Home sweet home!

Explain:
In this lesson I have learned to look deeper into the connections of people and the geologic forces that dealt them the landscape they enjoy.  I was reminded of the diverse biomes that the people of this planet have made into  sustainable communities despite sometimes harsh conditions.  I am reminded to stand in awe as I look at landscapes and think of the people who lived there hundreds or thousands of years ago and were able to provide for their children from the land in a way I in some ways envy yet respect in full for its harsh and demanding ways.

Extend and Evaluate
As I contemplate land shaping forces and how that has influenced cultural connections to the places they live many cultures come to mind.  The first that came to mind was the Sherpa people of Nepal, high in the Himalayas, such a violent collision of the Indian Plate and Asian Plate, leaving a very unique place to call "home".  What lead these people to settle here?  That same question has been in the back of my mind in many of my travels around Alaska.

On my first trip with my new friend James to hunt we traveled by skiff for hours through meandering rivers and canals cut by the US Army corp of Engineers.  As the raven flies the route may have been only 10-15 miles from the village but, by boat it took most of a day. As I look around the same question went through my mind. Why here?  By the end of the trip it made more sense, this land can provide. 

by Kevin H.

Parts of Alaska are thought to have formed near the equator based on paleomagnetic signatures, brought here as the North America continental plate and the Pacific Plate push and slide against one another.  Alaska has been on the receiving end of these terrains making geologist work hard to understand this complex  Alaska geology



Pacific plate bringing terrain to Alaska

Why do people stop and make a place their home?  Maybe they can go no further, maybe they just planned to stay until the weather changed, maybe they found the resources they sought or maybe they just looked around and liked what they had around them.  When I teach Earth Science again these topics and the idea of connecting with the land will go hand in hand with the theory of how the landscape was formed, be it western sciences version or one I have yet to learn from the people who live there....

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More comments

I like the way Dave talks about "urban hippies" and getting back to connections with the earth.  Dan and I like all the great video's that help explain complex ideas.  I did the first comment a few days ago so I will have to go home and look at my notes... :-)

When in Rome....

Explain:

            As I read and explore the resources for this class I am excited to be back in Science after a long hiatus! Each module I read and each link I click on brings back a memory from my undergraduate studies of another time.  The review of this material reminds me how to recover the information in my brain that has been “out of mind” during my 10+ years of teaching Business, though it is never truly forgotten I have found.

Evaluate and Extend:

            While teaching business I was lucky to have a strong science background too.  As we discussed the economic resources and their impact on local production, science had to find its way into the lesson.  We would discuss the 4 p’s of marketing: Product, Price, Place and Promotion and the local resources always led the way to an areas prosperity.  Where would you place an orange juice production plant?  Of course near the oranges! Why is a brewery one of the most successful product exports from Juneau?  It’s near some of the best water in the world and the other ingredients are light and easily shipped. And so on.

            My travels also enlightened me to economic development around the world.  While visiting Cairo, Egypt I witnessed a phenomenon in production I was not at all familiar with at the time.  Outside the window where I was living they were building a school.  It had been going on for two years and was not even a tenth of the way done.  It was a Saturday when I arrived and I could see 50 pieces of heavy equipment near the site.  When Monday came around I heard some soft construction noises, but nothing like I expected.  It was a couple men throwing bricks to the second floor after they carried them by wheelbarrow to that spot.  WHY?  They had a variety of equipment going unused and so much manual labor carrying bricks, mixing mortar and building this school one brick at a time.  The short answer is the goal of the local community and government was not to build the school, it was to keep men working. 

            Just as the land has shaped the economy and life of the people of Alaska.  The harsh landscape from plate tectonics in this area limited travel by land so the water just worked better.  The sea has many resources readily available to the people here (South East, AK) while the land and climate are not so good for farming.  This has led to a "sea based" subsistence, though some hunting and gathering on land helped sustain the people here.
            No matter your heritage, your ancestors lived off the land and resources of their local environment and those turned into trade which led to economic diversity in most places. Some more than others…. depending on the lands mineral deposits, oil deposits, geographic location and political connections; some places manage to hold on to more of the traditional ways and some loose them entirely...

3 colleagues

I will attempt to "link" to my 3 colleagues I commented on.  First is James White a former student athlete of mine here in Juneau, welcome back James!  The next is Ernestine Hayes whom I just picked because I liked her blog. And last but not least was Eric Ellefson, I think I will enjoy reading the blogs of a "new young teaching white guy from the lower-48" in a native village...lol, as I have been one.

found draft!

I just found where the work I was doing is automatically saved... wow!  Cool for next time....

Connections

First I will remind everyone to save, save, save their work before they are done so if something goes wrong you don't have to start over....

As I read this material and watched the video on Chevak and others my mind raced.  I have long been interested in how things where done in the past and have respected those who survived this and other harsh climates.

 I remember one of many white-outs while I lived and worked in Chevak,  I got word that the girls basketball team was over due from Hooper bay.  People gathered at the school as the VHS got the word out.  People brought their snow machines, extra fuel cans, food, blankets and modern gizmo's like my GPS.  Suffice it to say the first mission was unsuccessful and we almost lost a couple other people.  The next morning a local man with much experience found the team and got them home safe just using the blueprint of the land in his head! The team and Coach did what they needed to to survive until help arrived as they had been taught.  I looked at my GPS and laughed to myself.

I also got to spend time with my students and Native Alaskan colleagues in a true "sea week"  5 days out in the tundra, making camps, winding around rivers by boat, hunting seal, visiting old village sites, listening to stories of a way of life not so long ago, yet so different.  I was like a sponge, soaking up all I could and wishing I had a notebook, then realizing one is not needed if you listen. I wanted to share everything I learned but, had no audience as my students where their with me and had heard the stories each year I was told.  I went back the next year too and enjoyed it even more, listening and learning things I was not sure when I would use but enjoying my opportunity.

I now have the chance to share some of the knowledge I learned!  After Chevak I taught only Business and  Finance, now I am finally teaching science and can't wait to share some of the stories I was told as the topics arise.  I was worried I could not remember enough to speak to them, however, the resources I have already found in Teacher's Domain have given me the confidence and information to bring them forward.

This is the current site of Chevak (with my old buddy Gin, the dog)

 This is the old site of the village, it was getting to small and the water level was making it unsafe.  There are many remnants of the sod huts and old tools used there.  I'm sorry to not remember the spelling of this grand place...

A good place

I have many places I love to be, all of which are better with family and friends.  This one is from Coglan Island picnicing with the kids after catching a few fish earlier in the day.

Special assignment:

This is a picture of the area I was born.  It has experienced heavy erosion over the past 12,000 years of the Holocene, like all places on this “Google Earth”.   The dominant formations near my birth place are alluvial fans and fan deltas, these have left a common landscape now scared by drainage patterns and covered in hearty foliage.