckily the school had someone waiting for me), I was interviewing or listening in to presentations or sticking a microphone in people's faces and trying to ask intelligent questions right up until I had to head out. So a moment to stand and enjoy brisk air and actual sunlight was welcome.

With a population of 150, the school was understandably small. It held K-12. Class sizes ranged from eight seventh graders to two high school seniors. That's par for the course in rural Alaskan schools.

Just outside the school I snapped a photo of a bluff and assorted bits of town.

And some more. This is still Golovin, but the roads in Nome look much the same.

Leaving town.

As Golovin sits on a peninsula, there's frozen water all all sides.

Ooh, shadows! So artistic!

Oh ... well, that is kinda nice.

Off goes a plane full of career fest folks. I would board a slightly smaller plane (smaller in cargo, not passenger space) in about a half hour.

Silhouettes.

See those?! Those are trees! We don't have trees in Nome. We made a brief stop over in White Mountain before heading to Nome. White Mountain, I am told, is one of the most beautiful villages in western Alaska. Gotta make sure I get there some day.

Heading back to the Nome, flying east. To my right (north) is snow-covered mountains and tundra ...

... and to my left (south) is ice-covered ocean (well, technically, Norton Sound, but it's all salt water to me).

Yep ... snow-capped mountains.

Some frozen rivers snaking through the cold.

Coming into Nome ... I think that's Icy View, a small just-outside-of-town burg.

And there she is ... after any time in a village, it's always good to see Nome.

A few more photos, including a lot more of the sunset, can be found here. I'll have to blog about Elder Voices and more goings-on, but for now, those pictures will do.

Winter Bluster at the Transmitter

2011-01-26T01:51:00.000-08:00

Les was up here again recently, and I went out to the transmitter to do some maintenance with him. To get to the transmitter, at this time of year, you have to park along the road and march across a snow-covered drive that's now indistinguishable from the tundra. There's ice and snow pack, town is miles away, and as you walk to the transmitter (between falling through icepack into snow up to your knees) you see nothing but abandoned summer huts on a slim sliver of land a mile or so behind the transmitter building and limitless sea ice beyond that. During the day, the sun was peeking over the distant horizon and you could see the ever-blowing snowdust coiling and spinning and floating over everything like rapid steam or flying snakes. At night the moon was huge and white and low. With no lights from civilization to guide us, we walked with flashlights, though given enough time we'd have easily made it by moonlight. Over the course of three trips out to the transmitter we did a lot of little things: checked and maintained the generator, exhaust louvers and cooling fans and a heater, power cells and thermostats. It was interesting to me how necessarily fatalistic the work is: a chronicle of how long things have been in operation, how long they should last, how long something has lasted, if and when it'll be replaced. I might see a marvel of human ingenuity and complexity, whereas an engineer like Les must see a beautiful system of somewhat predictable decay. Les answered every question I had with thorough detail, and as if to put a period on each sentence, he'd rattle off from memory when it was installed, how good the maintenance has been, and when it will likely die and need to be replaced. It was especially funny to see him check the batteries and run the backup diesel generator. So loud we needed ear protection, he turned it off by thumbing a switch and said without a trace of emotion, "yeah, that's got a life of about forty years."

But we did one heavy job: an annual cleaning of most of the high-voltage equipment. This involved taking the station off the air, so we did it at night. We powered down all the power sources (and, as we output a 25 kilowatt signal, that's a lot of power) and grounded our porcelain nipple, just in case we picked up a surge from another station. And then we cracked open all those "Danger! High Voltage!" boxes and got to work.

There's something slightly intoxicating about knowing you're working on silver-copper coils worth over $75,000, and that the only reason you're not having 240,000 volts of electricity boiling your eyeballs is because you flipped a couple switches. Like polishing the warhead on a missile. So very close to something so very deadly. Working together, Les and I were able to finish up in under three hours. He had predicted four. Always good to come in under budget.

The last time Les was here, he introduced me to the Bullshit Table, a breakfast table of town's "movers and shakers" (as it were). He made the intros by saying (something along the lines of) "this is Matt, he's a lifer, he just don't know it yet." With his storied history of being an engineer for KNOM for a long time, first as a volunteer and then later coming back on a semi-retired-but-still-working-full-time-and-living-in-Nome basis, Les has a certain quality to him, a certain je ne sais quoi, that affords him this cachet to make such pronouncements.

I guess I've been thinking about that a lot lately. Is Nome a place I want to stay? Not for life, anyway; I am far too much a fan of local breweries, indie cinemas, live music, cheap produce, and ethnic restaurants to make Nome home for life. But that's OK; some may see that as a weakness, others as a legitimatize reason, but I just know that's who I am. So Les is wrong there. Not unless something truly magical happens. But a second year at the station? Another year in Nome, who's best parts (think: endless summer days that barely break 70 in beautiful country) I arguably haven't even seen? That's a question worth asking. It wasn't six months into China that I was sure Year Two was the right thing, but it happened sometime in the February-April window. And just as important to ask: if not here, then where? Where to, and doing what?

About a week after Les left, Sunday in fact, there was a problem out at the transmitter: the heater wasn't kicking on, and we were reading dangerously low temperatures. Ric asked for a wing man; I grabbed my coat and my bunny boots and we drove out. It was cold, maybe ten or fifteen below, but the wind was easily blowing forty miles or more. The wind was coming from the north, so it was at our backs as we walked down the now-familiar path, though the much of it had been erased. Inside we rigged a clamp on some exhaust louvers (to keep the warm air in) and, on a door to the north side of the building, replaced a filter for outside air (that was letting in a stream of frigid cold) with a solid block of wood. The power nodes and most other equipment had their own filters; the wood stopped the cold air from pouring in. Immediate difference, and temps started going up. I had to be on the air in about an hour. Leaving the transmitter, and walking back to the car, the wind cut into you. Forty or fifty miles an hour, eyes an instant blurry mess. Wind screaming by you, unable to hear anything or anyone, chaos. You can't breath because the hood of your parka is pressed so snugly against your face from the wind that there's no room to take in air. Your face immediately begins to sting with cold and you realize your hat, ear warmers, and hood will only work for a few minutes. Your forehead hurts from the exposure, an intense migraine somehow localized outside of your skull. You march toward the car, and just as you're about to lose your mind, you turn around, looking out again at that silent pink sun dipping over the calm sea ice. The snow is drifting and wafting everywhere like smoke, the howl of wind now bearable, the whole thing feeling like you're on another planet. You walk slowly backward and with the wind away from your face, you can breath.

Repeated three more times and Ric and I finally made it to the car. He said that in wind like that, the wind chill and temperature can freeze your retinas, "yeah, about two minutes tops," he said. I just sat there, smiling, and laughed.

Dear Western Alaska

2011-01-20T23:54:00.000-08:00

Look, I know you're busy. I just wanted to ... I don't know, just wanted to say this. Get it off my chest. No, don't laugh. This is serious. We have ... well, it's not a problem. No, don't roll your eyes at me, damn it. We have to talk, and ... and I think you already know what this is about.

It's about my music.

No, just shut up. Just let me finish, OK? Can I finish? CAN I FINISH?! Thank you!

Look ... hehe, OK, I know you're busy! I do! And I know it's not like I'm on the air all the time, either. So maybe some of this is my fault too. I know you don't hear my voice too much, so it's not like I expect you to perk up and call the station or anything when I do a little lunch time DJing. My Profiles air at most twice a day, and outside of the that, when do you hear me? Sounding Board? Maybe once every two months or so. Yeah, this month was different, I hosted last week and co-hosted this week, but you know what I mean. No, that's beside the point. Listen, don't get distracted, OK? I labor on Elder Voices, and not a word is heard from me. And I'm not complaining! What? No. No, this is not complaining. This is us having a discussion. Sure I'm on the air all day Sunday, but that's Sunday! Who's listening to me on Sunday? And what options do I really have to share my music with you then? Not many. An hour of slow songs and then an hour of new music? Like I can really cram some Tom Waits air time through that, right? Crew Picks? OK, sure, but that's twice, maybe three times a month at best. But we're getting distracted. I can live with that. I'm OK with that. But this week, you really crossed the line.

I filled in all week for Linda during the lunch slot, and played some pretty awesome music, and You Didn't Say A GODDAMN WORD ABOUT IT!

I'm sorry. No, really. I am. I didn't mean to yell. (Whew.) It's just ... I gave you so much good stuff. SO much good stuff. And I feel like you just ... I felt like I could have played a block of Dixie Chicks and you wouldn't have noticed. Can I ... can I just show you this playlist? No, sit down. We ARE talking about this. Yes, now!

(OK, and look, I'm not even going to go on about this, but I personally think I had pretty cool themes for each day, too. I mean, I did what I could, I found a quirky theme that hadn't been done before for each day, so that's a pretty cool thing right ther--OK, I'll get to the playli--OK I said!)

Monday Lunchtime Limelight: where I was supposed to choose one artist to focus on and play their music and their music only. OK, I admit it, this one is all one-sided, I admit not everyone likes Frank Black/Black Francis. That's cool. But I played a Pixies song! I played great solo stuff, great stuff with his band The Catholics, great solo stuff from Bluefinger that he made after calling himself Black Francis (again). OK, fine, here's the playlist:

1. The Pixies - "Where is my Mind?" (C'mon, you saw Fight Club, you know this song.)
2. Frank Black - "Superabound"
3. Frank Black & The Catholics - "Bullet"
4. Frank Black & The Catholics - "If it Takes All Night."
5. Black Francis - "Lolita"
6. Black Francis - "Seven Fingers"
7. Black Francis - "Cinema Star"

Look, I admit it. Frank Black/Frank Black/Charles Thompson/that dude from The Pixies is my thing. He's my main man. I'll be pushing that guy's music on people until the day I die, so yes, that might not be the way to win you over. But let's look at Tuesday.

Tuesday TWO'fer: play two songs in a row that have something - anything - in common. And so I just went for it: two songs, two'fer ... maybe it's clever, maybe it's just a total mathematical lack of imagination ... but I just went for numbers. Two songs with the same number in the title. Only other criteria: it's good. Now even you must like some of these songs. We already had two in our system!

1. Broken Social Scene - "7/4 (Shoreline)"
2. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! - "Love Song No. 7"
3. The Swell Season - "Two Tongues"
4. They Might Be Giants - "Four of Two"
5. Tennessee Ernie Ford - "Sixteen Tons"
6. Tom Waits - "Sixteen Shells from a Thirty-aught Six" (Yes! Tom Waits bonus!)
7. (Bonuse) Love - "Seven and Seven Is" (Wow, can't believe we had nothing from Love in our system!)

Wednesday Stereotype: Ukuleles. Not a genre, not even a preconception, really. Just one thing to know about these songs, they're all played on the uke. Now come on, western Alaska! How can you not love songs on the ukulele! I know it was cold out there, but these songs can't help but warm you up.

1. Bella Hemming - "(She Might Love You If You Learn to) Play Guitar)
2. Sophie Madeleine - "The Rhythm You Started" (Sophie ... how can you not love her?!)
3. Israel Kamakawiwo'ole - "Panini Pua Kea" (How could I play uke music without Brudda Iz?)
4. Rocky and Balls - "The Beard Song"
5. Zee Avi - "Kantoi"
6. The Ka'au Crater Boys - "Tropical Hawaiian Day"
7. Sophie Madeleine - "The Stars" (Yes another Sophie song, but this one was live, the Crypt session that I like better than the album mix.)
8. Israel Kamakawiwo'ole - "Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World" (This is *THE* ukulele song! Why do you look at me that way? Everyone knows this song, whether they know it or not. I can't find the full version on line, but it's the full five+ minute long one that has the bridge of What a Wonderful World. Naturally, who'd even bother with the chopped under-four-minute one?)
9. Mal Blum - "Ode to Kulele" (Short and sweet to finish the hour. Perfect closer, despite being played on the guitar. Just watch the video.)

Still nothing, eh? You know I got a call from you during the uke music. Yeah. Call to say you didn't hear any of it, but you thought ukes were dumb anyway. See?! See what I'm talking about, western Alaska?! I can't even ... let's just move on to Thursday:

Thursday Theme Park: Choose a theme, and songs related to that theme ... more or less. My theme was basically Songs Not in English. And I think I nailed this one, even thought I never played any Tom Waits.

1. Joe Dassin - "Les Champs-Élysées" (Yes of course it's French ... sigh, and yes, I did get it from The Darjeeling Limited. Shut up. It's a great song!)
2. Sigur Rós - "Inní mér syngur vitleysingur" ("Within me a Lunatic Sings") (Deserving of a place on any list of non-English music eh?)
3. Terry S. Taylor - "Cough Drops" (Yes, it's from The Neverhood, and no, it's not in any known language ... mostly a guy who needs some cough drops.)
4. Animal Collecive - "Winter Love" (OK, technically English, but listen to it! Can you understand a single word?)
5. Unknown Mongolian Song (Picked this one up in China, though it's Mongolian, on the long road to Nome.)
6. The Pillows - "Funny Bunny" (The Pillows, a great Japanese band.)
7. Pete Seeger - "Guantanamera" (Pete Seeger explains it all in English, but sings this wonderful Cuban revolution song.)

