Saltwater and sea air

That's where I am these days. I tried this out when the cool kids were all giving it a whirl, but I got tired of the fussy compose window that was hard to make do what I wanted, the image formatting that was difficult to control, and when vox broke entirely with adblock and support's fix didn't work for me, it just all got too much to bother with. Like jessamyn, I have a home of my own elsewhere and no compelling need to be in too many places at once. And the whole agglomeration of friends thing doesn't mean that much to me--it's like a cutesy sub for an rss reader, and whatever extra value that provides is apparently lost on me. So, as with flickr, vox just seems to be taking a different path than I find useful or attractive. My friends will find me if they choose, and if they don't choose, I don't need to be adding noise to their lives. I'll still be directing some of my friends and family here, when I feel vox suits a particular objective or level of technical expertise, but it's not, after all, a good match for what I care to do.

Thanks vox. See ya.

This was the short day, since the last flight I could get a seat on was the 1:40, well before the conference was over (and causing me to miss the sci-fi presentation *grump*). But I did spend another pleasant breakfast hour chatting with the other attendees and then sat in on "Program idea sharing for children." I was abashed to have to announce that I was not there, as the others were, to share details of successful programs they'd held, but rather to leech their ideas in hopes of reinvigorating our own program. With so very few volunteers, we're stretched full out to just meet our obligation to have the library open a specific number of hours a week. In the past, parents have stepped forward to help us out with summer reading and other children's programming, but in recent years those with kids in the right age group are already feeling fully booked helping out in the school or in other roles. Sandra Strandmann and the other librarians there were most gracious about listening to the challenges we face and making suggestions for low-overhead projects that might be within our reach, especialy if we are able to work with some of the other local agencies that are already holding various kid-related (not necessarily reading) programs such that our kids aren't really looking for new places to go. I have a nice list of fairly specific ideas to present to our director when she gets back, and I'm hoping we can get something going for this summer.

By the time that was over, I had just the right amount of time to whip back to the hotel and get checked out, then head out to the airport. Juneau certainly has a different take on security from that I'm more accustomed to in Anchorage—the agents seemed surprisingly apologetic and very very new to the whole process. My laptop was selected for special swabbing, and I stood there stoically, hoping no words ghosted out of the case to reveal their explosive potential. Apparently they all behaved, since I was eventually waved on through.

The plane was full and there were a great many librarians making up the crowd. At one point, not far out of Anchorage, one of them leaped up with a camera and shouted "If you're a librarian, hold up your book!" Wouldn't you know, I had finished my paperback the night before and was knitting away on my striped socks. But a young man next to me was half-dozing, his book stuck in the seat pocket in front of him, and so with a hasty "Mind?" I grabbed his and held it aloft in solidarity (it looked to be a bio of a school wrestler who—I'm a little vague here because I only caught a glimpse—lost a limb to something like cancer). The kid rolled his eyes with typical teen disdain for the lunacy of old women, but was otherwise gracious and returned to the appearance of sleep just as quickly as he could manage.

The rest of the trip home was smooth enough, just waiting out the passage of time and miles (*yawn*). Now I have a pile of receipts (hi, Shirly) and a stack of notes to go through. I wish that I had more pdfs and fewer sheets of paper, though. I heard several times during the conference that the presenters would be passing along their powerpoints and other materials to AkLA to post on the conference website. That hasn't happened yet, but I realize people are busy getting home and dealing with the backlog from last week. That said, it would really have been swell if those materials had gone up before the presentations. I would have loved to have downloaded pdfs and annotated them during the presentations instead of having a file of notes and another file (or, worse, something in that stack of paper) of the presenter's notes for each one.  Or that more presenters had done what Mike Robinson did, and posted their materials on their own sites as a bunch of links and worked from that during their presentations. Maybe another year.

Saturday was another long, full day and again I came away just bubbling with good ideas and conversations. While the presenters were generally great, I also really enjoyed the chance to speak with the other participants who were there. Signing up for the convention breakfast turned out to be an excellent move, and I met many very pleasant and interesting librarians over coffee and yogurt. But all during the day, whether it was in the halls, seated waiting for sessions, prowling the vendor exhibits (oh, so clever that was putting the coffee and juice stand at the far end of the vendor exhibits), or even walking to and from my hotel, I found the other librarians always ready to invite me into their conversations or responsive to my invitations. Talking with other articulate, well-educated people who have many of the same interests I do: how could that fail to be fascinating? And did I mention how nice they all were? Really.

