Felicity Wright

Travels

Yes We Can!

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“Yes, we can.”

Really?  Can Barack Obama’s winsome and winning phrase become a rallying cry, a call to arms, if not armaments?  Will the coming eight years be hailed as the “Yes, we can” era, just as the last eight were the “9-11” era?

“Yes, we can.” –  I sense that this could have been Sully Sullenberger’s mantra as he maneuvered his precious cargo through Hell to Hope before finding sanctuary and safety on the Hudson.  He entered the cockpit as captain on January 15, a few days before the Inauguration; he exited the plane as champion of the nation’s spirit.  Yes, we can – and he did.

The man sitting next to me on the flight from Maryland to California raises butterflies and grows Christmas trees back in Massachusetts.  He is heading west to visit his wife, who is currently working in California.  As he shares stories of his life, the symbolism of connection (visiting his wife), transformation (the emergence of butterflies from caterpillars) and celebration (Christmas trees) enchants me.   Can we do the same for our country?  Can we reclaim the vision of the Pilgrims whose yearning for connection, transformation, and celebration with God and each other gave them the courage to embark on a dangerous journey to new life in America?

They could.  Can we?

I am reminded of Lyndon Johnson, who met with Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the early days of his Presidency. As they discussed the challenges of drafting new civil rights legislation and the about-face from hate and fear to hope and opportunity, Johnson bluntly told King that the good Reverend mustn’t let up.  Much as he might want to draft and sign a Civil Rights Bill that would change the country forever, Johnson told King that it was not possible.  “Keep the pressure on,” he implored.  I cannot do my part unless you do yours – so organize your people and keep the protests coming.”  Being the right person in the right place and the right time isn’t enough to bring about major change, even if that person is the President of the United States.

So King and his cohorts did exactly that.  The demonstrators marched, the ministers preached, the people walked and talked and wailed and sang.  And the good protestors gave power to the President who signed the Civil Rights Act of 1965 into law, changing our country as we knew it, beginning a change that made the last election possible.

It’s a lesson we need to remember, for Obama is not saying, “Yes I can,” but “Yes we can.”  As we have seen in the first two weeks of Obama’s presidency, the forces of hate and entitlement are real. Johnson and Jesus couldn’t fight them alone, Obama can’t either. We need to keep the pressure on.

Pondering the connection between Captain Sullenberger and President Obama, I realized that heroes are made when hope is birthed.  Hope is the seed that finds its fruit in connection, transformation, and celebration.  And thus the rallying cry of “Yes we can” demands that each of us becomes a midwife to the hope that lies inside, yearning to see the light of day.

To which the people shout, “Yes, we can!”  And we keep the pressure on.

At the top of the world

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Barrow, Alaska is the northernmost community of the United States, lying inside the Arctic Circle and north of North Pole, Alaska. It is flat, treeless, white, and wonderful!

Compared to the world capitals that I have come to love, Barrow is a bit, well, barren.  But while the town doesn’t have that much to commend it (except for some distinct and delightful “characters,” the Inupiat (Eskimo) people sure do! They combine playfulness and joie-de-vivre with a serious intentionality to do the right thing. It was a joy to spend two days with them last week, and I hope to return in February.

In earlier posts, I  promised a bit more background on the consulting project I am working on, but here’s the gist: it’s with the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation Federal Holding Company (see www.asrcfederal.com), a subsidiary of the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation (see www.asrc.com).  ASRC was established as part of the Alaskan Native Settlement Claims Act (ANSCA) that appropriated native land in exchange for money to develop 12 regional corporations throughout Alaska.  ASRC, on the North Slope, is the largest. Its mission is to serve its shareholders — the Inupiat people of the North Slope — with dividends through business proceeds as well as supporting new educational and employment efforts.

The Federal Holdings company is the only ASRC subsidiary outside Alaska; a minority-owned business, it supports federal agencies with technical and support services.  As you might imagine, many of the employees of ASRC Federal have never been to Alaska and have limited knowledge of the Inupiat culture and values.  My effort is to develop a Cultural Awareness Program to educate them on the rich traditions, customs, and moral underpinnings of the people of the North Slope.

In short, I get to travel to amazing places, meet wonderful people, and learn about their history, art, language, and values.  And so, here are a few pictures:

The sun doesn’t rise or set in Barrow for 2 months in the winter. These photos were taken in mid-day in mid-winter with a background flash.  There is a deep twilight from about noon-2:00 pm.

