Category: Banalities & Journaling

I really like Southeast Alaska.  It's a beautiful and compelling place.  But in one way, it was hard for me to be there.  That's because the first time I went there, in 98, I was at a very low place in my own life.  Michelle and I had separated, and we would exchange bitter emails and hateful telephone conversations intermixed with commitments to try again and reiterations of love.

It was the only time in my life that I tried "writing" full time.  That didn't go well, either.  I sat at my little laptop and produced quite a bit.  But I wasn't happy with it.  Or not happy with myself.  In the end, I deleted over 200 pages of dense writing.  And then I regretted it.  And later, I lost almost an entire novel, begun during this period, to a hard drive failure.  The writing of this time was destined not to exist.

I always felt a weird kind of claustrophobia in Craig, too.  That's not the right word.  The problem is that in small, isolated communities like that, there's no space to be a "stranger."   Everyone needs to know who you are, and what you're doing.  They may leave you alone, but just the need to explain myself to everyone I met was awkward.

So… did I enjoy seeing Arthur?  Definitely.  Will I be moving to Southeast Alaska?  Probably not.

More later.

"World's largest free-range lunatic asylum" was the phrase used by one of Arthur's neighbors out here on Port Saint Nicholas Road to describe Southeast Alaska.  Sounds about right, maybe.

Many people who come out to such remote locations as this extoll the amazing experience of a night sky littered with thousands of stars with absolutely no interference from the lights of civilization.  But personally, I find the experience of stepping outside in the middle of the night to be much more amazing when the sky is heavily overcast:  it's a thick, deep blackness that is unparalleled.  Nothing can be seen at all.  Zero light.  Yet the sky is above, you can smell the salt air of the fiord at your feet, the trees, the eternal drizzle.

My uncle Arthur's house is beyond cell-phone range, DSL (that he's "borrowing" from the neighbor via wi-fi) is spotty, and it's been down anyway because of a tree-branch-thru-wires at around mile-marker 2.5 on the round-the-bay road.  So… I've been off-line, until today, coming into town to the Craig Public Library to go on wi-fi and make this post. 

But I'm enjoying my visit, and being out in about as middle-of-nowhere as one can get, here on Prince Of Wales Island, Alaska.

More later, then… for next time I come into town.

It was actually almost clear when I arrived. But that’s pretty rare, in Southeast Alaska. Mostly, it’s about rain and gusty wind. I think I saw somewhere that Ketchikan is the rainiest city in the US – not sure if it’s true, but it’s got to be near the top of the list, anyway.
Unlike everyone’s image or expectation of Alaska, much of the Southeast isn’t snowy or frozen, even in winter. When I stayed here in 98 for several months, I only actually saw snow twice, and both times is was a damp rain-to-snow-to-rain that never got around to sticking to the ground.
I walked around some last night, but there wasn’t much to see. The part of Ketchikan where my motel is has a couple of high-rise apartment buildings, which seems downright strange for a rural American city of less than 10,000 inhabitants – it fits in better with what I would call an “Asian” model of urban development: the idea of high density plunked down in the middle of nothing. I don’t remember those apartment buildings from before, but when I was here before, I didn’t spend much time in Ketchikan.

I'm flying to Ketchikan today, to visit with my uncle.

So much for the "low carbon footprint" lifestyle, eh?  Driving everywhere.  Flying everywhere.  Uh… carbon guilt.

All the years that I lived here, I never did much stuff like this:  my brother has a friend who works at a cinema in Hollywood, and they spontaneously invited me to a "special screening" there on Friday night.  It was a cinema screening of some episodes of "The Guild," a web-based video series, followed by a screening of "Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog" – the title alone should give you some idea of the sheer extent of the genre-bending that was going on.  I liked both – I had actually been aware of (but had never seen) "The Guild," but "Dr Horrible" was completely new to me, though I'd have been interested in it immediately, since it's a Joss Whedon project, in part (Whedon created Firefly / Serenity, for example).