So that was my playlist for the week. (And you have no idea how long that took, finding those songs, making sure they were radio friendly, getting them into the system, and then linking them all here! On a side note: I'm amazed at how much "free" music is on YouTube.) And now that you've heard my side of thin-no, no, let me just say this, OK? I'm almost done.

*sigh*

I dunno, western Alaska. Maybe you're just not taking me, or my music, seriously. Maybe ... maybe we need to spend some time apart. Tell ya what: I'll go keep my head buried under some Profiles and Elder Voices, and maybe the next time I get to play some of my music, well ... maybe you'll be ready for it.

God I hope you'll be ready. I really want this to work. I'm not saying now, I'm not saying this week ... but I really wanna play music for you, western Alaska. I wanna play music for you in the worst way. I don't like to say this out loud but ... you're like no other listening audience I've ever had. (Mostly because you are the only listening audience I've ever have. But that doesn't mean you're not special.) And I don't want you to think I'm weird because I'm so into this working out. I know it might not, and I'm OK with that. But I like you, and I want to have fun with you while I'm here, western Alaska ... and it's only going to be fun if you can just accept me, and my music, for what it is:

totally kickass.

Tom's Cabin - Death by Eating a Rock

2011-01-19T00:32:00.000-08:00

So have I mentioned that Ben and I are brewing beer? We've got a Garbage Pail Ale (an IPA) and a Bunny Boot Brown (a brown ale) fermenting. The GPA might be ready in two weeks or so, the B³ might take about a collective month of primary, secondary, and bottle fermentation to be drinkable. These beers should both turn out much better than the as-yet-unnamed IPA I brewed over the summer for two reasons: for one, they've been brewed with with all grains (as opposed to malt extract), which is how real beer is made (malt extract is to brewing beer what cookies that come in a bag, just add water!, are to home-made from-scratch cookies ... that may not be accurate, I'm just laying my prejudices on the table); another reason the beer'll good is because Ben has brewed much more than I have and knows what he's doing. Brewing another IPA was fun, but seeing the dark, syrupy-sweet wort of the brown ale from the mash was exciting, like making a small change to an old recipe that somehow comes out looking and smelling amazing ... only, well, you won't get to actually try it for a month.

So how's about another note from Tom's Cabin? This one is dated August 8, 1995:

Just a quick stop - hiked out w/ Cassie because good berry-picking was reported in the area. The reports are definitely true. No wildlife so far - which is fine by me. Beautiful day. Started out foggy but cleared up nicely. Beautiful spot, as always. The death of one of our dogs this week - Cannibal (from eating a rock) - makes me appreciate Cassie & company all the more. I wish I could've brought all the dogs out here - give them an outing.

Therese

Another one? Sure, why not. This one's dated August 11, 1995. I didn't just turn the page, either; there seems to be little order, chronological or otherwise, to this little guestbook.

After a year-and-a half I am back in Alaska for 3 weeks. I just relived the memories of Tom's Cabin through the log. Great people have found sanctuary at this cabin. A yellow warbler just made our aquanitance. [sic] I'm here with with Señor Brian Greely from Portland, Oregon. He is here to learn the Alaskan ways. I have a feeling I may come back here soon to stay.

Cherie Collins

I wonder if Cherie is back in Nome, or back in Alaska? And if not, I wonder what path led her to wherever she is now? So many interesting threads weaving through the fabric of this place, not just the cabin, but Nome. I wonder where my thread will weave ...

Brain Freeze

2011-01-17T00:38:00.000-08:00

On Christmas Eve, as most of my room mates were at some form of Midnight Mass, my room mate Ben and I sat around drinking beer (many of them "imported" from the east coast thanks to my sister), talking about life and times in Alaska, and listening to Russian radio programs. Something about it had a very "fermenting revolution" vibe to it, and it's a recent if imprecise and dim memory of a strange and fun Nome moment.

But imprecise and dim have been a problem of sorts lately. I have been having a series of mental blocks that have somewhat shaken my faith as being one of the most intelligent people on the planet. I don't know how this has happened, but it's been a lot of small things lately. Perhaps my brain is breaking down, or at least has some kind of ice-damage.

For example: I spent about an hour trying to find some widgets and HTML to throw on my blog to make it look like a real blog and not some Livejournal reject from five years ago. Something simple, maybe some tabs up top or a crisp new layout for the column to the left. I seem to remember being able to do a simple task like this, lifting the requisite HTML off of another blog, fairly easily in the past. Sometimes I even rolled up the 'ol sleeves and wrote a bit of HTML, too, and it usually turned out OK. Half an hour later, I've got nothing. One little widget that looked pretty awful. The fact that I accomplished so little, and still have a dull-looking blog, is embarrassing. The fact that I've been wanting to do this for months and have neglected it is ... really embarrassing. The blog title itself! Oh what grand plans I had for it. Now it's just text.

Another way my faith in my own mind has taken a hit: I feel I don't have the mental capacity to do more than the handful of things I've committed myself to doing. I've been in EMT classes for a while now, and I've neglected to study as much as I should have. So some of the terminology isn't as fresh as it should be, and I'm not 100% in all the skills. In class I find myself grasping at straws for the right terms and ideas, and while I may know most of it conceptually, I can't seem to bring it when it counts. It's frustrating, but mostly because I know I need to find the time to study more in order to address this problem.

But that's just it. I can't find the time. But hey, I say to myself, you've got work, and it keeps you busy. Yeah, well, so does everyone else. But, Matthew! my mind tells itself. Surely you enrich yourself by reading many books! And aren't you also learning to play the ukulele? And don't you also do rock climbing at the gym on Fridays?! You're fairly busy, my boy! Aside from not knowing why my brain talks to itself like a mid-1800s capitalist in a top hat, I just can't buy that. If all of that is hard, then my friend Erin must be wizard, because she does all of that and more. For one, she can play almost any instrument with strings, so trying to play uke with her underscores how infrequently I practice and how far I have to go. She has a nice little cottage industry going converting raw materials like bee's wax and oil into things like lip balm and hand lotion, which she sells at a local shop, not only a creative outlet but also a nice little entrepreneurial venture; in addition, she holds down a full time job while taking classes at Nome's Northwest campus, being a life guard on weekends while doing rock climbing, and she's in my EMT class as well (and, presumably, will run with the ambulance when certified, as I hope to do). I see someone like that, so busy and somehow getting it all done on time, and I think that I just barely scrape by with my EMT classes and work, and even then my weekends are more or less unstructured hours of me-time. I just feel as if my brain is incapable of running at that pace most of time, and if the pace in Nome is too much for me, well my God...

And finally, I guess, it's all the stuff I want to do that I just don't seem to be able to do, or haven't done for weeks or even months now. Practice uke. Buy a uke! Sit down and get those chords for that song together, and oh year, write some lyrics too. Put in the time needed to hunt down ski boots that fit and the skis to go with them. Read. Write more, finish those NaNoWriMo stories. Look into getting a camera, finally. Write more hand-written letters to friends. Study more EMT. Do something new, exciting, and totally unexpected.

But no; I haven't done any of that, despite them all being on my mental to-do list for weeks or months. Why can't I get it done? You can measure the amount of TV I watch in minutes a day, and I can't think of any places to readily reclaim lost time. Between work, class, the gym, and the odd activity here or there, my days already feel pretty busy. They're not running lean to the bone yet, but maybe they should be. Maybe I should be striving to keep myself exhaustively busy.

I know first hand how adaptable and versatile our minds can be. Maybe I'm in the midst of an unconscious winter hibernation, and I'll slowly wake as we gain more daylight. Maybe I've just been distracted by people and routine, and I need a change. I hope as we get more sun and the days start to feel as long as real days should, I'll feel able to get some of these things done at last.

Or maybe my brain is already past it's prime, in which case, it's gonna be a long road ahead.

Sounding Board Promo - Waste & Recycling

2011-01-12T09:36:00.000-08:00

I'll be hosting the show tomorrow. Hope we get callers.

A Fond Farewell to a Friend

2011-01-11T02:04:00.000-08:00

My backpack is dead. Book bag, knapsack, whatever you want to call it. It's been a stoic, faithful friend since I entered college in 2002, and followed me all around the world. It's pulled duty I'm sure it never expected, and through broken zippers and cheap China streetmends, it's held it together. I remember packing up everything for the move to Alaska, and I was even going to leave him behind: he was beat up and one of the two zippers to the main compartment was shot. Better to leave him hanging on some forgotten hook in the closet, collecting dust, telling stories of the years, never having to suffer the indignity of ... ugh ... breaking. But no; I wanted my old friend with me one last time, and I needed a carry-on, so I figured he was up to one last hurrah. And he made it. Barely, but he made it. And between hiking with me a few times here in Nome and lugging my prodigious EMT books to and from class ... well, the second zipper to the central pocket gave up the ghost. And while I still take him to work every day, it's all an empty charade, like a cuckolded lover forced to make small talk with his wife's new boyfriend, a pathetic farce of a bag waiting to be put out of its misery. I just can't bare to let the old guy go.

This little pack has been with me from Villanova to Narberth, from Zhanjiang to Jilin, and he crossed with me from Singapore to Malaysia, Thailand to Laos, Cambodia to Vietnam, from London to Munich to Athens and back again, even returning with me to school when I taught stateside. And when I was traveling alone, just my bag and a camera and nothing but a wide open (mostly south Asian) road ahead of me, you better believe he was my stand in when I needed a self portrait.

The earliest picture I have of him, here we are in Macau, back in October 2006. He's there, on my back. Like a good friend.

And there he is again, as I make a sammich out of Macanese bread (where I was momentarily a huge fan of Portuguese imperialism) and authentic Macau streetmeat, thin sheets of meat sold by the jin (this one was wild boar).

There he is in Zhanjiang, back in December 2006, keeping order in a rowdy classroom.

Again in Zhanjiang, after Steve and I finally bought a ladder and started having parties on the roof. We've both grown so much since then: my bag has a little red Chinese knot on his zipper, the backpack equivalent of getting your ear pierced; and I'm pretty sure I'm reading Zadie Smith's "White Teeth," and who reads Zadie Smith any more?

Just barely visible shielding my back from the harsh Cambodian sun in front of Angkor Wat in February 2007.

Same day with me in Baphuon in Angkor Thom.

With the Smith Family on the Really Wonderful Wall of China in April 2007.

And again, barely.

With me begin ... ahem, in Xi'an, that same family trip in April 2007.

Finishing the trip in Hong Kong with my sisters. And my pack.

With some friends from America, Korea, China, Japan, and beyond in Jilin, December 2007. He really tied this pic together.

Atop Chang Bai Shan! Almost made it to North Korea, little buddy!

... close enough to see it, anyway.

Posing with Kevin, for some reason, on the China side of the river opposite North Korea.

Shootin' darts in the Cameroon Highlands of Malaysia. A valuable counterweight to that long tube!

And playing with some gross bugs there, too.

On Ko Surin in Thailand, the most beautiful beach I have ever seen.

Snorkelin'. (He never liked getting wet, so this meant a lot to me.)

Oh man, backpack! Remember when we rented that motor scooter on Ko Lanta?! Man, that was stupid! And awesome!

Noodles and beer in Penang, Malaysia. Can January 2008 really be three years ago?!

The colonial square of Melaka, Malaysia. Aw, backpack ...

As close as we could get in Laos. Vientiane, I think?

Crossing a river atop a waterfall outside Luang Prabang. Boots couldn't handle it, backpack could!

Returning home from China ... two years in the wilderness, old friend.

Back on the road so soon? In Trafalgar Square in June 2008.

On the shores of Mykonos in July 2008.

And although we had a lot of adventures in class in 2008, 2009, and traveled all over the damn place in 2010, the last pic of us together is here in Alaska ...

... exploring to the end.

So long, old friend. We've seen a lot together.

Happy Brew Year: Here's Hoping

2010-12-31T18:13:00.001-08:00

Christmas has come and gone, and while there were phone calls and Skype chats home, and meals tenderly prepared for dinners large and small, and white elephant gift exchanges (I got a sky-blue-and-rainbow scarf that I promptly donated to someone who will actually wear it, a lavender eye pillow likewise donated to someone who is more expert in good-smelling things than I, and a matching set of plates, bowls, and coffee cups for the house), it seems kind of silly to try to recount those moments here. With my camera broken and the inertia of doing nothing about it rather strong, I find myself less inclined to even bother worrying about pictures, and so I certainly don't waste time hunting down photos from other people. And since pictures are on Facebook and that seems to be about 90% of what people want out of a blog anyway, you're left to your own devices if you want those kind of pictures.