Note, there is no “hitching post” for horses, but the Ford Broncos and other motorized vehicles hook up to electric plugs for engine block heaters.  When it’s really cold, people leave the cars running all night.

The Inupiat artwork is amazing. This basket is constructed from threads of whale baleen, with a handle of walrus ivory.

North to Alaska, Part 3: Spirit Strikes Thrice

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If you haven’t read the two previous posts on “North to Alaska,” I recommend that you do so before reading this.  Thanks.

They say that good news – like bad news – comes in threes. It reportedly is folk wisdom, but I surmise Trinitarian underpinnings. Could it be that the Holy One is like a stool needing three legs to provide support, and that the Creator, Christ, and Spirit are merely differing varieties of the same life-giving substance much like ice, water, and steam…?

… Or perhaps the magic-three rule exists for no other reason than to keep us hopeful of more blessings or to find comfort in the assurance that misfortune is finite? Who knows?

What I do know is that I was the happy recipient of three distinct blessings during Thanksgiving week.

It all began in mid-October, when I received an email from Lisa Young, who had heard from Amy Greene that I was looking for freelance work while going through the tedious process of finding another pastorate. Amy is a dear friend and former colleague from RWD Technologies, where I worked before ordained ministry.  Lisa also worked at RWD but in a different department; she left to become a Vice-President with the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation (ASRC) and eventually enjoined Amy to join her team.  The email was brief: “Amy told me you were available for freelancing; call me if you are willing to work with the native population in northern Alaska.”

My heart raced as I called her back, ecstatic with memories of Mt. Edgecumbe.  The ASRC project was still in its planning stages, Lisa said, but she was happy to hear of my availability and enthusiasm.  Over the next few weeks, the three of us brainstormed possibilities, and Lisa discussed options with her supervisors.  She then asked her associate Sheila Boyd to design a contract for me to spend six months helping to develop a cultural awareness program. The contract was finalized the day before Thanksgiving.

But this wasn’t just any ol’ job – this was going back to the place and people that had formed me.  I would be doing ministry (albeit not parish ministry) in ways and for people that I treasured.  So many times since April 1966 had I dreamed of returning to the 49th state, but kept putting it off because the costs were outside my budget and a routine tourist trip would not reconnect me with the places and people of Alaska that I had come to love.  But now here it was – dropped like manna from heaven!  Considering the state of my and the country’s economy, it appeared that the Holy Spirit had been working overtime on my behalf. Thanksgiving was personal and intense

But that was just the first part. It happens that Debbie Brown, one of the other three Bennington College interns, had recently moved from the East Coast to the East Bay.  Even more to the point, she had returned to Alaska in 1967 and 1968 to work in a native high school just outside of Nome.  Best of all, she would loan her senior thesis on teaching Alaskan natives as well as source materials for her research.  We spent the Tuesday after Thanksgiving poring over the Mt. Edgecumbe High School yearbook, Volcanic Vibrations (a literary journal we helped with) and Tundra Times, the irregular newspaper for Alaskan Natives. Contract + reconnecting with a dear friend = Spirit strikes twice.

The final blessing of the week came in the mail when I returned home, specifically the winter sale catalog from REI. Knowing that I would be going to Barrow, Alaska (the northernmost point of the United States) in a few weeks, I spent Wednesday scarping up huge discounts on boots, parkas, long underwear, balaclavas and other requisites for surviving temperatures of minus 40.  I gleefully produced a 20% off coupon while purchasing $189 mittens designed to prevent frostbite in the Himalayas, Antarctica, and Alaska, and gave three-fold thanks for toasty fingers and a Trinity of blessings.

Next time – more on ASRC, the Inupiat (Eskimo) people, and Barrow, Alaska.  In the meanwhile, you might want to check out a recent television show on life in Barrow.  (Note that this was filmed several months ago, while there was still light. When I head there next week, it will be pitch black.  The sun won’t rise again until mid-February.)

North to Alaska, Part 2: Score One for Spirit!

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Note to readers:  To appreciate this entry, I suggest you first read the entry for November 19, “North to Alaska, Part 1: Silas Marner and Me.”