And several of the actors / directors / producers of the projects were there, too, as a "panel" to answer audience questions, afterwards.  So I got to see Whedon and several of his talented brothers and other various writers and collaborators in the two projects (which were intertwined creatively but not at all plot-wise).  

Overall, it was a fun night.

Today, I went to Mojave (a small town out in the Mojave desert about 70 miles north of L.A.) where my dad's significant other's house is, and my dad and she and I hung out for the day just chatting and such, mostly.

I spent a major portion of yesterday visiting my old haunts in Burbank, where I worked at Paradise Corporation (a pseudonym) from 1998 through the end of 2004.  As large corporations go, it's pretty much run-of-the-mill, but as a work environment that brought out the best in me and helped me to grow and learn, it was a fabulous place.  Three of the best bosses I've ever had were there, and the three of them are still working there, and I got to see each of them.  Luz (who was my first boss when I started as a temp worker in the AR department) is now in Finance, and Tom and Carol are still holding down the fort in National Accounts, which was my most accommodating home there. 

I also got to visit with my crypto-sister Joanne, as well as Gina and Judy and Marina and Oscar and Tracy and Diana.  And I had a great chat with Kevin in finance, who was my "best customer" for complex business analytics and reporting off the data warehouse.  Lastly, I saw Spot and Karen in IT, where I wasn't always completely at home, but those two as individuals were reliable and welcoming team-mates, back during my abbreviated sojourn as an "official" programmer/analyst (as opposed to my longer and somewhat more successful career as a "stealth" data warehouse hacker working for the sales and marketing people).

Anyway, this is a "shout out" and thanks to everyone I saw there:  I often think of my time there very positively, and I feel grateful for the genuine friendship they offered me, which is often hard to come by in a workplace.

I saw my first snow of the season yesterday.  That's not really such a milestone, when one is traveling around as much as I am, but it was still wonderful to see.  It didn't really stick, but there were fat flakes floating down for a few hours and there was a solid frost on my truck this morning. 

And now I'm off to Phoenix via New Mexico.  More later…

I arrived at my stepsister Brenda's house yesterday evening, here in Erie, Colorado (sort of between Denver and Boulder).  I actually met my niece and nephew, Sarah and James, ages 3 and 5, for the first time.  And this morning, I built legos with James for a while — bonding with kids it pretty easy, huh?  And then we walked to a book fair at James' school, and I realized there were a lot of books I'd love to acquire and have on hand in Korea, if I decide to go back and teach there some more.  I managed to limit myself to just a few books however. 

I'm on Brenda and Eric's computer, so I'll make this a short post.  More later — I was finally making some progress putting together an Ulleungdo video last night.  Maybe that'll get posted, but I'm off to pick up my dad at the airport, now — he's flying in from LA and we're driving back there together via Phoenix where we can visit my other sister and nephews there.  So that will give me a chance to spend some time with my dad.

I spent some time in my very old haunts around Dinkytown, the neighborhood on the northeastern edge of the University of Minnesota campus.  Some things change — there's the appalling new stadium on which the University clearly spent a vast sum of money, and new parking ramps and buildings and roads.  And the Student Book Store where I worked for 3-odd years has changed management and shrunk a bit, while the "Dinkydome" where it's located is under humongous renovation — it looks like they're going to put a giant building behind it where the parking lot and the Starbucks used to be.  The "Expresso22" (the cafe with the punk-gothy vibe that I used to escape to) is closed because of the renovations. 

But some things stay the same.  Down on 14th Street, the Expresso Royale is still going strong and has the same feel to it.   I used to study many hours there, way back into the 80's, when it was called something else and was open 24 hours a day.  I even saw some of the same dysfunctional Dinkydenizens loitering along 14th street… faces familiar from 10 and even 20 years ago.

Then I saw Minneapolis police officers on horseback.  That was weird.  What's that about?  In Dinkytown?  It's always been rather bohemian (Bob Dylan started his folk career there), but horse-mounted police was a rather excessively Manhattennish touch, I thought.

Overall, I guess  I was just reminiscing, though I stopped in the U's bookstore, as it's a good place for the obscure sorts of things I tend to like to browse.