I have written since I was an elementary school bookworm in Colorado. After college, I traveled to Northern Cyprus, Turkey, and Germany before discovering a home in Alaska. I have self-published children's books, am actively pursuing a publisher for my most recent set of books, and am continuing to write when I am not teaching at a local elementary school.
When in the depressive depths of unappreciated work, a sense of hopelessness, nothing does more to fill and rebalance my soul than natural beauty.
Wide Alaskan skies imbue me with peace: the clouds manifest beauty, the colors shine, the clear air refreshes. Even when the wind currents above roil and churn, the clouds still evoke tranquility for me. At times the harmony between sky and sun causes the firmament to shift color, delighting my mind’s eye and marveling my perspective. The sky is ever changing yet always constant. Amid the alterations the sky is unfluctuating. It accepts the changes as part of itself and remains. Endlessly…
For you, a gallery of photos of Alaskan autumn skies. May the views fill you with peace and hopeful prospect.
I inhaled breathlessly at the soft pink and blue of the sky. The colors were crisp behind the dark green silhouettes of the spruce trees. I had to stop and awe at the unusual pastels — and try to capture it with my point-and-shoot camera.
Ten minutes later on my way home, a russet four-legger with a white-tipped tail loped languidly across the road in front of me, expertly far enough away from metal danger. It flowed down the gentle incline and across the still verdant field.
Dusk continued to thicken, turning the landscape into a richer palette of velvety monochrome. The windchime on my porch klingled musically in the autumnal breeze. Mother Nature had soothed my soul once again, and I could sleep calmly, untouched by the worries of the day.
Every time I drive on the road to or from my house, which is only a few minutes off of paved Alaskan highway, I feel like a bobblehead.
When I ride my bike, it’s more like an amusement park ride. Wheew!
What this road needs is some snow. That’ll fill in the potholes and smooth out the surface.
Driving to avoid these potholes creates a line that Billy of “The Family Circus” would be proud of. [A cartoon by Bil (and son Jeff) Keane.]
(Oops. I used the s-word. It’s still August, so most people in the world would not think it mattered. Nevertheless, it’s too soon to the white precipitation of October to use that word lightly… as the chill in the morning air and the occasional plant already starting to brown and golden prove.)
A story about the future of teaching in a coronavirus world.
Thank the stars and the powers that be! We’re back in school! I am so excited: I finally get to be in the same room with my students!
Wearing a mask handmade by a friend.
It was tough working with students through a screen, especially since our school day was shortened and screen time was limited to 150 minutes a day, while our curriculum of course did not get any smaller. We had more to do: we taught how to wash hands, wear masks, use a device appropriately, where to pick up food, and how to describe and improve one’s emotional well-being, among other duties. It seemed like every week there was an additional way for educators to extend a helping hand through the screen.
Because so many students enrolled in e-learning and home-school programs, I ended up being the only 5th grade teacher in the school. So, no teaching partner to bounce ideas off of. At first this was all right. I’d still see colleagues in the school building, and before the expectations and anxieties became too intense, I could find people to join me in a video meeting for an idea exchange or just to vent and commiserate. Thank goodness I am naturally an introvert or I would have gone off of the deep end and other teachers on staff would have had to absorb my students into their digital classrooms.
I got really good at recognizing people from the eyes up. When they kept on their hats after coming in from the long, cold 45ºF-below Alaskan winter I only had the mask design to go by. Then everyone starting buying or making new masks because our original ones were giving out. We started calling out greetings so we could recognize each other: “Good morning, I’m Erica!” “Hello, this is Richard!”
The winter did not kill the virus like someone said it was supposed to. Maybe that was because the cold and the dim winter light (or, where I live, the lack of light) prompted people to huddle together in friend and family groups. Maybe it was because the virus was fighting harder for its life. Whatever the reason, the bug did not die. It grew, multiplied, and strengthened. People of all ages contracted the illness more frequently; half of these died, while those who recovered could still get ill again, at greater ferocity.
Sadly, the heat of the second summer did not destroy the virus either. Scientists eventually determined that a quarter of the original population who showed no symptoms were in fact carriers, and there were a very, very, very special few who were completely immune. Despite all of the thorough, exhaustive tests governments around the world are running on these blesséd people, no drug, vaccine, or immunization procedure has proven effective.