The first morning session was another one devoted to wi-fi issues, this time presented by librarian Kimberly Bolan and techie Rob Cullin. Yes, I know I spent all day Thursday on this, but lots of opinions are always good when you're exploring a new body of knowledge. A lot of their focus was on planning, so that was especially valuable in terms of making me confident that I was looking at all of the pertinent issues. As I review my notes, I see that I have more than one line set off by the row of asterisks that is my personal note-taking code for "actually do this." And they also were good on the other side of planning: that nothing will ever be 100% ready, so act judiciously but don't wait till you've answered every question to begin putting something in place. And following on that, despite the importance of publicity, don't rush into large-scale publicity on something new; give it a chance to be discovered by users and at the same time, you will slowly and manageably discover the problems that need to be dealt with.

The next presentation was another schedule shift for me, again moving into a tech session from a more general book-related session. It's not that I'm not interested in that part of the work of a library; it's just that I know that the rest of the library relies on me to be able to answer the technical questions, and I have plenty more to learn before I can do so with confidence and expertise. Folks who have seen what all is installed on my computer and the library computers might wonder what I might hope to take away from a presentation entitled "Why pay money for it?" given my well-demonstrated prediliction for open source and free applications. But Mike Robinson was an active and interesting participant in an earlier session I'd attended and this made me want to hear what he had to bring to this topic. And it was worth it, since he works for the UAA Consortium library and could talk about how various tools actually pan out in library use and which of the various ones stood out as best (which often includes "easiest," since an important element of cost is the time it takes to install and learn to use) in each category. I came away with a few new things to check out and greater confidence that I was focusing in the right direction in my use of some of my existing choices.

Continuing on in the open source discussions, I next went to a presentation by Darla Grediagin on Koha, a full library circulation/online catalog program. I actually auditioned this program three years ago when I was helping the library choose a replacement for its aging DOS version of Follett. Thanks to helpful volunteers and great directions on the wiki, I made it most of the way through the installation and configuration process. I ultimately abandonned it, alas, when I got to the part where it was necessary to create, from a black database, all of the MARC record fields you wanted to use. Now, I don't have an MLS, so while I know what a MARC record is, rolling up my sleeves and pawing around through their guts is not so much what I'm educated to take on. If there had been some sort of generic table, a default, I would have been all over it. But there wasn't, and so I wasn't. But Darla and I had talked some about Koha on the flight in and I was anxious to hear what more she could offer on the topic. We're fairly happy with the system we're using now (ResourceMate, in case you're wondering), but that doesn't mean we're necessarily wedded to them forever. Darla's enthusiasm is boundless, as is her experience with the trials of getting a fairly versatile product set up to meet the needs of her school district's numerous branches. I though that her presentation could have been better organized, but I accomplished what I'd attended for: a look at the present build and how it actually functions for an Alaskan library.

The afternoon "talk tables" were a nice setting for informal discussion, and I caught part of the "Guys read" program presentation and had a nice chat with the folks who run the "Tech support help desk project." Both were worthwhile, and being able to stand and talk was a nice change from sitting and taking notes. Good conference pacing.

And, finally, something on books (you were wondering; admit it). The last session of the day was a bang-up one by Kevin King on "Comics and graphic novels in the library." King is a fanboy, and we had a comics dealer in the audience, so there was a lot to glean here. I've been unabashedly pushing our director to add more graphic novels to our collection and the kids have helped me out by eagerly embracing every new series we offer them. King's handouts included a number of "must have" collection fundamentals, so it was perfect for folks just getting acquainted with the area and I suspect our director will feel more confident ordering with such a tool in hand (yeah, we already have some of them in our collection—aren't we just on top of thing?). There was also some good, general talk about how to deal with finding the right level in the library for certain works (just as there is with text novels, of course).

So, another good day with lots of tech and a book list to take home. I think I'm probably earning my keep, here.

I've been slow in putting up the rest of my conference reports, but not from lack of will. It's been a snag Vox has thrown in my way, and that made me a touch peevish. Between one day and the next, something at Vox changed that made me unable to edit posts or open the organize section.

The good news is that when I emailed in a description of my problem, they responded promptly with the suggestion that it might be my adblock extension. I tested and yeah, it was. Since neither the extension nor the filterset had been updated in the critical period, that left it as something vox had changed--in fact, that's why that extension wasn't part of my initial troubleshooting and why I missed that connection the first time around. I responded sadly that not only do I consider this extension a basic security device that I wasn't really wanting to have to disable every time I wanted to use the site, but that expecting other users of more limited understanding to manage this was somehow a bit askew from their "simple enough for everyone" premise.

