My Home

I live in a marvelous place. A legitimate checklist for my Saturday follows-

1. Check ammo status.
2. Sharpen Kukri.
3. Don gunbelt, pack knapsack.
4. Pay off The Russian.
5. Ride into the mountains.
6. Tea and sandwiches on a mountainside.
7. Shooting practice.
8. Ride back into town reeking of cordite.

Well Hello Again.

It's been a while, hasn't it? Pull up a stump and don't mind the fish heads. The lady from the dog yard hasn't been by yet today.

When last we met, I was eulogizing my late Grandfather. Before that, I was basically pinwheeling my arms wildly and waiting for my job to begin.

A lot of water under the bridge since then.

As intended, I packed my worldly goods up and shipped them and myself off to a spectacularly scenic little corner of the Northwest Arctic, finding employment as a schoolteacher.

And oh, what a clusterfuck it has been. And at the same time, what a marvelous decision.

The bad is almost all job-related.

I don't know if I'm a good teacher, a bad teacher, or perhaps the sort of teacher who burns his entire community to the ground. It's early yet- we just finished our second week of classes.

What I do know is that any and all time spent learning about the ancestral culture of the locals is wasted. Simply and utterly wasted. Because it has sweet fuck-all to do with the students. I've gotten more mileage out of the childhood tales of some of my more colorful friends than any amount of Native Heritage study. And thank whatever deity is listening that I actually appreciate casual brutality, or I would find living here to be a chore.

As it is, the teaching is difficult. My students, bless their enlightened little hearts, do not give a shit. They ask me "why we gotta read?" And while I have answers to THAT one, some others are trickier. For example, Health Class. It's a load of shit. They know it, I know it, anyone who has ever taken Health knows it. I'm reasonably sure even the Sex-Ed part is Abstinence Only- in other words, it's an hour every day that serves as torture for both the class and for me, while teaching nothing that's going to stick.

So some classes are awful and some are good- and they all have the unusual problem that they go off every day, instead of rotating like they do in larger schools. And then we have the real gravy part.

As a small school, we have a staff of five... or should. Four full-time teachers, and one Teacher/Principal. Until the end of the first week, when our Teacher/Principal, impelled by drama from last year, transferred to another school. Yes. The pigfucker gets in one week's worth of time-wasting, then rides off into the sunset, leaving us high and dry. As of this writing, we're not completely sure what the hell is going on or who will take over. This will be a semester dictated by who manages to fail the least. It's going to be a long, hard slog.

So much for the job. I get my first paycheck soon, and so much of it is already spoken for it hurts to think about.

But the place... the place is another story altogether.

The river runs by the front of the village, rich with fish and a lot of fun to boat around on. On all sides, there is nothing but empty space. An old mine lies about fifteen miles out of town, easily reached by 4-wheeler, nestled in the mountains. The village lies on flatlands immediately south of the mountains, hemmed in by forest and tundra in a delightful mix. Caribou pass by so close that hauling their carcasses back to town is a short trip, and every day I feel as if I've woken up in a postcard. It's also a place that, in spite of the rampant alcoholism and abuse, or perhaps because of it, accepts little things that I enjoy. When I walk down the road with my kukri and my .45 on my belt, the only questions I get are "what kind of gun is that?" and "where did you get that knife?" When a small child lands a pike, no one so much as blinks if I use my kukri to finish the fish off. If I come back into town with an armload of bones or antlers, no one feels a need to comment. If someone wants a dog put down, there's no song and dance about animal cruelty... someone just takes the mutt out to the airstrip and shoots it, then hauls its corpse to the dump.

In other words, it's a place where folks leave one another alone unless they're invited over or unless they need something. It's a place where I run the risk of being the most sentimental man in town.

And it's a place where I can watch old women dress out fish with an ulu in less than fifteen seconds. Where fish racks dot the riverside, and where caribou bones lie under nearly every house.

In other words, if I can stand the teaching for few hours a day, it's possibly one of the best places in the world for me to be.

So Long, Grandfather

My maternal grandfather passed away last night.

While I am saddened by this, I am utterly unsurprised.

Gramps was 91, and had been failing ever since spring. He last looked like himself eighty-one days ago.

Gramps went to sea when he was very young, served in the Navy through the Second World War and afterward, and raised my mother and all of her siblings along with Granny. He knew how to fix almost anything. He was working on the roof of his house when he was over eighty years old.

I am descended from one tough, tough, tough, IRON-tough old man.

I have no regrets about my relationship with my Gramps.

He has been a part of my life since well before I was born, and I don't see how that's going to change now. What he taught me and what he gave me will always be with me. If I'm supremely lucky, I'll be able to pass some of it along, and if I really outdo myself, I'll be half as capable as he was by the time I die.

