I drove to Hollis this morning, to drop Arthur at the ferry for a day trip into Ketchikan, because he is supposed to get MRI and CT scans. I told him to watch out for those high-energy photons.
I stopped by the road on the way back to Craig, and took this picture of a tree (or rather, it’s the snag that’s so prominent, here).
I also made this unexpected anachronism sighting by the road near Hollis.
I drove back to Craig, hung out at home (I didn’t get called to substitute, today), then drove back to Hollis in the evening to get Arthur back off the ferry.
[daily log: walking, 1km; driving, 130km]
Category: Banalities & Journaling
Caveat: Tree #132
I got to go be a substitute teacher today.
Here is a tree (or three) at the north side of the Craig Elementary School playground, today.
[daily log: walking, 1km]
Caveat: Tree #131
Arthur and I went out fishing this morning, fishlessly, and when we got back well after lunch, I was feeling rather “under the weather.”
I have almost never experienced anything like seasickness in my life, but the seas were somewhat heavy as we reentered Port Saint Nicholas, and I think that there is a kind of exhaustingness in riding the boat up and down across the water. I was driving, too, which requires some degree of intense focus.
So I took no walk in the afternoon, and I took no picture of any tree.
Here is a tree from my archives. I saw this tree ten years ago this month, during a visit to 장수 (Jangsu), the village in South Korea’s Jeollabuk province that is my friend Curt’s hometown.
If I recall correctly, that Buddhist temple is the one that Curt’s father was a deacon for (or whatever is the Buddhist equivalent of a deacon – in any event, a lay administrator).
[daily log: walking, 1km]
Caveat: Chowder Tradition
Since coming back from Australia I’ve developed a little mini-tradition of making Chilean style chupe de pescado (spicy fish chowder) every Sunday. I use the less perfect pieces of frozen salmon Arthur has. Partly, it’s one of the few dishes that I cook well that he seems to consider “acceptable.”
I love to make curries, but Arthur doesn’t like those, and he considers mole poblano to be a sacrilege against chocolate. I haven’t tried making borshch, but when I described it to him he was not at all impressed by the concept. I made fried rice once, but he didn’t seem to like it much either. So these things I’d have to make on my own without hope of patronage. That, of course, lowers the incentive to make them.
Caveat: Tree #129
Here is a tree from the archives. I took this picture of a tree at the back entrance (parking garage entrance) of the Urimbobo apartment building, where I lived for 7 out of the 11 years I lived in Korea. So I knew the tree well, and no doubt walked past it hundreds if not thousands of times – I would pass it anytime I left my apartment building to go anywhere except to work, as all the shopping and the closest subway station were out the back entrance.
At the time I took the picture, I was noticing the Buddhist icon (the swastika) on the advertising – realizing I had a Buddhist fortune-teller in my building with me.
I didn’t take a picture of a tree today because I was working on my well-head-shed-thingy, and got really tired out doing that.
[daily log: digging, a lot]
Caveat: Tree #128
Arthur and I went out in the boat, past Baker Island. That’s farther than I’ve ever gone with Arthur in his boat before. I think he was hoping to find some early Coho Salmon. But no fish.
I saw this tree, on an island.
At Siketi Sound, if you look southwest, you see the open ocean. There were broad, slow, large swells rolling in from the sea.
[daily log: walking, 1.5km]
Caveat: Tree #127
This is the tree outside the kitchen window, as seen from the balcony.
The hole seems wholly unholy. 헐…
[daily log: walking, 1km; digging down, 0.5m]
Caveat: Tree #126
Here is a tree from the archives.
I didn’t walk or take pictures of trees because I was digging a hole.
The hole will accommodate a pipe off the new well-head, when the well-drilling guys return to put in the pump.
The hole is difficult to dig because there are quite large rocks embedded in the gravel, which Richard put those rocks there when he was building the driveway / parking pad, where the new well is located.
[daily log: digging rocks, 1m down]
Caveat: Docked or Undocked
Arthur and I went out on the boat, seeking fish. We met no fish.
But we met this barge going up the inlet.
It turned out the barge was heading to our slightly antisocial neighbor’s house, where he has been hoping to install a dock. We knew at least this much, because we received a notification from the Army Corps of Engineers about the intention to do so, which is, I guess, a legal requirement that neighbors of such projects be notified.
