If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name Part 6

When Tom e-mailed me, asking about the trip, I told him Vancouver is nice, it's a great place to visit, but I'm more at home in a cabin in the woods. I have a feeling that when we are old, Chip and I will indeed be crazy enough to live in ours full-time. When that happens, we will walk by Tom's place every time we go to town, maybe even with a grandchild or two in tow, and I'll tell them how the old editor of the Chilkat Valley News is a bit like Th.o.r.eau, that he dreamed of a quiet place in the country and he built one. Then we'll probably stop in and help Tom with the shingles, or maybe even a new water system. There's a Buddhist saying that when your house is done your life is over. I hope Tom works on Camp Weasel forever.

DULY NOTED

Offering prayers "for a.s.sistance and focusing for the people of Haines," Georgia Haisler and a group of Baha'is and friends gathered in the rain on Election Eve at Lookout Park. Georgia said she is concerned about all the decisions that are being made in the next few weeks-from local and state elections to the vote on unification and the appointment of a new magistrate. "A lot is happening in Haines right now," she said, "and so we prayed for guidance."

Homeschooled Caitlin Stern of Haines is one of four recipients of the Alaska Conservation Foundation's 2001 Wilcher Award. The foundation recognizes students who are "thoughtful, energetic, and educated stewards who have made long-term outstanding contributions to the conservation movement in Alaska." Caitlin, now a Harvard freshman, was honored for her work as a field biologist in the Alaska Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve here.

The local band the Truffles have made Juneau radio station KINY's top ten this week with their song "Clear as the Light." It is number three on the capital city station's chart, just ahead of a song by Elton John. Haines High senior Lesley Rostron sings, plays the piano, and wrote the words and music. Lesley's father, Mike, said he and guitarist Rich Cooper "Pretty much stand there and play for her on that one."

Jennifer Norton is home after spending eleven months as a meteorologist with the National Weather Service up in Barrow. Although she described her time on the Arctic Ocean sh.o.r.e as a "great experience," she said she's glad to be back where "there's trees and stuff."

Learning Moments

THERE ARE NOW two weekly papers in Haines that just about everybody reads, sometimes twice. The Chilkat Valley News has been published since 1966 and is the paper of record. It's where my friends and I work. I'm completely biased, but I think it's a great paper.

The new Eagle Eye Journal is a weird, right-wing sort of publication that prints the cable TV guide, Dr. Dobson's "Focus on the Family" column, and redneck jokes off the Internet in "Bubba's Corner." It was started by a developer who thought the Chilkat Valley News wasn't pro-business enough. After we reported on a fine he had received for destroying wetlands, he got mad and tried to buy the paper. When our publisher, Bonnie Hedrick, told him it wasn't for sale, he started his own paper, hoping to put her out of business. Recently, a private pilot who was also a reporter for the Eagle Eye was killed when his plane disappeared between Haines and Juneau. I had to write his obituary for the Chilkat Valley News. Dave McKenzie hadn't been in Haines very long but was well known.

Because of the uneasy relationship between the two papers, his friends were suspicious of the treatment he would receive in my obituary. I think they warned his wife, who had just come up from California, where she'd been living while he worked here. The day after they called off the search for Dave's plane, I phoned her, explaining that her husband had known many people in Haines and deserved a proper obituary. She reluctantly agreed to meet me at his house, first thing in the morning. I brought over a sack of m.u.f.fins, freshly ground coffee, and a pint of half-and-half. We drank coffee and visited. A friend of Dave's was there too-no doubt to make sure I was nice. After about half an hour, the friend left and we were alone.

We talked about life and death-in general and this one specifically-in a room full of boxes and empty shelves, while Dave's widow sorted things to throw away, ship down south, or give to the Salvation Army. I helped her pack up Dave's belongings while she wrote down the spelling of their children's names. She lent me a photo of her husband standing in the snow by his plane to print with the obituary. She told me a psychic had called and said her husband was alive. The psychic had wanted a lot of money to help her find out where he was. It made her sad and angry, and she even felt a little guilty for not agreeing to pay. What if the woman really did know where he was?