A new year is upon us. The world lurches awkwardly into the future, like a confused man waking up at the end of a movie and leaving the 200X decade behind, slightly embarrassed but with no real choice but to go on. On! On boldly into 2011, a year whose number is somehow extremely underwhelming when compared to the epochal 2010. Just say them out loud. "Two-thousand eleven." Or "TWO THOUSAND AND TEN!!!" Obviously your mileage may vary depending on punctuation and capitalization, but I feel I have made my point. We are entering the century's tweens with growing angst, which means centennial puberty can't be far away. And that's when things are just going to get awkward: resource wars, acne, evolving new ideas to push the human race beyond primitive tribal, colonial, and national identities and toward the promise of a unified future beyond the confines of our solar system, and looking at other centuries and getting those weird fluttery feelings in the pit of your stomach.

Excuse me, there is a loud thudding outside my room as I type this. Let me go see what it is. (If this were for radio, I'd inset some realistic sounds of creaking wooden chairs, heavy footsteps, muffled hallway sounds, and a door slowly opening.)

This is what I just saw: my room mate Leah and her sister Lael (who's visiting Nome while on winter break), stomping around in my bunny boots. That's right: both of them. In my boots. At once.

Yes, my boots are that huge. Bunny boots are a pretty common piece of winter gear here in Alaska, and no one bats an eye when you walk around with these monstrosities of rubber and insulation hugging your feet. But even to people acclimated to this kind of dinosauric footwear, people are surprised at just how big my bunny boots are. I guess when two people can actually wear them at once, then yeah, that's getting on the absurd side of large.

Last night Ben, Bryant (an EMT friend but also a taught-English-in-Asia-for-a-few-years friend) and I brewed beer. Ben and I had been slowly amassing the necessary equipment and ingredients, and Wednesday, Ben activated the yeast: there was no going back now. We started brewing around eight and didn't finish 'till about one in the morning. It was a good time. I've only brewed once before, but both Bryant and Ben have brewed a few times. We sat around during the various stages of waiting, sipping some beers from home and some homebrews of Bryant's, talking out the process, beers we'd like to emulate, and other beer-related goodness. We chilled the wort with some snow, which actually cooled it very quickly (a good thing). It's fermenting now and looks and tastes (in wort form, at least) very promising.

In talking about all that is good and righteous about beer, we explained to a few other house mates and guests that all beer is essentially made up of the same four ingredients: malts, hops, water, and yeast. But in those four simple ingredients are so many possibilities. What kind of malts you use (lightly toasted, or coffee roasted?), what kind of hops, how much and how many and when they are added to the boil, the strain of yeast ... all of these things, subtle variations on a singular theme, can create such amazing complexity and variety. It's all still beer, but it's different, and with a few tweaks, hopefully better.

And so life will go on in 2011 with the same basic ingredients as it did in 2010, and the years before that; but here's hoping for some subtle variations and tweaks to make it better. I'm hoping to make the new year better in a few ways. As health and healthy living have become more important each yeah, I hope to improve my diet (less dead, more fresh; more real, less artificial) and my exercise routine (more of it, with a redoubled commitment to losing weight). That said, all in moderation, and I hope to brew more, more frequently. More music is always better, so I plan to practice the uke, force myself to learn new songs, maybe write some as well, and who knows, I may even try FAWM? For a while my life seemed to be defined by travel, and despite moving to Alaska only a few months ago, I feel very stationary, so 2011 must see some travel, preferably international. And I am committed to finding a way to use my time well frequently, rather than now, which is using my time well only somewhat frequently.

But these are externalities. I have to adjust, too: to be patient and to have patience with those I care about. To forgive and ask forgiveness. To learn when to resist and when to bend, and actually do both when the time is right. To communicate more regularly with the people I care about, be they in town or on the other side of the globe, and make sure they know how much they mean to me. To commit myself to putting as much energy as I can bear into living the lofty goals I believe and so often espouse. To dedicate this next year to love in all its forms.

If I can do that, or even some of that, 2011 will be a worthy successor to 2010. Here's hoping.

I'm Kind of a Big Deal

2010-12-23T13:03:00.000-08:00

I work at a radio station. I hope you know this by now. What you might not know is that we often share our station's stories with APRN, the Alaska Public Radio Network. If APRN picks up a story, people well outside of Nome will hear it; indeed, with partnerships with NPR and over twenty stations throughout Alaska, a story that goes out on APRN could be heard around the entire state.

Well guess who's story just went on APRN? That's right. And bonus: it's a story about dinosaurs!

Looks like wanting to be a paleontologist back in second grade is finally paying off.

Sea and Ice, Sun and Sky

2010-12-22T01:59:00.000-08:00

The ocean has frozen.

Read that again. The ocean - the unfathomably huge mass of water that is defined by only two things, it's liquidity and it's motion - is now an immovable solid. Strange stuff happens here in Alaska. It all started with small chunks of ice washing ashore.

Where did they come from? Did they float down rivers from some frozen nowhere in the interior, the way driftwood magically uproots and floats hundreds of miles away before being vomited back on the Nome beach? Or is there some cold pool of ice water in the sea, like a black oilstain distinct against the already-black pavement, where this stuff just ... congeals? Wherever it came from, it soon became this:

And another, taken seconds before. I think you get a feel for the drastic angle of the sun from these two pics. All I really did was turn about ninety degrees.

I'm standing on the seawall taking this picture, looking out into the ocean. When I arrived here back in August, the sea was gray and roaring, crashing against the rocks in foamy freezing waves just feet below where I'm standing. Now the rocks are covered in snow and the water is frozen somewhere between high and low tide until spring. Turning my back to the ocean, I can look down the sea wall as it parallels Front Street - the "main" street in Nome, where the bars and the bank and the post office are all located - and you can see a satellite dish (which I think is for AT&T) and the backs of buildings all covered in ice and snow. I like this picture; I think the shadow on the dish looks like a sideways exclamation point.

In addition to all that, we have sunrises that are pretty spectacular. Sure, the sun may not rise until noon, and it may set at three, but at least today was the solstice! Shortest day of the year means we only lost about thirty seconds of daylight today. Just about three and a half hours of sunlight in total. It's not as bad as you'd think. We'll start gaining seconds every day until spring, when we'll have the equinox and have only three-or-so hours of night. This photo again courtesy of room mate Ben. He's standing on our second-story deck looking south, toward Front Street, toward the sea.

And one more from Ben, of the eclipse last night. We drove just out of town and saw it turn a deep burgundy-maroon in a cloudless sky for about an hour. But it got too cold to stay for the totality, so after it became a full eclipse, we drove back home.

All part of life in Nome. Resisting the urge to make some "Home Sweet Nome" or "No Place Like Nome" pun. Wait, didn't I just do it all the same?! Damn it. These blog things are tricky.

The Northern Lights

2010-12-20T00:16:00.000-08:00

So I saw the Northern Lights - the Aurora Borealis - for the second time since coming to Alaska the other night. It was spectacular. And this time, I have pictures.

The station volunteers have friends at the weather service who have standing orders to call us, at four in the morning if necessary, to let us know if anything cool is going on. If at first we don't wake up, Leah is up every morning to do the morning show, and so even if we miss a call in the wee hours of the morning, she's a good safety net who calls the house a second time and makes sure anyone wanting to see the coolness is up to see it. The house got the call around six the other morning but ultimately it was only Ben and myself who went out to see the northern lights. We were told it was one of the more colorful instances the weather service folks had seen.

That's me, actually. (My parka is pretty warm; must have been four below, and I'm not waring much other than a single layer underneath that parka.) So not only did we see the aurora, but it also happened to be during the Geminids meteor shower, a sight worth seeing in its own right. Combine that with the snow blanketing the ground (and this radiating and reflecting purple-tinged ambient light) and you have one of the more memorable sights of staggering natural phenomenon I have ever seen. And the whole time, I had Joanna Newsom's Emily running through my head. My point-and-shoot camera no longer works (well, that is), but thankfully, Ben has just come into ownership of a slick new Canon EOS Rebel T2i DSLR - the very same DSLR I was contemplating before moving here - which gave us some great pictures.

Looking up at the sky like that, your eyes just get lost in the infinite blackness. So many stars ... you just look deeper and deeper into space and see more and more, ever expanding, your eyes feeling like they are constantly seeing a new level of detail, fresh orbs of light materializing out of nowhere, as if the stars are just being created. It's very easy to see how our ancestors came to worship the sky ... it's an amazing, magical thing. And here in Alaska, on the edge of the map, I feel like I see the sky how it's always been, unvitiated and unobscured by anything man has done.

Sikumi

2010-12-09T19:00:00.000-08:00

I just finished interviewing the director of the above short film, Andrew MacLean. He was raised in Barrow, went to school in New York, and this short film of his (which is all in Inupiaq) won the Short Filmmaking Jury Prize at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. His first feature, One the Ice, has been selected as one of sixteen finalists for dramas in for Sundance 2011 (which will be in January). It's a pretty exciting thing. Sure hope he rocks the house at Sundance, and I sure hope he gives my brother an internship or something.

Golden Gold

2010-12-07T01:30:00.000-08:00

If oil is black gold, then the package ~~my big sis sent me~~ a friend named Post L. Service picked up for me in Anchorage around Thanksgiving is ... um ... golden gold. That's right: beer.

The oak-aged two-threaded (English Ale and IPA) Burton Baton is delicious. It's very high-alcohol, nearly 10% ABV, but it had a very mellow hop profile and some unique vanilla and earthy-woody flavors from the oak tanks. A distinctly subtle beer from the often over-the-top Dogfish Head folks.

Waiting under our Christmas tree was some Olde School Barleywine, which I've never had and am saving for a special occasion. And at 15% ABV, it'll feel really special after one of these.

And finally, a real Christmas beer, Tröegs' (from Harrisburg, PA) Mad Elf, a really unique honey-and-cherry-infused spicy Belgian ale. Very sweet, noticeably spiced, it's unlike any beer you've ever had before, and it's really good. Saving these for Christmas.

All this and a 90 Minute IPA kicker, all in one box! My sister is definitively in the lead of the Who Loves Me contest.

I am now a licensed and credentialed Emergency Trauma Technician, according to the state of Alaska and a glittery-gold certificate I have here. I also have a nice little embossed-red-on-white-back card saying much the same. And a pretty sweet hexagonal ETT Trauma patch that would look pretty bad-ass if I had something to sew it to. Behold!

What does that all mean? Well, not much, really; I think, once I get my paper work in, I can officially ride in the ambulance. Maybe drive it? I still have a lot of chapters to read and skills to drill before I take the EMT-1 test. I also just learned that Alaska's EMT-1 certification has no reciprocity outside the state. That sucks, but so it goes.

As you can see, we have a Christmas tree. No mean feat in a part of Alaska well above the tree line.

Profile - Nikaitchuat IRA Interview (Part 3)

2010-12-07T01:23:00.000-08:00

Third and final. During my visit to Kotz, I spoke with Noah Naylor, the Deputy Director of the Native Village of Kotzebue. Naylor explained how the Kotzebue IRA has supported Nikaitchuat’s efforts to foster a new approach to native education that both protects and enriches Inupiaq language and culture.

Profile - Nikaitchuat Co-founder Interview (Part 2)

2010-12-07T00:39:00.000-08:00

From my BandCamp description: the Nikaitchuat Inupiaq language immersion school in Kotzebue has been teaching children entirely in Inupiaq since 1998. During my visit, I was able to meet with Pete Schaeffer, one of the original founders of the school, and he talked passionately about the vital importance a school dedicated to language and culture has for the Inupiaq community in Kotzebue.

By the way: it's pronounced "Nuh-kay-choat."

It took some work to condense the mesmerizing half-hour talk Pete and I shared into something digestible. What aired was actually a 10-minute cut I pared at the last minute. This is a denser and arguably less-finished product, but if you find a ten-minute talk about language immersion worth listening to, you'll probably enjoy an extra three minutes of goodness.

Profile - Nikaitchuat Inupiaq School (Part 1)

2010-12-02T15:58:00.000-08:00

The Nikaitchuat Inupiaq language immersion school in Kotzebue has been teaching children entirely in Inupiaq since 1998. I spent a day at the school sitting in on class and interviewing parents and teachers to learn about this unique educational method that combines native arts, knowledge, and language.

This profile was the first in a series of three about the school, Kotzebue, and the tribal institutions that have helped the school flourish.

Pretty proud of this one. It has some good interviews that I really had to cut down into something that would fit in the broader scope of the piece. Being in the immersion school also reminded me of my summer teaching Chinese via StarTALK, where everything in the classroom, from the instruction to the names to lunch, was done in the target language. It's great to see those same methods employed here to teach an entirely different language with a significant connection to native culture.

So yeah, way to go, me.

Profile - MOvember

2010-11-30T11:44:00.000-08:00

Men grow mustaches to raise money for and awareness of prostate cancer. Is it simply more facial hair and money raised for a good cause? Or is it the perfect complement to October's Breast Cancer Awareness? Or is it BOTH?! This runs deep, people.

We are on the other side of the looking glass now.

Check out the official MOvember website.

And check out that catchy tune.