Silas Marner (arguably the worst of the “great novels” written in English) continues:  “The shepherd’s dog barked fiercely when one of these alien-looking men appeared on the upland, dark against the early winter sunset; for what dog likes a figure bent under a heavy bag? – and these pale men rarely stirred abroad without that mysterious burden. The shepherd himself, though he had good reason to believe that the bag held nothing but flaxen thread, or else the long rolls of strong linen spun from that thread, was not quite sure that this trade of weaving, indispensable though it was, could be carried on entirely without the help of the Evil One.”

I struggle to explain “aliens” and “shepherds” and “flaxen” and even “linen” to the curious faces before me.  When I get to “without the help of the Evil One,” I know that I am treading on fragile territory, for truly it must be Satan, in the guise of Silas Marner, who has come to torment me and the winsome students of MHES. The only thing they can understand is “early winter sunset,” for winter comes very early in the far north of Alaska (September, to be more exact).  Here in early January in the southern archipelago area – familiarly called the “banana belt,” – we enjoy about two hours of daylight, with an hour of dark twilight on either side.  Each day, however, adds about twenty minutes of sun, which means that I and the other three Bennington College interns can explore and fall in love with this beautiful country and its people.

My grandfather had warned me that I would never escape the charms of Sitka and its surrounding area, regaling me with stories of his two years’ working as a geologist with the National Geological Survey in 1900-1902 to map the area from Glacier Bay and Skagway south to the southernmost tip.  He later studied and lived in numerous locations throughout Europe and South America, and so I believed him when he said that Sitka was the most beautiful spot on earth.  “You get glimpses of this beauty in western Scotland and parts of Italy and Greece, where steep hills crash into the ocean – but nowhere are the mountains as majestic, or the coves as tranquil, or the color as intense.  And, of course, nowhere else are the people as friendly, and nowhere else will you see bald eagles as plentiful as sparrows, and whales, seals, moose, and caribou in such abundance. It is an opera for your eyes.”

And he is right – about both the terrain and the people.  If there is one word that describes everyone we meet – student, teacher, shopkeeper – it is friendly.  Sour, surly and standoffish are foreign concepts here.  Everyone is nice; everyone seems happy that we are here.

– Which only makes the imaginary-but-keenly-felt presence of Silas Marner, a.k.a. Satan, all the more disquieting.  The students grasp neither the English culture nor the overwrought language. Forcing this horrific tale on these friendly innocents feels like stuffing them with raw rice followed by gallons of water; I am torturing both them and me. (The sudden departure of the previous English teacher is beginning to make sense.)

Something’s gotta give, but what?  The principal gives me carte blanche to figure out a better plan while also reminding me that Silas Marner is the approved curriculum and that other teachers have used it without complaints ….

What am I to do? The best education is both challenging and playful; it respects students as they are while also encouraging them to stretch their limits.  Tests and contests will not work, as the native Alaskans are non-competitive and unwilling (or culturally unable) to show off. Whatever plan I devise must respect the fact that individual superiority is scorned, while humility and community are celebrated.

At some point, seemingly out-of-the-blue, Holy Inspiration comes up with a solution: I ask them to read as much of the novel as they can stomach, give them a one-page summary in simple English, and swear them to secrecy.  I then ask them to work in pairs, as each of them writes a simple “how-to” instruction.  “How to prepare whale blubber, how to sew a sealskin parka, how to construct an “umiak” (Eskimo boat), how to roast a duck or make caribou stew – or whatever – try to be as thorough as you can – write it for someone like me who is totally ignorant [I make a stupid face and they laugh] – and use simple, clear English.”

After they write their piece, they exchange with their partners, and they discuss both “essays.” They can rewrite as many times as they wish, and when their partner understands what they have written, each one gets an “A.”

We spend the first half of each class session writing and discussing their essays. Some are overly spare: “Take boteandspeer [boat and spear] anfindawale [and find a whale] killitantakehoam [kill it and take home]. Missing are punctuation marks and spaces between words – to say nothing of detail. Others are challenging in opposite ways, e.g., a run-on sentence that lasts three pages. And some are quite wonderful. So, for the rest of the class, I take samples of their writing, put them on the chalk board, and explain basic spelling, syntax, and grammar.  I find examples of both good and unclear writing, always keeping the authors anonymous.

The writing improves remarkably in just a few weeks, and I realize that this inspiration on collaborative “how-to” writing was truly heaven-sent.

