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Originally published in The South Bay Daily Reporter, California, Summer 1994.

I sure didn’t think much about Native Americans sitting in a classroom in Robinson Elementary in the 1950s, a Dick and Jane book in my lap. There were no Indians left in Manhattan Beach. Nobody with Mongolian cheekbones or long shinny black hair. My brothers wore crewcuts with a little soap to slick the front up. I wore skirts and hard shoes. We all looked like Dick and Jane. Ancient Manhattan Beach history for me was the Red Car and the year Joe’s Candy Cottage opened.

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Originally published in The South Bay Daily Reporter, California, Summer 1994

I’ve moved up the coast. Way up. To Nome, Alaska. Now Nome is a place you’ll probably have to look up in a geography book. Even if you’re watching the Weather Channel and the guy’s pointing out highs and lows, you might think you could look over his shoulder at the big map and say, “Okay, so there’s Nome.” But Nome won’t be there. Alaska probably won’t be there.

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Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1995

When you read this, I’ll be gone. My family will be in Southern California for the winter. We didn’t plan it this way. I had hoped to be here for the Talent Show and Halloween. My friend Kaye and I were thinking of flying in to Council for Thanksgiving until we found out the airstrip wouldn’t be maintained. I was going to order an L. L. Bean spruce wreath for our front door for Christmas and add it to the Bering National Forest afterwards. I was also kind of excited about adding one more state to my list of celebration venues for my January birthday. But this frosty weather doesn’t allow digging up the rusty struts of Quonset huts and other wartime materials that my husband’s supposed to be digging up so we needed to go someplace else until next spring.

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Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1995

Toddlers experience everything in the first person. Mommy is theirs, Daddy is theirs, toys are all theirs, and other points of view aren’t understood. Toddlers sense the world with their mouths, hands, and bodies and it takes great patience, strength, and physical endurance to meet their needs lovingly. The power of toddlers is even presented as a great force in the second of the movies in the Star Wars trilogy, “The Empire Strikes Back.”

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Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1995

The final day of the Summer Reading Program at the Kegoayah Kozga Library was this week. The weight of reading 30 books for my oldest son is also lifted. It wasn’t that Sam didn’t think he could read 30 books. Between Beverly Cleary’s “Ramona” series, Tom Swift novels, and any book about dinosaurs, Sam knew finishing 30 books in 10 weeks wouldn’t be that difficult. He was proud of earning free passes to the rec center and the pool. He looked forward to the library’s ice cream party for the program participants (as long as there was plenty of chocolate syrup). It was also very motivating for him to get the little prizes out of Mrs. McKenna’s wooden treasure chest. It was that grand prize that had him worried. He just wasn’t sure he wanted to have lunch with the mayor.

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Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1995

Long before Dr. Fleischman moved into Cicely, Alaska, in the television series “Northern Exposure,” viewers were treated to a sit com episode based in our great state. It was just one episode and it was filmed right after Alaska joined the Union as the 49th state. Lucy, Ricky, Fred, and Ethel were here! In Nome!

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Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1995

If you’re five years old, you are usually not all that excited about seeing very large wildlife. When you’re driving out of town in the truck and your Mom and Dad are talking about seeing moose and bears and muskoxen, you’re sitting very quietly in your seatbelt thinking. You’re thinking that it’s one thing to see something huge and with long teeth and curving claws from behind the iron railing of a public zoo, but it’s an entirely different thing to open your car door to a grizzly bear on the open tundra. Dinosaurs are large and ferocious but at least they’re extinct. When you’re five years old and venturing out into the wild countryside around Nome, you’d rather see something cute and furry with little round ears and dark bright eyes. You’d rather see a lemming.

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Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1995

The tundra is a carpet of fiery reds, oranges, and yellows right now and, boy, do we Nomeites deserve it! One solid month of rain has kept us a little bit muddy and a whole lot of crabby. So, when the sun finally did come out over the Labor Day weekend, it was time to grab the berry rakes and buckets.

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Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1995

Something in my soul gets weary of all this light. In winter’s doldrums, I wish and wish for July days of sun. But when they’re here, I sometimes wish they would just go away.

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Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1994

I grew up on another beach down the coast. Way down the coast. My parents moved to California’s South Bay from Cleveland, Ohio, after World War II so my dad could get into making movies. All through high school, he’d goaded his friends (including my mother) into acting in his dramatic productions, showing his movies to the neighborhood in his parents’ basement. He was ready for the big time in 1946. He was a little less ready for me to come along several years later.

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