They spent the day trying to pound metal poles into the beach with giant hydraulic hammers.
And then the barge guys left, and the neighbor remained dockless. We didn’t actually talk to the neighbor (because of aforementioned antisociality), but Arthur speculated that his beach was too rocky, and that the effort to install a dock had failed.
I felt alarm and a substantial empathy. It can’t possibly have been cheap for the neighbor to hire the barge people to come out and work at his beach. Did it really fail? Wouldn’t the neighbor feel anger and resentment over this failure – looking over Arthur, with his pleasant dock just a hundred meters down the shore…. did this story really have this ending?
I guess we will find out more, later. But I feel badly.
Caveat: Tree #121
I worked at the school library again today. The work is a little bit dull, as there is some down time between seeing students. It’s more just “holding down the fort.”
So I didn’t take a tree picture today. I should have and could have, in the parking lot at the school, but didn’t.
I’ll present another tree from my archives. This tree (and the ones all in a row behind it) is from my daily walking commute to the Karma school in Goyang City, South Korea. The street is 강선로 (Gangseon-ro), in front of 강선초등학교 (Gangseon Elementary School), taken February, 2013, a few blocks north of where my apartment was at that time.
[daily log: walking, 2.5km]
Caveat: The Shortcomings
I worked a second day today as a substitute at Craig Elementary School.
Today, I was a librarian.
I even figured out how to check-in and check-out books, using their computer…. Even though the computer was a Mac, which I normally wouldn’t touch for questions of philosophical purity.
I had a bit of a breakthrough realization about this new work context: in terms of enrollment, Craig Elementary is actually smaller than Karma Academy (where I was teaching in Korea). They are not strictly comparable, of course – the latter being a private specialty school, not a public school. But in terms of the number of kids that I actually have to know, it’s a pertinent observation.
Being a substitute librarian is easier than the kindergarten gig I had on Monday. Well… it’s more laid back, anyway. Still, I got to see the kindergarteners again. And one of the kids said a very “Craig, Alaska” thing as part of a general review of my job qualifications: “You’re not bad as a substitute. You’re funny. But your face-hair is too short.”
That comment needs some explanation. I noticed that most men in Craig have beards. That’s one reason I made a passing effort at letting one grow on my face last fall and over Christmas. More notably, all the male teachers at Craig Elementary appear to have beards. So the child was just pointing out the obvious: though I might seem qualified to be a substitute teacher, I clearly had obvious shortcomings, because really I didn’t look quite right.
Caveat: Real Life Trolley Problems
“Trolley problems” are philosophical conundrums dealing with complicated ethical decisions.
But today Arthur and I had a real-life trolley problem. We were going to launch the boat. The boat launches on a little “trolley” that runs out some rails into the water from the boatshed. But there was some problem with the trolley. A piece broke off: “Snap!” and the trolley lurched 10 inches downhill. It was a bit scary.
Here is the broken piece.
It turned out one of the chocks that is wedged under the trolley wheels to ensure it stays in place when it’s parked in the boatshed hadn’t been pulled out. So the trolley tried to go over the chock and the guide-piece snapped off.
I see this as the type of hazard that arises due to Arthur’s continued refusal to write down any of the numerous procedural checklists he’s long been accustomed to carrying in his head. I try to write down these checklists based on observation and continued questioning in the vein of “what are you doing now?” … but these lists are still going to have holes in them – because I don’t have any past experience with so many of the things Arthur does.
A smaller example: it’s like the the struggle I have every time I watch Arthur trying to tie a knot in string or rope – I am not a knot person, I have always been poor with knots and I have always deferred to others when knots needed to be tied. Arthur, on the other hand, has always been very good at knots. But now, with his processing deficits (especially 3-D processing deficits), he very visibly struggles with tying knots that in his past were essentially so easy as to not require conscious thought. He will stand and study the rope in question, and simply not be able to know what to do with it. It’s painful, but it’s doubly painful because I have zero idea what his objective is – what kind of knot is he hoping to tie with his rope? I don’t have a clue.
Likewise with his checklists. And he rarely makes any effort to verbalize them. So I’m stranded, unsure what he’s trying to do and unsure how to help. Supposedly, I’m a “safety officer,” but without a program as to what’s next, it’s hard to know what I need to watch out for.
Caveat: Sub Sub
I went to work today.