When we had finished talking and just about everything was packed up except his office area, she asked me if I wanted her husband's books on writing. She said he had admired my stories in the Anchorage paper and Alaska magazine and had even mailed some clippings to her. I was surprised. "Please take them," she said, filling a box with books. "He'd want you to have them." Which is why Arizona Marketplace for Writers and Photographers and Writing Crime Fiction are now on my reference shelf. I see them every time I sit down to write. When I do, I think about the differences between papers and people and what it means to trust each other. One of Dave's books was Annie Dillard's The Writing Life. It's hard to believe that someone so conservative could like her writing as much as I do-especially like it enough to carry the book all the way to Alaska. It's small, but even so. In it, she writes, "How we spend our days, of course, is how we spend our lives."

There are some weeks when I spend part of every day in community meetings-for my church, the library, or the school. At one of those meetings-a special meeting in the high school library-Annie Dillard's writing and Dave McKenzie's politics came to mind and I realized how critical it is to teach our children that people think differently, and that there are ways to act on our beliefs without demeaning others who don't believe the same things.

This meeting was called because earlier in the week a list of the twenty "nappiest b.i.t.c.hes" in school had appeared on the lunch tables and had been posted on bulletin boards. The girls were labeled wh.o.r.e, gothic, lesbo, and s.k.a.n.ky, among other even less printable names; a freshman was singled out because she's Jewish. Two boys were caught and suspended for ten days. Now concerned parents, community members, and teachers were meeting with the girls to figure out what could be done to make things right. A big girl with strong shoulders sobbed, "Since I came to Haines people told me to get tough. I'm tired of it. I don't want to get any tougher." Another girl, also red-faced from crying, put an arm around her. The adults looked on helplessly as more students explained how it feels to be picked on, every day, at school.

One of the girls said her father raised her to turn the other cheek; she planned to buy the boys a Bible and tell them to read the list in there-the Ten Commandments. The Presbyterian pastor's wife nodded her support. So did Howard Hoffman, the minister of the Port Chilkoot Bible Church. But when the girl said she would get her GED rather than return to our school, no one smiled. Mothers looked like they'd been slapped. Fathers, standing in work clothes with their caps still on, gripped the backs of chairs tightly to keep from punching something. The home economics teacher started to cry. One woman said that meanness is not just a school issue, it's a community problem. "Haines isn't a very tolerant place," she declared. That hurt almost as much as the girls' tears.

Before the meeting adjourned, we learned that one of the boys who had written the list was a member of the Haines High varsity basketball team. The team is full of boys from good families, nice kids who make the honor roll and sing in the choir. Their parents acted swiftly to distance the rest of the players from the incident. Another suspension would jeopardize our chances of a berth in the state championship tournament. Reverend Hoffman, whose son is also a starter for the team, said he was concerned for the boys who wrote the list. "Think of them for a minute. They need our help, too. In my experience, people who are unhappy themselves often show it by this type of behavior. Has anyone talked to them?"

That Friday night, fans filled the gym to watch the home game. There were elders in wheelchairs, newborn babies on laps, and the night patrolman in his uniform. The smell of popcorn drifted from the snack bar, and the cheerleaders clapped and kicked. Everything was as it always is on game nights during basketball season. Haines looked for all the world like the quintessential American small town supporting the home team.

Except there was no music. The Pep Band, which includes some of the targeted girls, wasn't in its section of the bleachers. Bob Krebs, the bandleader, kept them out of the gym in silent protest of the week's events. Eliza plays the clarinet. Although her name wasn't on the hateful doc.u.ment, she was proud of her teacher's action. She said other students weren't taking the girls' response to the name-calling seriously enough. Bob told me he hoped that this could be a learning moment for everyone in Haines. In good conscience, he said, he couldn't let it pa.s.s.

I thought about all those "learning moments" in my life that I'd pa.s.sed up. Mainly they were "little things," like ignoring a racist party joke. Some were bigger. Just this fall, during the Southeast Alaska State Fair, a couple of men spoiled the annual parade by heckling people on a float. One of the hecklers threw rotten vegetables. The float, created by environmentalists, parodied the Royal Caribbean cruise ship that had been fined millions of dollars for dumping photography chemicals, dry-cleaning fluid, and other bad sludge in Lynn Ca.n.a.l, between Haines and Skagway, and lying about it. The daughter of one of the organizers was. .h.i.t in the face with pieces of flying tomatoes.

