Meds & Mash

Author Gary Chapman wrote a book titled, “The Five Love Languages”. In it he described five exhaustive love languages that people use to give and receive love. My wife recommended the book to me a few years back and I’m glad that I took her up on it and read the stinking thing. Not one to usually buy in to the sappy, self-help genre, I sincerely enjoyed reading this book and think that it helped me understand my relationship with the missus even more than I did before.

Mr. Chapman states that all people metaphorically have a “Love Tank” and essentially run better when that tank is full. The important people in our lives fill that emotional tank with how they “love” us. The catch is, we’re not all geared the same. Each of us has a primary and a secondary love language. Sometimes couples communicate with the same love language and other times it’s just the opposite.  Understanding your own personal needs is the first step and then identifying your partner’s comes second.

Before I get too far in to this mumbo jumbo let me pause…. I’m in Alaska. If you’re here at the Kirby Krew you already new that. I have been married to Michele for 13 years. Last July when word broke that I was taking off to the Arctic, those close to us expressed concern. Was this a sign of problems in our relationship?

I assure – just the opposite is true. This whole “Adventure” wouldn’t be possible without the full support of my wonderful wife.  Things were good. Things are good. And things are only getting better. Vegas, here we come!

Back to the book report….

Where was I? – Oh yeah, “Knowing your Love Language”…

Let me list them – in no particular order.

Words of Affirmation

Quality Time

Giving and Receiving Gifts

Acts of Service

Physical Touch

So there they are. First step – Identify your own Primary and Secondary love language. The big hint was that people just naturally tend to give love in the way they prefer to receive love. So that explained my constant pull to tell Michele she’s beautiful, that I like her hair, that tonight’s supper was the best of the week. It explained why I was upset if I wasn’t tucked in to bed at night with a goodnight kiss or sent to work without a peck on the cheek.

I’m a Words of Affirmation and Physical Touch guy.

That wasn’t real hard to figure out. While I was reading the book I remember questioning Michele about the relevance of a self-help book telling me what I already knew. I have a hot wife and I like to hold hands with her. (Wink –wink) But what it was really saying about me was that I need to hear that I’m doing well – Words of Affirmation and that I need that Physical Touch to feel validated. 

I gave what I wanted to receive and wasn’t paying enough attention to the way my wife loved me.

Convinced that if I completed my assigned marital reading I might get lucky, I decided to read on.

For more than that reason, I’m glad that I did. I learned that my wife’s affinity for shopping was her way of showing affection to the entire family and me. From simple grocery shopping to the now infamous “She Bought Me Socks” – Michele’s constant Acts of Service were the Love Language that she was speaking loud and clear. I just couldn’t see it at the time.

(Check the LINK to a prophetic blast from the past.) 

Michele loved me by walking the dogs. Michele loved me when she did a load of laundry and made supper. Michele may be the best gift giver I have ever known. Just ask any of her friends. She knows just the right time that somebody could use a pick me up and is always spot-on with gifts she gives. She’s a natural at being a mother because she pays attention to other peoples needs before her own. 

Yesterday the mail came with another package addressed to Kirby @ General Delivery. I knew it was on the way but it wasn’t until I held it in my hand that I realized that, as small as it may be, this might be the last Flat Rate Box I receive from my wife while I’m still here in Alaska.

Nine months in to an experiment in self-discovery and sacrifice, I can see the end is near. 5 weeks from today I will be holding my wife and kids in my arms and looking at Alaska through the rear view mirror. At $6.80, that little Flat Rate Box was barely the size of a VHS tape but it was packed with so much love…

An envelope with a happy photo and some encouraging words.

An Internet payment for my roommate.

Two bags of instant mashed potatoes and

My blood pressure medication.

Now the box is empty but my Tank is FULL.

I love you, Five. 

See ya in a few weeks.

Can’t see the Forest for the Trees.

Occasionally, I can’t see the Tundra for the Tussocks.

When you’re too close to a situation, sometimes you need to step back a little to gain a different perspective. Do this and you might notice that there was whole a forest before you that was previously unseen because you were too close, focusing on the trees.

There are no trees in Kivalina. Zero. Zilch. But there are children and those children are a reflection of the Village. The kids are the trees and today I saw the forest. 

Some days I walk and am astounded by the enormity and beauty of the Arctic. The Delong and Baird Mountains cast an imposing backdrop to the east. I’ve never lived amongst the mountains until now and it’s an impressive thing. The far-reaching peaks and valleys convey countless opportunities of exploration in their surrounding comfort. Some days I see the power of the Chukchi Sea as another calming presence in a difficult clime. The ice heaves are ever changing and seem to mirror their mountain neighbors. Water, whether solid or liquid has always helped sooth my soul.