It was the first time since I quit working at Karma last July that I’ve gone to work, or gone into a classroom.
The kindergarten teacher at Craig Elementary was sick. And it seemed like the normal person who does substitute teaching was also sick. She came and gave a bit of orientation, the first hour or so, and then left. And there was a teacher’s aide, who was essentially promoted to be the main teacher, and more or less knew what was going on. And I was the temporary teacher’s aide, along with some other helpers.
Spending 6 hours with kindergarteners is quite a bit of work. And I didn’t really know my way around the school – so it was orientation by fire. Typical in Korea, perhaps less typical in the US, but this is a small town, a small district… so I had actually somewhat assumed this is how it would go.
It was fun. I hope I made a good impression. Actually I feel confident I did fine with the kids – but they’re not the constituency I need to impress, rather, the other teachers. We shall see. I did manage at least to have learned the kids’ names by the end of the day. I felt positive about that. And I solved a three way power struggle between three girls who were fighting over a doll. I think the other teacher was somewhat surprised at my success, there – she had shrugged and said it seemed to be an unsolvable situation and was just intent on keeping them separate.
Caveat: Tree #115
A tree seen at 10 mile hill.
I saw a bald eagle directly above me, circling.
[daily log: walking, 6km]
Caveat: Tree #114
I took a walk straight up the hillside (rather than along the road one way or the other). One walks much less distance – I prefer to call it “tromping” rather than walking. But it’s exhausting – pushing through undergrowth, climbing over giant fallen logs, squanching through muskeg and streams. Here’s a tree I saw.
[daily log: walking, 2km]
Caveat: Fun Trivia Fact
Here’s a surprising trivia fact I learned today:
My uncle Arthur still has a pilot’s license. Apparently this was considered somewhat disturbing by his GP in Juneau whom he saw this morning. Arthur’s justification is that a pilot’s license is meaningless if a doctor doesn’t sign off on the annual physical exam. Which is a valid point – no doctor would do that, given his incident from last summer. But it does seem odd. The State of Alaska never moved to suspend his driving privileges, either. So it’s just that the bureaucracy isn’t paying attention, I suppose. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Caveat: Holding the fort against late-season snows
I’m left holding the fort against late-season snow, while Arthur flies up to Juneau to see doctors. Being here alone is a strange sensation.
Here is dawn as seen from the deck.
Caveat: Tree #106
After Arthur and I drove into town for our Thursday shopping excitement, it was pouring rain and even sleet. So I have selected a tree from the archive.
[daily log: walking, 1km]
Caveat: Just Looking at Things
I haven’t posted non-tree pictures in a while. But I remain busy with my camera, during my daily walks.
Here are some pictures.
Caveat: Unlate
It’s a bit disorienting, but it seems to be the case that in fact I filed my taxes on time this year.
That’s the first time in at least a decade – and perhaps only the 2nd or 3rd time in two decades, where I’ve made the deadline.
It helped that I had already done all the paperwork, because I was unemployed during the second half of the year, and I had simply included the Korean income data for last year with all the previous years, when I’d compiled and sent to my accountant my tax info for all those missed years since my cancer hospitalization.
And it helped that like all those missed years, I had a post-deduction negative income. It’s all just paperwork. I paid my taxes in Korea for the last decade. The US is the only country in the world that requires non-resident citizens working abroad to file US-based taxes.
So happy day-after-tax-day.
Caveat: Lady Burns
In January, 1985, I was studying in Paris.
I had a camera my uncle Arthur had given to me – a fairly high quality Pentax (film-using, of course, in those days), with some nice lenses.
One day in Paris I walked around and over to the Île de la Cité and to the Notre Dame Cathedral. Because it was cold and overcast, there weren’t many crowds, and I climbed one of the towers and took pictures of Paris.
In the picture below, which I took at that time looking out on the Paris cityscape toward Montmartre, the gargoyle in the right foreground is part of the cathedral.
Today, Notre Dame burned.
Caveat: Tree #101
This tree is the northeast corner of the putative treehouse I might build if I get motivated. Well, it’s not just that. I am holding off because I need to buy more supplies to take the next steps, but I’m limiting my spending because I haven’t got a job yet.
[daily log: walking, 1km; tromping, 400m]
Caveat: Role Reversal
I’m having a hard day.
