Caveat: Tree #147

I took Arthur to the airport this morning. He has some tests the VA doctors want done, and needs to be at the hospital in Juneau.
Later in the day, he called me to say the doctors are keeping him overnight. This is … concerning – but not overly so. Arthur and I have already discussed that the doctors at the Juneau VA seem overly cautious. He feels like they are wasting his time, but he nevertheless is deferring to their wishes. We’ll see what happens.
I took this picture of a tree against a metal shed at the airport this morning.
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Here is the airport.
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[daily log: walking, 2km]

Caveat: Tree #144

This tree survived the treepocalypse. Maybe I posted a picture of it before, I don’t remember. But it stands somewhat lonely in the rock and dirt.
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[daily log: walking, 1km; ditchdigging, 1m]

Caveat: Tree #143

I’ll return back to a more traditional-style, Alaskan roadside tree.
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[daily log: walking, 3km; ditchdigging, 1m]

Caveat: Tree #141

Arthur and I drove into town: “Thursday is shopping day.”
Therefore, I present this tree from the archives.
The tree that I have selected is to the left of a scary-looking sign. The sign memorializes a prison uprising on a notorious prison island in South Korea (실미도), during the 1960s (the era of the dictatorship). Apparently the prisoners were being trained for a suicide mission against North Korea, but they decided to use their new skills to rebel and escape, instead. Things got messy, of course.
But anyway, it’s a nice tree.
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[daily log: walking, 1km]

Caveat: Tree #140

This is a tree viewed by looking straight up at the site of the new well-shed thing.
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[daily log: walking, 1km; ditchdigging, 1m]

Caveat: Tree #139

This is a sad-looking pine tree about two-thirds of the way up the slope toward the treehouse location. It’s the only actual pine tree I’ve run across on Arthur’s two lots – there are quite a few of them out east along the road where the muskeg is (the flat stretch near the bridges), but not so many here along the hillside. This pine tree looks like someone attempted to decapitate it at some point, but it’s decided to stay in the game for now.
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[daily log: walking, 1km; ditchdigging, 1m]

Caveat: Tree #138

I scrubbed barnacles in the morning.
I dug ditches in the afternoon.
No walking took place.
So, here is a tree from the archives: on the grounds of the Korean Shamanism Museum, July, 2017.
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[daily log: walking, 1.5km]

Caveat: The Moronic Barnacles

I think The Moronic Barnacles should be the name of a musical group.
Instead, there are barnacles (probably moronic) attached to the bottom of Arthur’s boat. It is my mission to try to remove them.
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Caveat: Tree #137

Arthur and I went out in the boat today. Still fishless, though.
The tide was very low in the morning. I took this picture of a tree reflected in the water with a fat starfish under the water in the shade of the dock.
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Here is the low tide – you could actually step from the beach to the dock.
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Here is a sea otter I saw.
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[daily log: walking, 1.5km]

Caveat: Tree #134

We went into town to do shopping today. So here is a tree from the archives.
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This tree in spring bloom is in front of the building where the Karma Academy was, in its last location in Goyang City, South Korea, where I worked from 2011-2018.
[daily log: walking, 1km]

Caveat: Tree #133

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).
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I also made this unexpected anachronism sighting by the road near Hollis.
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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]

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.
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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: Tree #130

The one hundred and thirtieth tree is too tall for the camera’s frame. And somewhat canted at a strange angle, seeking solace in the sea at the bottom of the slope.
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[daily log: walking, 3.5km]

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.”
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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.
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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.
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[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.
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At Siketi Sound, if you look southwest, you see the open ocean. There were broad, slow, large swells rolling in from the sea.
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[daily log: walking, 1.5km]

Caveat: Tree #126

Here is a tree from the archives.
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I didn’t walk or take pictures of trees because I was digging a hole.
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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: Tree #125

Here is a tree.
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Here is an eagle, down by the dock, supervising Arthur’s boat.
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I tried to get closer, for a better picture, but the eagle flew away.
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[daily log: walking, 3.5km]

Caveat: Tree #124

This tree is down at the northwest corner of lot 73. In fact I was standing on the stake to take this picture.
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Here is the pond at the Rockpit City Park, turning green for spring.
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[daily log: walking, 3km]

Caveat: Tree #123

This is a tree seen from the bottom (the cut for the road dug out under the tree, but left it standing there on an outjutting of soil).
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[daily log: walking, 3.5km]

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.
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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.
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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 #122

Not fully a tree… a ubiquitous shrub called devil’s club.
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It’s a rather horrible thing to walk through, clustered in the underbrush, but a woman along the road one day told me it was “strong medicine.”
[daily log: walking, 4km]

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.
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[daily log: walking, 2.5km]

Caveat: Tree #120

Because I worked today, I forgot to take a picture of a tree.
Here is a favorite tree from the archive: a tree seen in Kagoshima, Japan, in March, 2010.
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[daily log: walking, 2km]

Caveat: The Shortcomings

I worked a second day today as a substitute at Craig Elementary School.
Today, I was a librarian.
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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: Tree #119

This tree out west a little bit has a fork near the top. Like a tuning fork, hidden among the branches.
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[daily log: walking, 4km]

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