14th Annual Fisher Poets Gathering, Astoria OR

14th Annual Fisher Poets Gathering, Astoria, OR 2011

"Pull hard and she comes easy." 

Fisher Poets is here!  Today and tomorrow, Feb 25 &26 is the 14th annual Fisher Poets Gathering in beautiful, sunny, downtown Astoria Oregon.  And so am I.  This is my first year at the FPG and I'm a greenhorn.  But, no worries.  I didn't even have my bags out of my rental car at the hotel yet when I ran into someone I know, Steve, a fellow gillnetter in Cordova.  He's an old salt at reciting his poems here and is showing me the ropes. 

Last night, we checked out the Voodoo Room, one of the 8 venues where the performances are held this year,   http://www.columbianvoodoo.com/.  I'll be there tomorrow night at 7 PM.  Then, it was over to Clemente's for a dinner, meet and greet and open mike.  Appetizers  included Carpaccio, a thinly pounded local Albacore tuna with olive oil, shallots, black pepper and a touch of lemon and garlic, served on warm bread.  For dinner, I had the Oysters Casino.  Fresh Willipa Oysters broiled with bacon, chives, bread crumbs, Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, and a cream sauce. Yum.

FPG is part of an Astoria tradition, bringing men and women tied to the commercial fishing industy together to share stories, poems, memoirs, essays in celebration of the industry and it's people.  It's people, the community of fishermen.  Birds of a feather flock together.  That's it.  That's one of the things that has kept me fishing all these years.  I started fishing for the adventure of it, some 18 years ago, but the reason I keep coming back to it is the people. 

At last night's dinner, there were folks there I knew from fishing in Cordova, AK.  Like Buck, Lloyd, Phil, Dennis and Patty.  Then there was Rich and his wife, Marsha, whom I met in Hawaii a few years back.  And there's Pat and Jon,  who I'd emailed when arranging to come to this and finally met last night, face to face.  Then there's guys like Dave, who I sat next to last night.  Turns out, he and I both worked for the same family but at different times.  He worked for Gene Sheldon back in the '70's when kids two boys, Brian and Dave were still kids.  In the mid 90's I worked for Dave.  Small world.  But that's what I love about it, you just start talking and before you know it, there's a connection. 

As I mentioned in last week's blog, the performanced will be live on the radio.  Community radio station KMUN-FM broadcasts the Friday and Saturday evening program from the Astoria Event Center. This includes "streaming live" over the web at http://www.coastradio.org/. Simply go to their website and on the left click the button "Listen now on Demand".  I'll be on between 7 and 8 PM Pacific Time Friday night!  I'll be doing a shorten version of a story from my book, which will, hopefully, be out later this year.  I can give you a sneak peek of a poem that I'll be reading, too.  Just don't tell anyone.

I wrote this poem a few years ago, before I fell of the wagon on quiting fishing. It's call Fishin' Again.



Fishin’ Again

The seas were high

Yet there was I

Standing upon my boat

Whilst the waves were mean,

Gruff and green

I manage to stay afloat.

Though thoughts turn

Towards headin’ back to town

Where it is safe and warm.

But them salmon keep a runnin’!

And them bills keep a comin’!

So out my net does go.

These waves come a crashin’

O’er my bow

And slap me in my face

I taste the salt

Upon my lips

And ponder ‘bout my fate.

But “keep fishin!” says I!

It’s do or die

Its now, I must keep my faith

And low and behold

What the sea does unfold

A king as big as I!

So I set out again!

And fight with the wind

This struggle to keep alive.

And the riggin’ is singin’

Yet in my head is a ringin’

“Something here just don’t jive.”

But if this day looks bleak

By the end of the week

This tide is sure to change.

I’ll stick n I’ll stay!

And I’ll make ‘er pay!

The hour be not too late.

So keep fishin’ I must!

Or this season, a bust!

Then I’d be the one

To pay.

