A Resurrection

I've been thinking for a long time (most of this year, actually) about how best to get back in the swing of posting bits of stuff on here, on a regular basis.

Mostly, it's been a process of figuring out what got me excited about writing short personal stuff like this in the first place, and understanding the connection, if any, I should maintain to something that seems both very brief and disposable, and also sort of static and permanent.

This is also mostly unimportant; it's certainly not the kind of struggle to dwell upon. Though it is important for me to think very seriously about the way I'm reflected in the things I write, for one thing.

It's also clear to me that the process of thinking like that, in a serious introspective way, about crafting communication, is energizing and healthy. It's also sort of what I'm about, in a professional/philosophical/political way. So there's that.

I think what I need for now, then, is only to identify and observe the "point" of putting stuff here, outside of making feel guilty for neglecting it. By "point," I suppose I mean the thematic/subjective/conceptual constraints of the thing.

And to get to there, I'll observe this: that Alaska and myself are not the same thing. But we (the state of Alaska and I) are also not complete opposites. We have some things in common, perhaps some things that even tie us together at this point.

So: at this point, that's what the material here will attempt to be "about"--exploring whatever it is that makes what goes on in my head either close or far away from what I think "goes on" in the "head" of the state of Alaska. What makes us similar and different.

Things that maybe fit within these constraints: coffee, the wilderness, education, politics, curling, agriculture, wine, bunny boots, the construction industry, furniture, Carlos Boozer, bear attacks, the Internet, Joe Strummer, and poker. Things that maybe do not: talk radio, bathing suits, Tony Dungy, muscle cars, TMZ, dog sweaters, and Pokemon (unless it regards Herman Cain).

What I hope and think will happen as a result is that I'll be more compelled by the opportunity to maintain some form of "personal" writing, which feels important and promising. The writing here also has the chance to be more clear, cohesive, and fun.

Incredibly, miraculously, the sunlight's back up here in a prominent way, and it does wonders to pull folks forward into new times and spaces. Again, it's that space--the actual, physical expanse, mmmhmm, but even more, the personal concepts of it and the awareness it creates--that predominates, in our experience, and our interactions, and our understanding of where we're at and the opportunities we're provided.

We're divorced here, in a very clear way, from much of the physical condition and circumstance that formed us. But awareness of those tangible and internal systems of influence and craft--those root systems and planing tools--is emphasized equally by our continual and exaggerated reliance upon their  impulsive and measured effects. We're driven by our craft and creativity and the need to place impact on the space we have, with the assumption that this space, the internal stuff and the external stuff, will offer along with our imprint its coded but apparent origins. Like outside, it's a question, of course, whether the space inside is under our control at all, but having lots of it to explore and wonder about doesn't hurt, and is also, for us, pretty productive and rewarding.

As promised, here's a small piece of our maiden snowshoe last week, complete with a 4pm-ish hazy sunset  through the trees. We're roughly a mile from our house here, and barely off campus--it's empowering, to me, that we're here up here in a world that allows and supports this kind of access to the deep and rough outdoors. Like I mentioned, we picked up these snowshoes just a week ago, and all it took was a trip to the University trails page and a ten-minute walk up the road before we were giving them a full workout.

I think I've said this here before, but the general spirit here seems one of resourcefulness; the tools and knowledge needed to survive within and engage the surroundings are readily available, and the lifestyle rewards heavily most everyone who seeks out them out. For the two of us, who take pleasure and satisfaction from our strength and resolve, and who strive to learn the variations and complexities of adulthood, it's a good place to be.

July 4th, 2010. Sauquoit, NY.

Sarah and I were with the Fiores for the 4th again this year, and it was about the best thing we could have done to wrap up our seven years in the Northeast. The weather was phenomenal, the party was phenomenal, and seeing everyone there reminded us once again how much we're going to miss being less than a day's drive from most of our closest friends.

It's a joy to shuffle through the hundreds of pictures we have from our last eight months, but as a break from this series, I'll mention the couple short hikes s42 and I have taken this week to break in our new snowshoes. The trails around campus here are excellent, through some pretty deep woods and not far from the house, and the -18° F temps yesterday added a crispy and fresh element that made things more adventurous. I think my insides, though, are still recalibrating to our climate since being back; I woke up a couple times Tuesday night worried appendicitis until I rolled over and felt the same ache on my left side too. Like most other weirdness here, I'm blaming it on either the dryness, the darkness, or the cold. Snowshoing pics this weekend.

After yesterday's post, and still in the first few days of the year, I think it's appropriate to provide some retrospective this week, focused twofold on our very eventful year of 2010 and some of the public spaces we inhabited. For those of you that lived through all this with us, I hope you can have as much fun reliving these moments as I do. For those who didn't, I hope there are shots here that communicate a little bit of the enjoyment they represent to me.

Above are a few of the most excellent people in the world, outside the Old New Orleans Rum Distillery in East New Orleans. The trip I took with these guys to New Orleans was an unspeakably great moment, and impossible to forget, considering especially the summer it introduced. I really can't think of a more impressive way to have kicked things off, and I hope everybody had half as much fun as I did. Also, being reminded of the Cajun Tea* that Shye and Bill are flaunting here is gonna make me crave it for the rest of the day.