But ultimately that's a site's prerogative, to block my use if I don't contribute to their revenue stream. I can't argue with that. Personally, I'd happily pay them the amount of revenue they'd make off my loading the ads just to have things work smoothly without them, but, again, it's their business model and they have for whatever reason not chosen that option. So, like the situation with flickroo, I figured I had gotten the big "who cares?" and it was up to me to put up or leave.

I was surprised, then when I received a second email, saying that they'd updated the code and to try it again. Alas, despite furious cache-emptying and shift + reloading, I was still blocked. I sent them back this result, and have not heard back since. Still, I was actually quite impressed that they'd gone this far to accommodate me (and surely I'm not the only one--I hardly can take sole credit for this given the popularity of the extension). That is different from the yahoo response, and that in turn does make me willing to wait a bit and see how this works out. I'll go back to posting because I really do like the combination of features they've assembled here. I'd like to do it without having to turn off an extension, but I'll bite that bullet for a bit in hopes of them actually achieving a fix. I pulled my photos off of flickr because I don't consider "tough shit" an acceptable customer service response from a company I choose to do business with. Vox has been trying to convince us that they're different. Let's see.

Friday was the official beginning of the conference, and of course beginning with a keynote address is the thing to do. This keynote was presented by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum, creators of the Unshelved cartoon strip that features, of course, a library, librarians, and assorted patrons. In the case of this duo, the strips are written by a librarian and drawn by a cartoonist, and they launched their talk with a rousing 'library simulator" session that featured a variety of performance contributions from the audience and culminated in the iconic "shhhhhhh!" Good start. Daniel Cornwell has more on their presentation.

I enjoyed their whole talk--it was light and funny and unpretentious but, throughout, remained library-related. The one image I found sticks with me, to the extent that it transferred intact to my to-do list for when we get library wi-fi, was the one illustrating how wi-fi in libraries would free users from being stuck to the physical library layout...drawn as a crowd of laptop users all huddled around the single power outlet in sight. That pretty much spoke to our experience in the convention center: the wi-fi was there (thank you!) but the laptop carriers were distinguished in every presentation by heading directly for the walls. That wasn't a problem in most of the smaller rooms—and since the tech topics that attracted the laptop carriers also attracted the smaller crowds and had power needs for the presenters, they all ended up well served. The few presentations I attended in the ballrooms, however, provided no outlets. Luckily, these were not so numerous on  my schedule that I couldn't make it through on batteries and then recharge during the next, powered presentation. But another schedule in another venu might not be as well provided-for, and I hope that this same image proves sticky in the minds of future AkLA conference planners.

From the keynote, I went on to a presentation on "Electronic presence and outreach: beyond your library's website. Mike Pruzan seems like a nice guy and a decent presenter, so I'm a little sorry that we ran away with his lecture and turned it into a general discussion on web tools and how we're using them. I have to confess to being a party to this hijacking, but I won't take sole blame since Daniel Cornwell started at least my part in it by commenting in a discussion on the use of deli.cio.us as an adjunct to a library blog that Seldovia is doing so. That led to me fessing up to being the guilty party behind the blog, and Mike soon had our deli.cio.us account displayed on the big screen and off the discussion went. But I think that this (as well as many sidebar conversations I had with other librarians who sought me out on these topics during the conference) did demonstrate—and I shared this with Aja Razumny at the end of the conference—that there is growing familiarity out there with at least the names/existence of the basic tools and a sense that their use is desirable, but there seems to be a craving next for the more practical "how do I get started using them" and "what are the issues we need to worry about along the way" and "how much of our already critically short time is this going to demand?" This is some of what Jessamyn West spends a lot of time talking about (I'm giving you two links here because she has a subtle difference in her tags). Aja, clever person that she is, immediately turned this observation back to me by asking if I'd like to present on this part of the topic next year, or at least participate in a round table, but I had to tell her that my attendance is purely up to our library director and I can't speak for her intentions (but that, yeah, it's of interest to me and that if I attend, sure). So, as for Mike, yeah, he ended up getting lost in the greater topic, just like he has in this paragraph, and I'm sorry about that. At least you sparked some good conversations, Mike, and thank you for that.