Cuz’ the ocean, you see,

Is intertwined with me

As the same salt runs through our veins.

And I need her

As she needs me

And so I go out

Fishin’ again.

I don't remember all the poems done last night, but I"ll share what I can.  Rob's was about riding a 5 gallon bucket: Those rodeo guys got nothin' on me, I"ve rode a 5 gallon bucket in 40 foot seas! And when the boat rocks port to starboard you get a bit drenched, just like those toilets, designed by the French. 

If you want to take a gander at other performers and what they are up to, there is an anthology of FPG songs, poems and stories called "In the Tote" put together by Pat Dixon, http://web.me.com/dixonphoto/Fisher_Poets_-_In_the_Tote/Welcome.html.  Or, click here to check out last year's venue http://www.clatsopcc.edu/fisherpoets_archive/.  A lot of the perfomers have Cd's and books out, these will be for sale during the weekend.  My buddy Steve, has some great poems on his CD titled Give a Dollar to the Sea: Poetry and Songs of Alaskan Fisherpoet Steve M Schoonmaker and can be reached at saulteur@hotmail.com.

Next week, I'll be able to post some of the high lights, and maybe the low lights of the weekend.  And, will also resume work on the Egg.  Catch ya on the flip side!ea through vivid and powerful poetry. Discover what truly inspires this colorful community on the brink of extinction

Putting Humpty Dumpty Back Together Again...

First off, I'm very excited to let you know that I'll be performing at the 14th Annual FisherPoets Gathering in Astoria Oregon next week, February 25th and 26th!!   I'm on both Friday and Saturday night around 7:30 P.M. Pacific Mountain Times.  My Friday night's performance will be broad casted on 91.9 FM KMUN  @ www. coastradio.org.  To give you an idea about this celebration, I've taken the following is taken from their website  http://www.clatsopcc.edu/community/fisherpoets-gathering. I'll have more on this next week but in the mean time, check it out!  The schedule and all that is on their website. 

The FisherPoets Gathering (FPG) is expecting a record number of more than 80 fishing and maritime industry people from several states and British Columbia to bring their original poems, stories and songs to Astoria.  Along with several local musicians who also have strong fishing-industry ties, they will present their readings and music at this 14^th annual weekend program, February 25 to 27. 

"Fisher Poetry" comes from experiences living and working in the industry, and ranges in writing style from fast-moving rhyming couplets to crafted free verse or literary prose, and includes poems, songs, short stories, personal memoirs and essays, along with art.

KMUN-FM community radio broadcasts both evenings live 6 to 10 p.m. from Astoria Event Center at 91.9-FM & www.coastradio.org.  Enjoy!

Now, back to our regularly scheduled blog

Hanging panels

No EGG-zadgeration, putting the Humpty Dumpty back together again is no easy task. That is one term of endearment that I call the Egg, my recently purchased 12'  1955ish camper that I am renovating.  Did I just say I?  I meant to say Vince.  He seems to be currently doing most of the work, for now.  Mostly because he has more patience than I do and, as a result, better carpentry skills.  If left to my own devices, I would be done by now, but it probably wouldn't look too good.  Turns out, remodeling is a big task, a bigger task than I ever imagined possible.  But, I'm committed now and just too stubborn to turn back.  I also did a bit more research on discovering the make and year of the Egg.  I found this website http://www.tincantourists.com/ featuring old, excuse me, vintage camping trailers.  I emailed Ron, the founder of this organization and he speculates that the Egg is from the mid 50's but said that most manufacturers just copied each other back then and couldn't guess on the make.  Thanks for the info Ron! If you're into vintage campers, here is another cool site: http://www.ynotcamperrestoration.com/Index.html
So, its looking more like the Egg is closer to 50 than 30 years old!  Wow.  It'll be eligible for social security soon.  But, I got to tell you, the wooden ribs on the inside of the camper are beautiful!  No knots anywhere and for the most part, with the exception of a few portions of the ribs, they are still all good and solid.  The plywood floor is in a little better shape and again, no knots at all, a sign of older wood.
This week's progress was hanging some of the panels up.  We thought we would just fly through it and be on to installing the bunk by now, but we are still hanging panels.  That's OK though, we are taking out time and it shows.  I think it looks pretty good.  One of the reason its slow going, the main reason, is that the Egg is not symmetrical.  Guess after 50 some odd years of shimmying down the road, I'd be a little off kilter, too.  We've had to accommodate for that.  A panel might be 1/8-1/4 inch off from one end to another. Or ribs will not be aligned and things like that.  Anyway, we are getting there.  We got the two ends covered and the ceiling up.  See our progress below from measuring out the panels in the garage to hanging them.