Other days I’m not so fortunate. I see the piles of trash, the neglected dogs and even worse, the neglected children. I see skeletal mountains of snowmachine and ATV parts randomly discarded around the village. I see the scars of domestic violence when a co-worker that stepped out to have a smoke refuses to make eye contact out of embarrassment. She knows that I know why she’s missed work for 4 days in a row. Her injured leg and battered face evidence of the evils of alcohol in the village.

Sometimes I walk completely oblivious to the monsters that grip this land – complacency, depression and poor mental health. Other times it’s glaringly obvious. Last night I noticed the two bags of frozen excrement and feces that dropped off of a trash run trailer weeks ago have still not been picked up and moved to the appropriate place. Soon those bags will thaw. Last night I watched as unsupervised school aged children chased dogs with sticks and ropes, attempting to tie them up and beat them. Later, that same crowd stood around laughing while one child was on his knees while the dog humped away. I walked away while my ten-year-old classroom menace lead the masses in vulgarities.

Lately, our school days begin with fractions of the total enrollment in attendance. Others straggle in tardy as a result of non-existent bedtimes. The non-existent bedtimes are a microcosm of the lack of family education and parental values. Nowadays, the sun lights the Arctic skies well past my bedtime. The increased sunlight hours and the warming temperatures have helped invigorate the village but honestly, not in a positive way.

I guess the pessimist and the optimist in me are stuck in a constant dispute over the beauty and ugliness of this place. Last night I felt defeated. On my evening walk the pessimist in me chose to see the hardships of life easily outweighing the good on the island.

I'm no Al Roker.

I finally made it to the weekend and then was a slave to the whims of the weather. Friday and Saturday the wind blew like it was getting paid to blow. At the same time, we were getting about the heaviest flurry of snow that I've seen at any point this year. The combination of the two made for terrible visibility and left behemoth drifts in its wake.

The drifts appear with no real rhyme or reason. One house might be blanketed and covered while the next one seems untouched. At about Noon today, the clouds broke and the sun appeared. The sunshine brought with it a much needed respite from the relentless wind. With a bright sunny day, the village came alive again.

The Hondas were slowed by the sheer volume of snow that touched the tops of the fenders. While the ATVS spun and fish tailed back and forth, the snowmobiles acted as if they were finally set free from years of incarceration. The dips doo'd streets of Kivalina no longer resembled a moguls course. Smoothed out from fresh powder, they now more resemble a whiteout drag strip.

Today the temps tickled the twenties. Some Eskimo kids played without gloves. Others have shed their coats completely. The peaks and valleys of the drifts are their new playground. On my evening walk I had to turn the other cheek when kids called out my name from the roof of the Post Office. As a kid, if rising snow drifts had allowed me access to the roofs in my neighborhood I would have taken  full advantage too. The adult in me thought about hollering a scolding correction. Instead, I smiled and gave a wave. They somersaulted from the roof on their own and ran off to the next pile.

It's April 3rd. I am ready for Spring to sprung. There are thirteen, nearly fourteen, hours of daylight with each rotation of the earth. We add another eight minutes daily. The sun is there to greet me when I first crack the qanichaq door in the morning and still shining bright when I tuck myself in at 10:00 pm. When the sun is out, so are the kids. Which makes it all that more difficult to keep their attention when placing commas with conjunctions during the school day.

"NEXT MONTH..."

Two words that I've looked forward to for a long time...these two words can now be a part of my vocabulary and carry some serious weight with them. The school year is winding down. My Alaskan Adventure is fast approaching a hopefully anti-clamactic end.

Spring is in the air even if six fresh inches of snow are on the ground.

Fishing vs. Catching

If I had my druthers, I’d fish until my arms fell off. Given that my quarry of choice is the muskellunge that may actually happen some day. My arms might just fall off. Having spent a King’s ransom on baits and a lifetime chasing the fish of 10,000 casts, I intimately know the exhilaration of holding a tiger by its tail. Unfortunately, I know all to well what it feels like to be in a slump. I’ve gone days, months and even seasons without so much as a sniff. Being the humble sports fisherman that I am, I’ve been able to swallow my pride and keep casting away because the next catch could be the one I’ve been waiting for. The next cast could always be the one to put a mighty Muskie and me in the same picture frame.