I'm glad I abandonned my previous schedule plans and next attended Dale Mussleman's presentation on "Manage and maintain your Gates library computers." Dale was involved in the original Gates Foundation program that made so many computers (and their complex software/hardware configuration) available to libraries throughout the state, so he had actual working knowledge of these specific machines. He was armed with books, cds, and all sorts of tips for recovering from years of subsequent neglect these machines have suffered from in many cases (*cough*) as well as dealing with newer machines that have similar vulnerabilites without the build-in protections. I just feel really set up to maintain our two public computers now even though, *sigh* that means I have a lot of heavy reading ahead. But, hey, at least I now know where to do that reading. And where to go for help with them if I need it. There was excellent value for our library in this session.

The final presentation of the day was in many regards the most disappointing one of the conference. Mary Lou Caskey obviously has a great deal of experience, but her talk on the "Top 10 things I've learned about managing libraries" didn't really contain much that seemed terribly new or insightful. After talking with some of the others who attended her session, that seems to be a feeling shared by a number of us. Marketing and promotion being important, watching your personal image, partnering with others...I'm not sure whether it was a matter of perceived scaling or what it was that failed to make these rather basic concerns resonate, but when I left I didn't feel especially richer than I did when I walked in. I'm sorry, because she presented well otherwise, but it either wasn't sterling content or it simply wasn't content I needed or wanted.

And that, plus a very pleasant lunch with Daniel's party, and my brain was about full for the day. There was a dessert reception that evening for a bunch of authors and there was to be music and it was at the downtown Juneau library, which I'd surely have enjoyed seeing, but when I got back to my room and thought about getting on a bus at 7 with a return bus not until 9:30, I realized that my enthusiasm had run out beyond even the power of chocolate to revive. So I didn't. 

I'd had fun chitchatting on a pickup basis with some of the various librarians swirling about the airport, plane, and hotel, but Thursday was the start of the conference. I have to say it lived up to my expectations and even hopes, right away.

I had signed up for a whole-day workshop on wireless for libraries, the morning to be background on connectivity, troubleshooting and security and the afternoon to be a hands-on lab with the equipment. My new laptop looked a little bare lined up with everyone else's on the table, even though I'd stuck one of my freebie moo cards on it with some tape just before I left home so that I could at least pick it out going through security. Steve has promised to find me one of those sexy skull stickers that say "Born to wellhead" and I'm looking forward to slapping that on it.

The workshop was good. The instructor knew his stuff and, even better, could communicate it without having to impress us with impenetrable jargon. We had a couple very tech folks in the class, too, who were there to find out what kind of things the librarians wanted to know, and they were a swell bridge between the basic tech and what we knew about what our patrons want and how that works out in real life. I decided, after talking with the instructor, that the equipment we'd used for the class wasn't exactly what our particular network best needs, but I have a way better idea now of what I am shopping for. Shirly and I will be having some serious discussions about security and bandwidth, and I think my take-home value here will be high.

In the evening, I went back over for the opening reception to the conference itself (the day had been nominally pre-conference; the workshop a grant-funded special). I was hailed by Paul Seaton, our local state representative who does make a point of staying in touch with his constituents. He gathered a group of us, representing Seldovia, Homer and Seward, and we spent some time chatting about the legislative session in general and then quite a bit specific to the issue of school funding. If I will fault Paul in conversation, it's that he's just a bit too quick to argue back with what he's identified as the best solution rather than listening fully to his constituent concerns. But I'm also well aware that such concerns are often based on limited knowledge of the processes and finances involved, and as such somewhat askew from the actual work that may be done. The major part of his text was that he is emphatically working for more funding, especially for funding that more effectively addresses our district's schizophrenic status as part-rural and part-urban (we get  funded at 80% of what Anchorage gets, but have high costs due to our rural schools, like Seldovia, that are not addressed well by that formula). He was a bit critical of the school board/district, saying that they didn't need to do the dramatic mid-spring teacher layoff, but rather that this was their choice over getting an earlier financial settlement from the state in the hopes that the drama would gain some last-minute funding boosts at the end of the session. He also was vehement that guaranteed minimum funding increases most successfully guaranteed that only the minimum would ever be conveyed. That may or may not fully cover the case, but I will give him points for being there (there were not a lot of other legislators working the librarians) at least.

But (sorry, Paul) the highlight of the evening was the group of ballroom dancers from local elementary schools that performed for us. This is one of those behavioral success stories (you've seen the movie? we've got it at the library) in which unruly kids develop a passion and incidentally some manners and respect for each other. So the group of third gradeish-looking kids filed in, couple by couple, and treated us to a demonstration of a waltz, swing, tango, and merengue. The applause was heavy and the kids were beaming with their reception. Really, it was charming. And just right to follow a day of heavy brain activity.