Although charges were filed against the a.s.sailant, who is the owner of a gift shop, dozens of Haines residents, including two school board members, signed letters to the court testifying to the man's good character. They like his wife and children, his in-laws and cousins-and they don't like the environmentalists who made the float. The magistrate, who is new in town, gave the tomato chucker the judicial equivalent of a ten-day suspension from school.

I have learned from trial and error that the secret to long-term survival in Haines is knowing which battles to choose. I thought the parade incident wasn't mine. Our family talked about all of this, loudly, over several dinners. I asked Sarah why she didn't speak up about the meanness at school-there are only about a hundred students in the whole student body and she's on the girls' basketball team, so I figured she had to know more than she was saying about the list's origins. She said, "It's not easy to rat on your friends. You didn't say anything about the tomatoes at the parade."

At the meeting, I had seen the pain in the hearts of both the victims of this latest so-called prank and their parents. The boys suspended from school aren't the only ones responsible for the awful list. It's not the basketball team's fault either. I have a feeling that Haines isn't the only place where every day someone hears a snide comment or sees a flippant gesture. It may even be the thing left unsaid. Most people of goodwill are like me; we don't do anything about it unless it's aimed directly at us or people we love.

I decided to take the music teacher's advice and make this a learning moment. I joined a school committee planning to use the list, and the reaction to it, as an opportunity to teach tolerance. After much discussion, we agreed to bring in some guest speakers and sponsor three days of lectures and workshops called "Reaching for Respect." One of the areas of intolerance we all agreed should be addressed was h.o.m.ophobia, especially the name-calling variety displayed in the halls at Haines High. I volunteered to work on that part of the program.

I knew that Mildred Boesser, the wife of the Episcopal archdeacon of southeast Alaska, Mark Boesser, often spoke on this topic. They have four grown daughters; the oldest describes herself as a lesbian. They're members of a group called Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG); they carry the organization's banner in the Juneau Fourth of July parade. The Boessers are well-respected, longtime Alaskans. Mark officiated at the funeral of Alaskan corporate and cultural leader Morris Thompson and his wife and daughter, who were killed in a plane crash. I thought that this kind, elderly, Christian couple would be perfect to broach the subject of tolerance toward gays and lesbians at Haines High. Turns out some people in the community didn't agree.

After reading a Chilkat Valley News article (written by my daughter Eliza, who happened to be an intern at the paper at the time) describing the half dozen planned workshops, a couple of school board members and other apparently influential members of Haines's so-called Christian community got very upset about the h.o.m.ophobia workshop. Residents who believe h.o.m.os.e.xuals are deviant pedophiles and certainly will be going straight to h.e.l.l dominated the "Letters to the Editor" pages of both the Chilkat Valley News and the Eagle Eye Journal. Some people expressed support for the school's handling of the problem. But enough influential people called the superintendent of schools in protest that he canceled the Boessers' presentation without public discussion. The committee was told about it the next afternoon, during our last planning session. Some committee members were angry, some were sad-as I was-but I don't think anyone was completely surprised. We'd all lived in Haines long enough to know how these things happen. This time I decided not to let it go.

I wrote and read a commentary on the radio explaining why I thought the workshop was important. Not for NPR or even Alaska statewide news. It was just for us and was broadcast only on KHNS, the local public radio station. If everyone who gets the signal had their radios on and their family gathered round, three thousand people heard it. I also paid to print my opinion in the Chilkat Valley News. I chose this battle, fully expecting the wrath of my neighbors and my children's teachers. Chip supported me, even though we both knew carpenters who might boycott our lumberyard.

But what happened instead was a surprising display of public support for my position. It was as unexpected as discovering that I would have liked Dave McKenzie had we ever talked about writing and our favorite authors. People waved to me from pickup trucks while I was running. One guy yelled, "Right on" out his window. I received over a hundred positive phone calls and a handful of letters from out-of-town newspaper subscribers. One elderly couple actually bought something from Chip because of what I said; turns out they have a gay son. It was unbelievable. I had only one negative reaction-an anonymous hate letter, from someone who was smart, articulate, and knew my family very well. It gave me the creeps. Chip said to ignore it-if they didn't have the guts to sign it, they weren't worth my time. I wish I could. Instead, Steve taped it to the wall at the newspaper office, where it remains to this day. Once every couple of weeks I read it, and spend an afternoon looking at my friends more closely. I know it's silly, but I can't help wondering where it came from.