I had dropped off my application for a job with the Craig Schools on Monday. But I was told at the time that Friday would be the earliest someone would look at it (though it wasn’t promised for Friday, either).
Anyway, today is Friday. I have a really hard time with “waiting,” where I have zero control and zero chance to know what might happen. Which is what my situation is. Will someone call, or not? Will it be positive or negative in outcome? I don’t even have a way to guesstimate probabilities.
I found myself playing a game on my computer. I don’t actually do that much. Hardly ever.
Meanwhile, I went downstairs and Arthur was being productive. He was sorting out his finances, in the wake of having written a large check to the well-drillers yesterday.
So Arthur, who normally spends hours each day playing solitaire or tetris on his computer, was doing useful things.
Meanwhile, I was killing time with a game on my computer.
I joked with him that we’d undergone a role-reversal.
Caveat: Pump Not Included
After all the banging noise and money, this is what we got.
And no, water does not come out, yet. “Pump not included.”
Here’s a picture from earlier this morning, as they were pulling out the drill shaft lengths and lowering their derrick.
Caveat: Well
Arthur seems to have bitten the bullet and decided to put a well in. Currently water here is supplied by a bucket on the hillside. Because of the substantial rainfall, this has not been a significant problem in the past, but in the past 6 months we’ve had two “droughts.” Last summer there was an extended dry spell in August/September. And this past February we had an extended cold spell, which froze the precipitation preventing it from getting into the water tank. Both of these might be one-time flukes, or they might be part of a climate-change trend – even Arthur is open-minded with respect to the latter possibility.
Anyway, to address water insecurity even here in the rainforest, he’s decided to pay for a well.
This is a substantial investment.
Here are the trucks of the well-drillers. They are putting the well in on the edge of the new parking pad on the western lot, close to the property line and close to the existing water tank (cistern) infrastructure on the eastern lot.
They got down to a bit over 200 feet, yesterday, and it’s giving 3 gallons per minute. This is not great, but it’s adequate for a house or two. We’ll let it go a bit further, and see how it goes. Another resident down the road has 8 gallons per minute at 220 feet, while yet another gets only 1 gallon per minute with 370 feet. So the water table under the very hard rock of the island is a bit of a crap-shoot, apparently.
Caveat: jaredway.net
As a part of my intention to take more seriously the notion that the time has come to look for a job, I have created a new website which will function as a more “professional” snapshot of my persona than the one on there here blog:
jaredway.net
Caveat: Tree #94
We have arrived at home. Here is tree #94 – from the archives (I think this is from the Hollis ferry terminal at dawn).
[daily log: walking, 2km; flying/driving/ferrying, 600km]
Caveat: stuck inside a machine once again
As I sat, packed into a middle seat on my 5th airplane in 3 days for another seemingly interminable journey, the mp3-player on my phone played a musical track that I’d first downloaded and listened to when I was undergoing radiation treatment for cancer, in the Fall of 2013.
So of course I had some flashbacks to that point in time, as can happen with evocative music associated with specific experiences – and the actual character of the music has little to do with it… otherwise, why do I always think of Ayn Rand when I hear Arlo Guthrie’s “City of of New Orleans”? He’s a commie, and she was a hard-right libertarian type. But that song was on heavy rotation in my “life’s soundtrack” at the point in time when I was reading her book Atlas Shrugged. Thus it goes. Okay, enough of that digression.
I posted this picture of myself, back during my cancer treatment, which recalls my experience with the radiation treatment concretely. Note the immobilizing rigid (yes, rigid) plastic mesh pinning down my head and upper body).
Anyway, the thought that struck me so profoundly, as I sat crammed in that airplane seat, was that the radiation machine (a high-powered CT scanner, basically – the radiation therapy was technically called “X-ray computed tomography intensity modulated radiation therapy“) was more comfortable than a typical economy-class airplane seat. Given a free option to spend X number of hours in one or the other, I would definitely choose the radiation gadget.
That’s how I feel about traveling in airplanes.
Of course, there’s no denying that the real negative on the radiation treatment wasn’t the time spent in the machine, but rather the side effects: weight loss, hair loss, nausea, etc. I guess airplane seats don’t have such a long-term impact.
What I’m listening to right now.
Epsilon Minus, “Lost.” I wrote about this particular track once before, on this here blog, noting that the track appeared to be one of the few that doesn’t exist online. Obviously someone has since remedied that problem.