In the winter, it's never easy in Alaska, or quick. I left on Monday for a conference I planned to attend on Thursday, and that almost wasn't long enough.

See, I left home a full day early, starting just with getting over to Homer. It was a relatively early morning flight and the north wind wasn't yet as boisterous as it grew to be later in the day. But plenty bouncy, that flight was, nonetheless. We took an extra lap around town for Becky, who grew up here and had been home for a quick visit. Once we got headed along the bay, it was lovely watching the great tumbling snow plumes blowing off the ridges and backlit with the low, peach light from the sun in the south. Becky and I both had our cameras out, shooting, but the motion made it hard and I eventually put mine away for fear that I'd jounce my lens into the window. I probably would have been able to shoot more steadily had I not been in a seat with a collapsed back and a duct-taped seatbelt that I couldn't pull tight around me, but these are busy planes, heavily used, and that isn't always an option.

But that went well enough. It didn't start to get interesting till the next day.

It was well before 7 am when I arrived for my flight to see a suspiciously empty parking lot. Inside, the sole person working told me the flight had been canceled: broken plane. She offered to book me on the next flight, and even called to get me on a replacement for the connecting flight I'd miss. So, a few hours of boredom sitting in the airport waiting, but that's why I carry a book, right? Yeah, too bad the Homer airport doesn't have wi-fi.

The first clue I had that I wasn't out of the woods yet was when I was sitting waiting for the next flight in Anchorage and overhearing some folks behind me talking about the earlier flight to Juneau getting routed on to Petersburg, probably to spend the night. As it turned out, we were all sitting at the wrong gate, courtesy of Alaska Airlines posting it incorrectly on their electronic boards. We fooled them, though, and found the correct gate.

Yes indeed, the chances were slim of our flight getting in to Juneau in heavy snow and blustering winds, they confirmed. If we got on the flight and it couldn't land, the next stop would be Seattle. If we didn't get on the flight, we'd need to know that all of the following day's Juneau flights were already overbooked. The chances of getting to Juneau from Seattle were better than getting there from Anchorage, we were assured. I didn't know whether that "better" really referred to us or to their preference for clearing us out of being their problem and passing us along to Seattle for disposal, but going on seemed to hold more promise than not. At the least, a growing crowd of librarians agreed, we'd have the entertainment of a dinner and possibly some shopping in Seattle in recompense for missing the first day of the conference. Since Thursday's workshop was the one I especially wanted to attend, my choice was fairly clear: surely missing it if I stayed in Anchorage vs possibly missing it and ending up in Seattle.

We weren't too late taking off from Anchorage, although being Alaska Airlines, no one had expected them to really be on time. The pilot came on after we landed in Cordova and told us it wasn't likely that we'd be able to land in Juneau and would probably be going on to Seattle. After we landed in Yakutat, the pilot came on and told us it wasn't likely that we'd be able to land in Juneau and would probably be going on to Seattle. The librarians standing in the aisles chatting laughed and made plans for dinner.

As we were approaching Juneau and starting down, the pilot explained once again that we had fuel for only one try at landing, and since that decision has to be made some distance out, at Juneau, due to the mountainous terrain landing planes have to thread their way through, we'd not necessarily even have a chance at landing.

It was dark out by then. Snow was visible blasting past the lights out on the wings. The turbulence grew and the plane was dropping, rising, side-slipping in the buffets. There was nothing to be seen out the windows. The snacks ("only for those originally scheduled to be on this flight; all others will only get orange juice" the attendants said as they passed out the nutritious combination of a bag of potato chips and a cookie) had all been cleaned up and all the computers and most of the knitting had been put away. The plane creaked and heaved.

And then we were on the ground. Just like that.

I've been on flights where the pilot got a standing ovation upon touching down. This wasn't one of those. But a happy swell of noise built as we seized our laptops and bags and started surveying who was staying at which hotel and who we'd be sharing cabs with. For me, only 13 hours out from Homer, I made it to Juneau. And that's faster, still, than walking.

It was another bit of adventure at the hotel, what with not having heat in my room and the pot smoke drifting in clouds in from the hall and the jackhammer (what were they doing at 8:30 at night?) and the crowd joyfully having circus sex in the next room, but this is after all the state capitol and you have to expect a little drama. Juneau prides itself on that.