Cutting panels to fit

One down, many more to go!

Measure twice, cut once

The finished ceiling

Currently, Vince is making forms for the walls.  First, he made them out of poster board to copy the curve of the back wall.  Then he transfered the poster board and copied it onto a left over piece of insulation.  After that is fitted correctly, then he will copy that onto the paneling, cut and install.  Easy peasy.

Making forms for side panels

Tune in next week to see if we are pulling our hair out by then, I mean to see our progress.  And, I'll see you in Astoria!

Ha ha ha.......An Egg?

Anyone remember that at the end of some Ozzy Osborne song?  Well, it's become a reality for me.  I call it "Project Egg".  I recently purchased (gotta love Craigslist, best thing since sliced bread, if you ask me) a 1971 12'x7' camper. However,  I'm doubting this thing was built even that recently.  Maybe mid 60's?  Anywho, the plan is to remodel  it, throw some creature comforts and necessities in there, drag it over to Cordova  and call it home sweet home for the fishing season.

Chris, the gal I bought it from had gutted it, insulated the s*!t out of it, made a few rudimentary necessities, threw a in a heater and lived in it in her friend's driveway in East Anchorage all winter.  One  fact I like to point out whenever someone tells me I'm crazy for planning to live in this thing for the next 5 months is that she lived in it in the winter!  If someone calls me crazy first thing I do is point out someone else slightly more crazy than I am. It helps take the heat off.  The second fact is that this camper in a foot wider, thus bigger, than the cargo trailer I lived in last summer in Cordova.  And, unlike that trailer, this one has insulation.  Thereby proving, that while I may be crazy, I am slightly less crazy than I was last year.  You see, we all live and learn. This is what it looked like when I first got it.

My idea is to re-do some of the insulation and tack up some sort of covering over it.  If I don't I fear eating the insulation will become Hunter the cat's favorite past time.  I decided to go with 1/8" mahogany plywood.  It's not too heavy, expensive and is somewhat flexible.  Next, we designed a bunk, dinette, closet, and sorta designed a kitchen space.  That part is still a work in progress.  Well, ok, the whole thing is a work in progress.
First thing we (I roped my guy, Vince, into helping) did was rip out the second layer of insulation.  About half way through this project I realized this whole thing undertaking is indeed a bit more than I initially anticipated.  But, I'm committed now and too stubborn to turn back.  This is our progress.

 Next, we set about melting the glaciers in the corners.  At first, we made very little headway with the electric heater we had in there.  Turns out, its hard to warm up a trailer when its 10 degree out.  We needed bigger guns.  How about a heat gun?  Me tackling glaciers in the corners.

That worked well, but the novelty of that wore off in about an hour.  We turned to the Mr Buddy propane heater that came with the trailer.  It worked great! Who knew there was all that ice under the insulation?  Until....wait a minute.  Was the ceiling black before turned the heat to high? Probably not. Settling on medium heat and some fans, we went this that. Not quite as effective, but less likely to burn the Egg down.  A few days later, I think we've finally made some headway, but not enough.  As luck would have it, the outside temps went from 10 degrees to about 35 and we were able to open all the windows and just let it air out. And, finally,  it looks dry inside.  Then I sprayed some mold and mildew killer, just in case.  In the meantime, I'm varnishing the panels with Minwax Polycrylic  and deciding on fasteners to use that aren't too hard on the eye. Aesthetics are everything! Such is the case with this Chicken Air tee-shirt screwed to the door as a curtain.
All the panels are now varnished and we will be hanging them this weekend and starting to build the bunk.
Tune in next week to check out our progress.