And for the record, I didn't shave my 'stache until November 16th, when it was mutually agreed upon that a) nothing's really growing anyway, and b) that much peach fuzz is just embarrassing for a supposed adult of twenty-six years.

No Sun, No Problem?

2010-11-28T10:14:00.000-08:00

I've heard people comment up here that as the darkness gets longer your energy level drops through the floor. I was hopeful I would be able to resist it for a while with some regular exercise and all that, but it's just after nine in the morning as I write this, the sun won't come up for another two hours, and despite some breakfast and a cup of coffee, I am dragging ass. I look outside and see a darkness as deep and infinite as midnight, and I can't help but feel the only reasonable thing to do is go back to sleep.

NaNoWriMo is, my novel-writing roommate Matty explained to me, like Australia: the coasts are warm and wonderful, but in the middle lies a vast expanse of desert. And it's easy to start the journey, and pretty easy to write those last 5,000 words, but the middle is hell. And so I find myself at the end of November, barely a quarter of the way into the desert, where I will die a slow and painful death, my bones picked clean by the harsh winds of time and the buzzards of laborious metaphors. That kind of writing is exactly why I'm "finishing" this novel writing project nary a fourth of the way through.

But I realize that writing is a marathon, not a sprint, and that for the long endurance test of NaNoWriMo I was setting myself up for failure, like a runner who has barely finished his first 5k and is now signing up for an Iron Man triathlon. So what I need instead is regular training. To that end, we've spruced up a spare bedroom at the volunteer house with some sitting space, a desk and a bed-cum-couch and a rocking chair, and it's now the unofficial writing room. Go in there to sit, read, write, and just get something done, away from the distractions of the rest of the house. And that's where I'll be, tentatively, on Tuesday and Thursday nights, for some regular writing workouts.

Turns out all of the volunteers are second children. I find this interesting. We sit around and talk quite a bit, despite living and working together, and like all groups that spend so much time together, there's often a few lulls (and lulz) in the conversation. We kept a list the other day of what topics managed to stop the discussion dead in it's tracks, and they included:

* Nordic walking.

* The first Steven Hawking of the Night joke. (That's how it's worded ... so is it the first joke about Steven Hawking to be uttered that evening? Or a joke about the initial Steven Hawking of that night?) And isn't it Stephen Hawking?

* Antarctic time difference conflict. (Pretty sure this one was about international war breaking out over what time to set at the south pole.)

* "We had candles yesterday."

* 400 years in the future: mandatory Chinese gay marriage.

* David: Walt Disney = Nazi?

* Alzheimer's, Starbucks ...

* Me to Leah: "I've already made my judgment of you."

* Danielle: I grew up on an Amish farm, 12 kids, lies ...

* NaCl

It's an interesting place to live, that's for sure.

T.HanksGiving

2010-11-25T17:57:00.000-08:00

David Dodman, perennial KNOMer, told me of a rather fantastic idea for a Thanksgiving tradition: it's called T.Hanks Giving, and to celebrate all you do is watch a Tom Hanks movie on Thanksgiving. If you had to make your T.HanksGiving special, how would you do it? I think I'd try Castaway if I were feeling masochistic (or would that be The Terminal?), or perhaps The Money Pit if I were trying to be all hipster-ironic. Thankfully, I am not, so I think I'll go with Toy Story.

I spent my morning and early afternoon cooking gallons of gravy. Not for myself, no (although I do love gravy), but for the XYZ Senior Center Community Thanksgiving. When I wasn't making gravy (which, to be honest, was just OK; hard to make a nice creamy roux without a lot of butter, and I could never make it as peppery as I'd like since it's gotta be palatable to all, not just the spice-loving gravy guy), I was cleaning dishes, replacing trays of food, and even serving for a bit. It was a great way to make Thanksgiving, by far my favorite holiday, a little less selfish. Make no mistake, there will be selfishness later, and quite a bit of gluttony (picking bits of roasted turkey out of the to-be-cleaned trays at the senior center was but a preview), but it's good to just spend a few hours of a day like today doing something for someone else. But I guess that's really easy to do for a volunteer in Alaska who doesn't have a family to cook for or any traveling to do.

So here I sit, in a quiet house on Thanksgiving day, sipping some French-pressed coffee and listening to the witty lyrics and oddly-rhyming Australian accent of Darren Hanlon. In a few hours I'll head out to my own Thanksgiving dinner, with the other KNOM volunteers and the whole big KNOM family, and it will be a full house and table replete with yummy foods. And in this moment I am just happy and at peace, smiling a satisfied smile at the world and thinking about all that I am thankful for:

I'm thankful for my family: for Mom and Dad, Meg and Deirge and Patch, who put up with a wandering son/brother who always seems to miss all the good holidays. I would love to be at home frying a turkey and making some cornbread.

I'm thankful to be here, in Nome, and at KNOM, and thankful that another whimsical transplantation to a new corner of the globe has somehow turned out so well.

I'm thankful that the Rec Center is close enough and that the weather has been "warm" enough to get to it routinely. And for having kickboxing and yoga and all that good stuff.

I'm thankful to have friends who read this blog, send me chocolate and coffee and candles and beer, and who delicately remind me to ground my lofty idealism in a little practicality every now and then.

I'm thankful to have access to so much amazing music at work. New music always feels like fresh blood flowing through my heart.

I'm thankful for my room mate Ben, who will teach me a lot about brewing beer and has been a lot of fun and a lot of help as I learn the ropes at work; for my room mate Linda, who helped me discover yoga here, taught me how to DJ, and has helped make a house of five feel a lot like a home; for my room mate Leah, who has been quick with a laugh, a wellspring of excellent new music, and patient with a lot of my (perhaps unnecessary) questions; and for my room mate Matty, who has been a great hugger and a great listener.

I'm thankful I can actually get good coffee and beer here. It's the little things, I know ...

I'm thankful for getting to know so many wonderful people in Nome in such a short amount of time, and to have met and laughed with, cooked and eaten and drunk with, listened to and (not yet, but soon I hope) played music with them. To be so welcoming to a total stranger is wonderful; to be so welcoming to a total stranger while offering them a chilled IPA and a bongo to play on is magical.

I'm thankful for my cooking lessons, my EMT classes and study sessions, my rock climbing and belaying, for free samples of lip balm and my ukulele lessons, and my armchair arts and crafts. These bright moments have kept me warm and smiling in an otherwise cold place. There's so much I want to learn, and I hope you'll teach me.

And I am so thankful to be here, to be healthy, and to be happy. Thank you.

And because some people wanted it, here's a few pictures of Nome:

Just a few miles out of town, near the Dexter Roadhouse and by King Mountain, this is from October, when there was tundra and not an open expanse of snow and ice.

This is Old St. Joe's, in the main square in town.

Another view of the main square, back when there was grass. It's now a field of ice and snow.

So Happy Thanksgiving. Now go eat some turkey.

Thursday Theme Park Lunch

2010-11-16T22:30:00.000-08:00

Days without coffee: eight and counting.

I filled in last Thursday for an afternoon airshift, a usual noon to two show, and Thursday's theme is always Thursday Theme Park Lunch. The idea being that the DJ picks a theme and plays songs related to it, the connection to the theme being as proximal or distal as the DJ desires. The noon hour is always heavy at the top with news, weather, current conditions, hotlines, and community announcements. There’s some theme music and short spots in there to break things up a bit and let the DJ catch his or her breath(s?) (literally, in my case … just can’t seem to breathe well before going on the air), so by the time I actually got a chance to play music, it was almost half past noon. And the theme, I should add, usually only runs for the first hour of the shift, the second hour (one to two) being filled with usual random rotation music. Still, a half hour to play whatever I wanted was more DJ freedom than I normally get during my regular Sunday shift, so I took advantage of it.

My theme was “Rock Revolutionaries,” and I was able to use my incomplete and know-what-I-like knowledge of rock history to play some artists that I think were significant or influential. My musical choices were also somewhat limited to what we had in the system, except when it came to the Velvet Underground. I had no choice but to rip Sweet Jane from my iPod, because I knew it’d be radio friendly and there was no way I was gonna do the show without something from the Velvets.

So here was my playlist:
* The Beach Boys – Good Vibrations (from Smiley Smile, not the 2004 album Smile, and there are significant differences, trust me).
* Bob Dylan – Like a Rolling Stone (we’ve got a lot of Dylan in the system, but I wanted to play this one because I like it and we rarely play any of his stuff over four minutes long, and this one is almost six).
* The Velvet Underground – Sweet Jane (because the Velvets define the verb “rock” to me, and I can't imagine a band worth its salt not siting them as a huge influence).
* Jimi Hendrix – Wait Until Tomorrow (because it’s got some jammin’ guitar and because it was under three minutes long).
* The Clash – London Calling (because it reminds me of my first exposure to The Clash, from the album of the same name, a title track that would define the album’s and I daresay the band's excellence).
* Frank Black – Headache (because it’s a great song, and because it’s one of only two Frank Black songs we have in our system, and not a single track from the Pixies is in there either!)

Notably absent was Elvis, a man whose song catalog I have used many a time on the air to get me out of a pinch, and several decades worth of notable artists between Jimi and Frank. So sue me. Any rock history playlist probably says more by who it leaves out, but it’s my list, I only had a half hour, and I liked it.

Paths Crossing

2010-11-16T01:21:00.000-08:00

The station sends out a monthly newsletter, the Static, and has sent this newsletter out every month more or less since the station began. Tom usually wrote the Static, and the November issue was the last one he'd written. It also happened to be the month where myself and another volunteer were introduced to the Static readership. Click the link to check it out.

Anyway, in the brief article that "introduces" me, they ran this picture:

And then there's this picture of Tom from the memorial page KNOM has set up for him. (Scroll to the bottom of the page to see some pics from years ago.) This pic was only a few years ago, back in 2007.

Just ... interesting. Perhaps to no one save me.

Nomeshire

2010-11-15T01:27:00.000-08:00

In case you didn't know, The Hobbit is being made. Peter Jackson is directing, Howard Shore is composing, and Martin "Tim from the 'real' Office" Freeman is going to play Bilbo. And Ian "I'm Gandalf, bitch!" McKellen is reprising his role as the man in grey. Behold!

This ... this is awesome.

Tom's Cabin

2010-11-12T17:45:00.000-08:00

There's an interesting phenomenon here in Nome, and I imagine in several villages and towns throughout Alaska and probably anywhere where there's a lot of geography between people and a warm place to eat and sleep. And that's the idea of a shelter cabin. Basically, it's a common space for people to use, based on communal trust and upkeep, and it's stocked by those that use it with food, firewood, etc. The idea being, I suppose, that anyone can go out to one of these cabins and enjoy some seclusion and simple living, but that in a pinch, it might just save someone's life should they get stuck in bad weather, get lost, etc. And so it's in the common interest to keep it stocked, because you never know when you'll be there for leisure or for life or death. Nome has a cabin somewhat like this called Tom's Cabin, and while I don't think that this Tom is that Tom, there's a definite connection to KNOM with this place, in its upkeep and use and all that. I hiked out there in early October, but the camera was still blurry so the pics are predictably crap.

I was going through some old records here at the volunteer house (and amazed to find things like The White Album and Tommy on vinyl, among many other gems) and I came across a nondescript plastic bag that housed two very weather-worn notepads held together by a rubber band. I opened the bag and appeared to be holding the guestbook to Tom's Cabin from the early 90s. I thought it was one of the coolest things to just find lying around in a pile of old records.

Here's what greeted me when I opened up the guestbook. It's a big computer-typed and water-bled paper now, but I can only guess that at one time it was tacked to the wall of Tom's cabin:

Welcome to Tom's Cabin!

This place is maintained by a bunch of Nome people who use it kinda regularly. It's not just a fun place but also a shelter cabin.

Please keep that last bit in mind! If you steal the stove or use up all the firewood, you could be killing someone who really needs to come in from a storm.

There's some dry food in the closet; if you need it, use it. If you don't, please leave it for someone who might be stuck here.

Two windows are covered with plywood. The covers are easy to remove, just turn the eyebolts to line up with the slots and lift it off. Please keep the plywood and put it back over the windows when you're done. The plywood is 'cause the occasional bear visits and tries to break in. The plastic windows should do better than glass against bears but the extra covering will help keep 'em out.

There's a journal here somewhere ....please enjoy the comments others have made an add your own!

The friends of Tom's Cabin

Thought it might be cool to post some of the comments people have left. On the first page was an entry dated August 28th. No year, but based on subsequent comments, I'm guessing this is from some time in 1993.

Unbelievable! I found this cabin purely out of luck. I thought some old miner was going to shoot me for staking his claim. It was almost like I was drawn here. Sounds freaky, huh? This place is very eerie with the wind howling & the rain falling. I couldn't imagine living here alone. I would probably end up pulling a "Shining" on myself. Well, I'll be back tonite. Cio for now

~ Chris McNulty

Not sure if that name is correct, the signature is a little hard to read. Either way, this is a very cool find, and I hope to share some more in the future.

