I Can't Hear You When You're Yelling

When I step back from the blogs, news stories and Facebook rants about politics this year, I realize the challenge that Americans face.  We have to choose people to govern us and keep us together as a country, and in order to do that we have to identify our distinct values so that we can take a position, often diametrically opposed to that of other Americans.    In our quest to find some one to unite us we form partisan factions that stand in strident opposition.

What we all seem to forget, or fail to accept, is that we are not a like-minded people and will never be.  This land is too big, our experience too diverse, and our personal “religions” to different ever coalesce into one voice, one mind.  This means that Americans can let ourselves bicker and bash as we have for the last few months, or we can work to find places that we agree and try to solve problems in that context.

The other reality that we are ignoring right now is that we think differently because we are different and those differences in the way our minds work keep us from seeing the world the same way. For example, some people see wealth or resources as finite.  There is only a certain amount and if you have more that means I have less.  Others see it as unlimited, so that if you have more than me I can still go get more too.  You can’t easily change some ones mind on something like this, so don’t try.   That doesn’t mean we can’t share that world.  

Our challenge in listening to political advertisements, speeches and debates is to decide who is going to help us solve problems, provide for our needs, and help us live in peace and prosperity with our world neighbors.   The goal is to have OUR country not MY country.  Remember, if only your views are heard and only your wishes granted then another body of Americans is going to be left out and their needs not met.   The next time one of your neighbors speaks in support of a candidate, a principle or belief that you object to, close your mouth and listen.  Why is his/her thinking so different from yours?  Where is the common ground?   

Democracy is messy enough without all the yelling.

How I Became a Writer

            When I was little, as far back as I can remember, I liked to make up stories.   That’s how I entertained myself on long car trips, or long afternoons hoeing potatoes, stacking firewood or lounging in a grassy nook on the homestead bermpile.  One of the best times for story making was time between going to bed and going to sleep. Warm and comfortable beneath a wool quilt I could create interesting characters, fit them out with gear and comrades, and then send them off.  I would disappear into the mountains with Sam the mountain man, or sail off with Andy in pursuit of pirates.  Sometimes my story would be so exciting that I looked forward to my time alone so I could reinter that life my character was leading like I was reading a good book.

            As I grew older and became more of an adult, I began to dream up stories of my actual life, projecting what might, could, or should be for the future Dan.  Sometimes these stories came true and many didn’t. Then I started writing them down. This is what developed into being the writer I am today.  In the process, I have discovered that a writer needs to learn about language, the writing process, and story structure.  Finally, I found that writers have to spend a lot time working at writing.
 Perseverance is critical.

            Just as I savored creating stories for myself, I now like writing stories and sharing them — some of them anyway.  I like constructing these characters out of the experiences in my life and examining how they respond and change.  I find it really exciting when these characters seem to take the initiative and go off on their own way and let me follow and record.  That is what writing is for me, to build stories that could or might be.  Yes, some stories have actually happened for they come from my life, but they are seen through my lens and remembered by my unique version of memory.  They are mine. 

            Of course, I hope that some one will publish my stories and I hope that people will buy my books an then some one will want to publish more of my books.  But in the end, it goes back to being that boy making up stories as a he lay awake at night waiting to go to sleep. 

Getting There by Air, or Not in Bush Alaska

Last week, we arrived at the Anchorage airport at 7:45 for a 9am flight to Phoenix that left on time and place us in the Arizona desert by 3pm Anchorage time.  That’s the way most people expect air travel to work.   Make a reservation show up, fly, and arrive very close to the scheduled arrival time.    In bush Alaska however, travel takes on a very different look. 

            For you folks not from Alaska, “the bush” is any place off the road system.  

            Flying to the bush usually means boarding a small plane which is much more limited by weather your average 737.   Wind, fog, snow, and ice can stop or delay a flight and so can things like a pilot not showing up for work or a plane being delayed or weathered on the other end or a passenger throwing up in a plane.   Because of these potentials for delay, travel in bush Alaska is more like this: 

            Arrive at the flight service office an hour before the scheduled fight.  Check in, which means surrendering any bag bigger than ten pounds, declaring your weight, loud and clear, and making that you are dressed for bad weather and add those heavy clothes to your weight.  Then you wait.  Usually there are comfortable chairs, coffee, WIFI, snack machines, and people to visit with.  Often a TV is playing and some places have extra amenities special to that location.    

             No fudging on this; having an accurate weight of everything and everybody on the plane is critical to safety. 

            Take Bethel, a hub in western Alaska for example.  The Grant Aviation waiting room has a little coffee shop upstairs with espresso and hot sandwiches.  Above Yute Air you’ll find Brothers Pizza and an eclectic gift shop with some native arts and other interesting items for sale.  The RAVN station often has a lunch wagon parked outside with burgers and Chinese food available.   Alaska Air Bethel is the worst of the lot.  No Wi-Fi, no coffee, just TV, snack machines and a change machine that’s usually out of order, so don’t show up hungry with only a ten dollar bill — I did once and was saved by a colleague who shared her Chinese meal.   The nice thing about waiting in Bethel is there that cabs are cheap five to seven dollars to get most anywhere and you can order take out food from a variety of place and they will deliver.  