This doesn’t matter anymore because schools have found a way to bring the children back into the buildings! Yay!
I’m so excited that I have to force myself to take deep breaths and look over the checklist I made for myself. I have all of the paperwork (real paper!) my students will use this year, all of the textbooks, the writing and art supplies. I wrote the schedule on the board yesterday, and sanitized the desks and the chairs.
I take another long inhale to quiet my excitement then pull on the straps at my wrists to synch up my sleeves. The school district is providing me with this new uniform and only taking the cost of it out of eight of my paychecks. My salary, like all teachers’, was reduced to help purchase an outfit for all of the returning students. The custodians who lived are receiving double what I used to earn — for hazard pay.
Before I get out of my car, I press the buttons at my neck again. I’ve never taken ill, which could mean I’m a carrier. I would rather be that than immune.
I greet my students at the classroom door. They are so excited to be in the classroom but after a joyful loud noise as they shout out to each other, they settle into chairs at their six-foot-apart desks. It’s strange that we’re still automatically maintaining social distancing. I suppose it has become a habit. I admit I feel undressed not wearing a mask, even though logically I know that my new uniform makes a mask unnecessary, assuming I’m wearing it properly. I pull at the fastenings and check the collar.
“Welcome, boys and girls! Welcome back into the school building!”
Cheers bounce echoingly, but jubilantly.
“I am going to come round to each of you to ask the health questions. Remember to answer honestly, just like you’ve been doing at home. We’ll do this at regular intervals every day, just like at home.”
A couple of groans go up. One child lays his head on the desk with a clunk.
I can’t help but smile because I know what I’m about to announce. “I know it might take a long time for me to get to everyone, and that’s why I have put some paper, pencils, and crayons in your desk. You can use them to draw whatever you want.”
Cheers again. I grin wider as I listen to the pupils.
“Look! I’ve got two pencils!”
“What’s this?”
“My older sister had one! Until she broke it. It’s a pencil sharpener.”
“What? How do you use it?”
“I’ve never had crayons before.”
“I’ve never had new ones.”
“We don’t get these unless we go to school,” a girl said proudly, admiring the six brilliant colors.
“Whoa…! There are real books in here too!”
I am so very glad I dipped into my food money to purchase these gifts for my students.
“Okay,” I say to the first child, gripping my plastic-sheathed school device in one hand. “What is your name?…Nice to meet you. I’m Ms. Swift. Have you or someone in your family been out of the city in the last three weeks?…Have you or anyone in your home had a sore throat in the last three weeks?…a cough?…loss of smell?…body aches for unknown reasons?…”
I run through the questions, keeping my eyes open for wiggling students who look about to get up. None do. It’s amazing how a couple of years will change behavior. I read this child’s temperature measurement and type it into the records.
I’m nearly done with the morning health check when a girl raises her hand. “Do I have to leave to go to the bathroom?” She asks.
“Students cannot leave their classroom.” I shake my head. “Is your sound filter installed?” I have a few extra in a sealed package on my cart just in case. She nods her head.
“Good. Go ahead.”
I finish making my rounds, then I pass out water pouches, checking that the children can easily access the contents. A pair of students suspiciously refuse the water until I point out the stamped seal, and then they accept.
“Attention please,” and I wait for everyone to put down their writing utensils. “Everyone looks healthy.” I smile. “Now, get ready. When I say ‘go’, you need to press the two center buttons on your collar. When I say ‘stop’, push your head covering back on. Ready? Set. Go.”
Hsss… The pneumatic helmets crack open at the collar, letting in the classroom air. While I watch the timer, I also scan the room, making sure each child has opened his or her hazmat suit. We practiced this repeatedly during our school district professional development day.
“Stop!” I mime pushing my helmet back into place.
Click-click, click. I scan the room once more. The buttons circling the metal collar at each child’s neck are lit up solid green. Still, I walk the room quickly, making sure that the locks have indeed firmly closed and each child is in its own sealed environment. A couple of students nervously suck on the straws that connect to the water pouches fastened at their shoulders.
“Why do we have to do this again?”
“We’re exposing you slowly to the virus so that you build up a natural immunity. This time it was only one second. Each time it will be a different number of seconds. Our next exposure is in two hours.”