Busy Returning to Normal

2010-11-10T00:02:00.000-08:00

I can't pretend to be as affected by Tom's death as those who have been here with him since he first arrived in Nome back in 1971. The town here is littered with "former volunteers," people who came to KNOM and ended up making Nome their home. I can't be sure, but I get the feeling that KNOM has been one of the largest contributors to population growth in this town, bringing in new blood and turning one-year contractees into lifetime devotees. That goes for the current staff of KNOM, all of whom are full-time now but were at one time (and that time may have been two or ten or twenty years ago) volunteers. Hearing their stories, hearing the life-changing ways Tom touched them, and hearing the energy and intelligence and trust he showered on so many ... well, my words truly fail to describe the man. And I don't say that easily or emptily. Everyone, every single person, is a unique world of experiences and beliefs, and their life story is how they have acted on those beliefs. You could live an ordinary life and have a book to write; Tom lived his life like it was a book, and he was trying to keep the reader on his or her toes. I cannot adequately explain all he has done for KNOM, Nome, Alaska broadcasting, or the countless people he worked with, without writing far more than I have the patience for.

His funeral was in Anchorage last Saturday, and over 350 people attended. Considering that many were likely from "the outside," that is, from the lower 48, it's a testament to the man and his work that they came. And it's a testament to his legacy, KNOM, that despite the loss, everyone knows that the news must be read, the music must play, the station must go on, and KNOM must endure. And it has. Things have been returning to some kind of normal here, and I've been grateful for a busy week of interviews and editing to keep me busy. This week I've been working on three pieces: a film festival coming to town this weekend, a Health Fair that's a pretty big deal (it has a giant inflatable walk-through colon), and an Art Walk/Festival/Open House, one of the many outlets for the arts that continually surprise me in this place. In addition to that, I'm busy wading through far too much audio from my visit to an Inupiaq language immersion school last week. Being busy has been good.

What else has been taking up my time? EMT class, for one: four hours a night, twice a week. And that's not even counting the studying, which is something I have let drop to almost nil in the last two weeks. I've got to study a lot more, which is a big time sink, and is making that stack of books on my shelf look like they'll never get read. (I'm also stupidly getting stuck in the middle of really long books.) And it makes my recreational writing harder to do.

What's that about recreational writing? Yeah, well, it is November, and I'm going for it: National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. I've fancied myself a writer for too long without writing much of anything. That long creative desert is at last at an end, even if I'm only going to end the month with a terrible novel. I figure a terrible 50,000 word novel will leave me with maybe 5,000 words I am happy with. But mostly, it will start a habit of writing, and that will at least give me some practice. And who knows, maybe I'll write something good eventually? As I've learned with so many other things - losing weight, brewing beer, building a computer, moving to Alaska - a great adventure awaits, but it's only going to begin when you make it happen. So this is me making it happen. I'm nearly 8,500 words deep, and so far, it's actually fun.

I would be remiss if I didn't blog out another entry in the Who Loves Me More contest. Currently we have a three new entries: one from Mom, one from the Grandparents Curran, and one from Jim "Jilin" Vizthum (and his delightful girlfriend Ashley)

Mom sent me:

*my coffee grinder, which broke within two days. But that's OK, because the house coffee grinder we ordered from Amazon arrived the day before! So it all works out.
*a box full of mail, which is great for the magazines, not so much the credit card applications. But taking the good with the bad.
*an assortment of candy, coffee, and other edibles.

Thanks mom! Not to be outdone, the Grandparents Curran sent up:

*a whole batch of the Old Guy's scones, which were still very moist and tasty by the time they got here
*some edibles in the form of nuts, pasta, coffee, etc.
*some recipes, which are actually something that I hadn't thought of but are most welcome!
*a lovely card.

And finally Jim's package, which was pretty awesome. To wit:

*an incredible amount of dark chocolate: we're talking Hershey's, Cadbury's, and some truly epic 86% cacao Ghirardelli Midnight Reverie. I don't think I've had anything darker, save the 99% bar in Switzerland that tasted like chalk (bitter, bitter chalk).
*a couple of amazing smelling candles. Now, this may sound odd, but Jim was there with me in Jilin when those cookie-scented Yankee candles made the difference between a cold Jilin winter and a cold Jilin winter that smelled vaguely of cookies (and thus, in a way, home). Scents include Farmer's Market and cilantro and pineapple. Oh yeah.
*two books: a "scats and tracks" of Alaska book, and "Listener Supported: The Culture and History of Public Radio." This was the book that made me scream "I want to work for NPR!" five pages into it.
*more Trader Joe's peanut butter. I'd say I have enough, but that would be a lie. Now let's see the beer get this kind of love ...
*another hand-written letter. These are very much appreciated and will be returned in kind.

Speaking of tracks and scat ... bear sign!

Bear scat! They sure do like them tundra blueberries.

Bear tracks! We actually saw two different sets of prints on the beach ... they were quite old.

These were taken a while ago, back in September or maybe early October. We've had five inches of snow on the ground for two weeks now, and I don't think it's going anywhere until the spring. Not enough to ski or snowshoe yet, but hopefully soon.

And next time, I want to tell you about Old Betty #6.

Finally, I have quit coffee. For a week. As part of a bet. I kind hate everything right now. But I'll get over it soon enough ... and next week, after I win the bet, I'll be right back on the sauce.

Thank You, Tom

2010-11-03T01:36:00.001-07:00

His name was Tom Busch, and he was with KNOM from the very beginning. Philly-born and BC-educated - odd how I have to come to Alaska to trace these local roots - he came up to Nome in the early seventies as a full-time volunteer and head broadcast engineer. You hear a lot about people "building" something with their life's work, about people "making something what it is today." Well, it's no exaggeration that KNOM, the radio station I work for, the reason I moved to Alaska, simply would not exist without this man. Tom quite literally built KNOM: he dug into the permafrost with pick and shovel to lay the foundations for the first KNOM transmitter. He got the first bit of broadcasting equipment wired and working, and corralled a bunch of other volunteers into becoming award-winning broadcasters for over thirty years. KNOM was an idea, and Tom's unceasing life work was to make it a reality. Though he left the day-to-day operations of the station about five years ago, he continued working for KNOM, raising funds, crunching numbers, fixing equipment, extending our reach, and basically doing everything he could to keep his life's work going.

I met Tom for the first time a few weeks ago. He was visiting the station, as he often did, fixing equipment, trying to get a new hybrid installed in the news room, sharing what he had learned about donors and software and technology, an endless reservoir of knowledge. He interviewed me for the KNOM mailer, the Static, and took a few pictures of me at work; I swelled with no small touch of pride when one of my profiles began to air and he leaned his head toward the nearest speaker in concentration. Despite this man's place in the annals of our station, despite the countless other things he had on his to-do list, he sat with me and we talked for over an hour, listened with patience to a rookie's profile. As we talked, our stories had some eerie similarities: the strange serendipity that brought us both into contact with just the right person at just the right time to get us involved with KNOM, the experiences we had both had as volunteers settling into a place as unique as Nome. Eager to help and to learn, I offered to go with Tom to the transmitter, the very transmitter he had built and refurbished and kept working for over a quarter century. He patiently explained the maintenance work we were doing, and we continued to talk about radio, his legendary status as an Alaskan broadcaster, psychology and history and politics, his involvement with Iditarod and his novels and his exhaustively detailed history of KNOM ... Tom knew me for mere hours, and yet he shared himself, and his knowledge, so freely.

Tom passed away on Sunday night, in his sleep; he never woke up on the morning of his sixty-third birthday. You can imagine the impact the death of someone like Tom has anywhere, but especially here, between the walls of our cozy little station, on the streets of this small town ... something colossal has been lost. And it pains me to have known him so briefly. I could have learned so much from him, about so many things, and now that knowledge and profound understanding and experience and fire, is gone; now all I can do is measure the man by the tears of others, and see from here just how greatly he affected the lives of so many.

Thank you, Tom.

Sounding Board Promo - 2010 Election

2010-10-26T17:04:00.000-07:00

Sounding Board is the call-in show we do every Thursday. Each week there's a new host, and with the host comes a new topic. This Thursday I'll be hosting, and the topic is the 2010 general election. Alaska has an interesting couple of races.

If you ignore the libertarian, independent, and unaffiliated candidates running, Alaska has a three-way race for Senate: incumbent Lisa Murkowski is running as a write-in after losing the state primary to Republican candidate (and Tea Party-supported) Joe Miller, with the Democratic candidate Scott McAdams campaigning strongly with a better chance than most would have given him to win. Fun fact: there hasn't been a write-in Senator since Strom Thurmond's South Carolina victory in 1954.

The gubernatorial race is interesting because incumbent Sean Parnell is only an incumbent because he was next in line after Sarah Palin resigned back in 2009. So he's an incumbent that really doesn't have much of a first term to speak of, with a scrappy Democratic rival in Ethan Berkowitz, whose campaign has been throwing out quite a few (some say innovative, others say crazy) ideas for Alaska's future. Desperation or ingenuity is for you (or, well, Alaska) to decide.

So there are the headliners for what I hope will be a call-filled hour. There are other topics for the election to discuss, namely, a ballot measure that puts a significant redistricting of rural Alaska to a vote; if passed, it could cut some of those impossibly huge yet sparsely populated congressional districts into more manageable jurisdictions. It may sound trivial, but when you realize that some of these districts are larger than most states, and that within these vast areas there is little transportation infrastructure ... well, getting in touch with people and learning their needs can be a problem. I'll be interested to hear what people have to say about that one.

Usually the promos for Sounding Board are a little more cut and dry; I had some Halloween fun with this one.

Profile - Breast Cancer Awareness

2010-10-22T23:10:00.000-07:00

I was pretty happy with this one. Not only was it a way to get the word out about a local charity fundraiser collecting money for cancer research, but it was a way to promote the free mammograms for uninsured and underinsured women in what can be a vastly undeserved part of the country.

For the record, I didn't make it to the walk/run myself ... I had volunteered for Safety Patrol again, and despite being able to easily do both in retrospect, I simply didn't.

In other news, I am volunteering with a new friend for belaying little kids at the local rock climbing wall. Me, the guy who's never climbed a rock properly in his life, is now teaching kids figure eight knots and shouting out "touch the ceiling!" encouragement. A little girl named Kaly got to the top today and, while putting my harness away, she came over and gave me one of those adorable wordless hugs.

An Embarrasment of Riches

2010-10-19T00:23:00.000-07:00

Well, I'll be honest, I didn't expect anyone to actually send me anything when I made a dignified gentleman's plea for care packages. I mean, I averaged two a year in China, and they were big boxes of collective love from the fam. So imagine my surprise when, in Nome nary two months, and I've already received four care packages! You may have read what my big sis sent me, and I was just gonna chalk it up to birthday luck. But in the past few weeks, I've received three more care packages, and they have all been momentous.

First up, Christy "She's Real OK" Enloe from St. Paul, MN sent me a coffee-and-music box of love: two half-pound bags of delicious Dunn Bros. Coffee (it's a Minnesota-only thing, I think), a book about Alaska (that is all the cooler for being a pre-read, Christy-approved volume), an extremely endearing note that is going to force me into a hand-written letter campaign, and a copy of aFeel Good Ghosts album that I am quickly growing to love.

Next up was Granny (Grandma Teh to some), who basically got the sublimated message hiding in original request and just shipped me a box full of the Trader Joe's peanut butter I'm so fond of. She also included a letter full of love and encouragement that may just convince me to write a book. Hey, it'll be NaNoWriMo soon, right?

And finally, last but certainly not least, Mom sent me a bunch of tasty Halloween cookies, and by bunch I mean approximately fifty. To ensure minimal waistline damage, I am sharing them with room mates, guests, and co-workers.

So that's four confirmed people who love me. I wonder if anyone else out there loves me? Feel free to prove it by sending a box of love to:

Matthew F. Smith
PO Box 1847
Nome, AK 99762

In other news, EMT class is going to require a lot of effort. But it's doable. I am meeting fascinating new people here every day. I am planning another village trip soon, and I still have a lot of photos that I haven't had time to post. It's getting colder here, and the snow that falls intermittently is beginning to stick around for a while before disappearing into another brisk, dry autumn Alaska day. What were once puddles of water are now pools of frozen mud, camouflaged underneath a thin coat of dust from the unpaved roads. The days are shorter; the sun rises at ten and sets around nine, with the sun always sitting at that odd angle that makes you think it's about to be sunset any time you look out the window. And I saw the aurora borealis! It was just as amazing and ghostly as you could possibly have imagined; sadly, none of the footage I took of it registered. It was dark, after all.

More updates and radio content will be online shortly. And in case it wasn't clear from above: thank you. Thank you so much for sending me stuff. It's hard to explain just how much a box full of peanut butter in the mail can mean.