When Frank Murkowski was governor, he insisted that the state buy him his own jet because he shouldn't have to travel on commercial transport. The only group who supported the action was the airline attendants union, whose members were said to be thoroughly tired of coping with his tantrums and demanding behavior. As soon as the door slammed behind him at the end of his term, it went on sale and thence to eBay (where I still don't think it's sold yet, but I haven't really been following its travails that closely). It is thus the perfect symbol of everything Frank stood for as a politician and exactly emblematic of what he did for the State of Alaska.

It has been a very quiet week here. No, not the kind of quiet you get from a tiny town half-empty in the depths of winter, although that is also the case. This quiet is different. It's the quiet you experience when the background noise of your life is turned off.

Most of us live with a lot of background noise and don't really pay it any attention. There's the noise of traffic, the noise of the neighbors, the noise in our homes of machines running, even when we are home alone. Some folks, like the lifeguard who takes over the morning lap swim when Steve's away, add music to that noise, music so loud it hurts my ears even when I have earplugs in and my own mp3 player running and I'm half under the water. But she and her friends just tune their own voices up a notch and bellow over it all, unconcerned: it's all part of the background for her and it's so important a background element that the first thing she does when she arrives, before she unlocks the locker room doors and turns on the lights, is turn on that noise, and it stays until she showers and is ready to lock the door again. So too with background noise are environments vividly cast in movies, like the continuous ship noises through “Master and Commander” or the deep rumble of the engine in the spaceship Serenity and its absence when the shots are exterior.

Although we have a perhaps regrettable lack of interesting spaceships and rather an overabundance of blaring music at times here, the background sounds of our life here are nonetheless distinctive. On winter nights when the wind is up out on the Inlet, there is the slow rolling roar of the waves crashing and stirring the shingle a mile away on the Outside Beach. On winter school holidays, like Friday, there is the relentless roar of snow machines going around and around and around the lake below my house for hours on end, accompanied by the squeals and screams of racing children. (That used to be illegal, but under our new kinder, gentler, anti-environmentalist city council, apparently not so much so any longer.)

But year around there is another constant of our daylight hours, and that's the sound of airplanes landing and taking off, hour in and hour out, through the year. It can be a gentle noise and sometimes it can be a horrifically loud noise, but Seldovians just pause in their conversations (although it's a little more droll when you're on the phone with someone elsewhere and have to ask “can you just hang on a sec—there's a plane taking off here”) and then pick up again as the aircraft trails its diminishing volume off to Homer or the villages around the corner. It's a traffic noise, not much different from a highway running a block or two away from your neighborhood: out of sight but never out of hearing. We don't always listen to every plane, but the special ones sure do catch the ear: the missed approaches with a frantic acceleration back airborne at the end, the heavy clunk of a rough set down, the revving and stalling back on a wind-swirling day, the one that cuts rudely close over town (surely full of tourists who don't know any better, jerks).

And we surely notice them when they stop. Oh, maybe not the first missed flight, although if you're expecting a package or fretting about whether or not the weather is going to close in and wreak havoc on your delicate travel plans then yes, maybe so. But there comes a time on a foggy/snowy/rainy day when you surface from your work and think “Huh. Haven't heard much traffic for awhile.” And a quick look out the upstairs window tells the story: the mountains across the bay have disappeared. That's the metric, you see. Our airstrip is VFR, which means that you cannot fly a commercial flight (a private individual can be as much of an idiot as they want) in or out if you cannot see at least three miles. And from my upstairs window, that's where that mountaintop with the sounding board measures. So if I can't see the mountain, the odds are that the pilots cannot see far enough to land.

A halt to flying is old news to Seldovians: happens all the time. The fear of it is vastly traumatic to the government and business and agency visitors who come here, though, and it's not unusual at all to have them bolt for the airport halfway through a meeting, no matter what the weather, as they lose control of their fears and succumb to the dire specter of being stuck in a place without cell phone service forever. FOREVER!!!1 Most of us know how to scramble to shift travel plans if they're that necessary (and we left a day early instead, if we were really worried). Most of us who live here are able to do so because we can live with uncertain transportation and the demands of the weather.

But the weather closed in this week around Wednesday, or maybe even Tuesday afternoon. I wasn't really watching that closely because, you know, I don't need to go anywhere that I can't walk to at the moment. And although it wasn't bad weather, a low foggy cloud hung in all the rest of the week. A few flights were able to grab a hole in the clouds to dash in, but the skies were mostly silent, grey, undisturbed. There was no mail. There were no packages out at the airport. There were no fresh donuts or newspapers at the store.