Silas Marner, be damned!  Score one for Spirit, and give thanks!

In the next blog, I will explain what my fondness for the Alaskan natives has to do with my present life and how the Holy Spirit has, once again, come to my aid.  Please subscribe and keep reading.

North to Alaska, Part 1: Silas Marner and Me

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“In the days when the spinning-wheels hummed busily in the farmhouses – and even great ladies, clothed in silk and thread-lace, had their toy spinning-wheels of polished oak – there might be seen in districts far away among the lanes, or deep in the bosom of the hills, certain pallid undersized men, who, by the side of the brawny country-folk, looked like the remnants of a disinherited race.”

Thirty shiny faces stare blankly at me and then each other. I do the same. Except for the occasional three- or four-letter word, I might be speaking ancient Greek or whatever it was people spoke umpteen centuries ago in Timbuktu. Hell, they don’t even know to snicker at the word “bosom” and probably haven’t heard of “boobs” either.

When I glance again at what I have just read aloud to them (the first line of George Eliot’s Silas Marner), it – despite the dashes for which I share a fondness – suddenly morphs into the worst and most incomprehensible piece of writing that the English-speaking world had ungraciously bestowed on poor ordinary mortals.

But are we “ordinary”?

Oh yes, in many ways we are quite ordinary. We follow the same syllabus as eleventh graders in the “lower 48” (the continental United States), so we can rest content with the happy knowledge that millions of public school juniors are suffering the same ordinary despair that we so keenly feel. But arrayed in front of me are thirty students ranging in age from 16 to 26 with otherworldly faces reminiscent of tribes wandering the steppes of central Asia many millennia previously.

When they realize I am as clueless as they, they respond with warm smiles – which is good because they outnumber me in mass, might, and experience (even if I can pronounce and understand words like bosom, pallid, and brawny). By contrast, their reading comprehension is between second and fifth grade, fully unprepared for George Eliot at her best – to say nothing of her worst.

So I re-read it, defining most words and describing such foreign things as silk, spinning wheels, lanes, and (God help me – you know I try – “remnants of a disinherited race,” i.e., itinerant peddlers and weavers of which Silas Marner was one.) I explain English country life with its classism (which they cannot grasp) likening it to racism (which they can). They respond with more blank stares – although this time with a hint of mischief or chagrin.

It is going to be a long nine weeks.

Along with three colleagues from Bennington College, I have entered the unhallowed halls of Mt. Edgecumbe High School (MEHS), a boarding school created by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) for the purpose of educating native Indians and Eskimos in Alaska. Except for MEHS, only the five cities – Anchorage, Fairbanks, Juneau, Ketchikan, and Sitka – sport local high schools, effectively disenfranchising those natives who live in remote areas. So the BIA pays for two students from each village to come to MEHS to finish their studies.  And here they are – Eskimoes from the far North, Aleuts from the western archipelago, Athabascans from the interior, and Tlingits and Haidas from the south, with a few students from smaller tribes scattered throughout the state.

Bennington College’s Non-Resident Term is an exciting opportunity for the administration to save money on heating and snow plowing during the winter, for faculty to do “real stuff,” and for students to work in museums, prep schools, government agencies, and non-profit organizations in Boston, New York City and other hubs of civilizations. Very few manage to make it west of the Appalachians – to say nothing of 57 degrees latitude (even further north than Moscow). But some wonderful person has worked out an arrangement with the BIA to employ  four of us as teacher’s aides, and so I (a freshman) and three sophomores show up on January 2, 1966 – the day after the great fire destroyed St. Michael’s Russian Orthodox Cathedral, the great landmark of Sitka.

It was on that same day that one of the English teachers decided to quit – on the spot.

So, along with helping with the orchestra and band, I am assigned two classes of 11th grade English. No problem, explains the principal – here is the lesson plan – we go by the same requirements as the schools in the lower 48 – they just finished their year of American literature in which they read Moby Dick, Scarlet Letter, and Huckleberry Finn….

And since I have lived abroad for a year and spent a couple years as a volunteer tutoring children in inner-city schools in Washington, D.C., I am open to whatever adventures life my throw my way.

Except – I would soon learn – Silas Marner.  It did me in.  Forever.

Stay tuned – more on this soon!  Please subscribe to my blog so you don’t miss any of this riveting tale, plus learn why I am sharing stories of Alaska now, almost 43 years later.