Caveat: Juneau
I am with Arthur in Juneau.
He came here for two medical appointments – we’d decided when planning the trip to my mom’s in Australia that it was logical to just tack on the visit to Juneau to the end of that trip.
This did not work out well. We got to see the specialist this morning, but our delayed arrival due to the problem in departing Cairns meant that the general annual VA appointment was utterly cocked up by our missed day. And there seems to be little we can do about it. Arthur is being indecisive about whether to stay longer in in Juneau to get things taken care of, or to go on home and come back to Juneau later – both involve almost exactly the same level of extra expense, and without that as a guide, it’s hard to make a decision.
Meanwhile, I decided to walk around. I’ve never visited Juneau before, despite repeated visits to Southeast Alaska.
Here are some pictures.
The State Capitol building – one of the few non-purpose-built state capitols in the US (the only one?), it’s just a repurposed old office building.
The Russian church.
A neighborhood park called Chicken Yard.
Manila Square – there are a lot of Philippine people in Southeast Alaska (which I knew – I remember my surprise at hearing Tagalog on the streets of Ketchikan), so there is, apparently, a memorial of this here.
The Korean Restaurant that is closest to my new home (bearing in mind that that still means more than 500km by boat or plane from my new home).
A view of Juneau from in front of our motel.
A little hut in a field.
Caveat: 한국어영화
Having nothing better to do on the 15 hour transpacific flight, I happened to stumble across the fact that the Air Canada movie selection included quite a few foreign films – including 4 Korean movies.
I decided somewhat arbitrarily that transpacific flights should include Korean movies (such movies have been included, so often, in the past, because my most frequent transpacific carrier has been Korean Airlines).
So I binged on Korean movies. No comment with respect to quality – this is not, nor has it ever been, a movie review blog. You can find summaries and reviews elsewhere, better than anything I could write.
But I enjoyed watching them – a few hours of immersion in Korean culture, absent from my day to day life since last summer.
The movies I watched:
돌아와요 부산항애 – a violent cops and robbers thriller where the two antagonists (cop and robber) are twin brothers.
스타박스다방 – a comedy involving a guy starting a coffee shop in a small coastal village in Korea, where many of the characters die at the end.
선명탐정: 흡혈괴마의 비밀 – an anachronistic comedy adventure involving vampires in Joseon Era Korea (1700s).
Caveat: Tree #90
We were supposed to be flying in the air. That turned out not to happen – we got stuck in a motel in Cairns. A delayed departure for the first flight led to a chain reaction of missed connecting flights all the way to Juneau. Systemic failure. So they postponed everything 24 hours and we try again tomorrow morning, same time, same place.
Malingering around Cairns, I took a very long walk, from our suburban airline comp hotel to the downtown waterfront. I’ll post pictures when I get a better internet connection.
Meanwhile, a banana tree (or two).
[daily log: walking, 12km]
Caveat: Through pouring rain
We drove over to Kuranda today, to visit some of my mom’s friends.
We saw Pat, whom I’ve met during previous visits. Here is a picture of Ann, Arthur and Pat beside the Buddha in Pat’s driveway.
We met Kirsten and Emma at their “block” a little farther west. They live in a big shed and have a dam and a small reservoir on their property. And some dogs.
Here is the dog Mickey playing fetch with a ring-shaped toy, looking cute because the ring wraps around the nose.
Driving back, there was a lot of rain – sheets of rain like falling oceans.
We stopped in Ravenshoe, the closest town to where my mother’s house is, for a late lunch. Here is the Ravenshoe Town Hall.
Looking the other way, here is the Bottle Shop (Liquor Store) and Motel.
Caveat: Birds and their brains
I was just reading something that confirmed what many of intuit: birds are quite surprisingly smart relative to their size. Apparently it comes down to neuron count, as opposed to brain size, as such. Thus your average crow has the same number of cortical neurons as your average monkey, and that’s why crows seem as smart as monkeys, despite their much smaller brains. They pack a lot more neurons into that smaller head volume. And it explains why elephants are NOT smarter, too: they have fewer cortical neurons than the crow, despite extremely large brains.
My mother likes the birds that dwell around her house (and make quite a bit of noise, too). Here are some pictures she gave to me of her various neighbors.
A tawny frogmouth.
A pair of bush thickknees.
A king parrot.