And by Saturday, there was whining. Resigned whining, because everyone knows there's nothing to be done, but half the week without mail and now the weekend to go (we don't get mail service on the weekends, here), oh that's coming up on a longish time to be so out of touch, and then there'll be the wait when the mail does finally come in for Margaret and Jeff to get all that backlog sorted out for us. The newspaper readers are starting to chafe, those who don't fancy the TV version and who aren't comfortable reading online, the way I do. There's a little pride in that whine (“see what I have to bear up under”), and I think to some degree the old-timers, at least, get a little nostalgic about what were the considerably more serious rigors of isolation they faced a few decades ago. Someone always offers up a comparison to when the newspapers were always three days late arriving from Anchorage or the TV shows were shipped up on tape and broadcast two to three months late (imagine watching your Superbowl in March, long after you read the wrap-ups in the press) or all the sugar sold out at Christmas and the shelves were empty till the ice went out again in March or April. At the library, one of the managers from the store is joshed gently for promising newspapers in half an hour and has to explain that mechanical problems kept the plane from dashing through a momentary hole. Someone else speaks up to say that that flight a day or two ago was an outbound medivac, taking the chance of punching through on the pilot's motor recollection of that big hill just beyond the end of the strip.

Right now, the light is starting to come up behind the grey, solid clouds. Snow is falling, hard to see yet except as motion against the deep dark of the spruce trees around the house. The only sounds I hear are the hum of the fans in the computer and the clack of keys and a gentle cat snore from the windowsill. It's going to be another quiet day.

Dear weather gods in charge of the Seldovia vicinity:

It has come to my attention that you have recently been scheduling your snowfalls to occur on Tuesdays and Thursdays and Saturdays. While I am all in favor of the snow and the wholesome outdoor exercise that shoveling your snow back up entails, I feel that I must point out that this is less than optimal scheduling.

As it happens, snow that falls one day often continues into the dark hours (which at this time of year is, frankly, most of them), thus making the aforementioned shoveling not feasible until the following day.  But since I swim on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, this means that after I get done swimming for an hour, I get to come home and spend another 2 1/2 hours shoveling. While this is indeed a glorious fitness opportunity, this leaves the other days of the week suffering something of a deficit and requires me to spend my exercise on the considerably more boring treadmill.

If you were to shift your schedule of snowfall (given that the school sets the swim schedule and you know how THEY are about flexibility) to M/W/F, then I would be able to do the shoveling on the days I do not otherwise have fitness events scheduled.

Thank you for entertaining this suggestion for the improvement of your service.

Respectfully yours,
Me

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To: vehicles that drive on my driveway before I'm done shoveling
From: the cranky old broad at 318
Re: tire tracks

Are you aware of what a pain it is scraping up the smooshed-snow tire tracks you make on the otherwise smooth and pristine ice surface that undercoats my driveway? Let me tell you, it's not trivial to be smoothly whooshing along with the snow scoop and then SLAM hit a hard, stuck-down patch where you had to stomp around with your tires. Especially your giant chained-up tires.

It's been a demanding season on my snow scoop and me, and we're both getting a little rickety in the pins about now. Your tire tracks mean that I have to go all the way up to the house and get the metal shovel and SCRAPE AND CHIP those tracks away before I can go on shoveling. Not only does it interrupt the smooth zen flow of my work, but it's a pain in the ass.

There's a whole perfectly usable lane below my house. Stick to it.

---

Dear curl of snow and ice hanging off the edge of the dormer roof,

While I've spent some days now admiring your graceful curl and ever-changing assortment of icicles, I'm starting to wonder just how much longer you plan to hang out there. Has it occurred to you that you're cutting off a substantial quantity of the very limited amount of light available to us at this time of year?

Also, you and I both know that it's going to cause an unholy racket once you finally do decide to let go. It would be really swell if you could schedule this for sometime during the day, just so that Tina and I don't have to fly up out of a deep sleep and straight into heart failure, denting the ceiling over the bed and all. I'm sure you understand.

Yours in architectural admiration,
Me

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Dear coffee mug,

Ours is an fond and longstanding relationship, and you are truly the light of my morning life. My admiration for you is such that I was, quite frankly, shocked the other morning when you chose to leap up and grab my hand as I was reaching for the mouse, causing the coffee you contained to splatter all over my keyboard
and my monitor
and my desk
and my desk calendar
and the notes on my desk
and my robe
and my nightshirt
and the cushion on my chair
and the chair upholstery
and my slippers
and the floor.