            So you wonder, why all these tips about waiting?  Well, bush travel is about waiting you will spend more time waiting than traveling.  Sure the flights all have schedule departures, but as one traveler put it, these are just guidelines.  Your flight may leave 30 minutes early or 2 hours late.  You just never know.  Sometimes the flight is delayed and put on “weather hold”. That means a thirty-minute wait for another weather check weather legally safe for flying.  Weather might be fine where you are but not where you are going.   You might spend several hours on weather hold before the flight is actually cancelled, and the traveler rebooks and starts the process over again, often the next day.  Weather hold can last for days.  Especially when a blizzard blows in because when it’s all over then runways have to be cleared and declared safe.  

            People unfamiliar with this sort of travel don’t function well with weather hold.  Once when a flight service office was packed with people, suitcases, plastic tubs, and cardboard cartons on one typical wintery morning in Bethel.  A couple hundred people including me had blown in with the storm even though the chance was poor fpr flying anywhere on a day like this.  All flights were on weather hold and apt to stay that way for a while.  It didn’t take a pilot or meteorologist to tell most of that.   There was one woman dressed more for Seattle than Bethel who was grilling ticket agent.  I have to fly the Akiachak and back today because I have a flight to New York this evening.  Everyone laughed.  “I’m sorry, Ma’am said the ticket agent, we are on weather hold.” 

            “Weather hold?  How long does that last?” ask the frustrated traveler.  Everyone laughed again.  We have to laugh because travel in the bush will drive us nuts otherwise.

            Once your flight is called your pilot calls the passengers, checks the manifest and escorts the passengers to the plane.   Newcomers will be surprised to find they are sharing the passenger compartment with cargo, cases of soda, diapers, spam, toilet paper, and you the passenger are all going together.  I have boarded planes so packed with cargo that we had to squeeze and wiggle our way to forward to get into our seats.  Lucky you gave up that backpack for there is no place for it.  Some passengers will have carryon though, take-out pizza or Chinese from Bethel restaurants or even Cinnabuns or McDonalds from the Anchorage airport.  My favorite is when I see some one traveling with a elaborately decorated birthday cake on their lap.  That is love.   Finally, the pilot gives the travel briefing and the routing — that when you find out how many villages you get to see on the way to your destination. 

            When the plane finally arrives at the remote village there is usually and gravel apron where the plane parks and unloads surrounded in winter by snowmobiles and trucks and in the summer by atvs and trucks.   You hope your ride is there to pick you up for there is no warm terminal building to wait in and don’t expect a shuttle bus.   Over the last few years air strips have been moved away from villages so it is often a couple miles to the village unlike the old days when the airstrip was literally in the village.  Some places like Chignik Lagoon, and Hughes are still that way. 

            Flying to Hughes my first time, I called the school and asked them to meet my plane.  “Sure,” the man said at other end of the phone, ‘I’ll be there.  Sure enough, when the plan landed he walked the hundred feet from the schoolhouse to meet me.  We had a good laugh over that. 

            As tricky as it might be to reach a remote Alaskan village, leaving requires nuance attention to detail and sometimes dumb luck.   Needless to say, people aren’t sitting around at the village airstrip for hours waiting for the plane.  When the plane is fifteen or twenty minutes from the airstrip, the pilot calls on the vhf radio which anyone with a radio can here, “The is Grant Aviation 20 minutes, Hooper Bethel.” Usually he will repeat it.  The local agent has probably received call from Bethel or whatever hub when the plane leaves there.   Earlier in the day, the departing passenger has called the flight service hub and the local agent to get on “the list”.  Failure to do this can mean not having a seat.  It also helps the pilot plot his routing if flying village to village.   As your flight time approaches because you have to read to roll when that radio call comes through.   Sometimes that means waiting and waiting all packed and ready, or being drug out of a meeting because the flight is coming early.

            If you have read this carefully you know what you need to know about successful flying in bush Alaska.  But you would be wrong.  It has been my experience that if you think you have it all figured out, you are delusional. 

            For example, I was in in one village and scheduled to fly from that village to another rather than back to the hub.  My reservation was paid, confirmed and I checked in with the agent after ten years of bus travel I knew what I was doing,  That’s why with one foot on the step to board the plane I double-checked the routing with the pilot.  “Oh, I’m not flying there today.  We are direct to Bethel.”  Following up with the main office I found, “Oh village to village is dependent on cargo and routing.”  Luckily, I could catch one of the other flight services in time to catch their plane that was going where I wanted to go.   That’s just how it works.

            The few of us that have the opportunity to use the many small flight services in bush Alaska get to visit remote and wonderful place that are inaccessible to most people.   Flying to places like Toksook Bay or Arctic Village requires knowledge, flexibility and a willingness to embrace the moment and savor the experience even if  sometimes you are gritting teeth while doing it.

Poems and Other Short Pieces Looking for a Home

Wood Lot

I count the cobbles on the beach

while we wait for the breakers to rise from the swell of the sea

and race up the steep cobble shoulder of the shore

with one final delivery of cedar

on back order from some river in Canada.