Last night I attended the Blessing of the Boats. Pastor Enoch and the Episcopal Church hosted the evening ceremonies. With a village population near 400, it was sad to hear that only 68 folks broke the threshold at the church. Nine Crew Captains, their wives, village elders and a handful of naluagmius clung to the pews at the back of the church while the tools of the trade were laid at the foot of the altar. It’s a cool place where I live. No one thinks twice about brining spears, harpoons, rifles and whale bombs in to a house of worship. Well, not during whaling season anyway.

Like any church service I’ve ever been to, there were hymns to be sung and the Gospel to be read. Men and women of the whaling community faithfully marched to the pulpit with scripture that matched a season of harvest. In the pews, children munched on Hot Flamin’ and were quieted with Pepsi while their parents updated their status on social media. Meanwhile, Pastor Enoch preached about tradition and honor. He spoke about doubt and faith. Enoch mentioned burying old squabbles and working together to show the people of Kivalina that being tied to the past is a good thing.

You see, there are doubters and quitters in Kivalina. As I’m told, years ago you wouldn’t have been able to find a seat in the church on the night of the blessing. Now the Inupiaq struggle to keep tradition alive. There’s a contingency of young people that have no ties to the subsistence lifestyle. They fight their own demons of complacency and addiction. Battling Mother Nature and honoring their community through the ritual harvest of beast doesn’t even register on their radar. Nine Captains and their crews are all of what remain in a community being washed out to sea.

The pessimists do have some argument to make though.

The last time a bowhead whale was harvested by a crew from Kivalina was in 1996. That’s twenty years ago. Can’t say that I blame them. Even this muskie hunter would start to grow tired of all that fishing and no catching.

Some blame a curse over family feuds surrounding the last whale. Others point at Climate Change and thinning ice. The Bowhead Whales typically follow an arch out of the Bering Straits on their migratory passage through the Chukchi Sea towards the Arctic Ocean. According to the locals, safe sea ice no longer extends out in to the deeper waters of the Chukchi Sea. Those theorists believe the hunters of Kivalina cannot get to where they need to be.

Whaling Crews in Point Hope and farther north in Barrow have been successful in recent years. Family ties are strong all over Alaska but especially in the Inupiat. Muktuk (whale meat) is passed on to family and friends and you can imagine that a 45-60 foot marine mammal that weighs over 150,00 pounds can feed more than one village.  So, people in Kivalina get a taste every year but they want more than a taste.

 

They want a catch. Those that believe, believe it will happen on the next cast.

And so, there we were.

4 teachers.

Two reporters.

Nine captains and the rest of the gang.

All there to pray for strength, patience, perseverance and guidance.

"Please Lord, let this be the year that Kivalina catches a whale. 20 years is long enough."

Just one more cast.

High Hopes for High Stakes

It is March 27, 2016 and I am stuffed in to a small room at McQueen School in Kivalina, Alaska. Small: as in 14x18 feet. I’ve fished out of ice shacks bigger than this. 18 computers, 9 students and 2 adults are cramped in to a room that is roughly 262 square feet. It is less of a Computer Lab and more of a Computer Closet.

Today is Day One of the AMP Test. The Alaska Measures of Progress is another high stakes computer based test not unlike the MCAs from back home in Minnesota. Unfortunately, not even Bush Alaska is immune to the pressures of these ridiculous tests.

A company called KITE won a contract to assess the progress of every grade 3 through 12 student in the great state of Alaska. And this morning their Website is unable to handle the sheer volume of traffic flooding the system with the answers diligently clicked away by students on the other end of the educational umbilical cord. Sadly, this isn’t my first rodeo. This always happens.

Somewhere along the way, politicians, lobbyists and other random talking heads across the nation have decided that teachers need to be held accountable for American kids falling behind their Asian counterparts. Those geniuses decided that plugging a kid that probably already has more screen time than the FDA recommends in to a computer for scientific data was going to scare teachers in to actually doing work and not just teaching coloring and the polka. I would bet my next paycheck that very few of those lobbyists and politicians have ever spent much time at the helm of a classroom relying on them for direction in life.

And those test administrators that spent countless dollars and fewer hours compiling all the latest and greatest unbiased questions should be forced to sit in this room with me here today. They are no doubt scrambling at KITE, trying to identify the bug in their system. Yet, I’m the one that has ramped up the rigor. I’m the one that has readied the troops and got them at least to enter in their username and passwords correctly. Which, I might add, is no small feat in itself.