E-Mail for Teacher

2010-10-12T23:46:00.000-07:00

Got an e-mail from one of my students back in Delaware. Thought I'd share, as it made me feel pretty good:

Hi matthew,I was very happy to receive an e mail from you. Your new job is fantastic because in radio station, everyday you will meet and talk to new people.Your e_mail showed me that you are very happy about this job.I am very happy and glad for you.You are a very good person and I know you will succeed in this new job.Ok now what about me ? I am still at Deltech.I received $1000 from an international scholarship so that helped me to register for this semester.So far everything is great,I take 4 classes.Advance Reading: I got 95% in the first test,Math 181: 101% and 105% the two first tests(because of extra credits),CIS 107: 100% and 90% the two first tests and HLH 100 which an introduction for health professions and an online class(98%,87%,100%,100%).So like you see I can complain about school now.I got a new job but it is at Phily.I work 5 days and go to school 2 days (Monday and wednesday).The days I work,I sleep at Phily in my friend's house so I do not have to spend to much in transportation.The pay is a little better than the first at Wilmington.

Now I have your e-mail so I will give you more often my news.Thanks for everything you have done so far for me and good luck in your new field.

I may have left teaching behind me, but it feels good to know that I helped some students, that what I did mattered. This guy'll be a nurse in no time, and probably bring those skills back home to Africa, helping countless others. Our lives and work can ripple out and touch an unknowable number of people ...

Involved

2010-10-11T23:26:00.000-07:00

Aside from going to the gym at whats seems to be a more regular pace here, I've been trying to get involved in the local community in as many ways as I can. It seems like a logical decision, since my job requires me to stay current with a lot of the town's goings-on, but it's also a good idea to throw yourself tirelessly into new things any time you find yourself in a strange and wonderful new place. The more things you do to keep yourself busy, the sooner you'll find yourself in good company with suddenly too many things to do rather than too few. In China, this was same same but different, because my ability to engage with people in a new city were limited by the language barrier. But then, the language barrier itself was an ever-present project to tackle; just walk outside and find someone to practice with. So I've got to be a little more creative here.

I volunteered for Safety Patrol last week, which isn't nearly as interesting or heroic as it sounds. Most people have heard something about the state of Alaska cutting all residents a check for $1,000+ just for living in Alaska. It's called the Permanent Fund Dividend, and it's a strangely socialist division of state wealth that comes from the sale of Alaska's myriad natural resources, namely, oil. A lot of the money that Alaska made when it leased its oil fields, mines, and other income generators to developers got thrown into a bank account, and through careful investments, prudent management, and a strict "no other program in Alaska can touch this money for anything ever" policy, they've grown that initial investment into nearly $30 billion. So the state divides up the yearly interest made on the principle, and sends that money out in the form of PFD checks. Now remember, many parts of Alaska are desperately poor, and job prospects in many rural areas can be nonexistent. So what do you do with a big fat wad of cash suddenly burning a hole in your pocket? Well, apparently, you drink.

I'm not resorting to ugly stereotypes. I saw it. The people in Nome have seen it. They've seen it enough in years past that somewhere along the lines, someone thought it was a good idea to organize a squad of volunteers to keep people from going swimming in the subzero waters, from passing out in the snow and dying (luckily, no snow yet this year). And it was a lot of people from villages and from around town: I heard names that were definitely not "Nome" names, names that I could place in only a month or two of being here as from a specific village; this is a way to spend your PFD for many people in Alaska, be they townies or village people. So Safety Patrol goes on, erm, patrol, during times like PFD, New Years, and Iditarod (when the bars stay open until 5 am); that is, any time there's a lot of money rolling around or any time the bars are open late. Feeling the need to get involved, to fill up my free time with something constructive, and to provide a young back that doesn't mind walking around in the cold from 11:30pm until 3:30am, I volunteered.

And (thankfully?) it was incredibly boring. Overdressed under sweaty base layers and boots, walking a bit too authoritatively down the street with my orange "Safety Patrol" reflector vest, and stalking a little too eagerly into the shadows with my flashlight, the night was very uneventful. Looking onto the beach with my flashlight, I saw a naked mattress on the sand, tucked snugly into a tiny crevasse in the stone sea wall, a metallic ruby bra laid on top and an empty plastic bottle of whiskey to the side. I came upon a women, likely drunk, who had found a massive tree trunk of drift wood; she wanted to take it home, and she courteously introduced herself before meandering away. I walked down the street with two other volunteers, women my mother's age, as a drunk walking the other way on the opposite side of the street yelled out threats of rape (to me, exclusively). The only person drunk enough to flee from the cab we hailed him ran into an ally, sat down quietly, smoked a cigarette, told me of his uncle's recent suicide, and explained his philosophy to always smile and be happy, all before another volunteer drove him home. The bars closed, people meandered to hotel rooms or home; we kept walking until 3am, and when every street was silent, we went home early.

It was time volunteering, of trying to do something good for other people, and it was a heartfelt effort, even if the results were placid. That's why I'll do it again this weekend. And that's why I went to my first EMT class today. Because in a place this small, it feels like getting involved actually matters. Being treated like a faceless number can't happen, on either side of the equation. You become known here, and you can put a face to the people you (are trying to) help. There aren't impersonal, bureaucratic barriers that separate you from the good you're trying to do or the change you're hoping to make. What you do just seems more consequential here. I never would have volunteered to walk drunks home in Delaware; I doubt I would have wanted to learn how to be an EMT on the streets of Wilmington or Philly.

It's good to live in a place that feels so human.

October Crewpicks

2010-10-10T22:51:00.001-07:00

One of the cool perks of working at a radio station is, well, there's a lot of music going out over the air. And one of the really cool things about KNOM is that we get to help expand that musical repertoire through Crewpicks. Each month, people who work at the station - the "crew," if you will - get to select two or three songs to highlight - a type of "pick," as it were. So these picks by the crew (or "Crewpicks" as they're called in the industry) are a chance to not only play a song that isn't in regular rotation (due to age, genre, content, etc.), but you get to talk a little about why you like the song, the artist, or whatever. As a passionate fan of music that is rarely played on the radio, I've concocted a fantasy where I'm doing some kind of work for "the movement" by putting oft-unplayed gems on the air. And so I want to share with you my October Crewpicks.

I can't really say more about each song than what you can hear in the track itself. Just listen to each one below; it has my intro, a bit of the song, and my outro. Obviously, the song plays in its entirety on the air, but I'm not about to get my ass sued by putting the whole thing online here. These Crewpicks are how I'm selling my musical beliefs to western Alaska, one song at a time.

Enjoy the brief clips, and do try to find the songs if you're at all interested ... you don't be disappointed.

<a href="http://mattlaska.bandcamp.com/track/october-crewpick-frank-black-do-what-you-want-gyaneshwar">October Crewpick - Frank Black, "Do What You Want (Gyaneshwar)" by Matthew F. Smith via KNOM.org</a>

<a href="http://mattlaska.bandcamp.com/track/october-crewpicks-the-monks-higgle-dy-piggle-dy">October Crewpicks - The Monks, "Higgle-dy Piggle-dy" by Matthew F. Smith via KNOM.org</a>

<a href="http://mattlaska.bandcamp.com/track/october-crewpicks-neutral-milk-hotel-in-the-aeroplane-over-the-sea">October Crewpicks - Neutral Milk Hotel, "In The Aeroplane Over the Sea" by Matthew F. Smith via KNOM.org</a>

Profile - Two'fer

2010-10-07T00:12:00.000-07:00

Two Profiles to share today, and I think they're a good two to pair. They are on very different subjects and can help illustrate how vastly different two projects can be. One can involve going on-site for a weekend, getting live audio,and crafting a narrative out of minutes upon hours of sound. Or you can bring a bunch of people into the studio and basically hit record. Enjoy!

<a href="http://mattlaska.bandcamp.com/track/profile-2010-teller-cultural-festival">Profile - 2010 Teller Cultural Festival by Matthew F. Smith via KNOM.org</a>

(Note that this Profile is different from the last one on the Teller Festival. The previous one was making people aware of the festival in general. This one is my coverage of the 2010 festival in particular.)

<a href="http://mattlaska.bandcamp.com/track/profile-medical-coding">Profile - Medical Coding by Matthew F. Smith via KNOM.org</a>

Is it October Already?

2010-10-03T22:47:00.000-07:00

Well, is it? Because it's hard to believe I've been here in Nome for a month. Pretty remarkable, in fact, because that's 1/12th my time here. That is, if it does indeed turn out to be only a single year.

So, the Teller Cultural Festival. It was last weekend, and I'm only now getting around to saying anything about it. It was ... a pretty unique experience. The village of Teller is incredibly small. I don't think I've ever been in a place so small or remote. It wasn't exactly isolated, the way Luang Prabang is isolated. That place was (er, ... is) at the very far end of a highway running through Laos, and after a few hours of steep but kempt roads, a bus full of travelers and locals finally sees a valley opening before them, and there stands this mysterious city-state of reserved south Asian beauty mixed with old French architecture. It may be far as hell from anything else, but it's still a frequent destination for many.

Teller, on the other hand, is a 75 mile car ride over one long unpaved road, a town of 250 in a remote corner of the Seward peninsula. It's not really on your way to anything, it's not in the middle of anything; it's not a harbor, it's not a hub for flights (the airstrip is just that, a simple strip), it's not home to any fish or game or resource, and it was hard for me to see what kind of jobs there were for people in the village to do. I was there for a festival, and the people I saw were not all locals, but I got a strong impression that this village had its fair share of the problems that blight the rural poor in Alaska: remoteness, lack of economic opportunities, and an unclear path to a different future.

But a lot of that can be said about many places in Alaska. In Teller, I saw things that were a little more hopeful. I saw a really strong community that put on a show that gathered people from across a pretty vast geographic region. I saw a strong showing and preserving of native culture and values. I slept in a classroom that had a lot of iMacs and netbooks, a clean and well-lighted place that added up to a school that (despite its small size) seemed to be a positive place that would inspire just about any kid. And I met a lot of wonderful people that were warm to a complete stranger, and gave up their their time for interviews, chit-chat, and my multitude of questions. On paper, I know what Teller is, what it should have been; but actually being there showed me quite a different place.

And yeah, I slept on a mattress on the floor of a classroom (does a hotel sound like a sustainable venture in a town so small in such a far off place?); and yeah, I wandered around town all blustery Saturday looking to interview some people who might not have been sober when I arrived; and yeah, I ate muktuk (whale skin and blubber) and dried fish (think salmon jerky) and reindeer soup and reindeer liver and walrus and herring eggs and all sorts of other strange delicacies; and yeah, I stood in a gym and heard what sounded like the same song a couple hundred times. But it was a trip that let me see who I'm actually writing for, who is listening to my work on the radio, what their day-to-day is. It helped me understand why that last birthday hotline - an announcement we collect and read over the air twice a day - might mean so much to someone, and why I should be a little more patient and understanding of that pushy grandma at the other end of the phone who wants to make sure I pronounce her grandson's name correctly on the air.

In other news, my sister Meghan is winning the "send me stuff" contest. In two (count 'em, two!) flat rate priority mail boxes, I received:

* lots of dark chocolate!
* some coffee that is being coarsely ground for my idling French press!
* two bags of FoodShouldTasteGood's multigrain chips (the only chips worthy of my guac)
* a whole six pack of Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA (even more amazing when you consider they only sell those bad boys in four packs). Of course, each bottle was carefully triple-wrapped in bubble wrap, and they all got here in tact. For the record, sending beer in the mail is technically illegal. On a related note: I enjoy beer from Tröegs!
* a 22oz bottle of Wrath of Pecant, also from the Dogfish Head guys. "No plans to distribute this beer outside the state of Delaware," they say! I laugh at thee (thee, in this case, means them. Not you)!
* some Trader Joe's flax seed-infused all natural peanut butter. This stuff makes me feel like I'm having peanut caviar for breakfast!
* a lovely birthday card!
* !

So yes, clearly my sister Meghan loves me. What about you, reader? Do you love me? Prove it!

The slowness of internet speed here has me delaying the upload of a lot of photos. Some of them are from the summer, some are from the month I've been here. But they'll be up, and I'll share, because hey, I'm doin' this for you, after all.

Teller You Love Her

2010-09-30T01:34:00.000-07:00

More later. Sleep now.

Profile - Teller Cultural Festival

2010-09-27T00:31:00.001-07:00

I spent the weekend in Teller for the 2010 Teller Cultural Festival. I wrote this profile before I left, and it was aired based on my research and interviews with some folks involved. I'll be producing some pieces on the actual 2010 festival this week. Enjoy!

<a href="http://mattlaska.bandcamp.com/track/profile-teller-cultural-festival">Profile - Teller Cultural Festival by Mattlaska</a>

Teller

2010-09-25T01:33:00.001-07:00

I am in Teller, a village of about 250 people. Not far from home sweet Nome, maybe 75 miles. I am here to report on a native dance and music festival.

I had a $25 per diem, and I bought a $10 gallon of water, a loaf of bread, and a jar of peanut butter.

I am now sleeping in a sleeping bag on a mattress on the floor of a classroom at the local high school.

Unique, to say the least.