I hoped that all the support, coupled with my public arguments for the workshop, tempered by reason and love, and backed by the Const.i.tution of the United States and even the Pledge of Allegiance ("with liberty and justice for all"), would change the opposition's minds. I had visions of the superintendent himself sitting bolt upright in bed, thumping his hand to his forehead, and waking up his wife with a shout: "Heather's right! I'll put that gay workshop back!" But that didn't happen.

So there I was, defeated, perhaps knocked down a rung or two on the Haines social and political ladder, but back in the school library for the monthly meeting of the Parent Advisory Team. A different parent group. I was not saving the world this time, just going over the student handbook with other parents, page by page. I was asked to report on the thoroughly uncontroversial section devoted to school buses. There are two.

At the end of the meeting one of the parents said she really thought we should weigh in on the current controversy surrounding the h.o.m.ophobia workshop. Everyone either looked at me or pretended not to. "You all know how I feel," I said, and they laughed, a little. Then Kathy said, "h.o.m.os.e.xuality is a sin. Some studies say it is biological, but just as many say it's a choice." She's the same Kathy whose son is the captain of the gillnetter on which my daughters crewed. The Kathy who called me in the middle of the night when the Becca Dawn was sinking. I know her. I like her. We have a lot in common.

I took a deep breath and decided to observe everyone as an anthropologist would, from a scientific distance. I didn't get mad. I explained that for me the workshop wasn't about the origins of h.o.m.os.e.xuality. "It's not about why," I said. "It's about being nice to people, about loving your neighbor as yourself." Kathy agreed that this was important. The school counselor, who is part of the Parents Advisory Team, told us she had been at an emotional faculty meeting earlier that had showed the school staff as divided as the community. Several teachers had threatened to quit if the workshop was reinstated. Others had threatened to quit if it wasn't. n.o.body can afford to lose one of the best jobs in Haines, so I doubted any teachers would really walk out, one way or the other. But I didn't say so. The counselor observed that any room in town with ten people in it would not be able to come to a consensus on how and when to talk about h.o.m.os.e.xual issues in school. Echoing the sentiment at an earlier meeting, she said, "Haines isn't a very tolerant place."

When the meeting was over, I gave Kathy a ride home and asked her what she would do if one of her children turned out to be gay. "I'd be sick," she said. "I'd love 'em, I'm their mother, but I tell you, I'd be sick about it." After I dropped her off, I couldn't stop the tears rolling down my face.

To shake off things like this I need to move-outside. I used to exercise for my body, but these days it's more for my soul. I strap on my snowshoes and go for my daily outing. I rarely see anyone, and I look forward to the hour or two alone in the woods and ridges above town. I stomp up the trail, thinking, talking to myself, even rewriting the workshop saga. In my head the Boessers come and talk with everyone. They get a standing ovation. Half a dozen students come out of the closet and form a gay student union. Flash forward to years later: one becomes the United States representative from Alaska after the notoriously conservative Don Young retires. I'm feeling much better when I break out into a clearing and look down over the water, mountains, and this tiny place barely hanging on to a cold country.

I'll never be a nature writer, because my favorite part of any hike is looking down on homes and boats. From two miles up the trail, Haines seems like a toy town. I try to find my house. I can't quite see it, but think I spot smoke from the chimney. I can see Chip's truck parked at the red lumberyard on the waterfront, and the school, the boat harbor, Main Street, and Fort Seward. I think of all those people in all those little buildings, spending their days and thus their lives at work, school, or home, trying to do the best they can to take care of themselves and the people they love. I look right and left and see snowy mountains repeating all the way into the haze over Glacier Bay, whitecaps on Lynn Ca.n.a.l, and the braided channels of the Chilkat River weaving into the sea. I say thank you to whoever is listening and head back down the trail with a much lighter load.