Couldn't you just have blown a kiss?

Warily,
Me

---

Dear author of the sweater pattern I just blocked the pieces of:

Did you actually knit and finish this thing?

Don't get me wrong: it's been lots of fun to knit. But part of knitting is, for me at least, the expectation that I'll end up with a wearable something-or-other at the end of the process.

And if you had in fact knit and finished it, you might have noticed that while you specify the dimensioning of the front of the sweater in terms of the height of the armhole and the number of rows of decrease to form the v-neck, you specify the back of the sweater in terms of total length to the shoulder seam. This, since you seem not to have previously noticed, results in the front arm opening being on the order of 1 ½” smaller than the back arm opening. And given that the sleeve is symmetrical and that you seem to indicate your intent that the opening be the same in the schematic you provide, I am thinking that there's going to be something of a problem here.

Yes, I understand seaming and ease. I'm guessing that maybe I understand it even better than you do, because there's no way on earth that an inch and a half of ease IN THE BODY is going to disappear when I sew it to the sleeve. It's certainly not something that's going to block out, not that I didn't give it a try just because that seemed at the time to be the simplest option.

Oh, wait. Unless that sweater's specially designed to take into account the sort of musculoskeletal challenges that, say, the Hunchback of Notre Dame suffered from. Only I don't remember seeing that in the intro to the book or the descriptive text in that pattern section. Did you forget to include that part?

Luckily, I'm a fairly patient person and because of the way that back piece is knit up, it's not going to be hard to rip back the cast-off and those stitches held live for the eventual neck finish, take out a rep or two of the pattern, and then refinish that shoulder/neck edge. And reblock. To match the dimensions of the front piece. As should have been to begin with.

Honestly. What were you thinking?

Peevishly,
Me

---

Dear programmers of the upgrade to the library circulation program:

Uh, guys, I really appreciate that you provided this sweet little conversion ap seeing as how my mad SQL skillz, well, really aren't. And, hey, that error log is shiny, popping up when the conversion fails.

But here's the way it is: telling me that my database suffers from error #47 is kind of a mixed blessing. I'm dazzled with pride to know that my database, out of all of the databases in the world, DOESN'T suffer from at least 46 other errors. Really, that's a bonus I had no reason to expect. You are totally the shizznits.

The thing is, then, that I have no clue what error #47 is, let alone what to do about it. Because doing about it is exactly where I want to go next, given that I paid you for this program with the expectation of, you know, actually using it. Which requires converting the data from the old version.  And since you, having written the thing, obviously do know what error #47 is (you do, don't you? please tell me you do), I'd be just ever so delighted if you'd share this with me. Being as how I paid for it and all.

Suffering from convertus interruptus but still trying to keep a positive outlook,
Me

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To: Wind gusting around my house
From: Snow-clearing Team Leader, the house at the top of the hill
Re: Bad plan

What with my trying to keep the snow cleared off despite constant new showers, you're not helping so much by thrashing those heaps of snow out of the trees and drifting them up in every lee. Knock it off.

---

Dear carbon monoxide monitor in the mudroom,

I know you miss my husband while he's away at work. I do too. But acting out in this fashion is not the way to win his return.

I realize that he paid you quite a bit of flattering attention the other day when you needed a new battery and what with the improved voltage and all, you're most likely feeling pretty frisky. But this business of alarming every 22 hours is getting tiresome. And, since he's not here, it's not gonna be getting you the attention you so obviously crave.

This is unseemly and futile. Please stop it. Also, you really don't want to visit the next step in my annoyarchy.

Threateningly yours,
Me (the one wearing the earmuff hearing protectors)

---

Dear trees overhanging the Young St. hill,

What's with you guys and the waiting till I'm walking down the hill in the dark to offload your snow load? I mean, you had all night to take care of this. Just because I've got my umbrella up doesn't mean I'm as thrilled as Totoro, okay? Swimming is enough to get my heart rate up in the morning; I don't need you bombing me on my way to the pool. There are plenty of kids walking that route just a bit later who would no doubt be thrilled to in engage in a snowfight with some trees. Consider it.

Yours with palpitations,
Me (the one with the crumpled umbrella)

PS: No, I do not consider it eccentric to walk around in the snow with an umbrella. This is a device to keep precipitation off of the head and eyeglasses, which I find completely apt no matter what the actual texture of the precipitation. So you and all the passing drivers who stare at me can just be getting over that, okay?