He gave me a pocketknife... a little one... that I had on me today, before I'd heard. But I've been thinking of him.

He taught me to drive a boat. Some of the highest praise I've ever received in my life was when I heard from someone else that he thought I'd brought it into shore properly (which is to say, jumping over the side and hauling the bowline in with me). He taught me to drive his old Toro tractor. He drove his dog-infested RV back and forth across the country year after year, getting the hell out of Indiana for the winter.

He made sure I always had an air conditioner in working order when I stayed at the farm.

He was one of the few people I could shut up around, simply because I knew he didn't need me to say a damned thing.

I'll miss you, old man.

But I also know you hated being fussed over, and you'd be downright irritable if I moped around because of you, so I'll carry on as I always have.

Thanks for all you taught me.
Thanks for all you gave me.

Godspeed.

A Tribesman Far From His Tribe.

"Parting from friends is a sadness- a place is just a place." - Dune

So, my sister and I watched Blazing Saddles again tonight, and while I enjoyed it, it brought home a simple, unpleasant truth.

I miss the FUCK out of my compadres.

Where I used to be able to drag my broke ass across town and always find a couch to crash on and a place at table, I now find myself more or less trapped at home until I head for Kobuk.

The little things- casual abuse shared by people who knew better than to be offended by it. Someone to bitch about things with who didn't feel the need to solve my fucking lame-ass problems.

A shared sense of identity, honestly. When in the company of my weird, heavily-armed family, I always know where I stand. I belong as I don't think I ever have before (which speaks volumes about just how fucked up the folks I run with are). I can truthfully say that they are "home" in their own twisted way.

I miss the hell out of 'em, but I'm taking the long view- I may be in Kobuk for just two years, or I may live there for twenty.

But whether I'm thirty and bored with it or I'm sixty and the thought of an Alaskan Arctic winter is more than I can stand, I know some folks who'll put me up.

And that's worth remembering.

On Comic Book Nerd Rage

So apparently, someone is tweaking Wonder Woman's costume and origin.

This, of course, has the nerds who care in a frothing rage.

Which is funny, since, speaking as a comic book geek myself, I have the following observation to make-

Scarlet Spider/Spider-Clone- It sucked, people hated it, it went away.
Superman Red/Superman Blue- It sucked, people hated it, it went away.
The Eric Masterson Thor/Thunderstrike- It sucked, people hated it, it went away.
The Arrowcar- It sucked, people hated it, it went away.
The High Lords in X-Force (you know, immortal mutants as a community) - It sucked, people hated it, it went away.
Azbat- It sucked, people hated it, it went away.
Superman's Mullet- It sucked, people hated it, it went away.
Iron Spider Armor - It sucked, people hated it, it went away.
Avengers Disassembled- It sucked, people hated it, it went away.
Spoiler's Death / Leslie Thompkins' Character Assassination- It sucked, people hated it, it went away.
X-Corps- It sucked, people hated it, it went away.
Punisher versus Demons- It sucked, people hated it, it went away.
The Kinder, Gentler Magneto- It sucked, people hated it, it went away.
The Punker, Edgier Storm- It sucked, people hated it, it went away.
Nightcrawler the Priest- It sucked, people hated it, it went away.
The offscreen death of Sebastian Shaw- It sucked, people hated it, it went away.
Hal Jordan as the Spectre- It sucked, people hated it, it went away.



This too shall pass.

Traps and Tricks

So, the old cat died a while back.

For all of her faults, the old girl did one thing, performed one service we kind of miss these days.

She provided guilt-free pest control. No voles could survive in her radius, and her mere presence was a deterrent.

Now that she's gone, the duty has fallen upon me- because neither my sister nor my mother have the stomach for it.

And thus it is I who bait traps with tasty treats for the little creatures. It is I who place them in locations of value. And it is I who haul the little corpses outside and dump them for the shrews and carrion birds.

It's funny.

My sister flat-out refuses to bait traps. She claims it's too "serial killer" for her.

I can try to explain that there's no malice in my heart when I set these traps. I sincerely wish these rather dim-witted little creatures would simply stay away from the trash can and the flour and the rice on their own... But wishing doesn't feed me.

But I doubt she'll ever grasp that.

This wouldn't bother me, except that she wants them gone more than anyone.

After all, I'll be gone in August. I can only hope she figures out that what we need to do often has no emotion connected with it at all.

Back Home Again...

No, not in Indiana.

After a long-ass month suffering through educational theory, leavened with useful moments of teaching summer school, I have returned.

Life, of course, has moved on without me, and thus the doctor from Utah wants his damn money.
I also have to buy supplies for a year.
And a plane ticket to Kobuk.
And get a physical.
And otherwise get my shit together.

So, after having a month of mine utterly wasted, I can finally get on with the whole affair.