HERE'S SOMETHING THAT happened a few years after the ugly incident at school. It happened in the windowless bas.e.m.e.nt kitchen of the American Legion, Lynn Ca.n.a.l Post No. 12. It confirmed what I had suspected for a while-that I was no longer an outsider looking in but an insider looking out. For all the flaws, Haines is my hometown now. I was one of the cooks for a fund-raising dinner for my daughter's friend Haley and her family. Haley was in seventh grade, and had been in Children's Hospital in Seattle for five weeks with a ruptured appendix. Her dad is a musician and carpenter. Last winter he built a sailboat, a wooden cutter. It's in the harbor now. He has a rock band with his other daughter, Lesley. They're called the Truffles. They play at the bars and have made two CDs. Lesley went to Los Angeles instead of college, but she's home now, making sandwiches and lattes at Mountain Market. Haley's mom grew up here and works at the post office, so they have insurance. But the emergency Learjet flight from Juneau to Seattle cost over $20,000, and they just don't have that kind of money. Few people here do.

The post commander ended up doing much of the cooking. After the other volunteers and I took one look at the ancient black commercial stove and feared it would either catch on fire or blow up if we turned the wrong k.n.o.b, we called him for help. He arrived a few minutes later and showed us how to work the stove. Then he decided to stay and put on an ap.r.o.n, and began sauteing onions and peppers on the griddle.

The commander had lots of opinions about what to put in the spaghetti sauce. He'd never used a recipe, he said, and wasn't going to begin now. I never do either, but dinner for two hundred was so daunting we had figured that the best approach would be to multiply out a Moosewood Cookbook recipe. "Moosewood?" said the commander. "Never heard of it." Then he dropped a handful of chili powder and handful of salt into each of the five bubbling pots.

The butcher, Clint, came in to inspect the cooking. He had on a cowboy hat. He tasted the sauce and in his Texas tw.a.n.g said it needed wine. "Should we have wine at a fund-raising dinner?" someone asked.

"Not to drink," he said. "To put it in the sauce. Go out and get a nice big bottle of burgundy-that'll do the trick."

The commander said he didn't know why guys don't join the Legion anymore. He's the youngest member, he told us, and he's fifty-three. One of my friends chopping peppers next to the commander is married to a Vietnam vet, but her husband never says anything about the war and doesn't have a flag decal on his pickup. He definitely wouldn't want to share war stories down at the Legion. She didn't say anything, just finished her task and left quietly. The other volunteers wiped the dishes, hung up their ap.r.o.ns, and went upstairs to set the tables and organize the auction. That left just me and the commander, stirring sauce and boiling noodles for the next two hours.

I learned that he was in the navy in Vietnam. He said he got in trouble for not making regulation spaghetti sauce. "The navy sauce had no spices, just paste, tomatoes, meat, and one bay leaf for, like, twenty gallons. It was bad." So he added all kinds of things-onions, garlic, oregano, basil, and lots of salt and pepper. "Guys came back for seconds-that's when the cook knew I'd done something. He was not happy. I got in trouble for that one."

The commander showed me his discharge papers; he keeps them folded in his wallet. He earned three awards-I don't remember which ones-and told me about his broken back. I said he must have gotten a Purple Heart for that. "Nope," he said. "Gotta bleed. No blood, no Purple Heart." I joked that if he cut his thumb slicing mushrooms I'd give him a cook's Purple Heart. Then he felt the edge of my knife, which I'd brought from home, and said that it was too dull to cut much of anything and started sharpening it. He told me about his heart attacks (two) and his wife ("If she even has a sip of a margarita she gets tipsy"). And how proud he is of the Legion Hall's new paint and flooring, real improvements done on his watch. We talked about movies, too. We both liked n.o.body's Fool, with Paul Newman and Jessica Tandy, about a good guy in a small town who doesn't seem to do much of anything but who really takes care of his friends and neighbors.

It was close to five, and the Legion's bar was filling up. A woman with a raspy voice was bartending, and a handful of regulars sat on their stools. Country music played on the jukebox, and whenever anyone opened the door, warm smoky air went out and cold damp air came in. The flags above the porch were in a wet tangle around the pole. The snow had changed to rain.

The sauce was finished and we had noodles waiting in warming pans and garlic bread wrapped in foil in the oven. The Bamboo Room Restaurant, across the street, sent over donated salad and dressings. Upstairs, the long folding tables were covered in white paper, and Haley's friends and their parents were gathering to help serve and clear. Chip was there, too, with the kids. They had already poked their heads into the kitchen to say h.e.l.lo.

Debbie, who was the main organizer along with the post office crew, came into the kitchen. "I haven't slept in a week, I'm so worried," she said. "Do we have enough food?"