I really hope this natural immunity process theory works — without the “acceptable losses” everyone talks about.
I give a short math lesson and my students instinctively pull out their devices.
“If you finish your work early, please check the Google Classroom for additional math practice, or you can look at the Language Arts assignments. If you are comfortable that you understand what to do, you can work on them, or practice your typing skills. Lessons are in the Classroom topic folder. You can even read the textbooks that are in your desks.” I’m pleased at the eager looks in some children’s eyes when I mention the hardcovers. “When I come back, I’ll do another health check and refill water if you need it, and I’ll have a snack too.”
Some students clap or smile. A couple have already turned their focus to their studies.
“Lunch is at 11:30.” I point at the schedule. “You can see, too, that twice a day I’ll be emptying your holding tanks.” I smile reassuringly at the girl who has already made use of hers.
The instructional tutor appears at the doorway. After making sure that everyone is paying attention, I introduce her and leave the class in her hands.
As I am heading out, I notice a temperature indicator wired into a helmet has bumped up one degree. I hope this is just a minor fluctuation and not an indication of the child’s sensitivity to the virus. Not on my first day…
I make sure the suit’s fan system is working properly before I leave.
I roll my cart down the hallway to the next room, where the next group of students is waiting. I greet them, usher them in, and begin the same routine I ran through with my first group.
Each of the six remaining teachers have five classrooms to manage. The staggered starts mean that the pods of students will be even less likely to interact. It also means that my day, and each of the next 199 days, is going to be a long one. I know that my job description has changed significantly in the last two years, but I still reserve hope that in these forty weeks of school I will be able to teach some of my eighty elementary students at least a little of the academic skills they have lost due to the virus — without losing many of them to it.
A sound that seemed to come from inside my floorboards drove me outside to see where the source of the scratching (the culprit!) might be.
Said the trapper to the squirrel, “Gotcha!”
Over the last two years I have had problems with squirrels getting inside my house.
1) During one winter the house had shifted so much on its pilings that the underside of my house had dropped onto the board onto which the lightning rod wire is stapled, causing it to punch through the plywood on the bottom of my house. The house rising again, perhaps in combination with the board sinking, too, had created a hole right next to a metal foundational beam — a perfect walkway for a squirrel, which ducked inside and began making itself at home.
I heard it scrabbling around underneath my kitchen floor, found the hole, borrowed a live trap from a coworker, trapped the sciurine beast, and relocated it to a park eight miles away — but not before I had boarded up the hole. I had an imaginative vision of the squirrel somehow making it back to my house before I could pull up in my driveway. Although I doubt a squirrel could run faster than the speed limit, I heard later from a friend that I might not have taken it out of its habitat range after all.
2) The next year, during the spring, I heard the same type of scrabble-scratching outside my bedroom window. Since the room is on the second floor, there was only one place for the rodent to be: inside the overhang porch roof. The edge of the wire blocking the ventilated soffit had been pushed in on the end over the steps, creating a hole just big enough for a narrow-skulled rodent to squeeze through.
I set up a table and chair on the porch deck and sat down for a relaxing read, with the ulterior motive of catching the critter in the act. A couple of quiet days later, I did. I heard the pitter-patter of tiny hard nails moving from one end of the soffit to the other. Stealthily I stood and the gnawing mammal froze when it saw me looking up at it.
We stared at each other, I with narrowed eyes, it with wide black ones. Four toes curled around the wood panel forming the soffit vent. It looked down through the gap above, safe.
“You’d better find someplace else to live,” I whispered menacingly. “I’m going to get you.”
Its tail twitched.
I shot it a dagger glance then retreated inside. Whether the varmint stayed in the roof for a while or climbed headfirst down the supporting post, I do not know. I knew my game plan.
I had purchased a live trap and now set it up on the railing, using sunflower seeds as bait. The next days the seeds were gone, but the trap unsprung.
I used peanut butter to glue more sunflower seeds to the trip plate.
The next day, I heard metal rubbing on wood and went outside just in time to stop the trap from plummeting off the edge of the rail from the movement of the squirrel’s urgent attempt to escape. I checked that the end flaps were secured and looked purse-lipped at the rodent again.
“Gotcha.” I bared my teeth in a smile. “I told you I would.”