Transition Routine

2010-09-22T00:31:00.000-07:00

Things have fallen into a kind of regular schedule lately. Which is not to say things feel comfortable (in that way, if you catch my meaning) nor normal quite yet. I've been going to work, making calls, scouring leads for stories (more often than not, they don't pan out ... hope that's part of learning the ropes and not something that will continue to waste time), drinking coffee, recording interviews, going on-site to get live audio, drinking more coffee, and editing, editing, editing. I come home for lunch, usually a brisk walk to the post office (you really should send me something), read as I eat (see the sidebar at left if you're interested in what that is), head back to work, edit some more, make more calls, and despite that inevitable feeling of monotony, I rarely manage to leave on time, always wanting to get something finished, or at least a certain stage of the project finished, to make sure I have something fresh to come in to tomorrow. Get some exercise in - gym, running outside when when I can, or a bike ride - and then, hey presto, it's already nine and time to think dinner, reading or writing or blogging to something and then, whoops, it's eleven and I should get to bed I guess ...

So there's not a wild variety to my day. The sun sets around 9:30 in the evening now, which is nice, because the sun seems to be setting on my schedule. I'd rather it be dark all morning while I'm in my office blearily reading emails and new sites, and then stay light longer into the time I'm actually able to get outside. But today we reached night/day parity: we're down to only tweleve hours of sunlight here, losing six and a half more minutes of sunlight every day. Counting down to nearly perpetual midnight. It sounds much more terrible than it really is (or so I hear).

I went on a nice long bike ride today out of town, circling a mountain in a quixotic and roundabout fashion. (And, appropriately enough to a previous adjective, the mountain actually had windmills on it.) The winding road along, up, and above the mountain wasn't too taxing, but all I have is a junker Schwinn from the volunteer house garage, and though it's 21-speed (or something like that), it's forever stuck in second gear, giving me really only seven gears to work with. The bike is also comically small for me, my knees stick out as I pedal like some kind of awkward clown on a tricycle. But it's a welcome alternative to exercising indoors.

The weather here has been amazing lately. Clear skies and sunny. We normally get "first frost" around this time of year, and on Sunday, Nome broke its record high. I know the nigh-unbearable arctic cold will be here soon enough, but I hope it holds out. It's nice to run just outside of town and be jogging alongside the sunset-soaked waves with a cool-not-cold sea breeze at your back.

Last Saturday Ben and I went hiking on the tundra. Ben's from Minnesota, an avid biker, hiker, and homebrewer. I'm told he also enjoys bacon, but he'll demand you present proof for that claim. He's keen on finding new trails and poring over topo maps. And while I'm certainly not apathetic about where we end up going, I'm usually more than happy to let him, or anyone who's been here longer than I have, choose the hiking destination. Using a hiking suggestion from the Nome Visitor's Center, we set out to climb 1040. It's not some famous or imposing mountain, it's just a mountain that's 1,040 feet tall and happens to be a place to get some good views. We took the station truck out near the Oregon and Cripple rivers, parked, and set off into the tundra, working gradually north toward the tall mountainish things off in the distance.

About where we started. A few river crossings were in order. I was able to make it without removing my (pretty damn good so far) shin-high Irish Setters.

Ben ... was not as lucky when it came to crossing the river.

Forgive the blurry photos. My PowerShot is gettin' up there, and is losing its ability to autofocus.

Tundra is covered in this moss-soft ... stuff. It's not a plant, it's not grass, it's just ... soft.

Despite having no trees, the tundra does it's own little autumn dance with reds, oranges, and yellows.

Lots and lots of mushrooms on the tundra. If I knew enough about which ones were safe to eat, this would be like a free buffet.

Well, even if I knew it was safe, I'd probably pass on this one.

A little olive oil and you guys would be superb ... assuming you're not deathly toxic.

One of the small mountains to climb on the way to the top of the mountain you're trying to climb.

It can look bleak and dead, but the tundra is wildly alive. There's berries and plants and fungi of all types. It's so dense with growth that it's literally squishy: stepping on it causes you to sink down a few inches, there's just so much vegetation growing on top of vegetation. It's very much alive and thrilling to traverse, especially on a clear day. Pictures, in this case, simply don't do it justice.

Little more colorful and alive in this one. Ben being in the frame also gives you a sense of scale.

Onward!

It's not real cotton, but it looks like it, and the mid-day light show I saw when the sun streaked through these plants made it look amazing. Again, the camera really fails to capture it.

Rocks at the top of the mountain. They look like art project.

At the top.

Blurry at the top.

On the way down.

... and the view that made all five hours of slow tundra progress worth it.

I still haven't shared the pics I have from around town, or the abandoned gold dredge we found a way into. Those'll have to wait for another time. I'm off to Teller soon, and my second profile aired, so I should have some good stuff to share soon.

Profile - Books N Badges

2010-09-17T15:53:00.001-07:00

Let's see if this works ... my first profile!

<a href="http://mattlaska.bandcamp.com/track/profile-books-n-badges">Profile - Books N Badges by Mattlaska</a>

Forgive the NPR pretensions of tone and style ... I'm rather new to this.

It looks like the Bandcamp (top) stream is actually working. The Houndbite might take a while to load the file and make it listenable. We'll see which works best.

Audio Editing Will Make You Deaf

2010-09-16T00:23:00.001-07:00

I've been hard at work at, er, well, work this past week. My days have of consisted of me sitting in my (let's not say tiny, let's say cozy) office with three computers tearing down the power bills before me: a PC for audio editing (mostly through Adobe Audition, which is a pretty full-featured program in which I am discovering new tricks daily), a dual-monitor PC running NexGen (our software for basically managing, archiving, accessing, and playing on the air all the songs, clips, new stories, and content we have), and an oldish iMac used mostly for writing, email, etc. At least one of these machines could easily be removed, but the age of the Mac and PC both (and the existing wiring into the soundboard) keep them in limbo. A workable limbo for me, but limbo nonetheless. With my new work laptop, hopefully I'll be able to remove the aging Mac and only us the PC for Audition. I'd be able to use my laptop for anything else that might require Mac compatibility.

But that's all boring stuff. The cool stuff is:

*With our facilities, I can feel the MattMatt&Matthew podcast "returning," and by returning, I mean actually happening beyond one episode. (If you're scratching your head about that podcast, don't worry, perhaps five people on the planet have ever heard it, and three of them recorded it.)

*I've been interviewing people left and right. It's part of my job to be ask questions and be nosy. And I really like that. I'm the kind of guy that will ask a question he can almost guess the answer to just to make sure, and I think I have a natural curiosity about people, what they do, and the world in general. Now it's just part of my job.

*Some of the people I've been interviewing include: a group of people setting up Caterpillar simulators at a local technical school; a US marshal; an Eskimo dancer and drummer who will be performing at a cultural festival next weekend (which I'm also attending); a retired Army guy who just returned from a two-month proselytizing trip in Zimbabwe; the local Fire Chief; and a lot more.

*Next week I'm "second mic" for our weekly call-in show. I'll be sitting in the studio, offering my two cents and/or backup opinions while the host ("first mic") directs the show, takes callers (fed from whoever is working phones), and delicately teases calls from reluctant listeners by carefully playing prepared audio clips. The topic of each show is chosen by the host. In a few weeks, I'll be first mic. I'm running phones tomorrow.

*Did I mention the Teller Cultural Festival? I'll be staying the night in a native village, watching native dances, hearing their music, interviewing people and hopefully eating some native food. I am incredibly excited. Really hope I get to try whale or walrus. (The natives have subsistence permits for legal whale hunting.)

*For my birthday, I had really good beer, and pizza with reindeer sausage. One more animal crossed of my "list of living things I've eaten" list.

*Actual, been-on-the-air radio content created by me will be posted on the blog soon! I think my first profile airs tomorrow!

In other news, my computer and monitor have arrived! Everything is working fine, so that's the good news; the bad news was, the CPU heatsink/fan came lose in transit, and it banged around and dented a few parts of the motherboard and other internal heatsinks. You either don't understand that and are thinking "whatever," or you know exactly what I mean and are worried if it even turns on. Well, it does. The heatsink/fan is back in place and so far, no problems. Just need to buy my wireless card so I can get the damn thing online ...

I just made potato leek soup for the room mates, and tomorrow I think I'll try my hand at blueberry scones.

Life in Alaska is good.

Not Quite Begging (But Close)

2010-09-10T17:57:00.001-07:00

So does everyone know about these flat rate priority mail boxes from the postal service? If I may:

You fill those boxes up with goodies, and as long as it's under seventy pounds, it costs one flat rate to ship them anywhere in the US. And guess what? Unlike a few years ago, I'm living in a place that is legally part of the US. I know, weird, but true. I happen to know for a fact that those large boxes (the packaging is all free, by the way) costs $14.50 to ship it to Alaska. And that's for the big box! Smaller boxes and envelopes are invariably cheaper to send.

"But Matt," I hear you cry out with a distinct desire to buy postage, "if I only knew WHERE to send such boxes! I yearn to ship you goodies, if I but knew what kind of box ... what kind of POSTAL box ... I could address it to!"

FEAR NOT, my friend! For here I provide the answer! You can address all mail to the post office box to which I HAVE A KEY! This will ensure that I and I alone (or one of my four room mates ... very trustworthy people) will procure the coveted mailed items! And that number ... behold!

Matthew Smith
PO Box 1847
Nome, AK 99762

Things you may want to include in your package include:

*Books, old magazines, and other readables.

*Non-perishable food items (including but not limited to: whole-bean coffee, Trader Joe's flax-seed infused peanut butter, dark chocolate, hell, even home made cookies will be OK in tupperware).

*Beer (wrapped carefully, a couple of Dogfish Head 60 or 90 minute IPAs should make the trip safely).

*Scented candles.

*Anything else you can think of.

I had a few things at home - coffee grinder, beer-brewing stuff, etc. - that will hopefully be able to be shipped up here as well. But for anyone else looking to make a poor Alaskan's day a little brighter (and remember, we don't use the word "bright" much up here). Now that I've got an official Alaska driver's license, it's my duty to ask for free crap from the lower 48.

This Place Reminds Me of Something I Never Knew

2010-09-08T20:32:00.000-07:00

I was on the phone all day today, tracking down people from four different agencies who are coming together to bring used books to resource-starved rural Alaska. I was talking to US Marshals, a telecommunications company, an air freight runner, and state troopers. And I thought as I was working the phones, why are they talking to me? Would they talk to anyone this way? Or does the brief, "Hi, this is Matthew Smith from KNOM" (and KNOM being pretty well known quantity up here) work that much in my favor? Either way, I spoke to my interviewees with purpose, following my list of questions but letting the conversation detour organically, and by the third or fourth call of the day, I felt as if I had gotten into a good rhythm. Bob Woodward I am not (yet), but I spent the rest of the day talking to (and editing my conversation with) a man who has put on circus shows all over the globe, and will be bringing the circus to Alaska - specifically, to Nome - in October. He was the most interesting person I spoke to all day, and remarked a few times that he was surprised at how much I knew about him, how much research I had done; and that makes you feel good, that you surpass your subject's expectations. They know you're taking them seriously, and that you care about what they have to say, even if it is about a circus.

Les the engineer is in town. He is a living encyclopedia of Nome, a meticulous broadcast engineer, and a great teller of stories. He has a deep, ponderous voice and tells jokes as well as my dad. I have been unable to leave him alone since he got here, in a weird kinda of hetero Harold and Maude. I woke up at 5:30 this morning to follow Les to "the bullshit table," a corner in a coffee shop where all the movers and shakers of Nome, the people who know all of what's gone on overnight and who know the whole damn town, come together to share a cup of coffee over breakfast. Some are finishing a long night's work, some are just going to work. I was very much the fish out of water, obviously younger than anyone else by quite a few years, but they were all friendly and talkative, and it'd be a good place to return to for stories.

I spent the afternoon at the transmitter, helping Les swap batteries on the generator, take measurements of all the equipment, and basically get a better idea for what makes the radio station tick. Less and I stomped out into the tundra to check the alignment of the wires that brace the tower at three pivotal junctures, and Les is the whole time explaining in almost-but-not-quite exhaustive detail, and I'm doing my best to just take as much of it in as I can.

We drove around town in the station car for a while, doing a few more odds and ends. It was a glorious sunny day, a day unlike anything I'd seen here since arriving. I looked onto the beach and saw blue-crested breakers, I waved at people I recognized but didn't know, we drove into town slowly, conversationally, and I was in no rush to do anything else. It was small-time towny stuff, it was quaint and almost boring ... and I liked it. I liked taking my time to help do a job well, I liked hearing Les impart his extensive knowledge of town life, politics, history, and architecture. I find it easy to enjoy these things here, and I find myself more than willing to enjoy them; I don't think I've been able to do that, really for a while. "This place," I said, "reminds me of something I never knew," and Les and I talked about past lives and life before cable TV and the internet, where nearly everywhere was a small town. Then he showed me how to turn the house over to generator power should the city power give out; he even showed me where the blue-glowing generator-powered light bulbs would be strung and shining from amid the dark.