It’s a sad joke that I’m sitting in a computer closet a hundred some miles north of the Arctic Circle, being told that my success and or failure as a teacher will be determined based on the results of a computer based test that resembles Swiss cheese. That’s a tough pill to swallow. I think the lobbyists, politicians, KITE administrators and anyone else that thinks the data based decision making that follows these tests has any validity in the real world should take a shift in the closet with me. They should have to throw together a meaningful remainder of the instructional day after scheduling the entire week around a test that just isn’t working.

Two boys were done with 28 questions in approximately 6 minutes. The other seven computer screens read:

Do not close test.

Contact your technology expert to restore connection.

When saved the test will move on.

AMP is broke.

KITE is broke.

Spending so much money on a system and belief that is broke frustrates me.

The real money in education should be spent putting boots on the ground. Limiting class sizes. Funneling special education and behavioral support where it is needed. Providing resources to teachers that are with children every day.

Not more testing.

And here’s a snippet of the nonsense email I got right before lunch.

UPDATE ON AMP and DLM TESTING

The fiber optic cable at the University of Kansas, where AAI is located, was cut by a construction vehicle. All KITE systems are down (KITE, AMP, DLM, Educator Portal, etc).  Please note, the issue is not with the KITE Client/Educator Portal servers or the tests. The entire University of Kansas is down.

Please cancel testing for today. The plan is to resume tomorrow. However, please have an alternate plan in case repairs are delayed.

I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.

Does anyone else miss NORM from Cheers?

It wasn’t the last day of summer or the first day of school.

It wasn’t the two missed birthdays in September.

Or the missed birthday in October.

It wasn’t Trick or Treating with friends and not me.

It wasn’t Parent/Teacher Conferences as a single parent.

It wasn’t having to carve the Thanksgiving turkey herself.

It didn’t even seem to faze her to spend our anniversary apart.

We were together at Christmas and apart again by New Years.

It wasn’t missing her birthday in February.

Or Valentine’s Day that soon followed.

She was a Hockey Mom that spent the children’s entire hockey season flying solo.

And it wasn’t any of the major milestones that I missed that made her miss me any more or any less.

You know what it was?

It was the normal.

Fifty days before I rotate back to the real world and my wife finally misses me. She needs me there to wash the dishes. She needs me there to clean out the freezer. To take out the trash. Michele wants me home to help with homework and put the kids to bed. She’s been as positive and supportive as one could possibly be without being diagnosed as cheerfully insane. She has stood steadfast in her convictions that she is strong enough and our relationship is healthy enough to work through a twist in the road of Life.

I admire her courage.

I constantly thank God for her strength and devotion.

She’s played it tough for a long time now.

And I recognize the daily sacrifice that the woman of my dreams has made.

I left in the Summer and missed all of Fall. Winter has come and gone in Minnesota and now Spring is in the air.

Michele finally misses “normal”.

Me too.

I love you, Five.

See ya in 49 and a wake up. 

Fitty... Part Deux

Editors Note: This post originally ran on November 2nd, 2015. Since then a few things have changed, most of which has been chronicled here. I took the liberty of editing the 11/1/15 post to reflect my current countdown.

Today is November ONE.  – March 24, 2016

I have spent part of July, ALL of August, September, and October and now part of November in Alaska. – And Now ALL of November, Most of December, All of January, February and most of March.

I have seen and done some remarkable things...things I won't soon forget. I have experienced things in the last 4 (8) months that I never thought I would again get a chance to do. This has all come with a price.

My son laid the smack down as the Middle Linebacker and leading "Meat Eater" on his youth football team this Fall. I did not get to see a single down except for a few short video clips my wife sent me. He earned the All Around award for his hockey team and impressed the socks off his teacher, his mother and I with how well he’s doing in school this year.

Saturday my daughter lit the lamp three times in her first hockey scrimmage of the season. I wasn't in the arena, not in the state, not within twenty five hundred miles. My daughter played in a dodgeball tournament with Boys and is rumored to be thinking about a trip to the movie theatre with Boys.

I missed Halloween Trick or Treating with my silly little munchkins and my adorable wife.

(All 4 birthdays, our Anniversary & Valentine’s Day)

We knew this before I left.

I would miss a few things...and those things will be there next time around. And for years to come.

We've accepted that as part of the equation. I am here - earning a decent paycheck and experiencing new things. They are there continuing on in their comfortable day to day lives and we are in touch often.

But today things feel different.

I've got something to fixate on.

A number.

50.

50 days from now, Good Lord Willing - I'll be holding my wife and kids again...on a short Holiday break RETURN TRIP HOME from the Northwest Arctic...

I could stand on my head for Fifty days if I had to.

Lots of living left to do here in the next 50 days but MAN, am I ever looking forward to December TWENTY May Fourteen!