The squirrel raced back and forth inside the trap, the trip plate clattering at its each pass.
I set the trap in the back of my truck, snuggly between the closed tailgate and campsite firewood, and the squirrel ceased trying to escape. Even though I did not want it to destroy my house from inside out, I also did not want to cause it undue stress whilst in captivity.
Before driving it to a park (across town this time), I climbed a ladder to block the squirrel-sized gap. The majority of the scrabbling sound had come from the other end of soffit, so I made sure to staple-gun a thicker wire mesh over both ends.
3) This third time I found a potential hole near where the old waterline had entered the house. Even though it looked to have no access to the house itself, still I baited the trap with peanut butter-smeared crackers (chunky peanut butter, of course), and drove to work.
When I returned home, the strangest thing—! The trap was gone! Vanished!
A lump hunkered at the base of my throat. What creature could have stolen it? A squirrel would not have been strong enough. What creature had been brave enough to be so close to my house? Had a squirrel been trapped inside so a predator had carried it off in its quest to break through the cage to the juicy center?
Live trap left by unknown animal, upside down, on game trail.
Had a fox gotten stuck in or injured by the trap? Needing to know, I began a systematic search for evidence of what had happened.
I discovered one metal end flap several yards away. Upside down, several feet down a game trail that led away from the house I found the trap itself. It was not broken, and, thankfully, sported no blood or fur. I guess that the animal had been able to shake off the trap with no injury to itself. I could breathe deeply now.
I put the live trap away, blocked the hole and have not again heard the telltale sound of a squirrel in my house. Would I have wanted to set out the trap again?
I hope if it was a fox that had reached its snout or paw inside the trap to lick up the nut protein and gobble up the crackers that the metal had really not scratched it or injured it in anyway. I truly hope that I have not scared away any vixen or reynard. I love seeing wildlife of all kinds passing through or running about in my yard.
I am impressed at the number of different ways we can wear masks!
I wonder if the protection level of your mask depends on two things: 1) how strongly you believe that COVID-19 exists, and 2) the number of people in your life whom you care about…
Soup. She craved some warm, delicious soup. Her children needed soup. This favorite dish was not always easy to find, but lucky her: So many restaurants had just moved into the neighborhood!
She stopped by the nearest, but the smell turned her off. The owner had just painted the façade.
She hurried to the next eatery.
What? She would have sworn she could sense a delectable aroma emanating from the kitchen, but this place was boarded up.
The next locale was open. Hm, the food must be good. Crowds were swarming to it. Finding a place to sit was tricky, but she was able to squeeze in. Yum, the soup was fantastic. With her belly as full as she could get it, she sighed and started to leave. Suddenly, a wind storm hit!
She ducked through a doorway then sprang back as a flat section of the bistro smashed onto two of her fellow diners. She shrieked and darted away as fast as she could.
Ah, man. She was already hungry again, and her unborn children still needed her to obtain as much of that tasty red soup as possible, so she flew towards another potentially open establishment. If she were lucky, she could grab another meal there too.
Don’t get bitten!
She had always enjoyed these fly-by outdoor cafes. She sang as she perused the dining options. This was going to be a good day.
Story inspiration: Group hiking in the mountains, through the shade of tree boughs, after a rain. Long pants, long sleeves, bug spray, head net…my deli’s closed!
Photographs: I am by far an expert at fiber art, but I do enjoy it. I wanted a fun accompaniment to a gift I was giving to my adventurer friend, so I scanned the Web for crochet patterns, and was sucked in by Ziggy Mosquito’s looks, especially her prominent proboscis. Plus, I could easily adapt this cute pattern by Marie Lize (2013) to the gauge, type, and color of the yarn I had handy. When the mosquito was finished I realized she would also be perfect to illustrate this short story.
The rain was so thick that my wipers could barely keep up. Sunshine blinded, so I quickly pulled on my shades and squinted up at the blue sky. The rapid beat of plinks and plops delightfully drowned out the radio’s music. Sixteen wheels in the other lane threw up a cloud of spray like from a tumbling river waterfall. Mist washed the raindrops’ sillhouettes from the windshield, then immediately speckled with another shower of rain. Charcoal grey clouds threatened from the northeast, but the sunshine and azure heavens followed me all of the way home.