The summer that Sarah and I had was a hurricane of a time, and I suspect it may have been pretty miserable had we been without the amazing support and distraction from the amazing family and friends we're somehow lucky enough to have. Plenty more to come.

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*Cajun Tea

1.5 oz Old New Orleans Cajun Spice Rum
.5 oz Simple Syrup
Iced Tea (unsweetened)

Fill a highball glass with ice. Add rum and simple syrup, and then top off the glass with unsweetened tea. Garnish with lemon.

'Spread the word around.' -- Lynott

For my first appearance here in 2011, I'm offering a bit of an aside. It's a pretty minor story, and one that I remember now but am probably in danger of forgetting if I don't recall it here and type it out and explore a little about why it's stayed with me so far.

In Boston, during my first semester of grad school in the winter of 2003, I lived in the Allston/Brighton neighborhood, just south of the Charles River and between the campuses of Boston College and Boston University. Allston housed plenty of students and plenty of cultural mixing, and seemed to me a unique and fulfilling example of city resources together with a collegial and ethnically diverse community. Lots of my BC friends and colleagues lived close by, and we spent weekends on foot and on the T around the neighborhood.

During one late Saturday night in particular, a group of us stalled on the steps outside a friend's apartment building. We talked about our respective courses and profs, and probably what our semesters would look like in the new year. At one point, apparently, our conversation expanded to include a group of guys on the stoop next door, who were, we learned, visiting from Ireland for work or school or vacation or something else. We talked to them about a couple of things, but wound up very quickly discussing some of the Irish poets I was studying that semester and moved even quicker to the Irish rock music on which I'd focused much of my study during my final college semester a few months before.

We talked about U2 and Van Morrison, who are almost surely the most successful and popular Irish artists of the last 40 years here in the U.S. and around the world. Rather than aesthetics, though, it was far more interesting to hear from these guys about the cultural connotations such major global figures hold for their closer and more local communities. It's clear the Irish should feel a strong sense of pride for U2's generic and wide-ranging impact as well as the crushing and sophisticated art of Morrison (in my mind, one of rock music's two or three greatest singer/songwriters). And they do. But these guys also felt a pretty strong sense of malaise and resentment at the notion that 'Irish music' is reduced, on a large scale, to either these global stars or the scrubbed and disposable folk sing-alongs heard in theme pubs around the world.

I think it's a sentiment I understand. It's pretty unsatisfying to consider that, though awesome, Elvis and the Beach Boys and Bruce Springsteen might represent to the world the entirety of America's rock music over the last 50 years. So I was glad I could dig a little further with these guys, even if it meant losing the interest and immediate participation of my BC friends that night, about Rory Gallagher, the phenomenal Irish blues guitarist. And Thin Lizzy, Dublin's familiar and still vastly underrated 70s arena rock band that gave the amazing and brilliant and awesome Phil Lynott his stage. And while these examples still fail to fully capture the country's long and rich popular music culture, they certainly provoked a more genuine concern and investment from its young citizens and workers.

Finally, even more interesting to me is how and why our conversation that night has stuck in my mind since then, and why it might still be relevant. I'm sure part of it has to do with a misplaced satisfaction about specialized knowledge, and me being sort of weirdly proud about being able to have an intoxicated conversation with these guys pretty purely on their conceptual turf, and all of us feeling (hopefully) enriched by it. Another part, though, has a bit to say (I think) about open and public and inclusive conversation, a subject perhaps on all our minds this week. To enter a public space, with the assumption that safe and satisfying and enriching connections can happen, is a daily and natural activity for most of us, to the extent that we forget how much happens beyond our control. This week I'm reminded how limited and focused our individual scope and knowledge and political loyalties normally are, and at the same time, how big and broad we can cast our impact, in both positive and negative ways. In Alaska, in the winter, these concerns--exiting private spaces and interacting with a community--seem all the more relevant. For all the potential our natural and open and necessary public patterns offer, I fear we lose quite a bit by taking our public spaces and systems for granted. It's a week to consider what it means to go out in space with each other and listen. It's pretty sad to me that some people got punished for doing that.

The deep freeze is here in Fairbanks, for the extended winter season. Consistently and clearly, we've been at 20 to 30 degrees below zero for the last two weeks, and concepts like movement, and clarity, and strangeness, have been squarely in our minds and breaths.

It's not really desolate here, at least not with the same connotations I think the term normally carries. The cold and ice and snow cover are almost exclusively gorgeous, and display colors and feelings that are varied and vivid. It's blue, as in the picture above, taken at about three in the afternoon, and pink and silver, and deep, dark green and charcoal. Relief, in its senses similar to both solace and contour, is a prominent idea.

Awareness of temperature and climate is also very clearly discriminated for me. My memories of temperatures this low, from the upper plains and Sandhills of Nebraska and South Dakota, include stinging winds and blowing snow, and temporary, limited confinement to vehicles rushing to warm and secure but anxious living rooms and fireplaces. Here though, the cold and dark are sustained, and still. Walking out, with others, into a late morning or afternoon of permanently frigid air, toward normal destinations and tasks, is tough to describe, but it is, ultimately, a confident and reassuring act. It's unique and stark and severe, but this weather lends the community a resolve that's weirdly comforting. And it doesn't feel all that mean.