Lost lumber tumbles onto the greywacke shingle

Where sawmill planks rub their edges

round on the cobbles

and scour their tattoos with sand.

Blue spruces tumble from the bluff

to roll in the sand with their boughs

around a birch of another river

all hoarded by the storm

in this bite of shore left open to the sea.

  

Things I Hate

I’m offended by inspirational Facebook posts

by women telling men how they should act. 

I’m irritated by drivers who speed up in passing zones

after driving slow for the last fifty miles.

I dread that endless split-second one spends anticipating pain between falling . . .

and landing on ice.

        Two Young Women in the Rain

I watched two young women walking 

the roadside in the rain 

with a dog that I didn’t notice.  

They appeared through the windshield, fresh and fertile like newly furrowed fields, dampened by the rain and ready for seed, looking up as I passed, faces smiling 

at me.  

And, 

for a moment 

driving to the post office in the rain,

the open pedals of their moist red lips made me warm. 

Eating

              We ate beans, 

beans with cornbread, beans with homemade cottage cheese off the back of the woodstove. 

Red beans, white beans, pintos, a lot of beans. 

              We ate potatoes,

potatoes with gravy, potatoes we dug from the cold wet fall ground. 

Fresh potatoes, boiled potatoes, swede potatoes. 

              We ate salmon,

salmon out of the river, salmon out of jars from the musty root cellar. 

Pink salmon, red salmon, king salmon, smoked. 

            We ate moose,

moose in stew, moose burger sandwiches on homemade bread. 

Tough moose, tender moose, poached moose, moose track stew.    

We ate food so good that I didn’t know we were poor, 

food so good I didn’t know people with money didn’t eat like that.

          

 

Too Many Liars for my Comfort

My Dad used to say that some people would sooner walk across the street to tell a lie rather than stand here and tell the true.

Since Christmas I have been at home a lot and have time to read and listen to news and commentary about guns and violence, isis and immigrants, and even bogus Alaskans.  In the middle of it all I see a common theme.  The liars have the upper hand.  We are truly surrounded by them.   Oh, you can talk about taking a different "view", or claim hyperbole, but we are exposed to so much falsehood that the the words are even getting twisted.  Words like reality, which used to be a synonym for truth, but now with "reality TV" it means "presented as the truth when it isn't really".

This truth bending has been nagging me and, as happens sometimes, all these other little flags popup that relate to it.   The State of the Union address was filled with exaggeration and some flaky numbers, which the President Obama haters immediately shined a light on and then followed with their own lies and half-truths during the GOP debate.  People were caught lying on permanent fund
applications.  Other people are accused of lying for the liars.   I notice Craig Medred calling out the lies on Running Wild with Bear Grylls (Craig Medred News) they filmed here in my home town while, down the road in Homer, another show tries to make the Kilchers look like they are living hand to mouth out in the middle of nowhere when they really live right outside a little tourist town like I do.   At the same time, the gun battle over the second amendment has both sides loading their clips with erroneous ammunition, and the Bundy gang out in Oregon is trying to convince us that they are a well-regulated militia.

People write fake news stories, usually to drive a political agenda, and then innocent people believe them and share them on Facebook and the lies spread like ebola.  In this age when we all have access to the public audience, places like Facebook and Twitter are bill-boards for people to post lies about politicians and policies and beliefs that they don't like.  Basically we have access to more information, but less truth.  Isn't anyone obligated to to at least attempt to base their public statements on facts and support their assertions with evidence.

 My mom used to say, "Just because you heard it it doesn't make it true, and you certainly don't need to repeat."  

I am tired of having to fact check everything I hear or read to see if some one is pulling my leg or picking my pocket, and I have plan to fix this problem.  A set of rules for anyone sharing information with the public.

Rule  One:   Reality TV has to be about real people doing real things without scripts, props or lying.  If you make up stuff or have fake people like Alaska Bush People's Browns, you have to have a scrolling message across the bottom of the screen that says, "We made this shit up; it's not true."

Rule Two:  Related to reality TV, If you claim to be educational like National geographic or Discovery Channel, and you show us things like two guys from Homer hunting deer on Admiralty Island and call it SUBSISTENCE hunting you have to have a big flashing sign that lights up and says "THIS IS BULLSHIT".

Rule Three:  Any reporter, journalist or interviewer who asked a questions or receives a statement that they know is false,  they are required to label that state as such, or challenge the source of that lied to prove it.

Rule Four: Political debates and speeches:  Any entity, like CNN or FOX, that hosts and broadcasts such debates and speeches has to also follow that show with another show that fact checks everything the politicians say.

Rule Five:  Facebook, Twitter and their ilk all have "LIKE" buttons that we use to show others that we like what we see.   Now they shall have "BULLSHIT" buttons as well.

Rule Six:  If your favorite blogger, news site, Instagram or Twitter makes a statement, and you want to share that with other people, you have check other sources to see if it us true.  If you post some lie without doing that you have to make your Facebook status, "LIAR".

If this doesn't work I guess I'll just lie about it and give up!