Less introduced me to the bullshit table as "a lifer, he just doesn't know it yet." He has admitted to me that he has only ever been wrong about lifers once.

Unpacking Inception

2010-09-04T14:38:00.001-07:00

I saw Chris Nolan's Inception for the second time last night, in the only movie theater in Nome, a giant unmarked wing off the town's only fast-food restaurant, Subway. It's a unique experience to walk into an otherwise normal-looking Subway, get in line as if to buy a sammich (those five-dollar footlongs, by the way, are about $8-$9 here), say "one for 'Inception'" and then head through a short left-right-left mini-maze into a smallish yet otherwise robust single-screen theater that wouldn't look out of place in any movie megecomplex I've been seeing movies in since I was a wee lad.

So, Inception. (Fair warning: here be spoilers. So if you haven't seen this yet, go see it before reading on.) As mentioned, this was the second time I had seen it, and I was glad I paid the $12 premium for a non-matinee movie in Nome to see it again. Nolan has crafted another meticulous movie that effortlessly marries a very compelling narrative with very careful, almost surgical storytelling. It's solid dramatic work and a watchmaker's craftsmanship, all mixed in with some new sci-fi twists that make for a very unique experience. I'm not writing a review per se, but rather a few thoughts on a few elements of the film. If you need a review, know that I liked it a lot and think it's worth seeing at least twice.

The role of the architect was something I felt was left poorly explained after first viewing the film, but after paying closer attention the second time, I see it as an element that really is vital to the story: the idea of creating a maze for dreams to take place in, a maze of their own design for the dreamer to get lost in, rather than the truly chaotic and unpredictable world that the dreamer would inevitably construct on their own. It's a shame that Ellen "Juno" Page can't seem to convey that she's actively involved in the process of building. A few times we see her looking fitfully into the distance, as if conjuring the corners of the dreamworld out of sheer will. But that's it. Considering the importance the film places on an architect that can devise a good dreamworld that is also a maze, each dreamscape seemed oddly complete and unmalleable, rather than the plastic and changeable world we're told the dreams actually are. By the time we're in the final dreamworld, the role of the architect seems lost, with just a few lines of dialogue that remind us the dream invaders are ostensibly in control. Still, a military base? How would that have worked without a lot of soldiers to populate it? As one character jokes, couldn't someone have dreamt up a beach? If the dreams are being directed by the arcitect, why dream up a hostile world swarming with enemies? Sure, the enemies are really Fisher's defenses, but still.

I also noticed a lot of comparisons to dreams and levels, to the worlds being self-contained "maps" and not real endless environments; that, coupled with a lot of current video game iconography (snowbound military bases complete with snowmobile gunfights, the characters shooting various guns with amazing accuracy at an endless army of faceless evil drones), made me see a lot of connections between games and level design and the inner workings of these dream worlds. The whole idea of building something in an unreal space felt like designing a video game and designing a dream would share a common skill set.

I also liked the character of Cobb a lot more, seeing him as a really haunted man who can't even build dreams anymore (we're told he was unnaturally talented) because his violent memories of his wife threaten to destroy him; a man who can only sleep and dream any more with intense sedation; a man running risks with other people's lives for selfish yet noble ends. And what's more, you realize that Cobb's claim early in the film, that inception can work, is not just hubris: he knows (and we know, by the end) that inception is painfully real, because it worked for his wife in the dreamworld but took hold so deeply that she killed herself in the real world. So you have a character living with some painful truths, to say the least.

I still take issue with the "bottom of the well" dreamworld where people who die are trapped; Cobb had been there, he knew what it was like, and he escaped, so why was it so dangerous for others to fall there? And how could Cobb and Juno-girl swoop in, save Fisher, and swoop out so effortlessly? Did Cobb ever escape? Did his Japanese partner?

We never do see Cobb awake from the car-over-the-bridge dream; he rescues his Japanese partner, or so we think, and then he's back on the plane, a series of wish-fulfillment montages re-uniting him with his kids before lingering on the spinning top. For my money, I think that top is still spinning: Cobb is trapped deep down there in his raw unconscious; inception worked on Fisher, as it did for Molly, but Cobb is stuck in his dreamworld limbo where he has seen his kids again, but to our reality, the "real world," he's lost, no longer there, "brains to scrambled eggs" or something like that. Again, that final lingering shot is up for interpretation, but I think the top keeps spinning: somewhere Cobb is still dreaming, but he'll never wake up from this one. All the more reason why inception is so dangerous.

Nolan still struggles with directing action, and I long for him to have a cinematographer that doesn't allow him to come in so close as to lose the majesty of the visual world we're placed in. There were moments in the film where I just wanted the camera to move back a step, to let me drink in the world that has been so carefully constructed, where I wanted less face and more room to breathe. Some of the action sequences are especially guilty of being pointlessly chaotic. Sure, the Matrix-esque tumbling and rolling are photographed well, but the more mundane action sequences - car chases and crashes, gunfights, etc. - all have a "that'll-do" quality about them that I found uneven given the rest of the film's precision.

Some questions remain, but it's been a long time since I've seen a movie worth a second glance like this. Here's to more. And if you even remotely liked this one, look up Nolan's sophomore-effort masterpiece, Memento.

First Week Overload

2010-09-02T20:06:00.000-07:00

I can't recall if I felt this way after one week in China four years ago. "This way" being so, well, overwhelmed isn't quite the word; but seeing the path set before me, the on-air hosting I'll do (mostly on Sunday, all by my solo) and the endless reporting and related producing I'll be doing, and the overdrive that the whole station engages in when Iditarod comes to town ('case you didn't know, the annual sled dog race ends here in Nome), and all the other tasks I'll be assuming or helping with, makes the next few months and years look daunting. China was arguably a bigger challenge at first, but subtle, perhaps because it took so long to realize just how formidable it would be. With the radio, my duties are more clearly defined from the outset, and so the list of things to get going with is considerable.

If anything, it feels like Starbucks: I could barely make a cup of coffee one week in, and I felt incredibly stupid that college and teaching were behind me and I couldn't make a damn latte. It felt like an ever-growing list of jobs that I'd never get the hang of. And little by little things got easier, but still felt difficult, until I realized one day I was a rock star on the bar and could run the whole store on my own. It'll be like that, I suspect; keep learning, keep practicing, feel that it'll never come easily until, unexpectedly, it just does.

All of that may be true, but radio (so far) is so much more my thing than anything I've done before. So there is an eagerness and desire to do this work that wasn't there there before, not even in China.

Other random bits:

* Looks like I'll be getting a brand-spanking new MacBook Pro for work, courtesy of the station. Nice. Gonna have to dual-boot that with Windows 7 ...

* If I can find a time when the DMV is actually open, I can get my Alaska driver's license, get on the station truck's insurance, and be able to drive in, around, and outside of town (only on station business, of course).

* Went out to the transmitter today, complete with it's 25,000 watts, it's tower with snaking supports, back-up diesel generators, and all sorts of other mechanical magic that I don't fully comprehend. From reading about Nome and the size of our operation, it would be easy to assume it's a small-time thing; but it's actually a very complex and expensive operation, putting on a 24-hour radio station, and I think anyone seeing what we have here, both in the station and out at the transmitter, would be humbled by just how much hard work, equipment, and energy went into and continues to go into keeping us on the air.

* KNOM is buying itself from the church in Alaska, and this coming year will be reforming itself as a genuine non-profit. It'll be cool to be here for that, to see and be a part of that change, but mostly, it's amazing to see how many people have come here expecting a year or two of service and have stuck around to make KNOM their life's work. Even people that came to Nome to work for KNOM have stuck around and found a place in the community long after they stopped working at the station. Which brings me to one final point ...

* The people that have kept this whole operation going for years are truly remarkable. The station is what it is and has the impact that is has out of sheer will and determination on the part of so many people over many years. I know it's a Catholic mission and I am poor model of even a lapsed Catholic, but this place really is faith in action. Like I saw in China and now see here, this is acting on your principles, this is putting your money (or lack thereof) where your mouth is. My reason to be here was not the mission. But working in a place that has true values of community and service hardwired into it's raison d'être is a place I want to work. It doesn't matter what larger body they are inspired by, be it secular or religious. They are here to do good, meaningful work, and I am proud to be a part of that. And damn it, I am more than happy to be poor for a while to do such work. And double damn it, I hope anyone reading this has the conscience to do something like this. Use your education and your youth and your intelligence to do something worthwhile for a cause you believe in. Forget the paycheck. Forget the materialism that distracts you. The high-paying job and the nice suburban house full of boring, empty consumer shit and all the drudgery of the rest of your life can wait.

* And finally, EMT classes are starting up soon. Hmm ...

On the Air

2010-09-01T19:46:00.000-07:00

Well, I was on the air for the first time in my life today (assuming we don't count that one time in high school when I got on the radio. This is real life, man. Very serious stuff now). I was shadowing one of the DJs (Kelly) during her 2-4 shift, and as part of the afternoon giveaway, I introduced myself on air, exchanged some banter with Kelly about who I am and where I'm from, and at the bottom of the three o'clock hour (that's about 3:30 for you people not in the biz) I became fodder for the give-way: name where the new KNOM volunteer is from, and win a free KNOM winter hat (who needs baseball caps? You ladies in the lower 48, that's who. With your sunshine and your stupid above-50 temperatures!). Some people called in and said Anchorage (?), some said Detroit (close, I guess ... it starts with a D, at least), one said England (???), until finally the winner called in.

And joy of joys, I got to pick the next song, and of course I got some air time for my man Frank, playing his '94 sorta-hit, Headache.

I can hardly believe I arrived less than a week ago. Has it really only been since last Friday? Between work and hiking on the tundra (alas, no pics ... yet) and getting used to this new place, it feels like two weeks have gone by. Work so far has mostly consisted of learning the ins and outs of the station. I've been hunkering down in the not-on-the-air studios, learning the software, practicing my on-the-air speaking with old news and phony weather, and otherwise trying to learn as much about Alaska and it's myriad tribal, state, private, and federal interests as I can. It's a long and endless process, this learning about the state, but a necessary one as I start to find sources and topics for stories.

The station just played some Dirty Projectors, and now they're playing The Who. Some of our music for spots is Yo La Tengo, and I've seen a Silver Jews album on a production desk. Now either the people here have extraordinarily good taste, or I have to accept the fact that it's not uncommon to have good taste in music, and thus most music listeners are weak-minded fools easily duped by the Lady Gagas of the world.

Hmm ...

Words from the Public Affairs Director

2010-08-30T19:41:00.000-07:00

My title at KNOM is the Public Affairs Director. That sounds rather official, but damn will it look good on a resume. But what it really means is that while I'll be lending a hand with the day-to-day news stories, I'll be focusing primarily on more longer-form news; think the features of the newspaper, and not the front page. In particular, I'll be creating five-to-ten-minute long segments called "Profiles" (that can look at people, places, events, or happenings that need a little more attention than the two to three minutes we allow for a story on the news), as well producing stories for a segment called "Elder Voices," where I put together twenty-to-thirty-minute long segments that highlight a member of the native community and passes on their knowledge and values. I'll also have options for highlighting music in two-hour segments that are open to all staff members, which basically means, I may be able to have my own show.

All of which means, really, that this job is exactly what I wanted it to be, exactly what I had dreamed it would be, and more. I really can't articulate just how excited I am to be working here, in a real radio station, doing real broadcasting, real journalism. It's almost scary how well it worked out.

But KNOM exists to reach a listening audience that has some severe problems. Our transmitter reaches an audience of about 30,000 people spread out over an area of about 150,000 square miles. Which is a listening area just shy of the size of California. More than 85% of KNOM's listeners are Eskimos and Alaska natives living in villages. Nome, like many parts of rural or "bush" Alaska, is pretty isolated: there is no way to get into Nome by road, and the most popular route is by air (and that gets pretty dangerous in winter that can get as cold as -60*F).

Western Alaska is also heartbreakingly poor. Yes, the state of Alaska pays residents a certain dollar amount each year (usually above $1,000); but unemployment in western Alaska can be as high as 90%, a truly staggering number when you consider the national average, even during our current economic difficulties, hovers around 10%. Nearly half of western Alaska live below the poverty line, according at an economic study done by a native corporation in 1989. The cost of living here is higher than the lower 48 - I've seen a gallon of milk for nearly $8 here, a six pack of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale going for $13, and vegetables that are $1/each in Delaware but nearly $6/each up here - and yet the average family income is just under $11,000. Gas is about $6.50 a gallon. Compare these costs to your costs, and think about what you make and how it compares to that $11,000. And then remember how cold it is here, how much heat your house needs, clothing ...

Nome was a gold rush town that once had a population of nearly 40,000. It's much smaller now, less than 5,000, and there are a host of very real problems that our listeners face. I am in a very privileged position to be able to come up here, work in this community, and bring them news from around the area, the state, the country and the world. I hope that I will be able to share with you on this blog some of the work I produce here. The only way to respond to my outrageous good fortune in getting this job is to work my ass off to make stories I am truly proud of.