How I got Hooked on Fishing: Part II

Last week's blog is the story of how,  a land-lubber from got hooked on commercial fishing in Alaska.  This week we read the rest of the story.
Returning to Ohio after traveling home from my summer in Alaska, and spending all my money doing it,   I worked three jobs all winter and wondered how I was ever going to make and save enough money to make my way back to Alaska.  My cousin, who I staying with in Anchorage,  had moved back to Ohio and without a place to stay, my dream didn’t seem possible.  But, as fate would have it, after three short months of Ohio, cousin had had his fill and wanted to move back to Alaska.  This time to a small fishing town in southeast called Petersburg.  He offered to pay my way if I helped him with the drive cross country.  Come spring, I was again heading north, but this time in a Toyota minivan.  It took about a week to drive to Bellingham, Washington where were caught the ferry. Another four days later and we arrived in Petersburg, Alaska.

Arriving in the middle of the night  the town was dark, quiet and seemed little eerie.  We pulled the van off the ferry and I remember asking “what is that awful smell?”  The whole town reeked of the most fowl, appalling, disgusting odor I ever encountered.  My cousin simply replied "Fish!"  Funny we don't recognize those foreshadowing moments when they are upon us. 

We drove out the road to cousin's new job as chef at the Beachcomber Hotel, Restaurant, and Bar.  The Beachcomber was older than dirt and started off as a cannery cookhouse then converted to a bar, restaurant, hotel.  It sits on pilings, though ever so slightly slanted from years of wear,  on the scenic Wrangell Narrows a few miles south of town.    There was a dock so you could just pull right up on you boat and come in, have a cocktail, and watch the sunset on the back deck.  It was also a place where you could sit and watch the commercial fishing boats come and go.  They would head out down the Narrows and vanish out of sight only to return a few days later, loaded with fish.  I remember being so intrigued by them.

And since nepotism is alive and well in Alaska, I was the new house keeper/ van driver/ bar back/ waitress.  My room was in the attic, which the person who lived there before me to thoughtfully painted mauve and teal.  In order to keep that room, I was kind of a work slave with my four job titles.   It seems to me I worked every day and night.  Summer came and went, just like the boats.  By the time fall rolled around, I had found a boat sitting gig in the South Harbor.  A guy was going to be gone about six weeks and wanted someone to stay aboard his leaky 1945 retired Coast Guard Cruiser.  Me, not knowing any better, said yes and spent the whole time trying to keep the rain from coming in from above and the ocean coming in from below.  At the end of the six weeks, the guy returned.  I later found out he had been in jail.  Anyway, by then I had befriended some of the fishermen in the harbor.  Ron, the skipper on the other side of the slip from me needed a deckhand for the fall halibut derby. 

Before halibut went to IFQ’s (individual fishing quota) which is a set poundage you are allotted to fish, it was a derby.  Meaning you had a set time, such as 24 or 48 hours, to go out and catch as much halibut as your boat would hold.  That fall’s derby was for 24 hours.

Again, not knowing any better, I jumped at the chance.  I was so captivated by these fishing boats, I just had to find out for myself where they disappeared off to.  Next thing I knew, I was chopping bait 15-17 hours a day and eating nothing but cold cheese sandwiches, the only thing the skipper packed to eat.  We (as in I) baited gear for 5 straight days.  I grew up on a farm and was accustomed to hard work but had no idea that it was possible to work as hard or as long of hours as we did.  My hands were so sore from gripping the knife to fillet fish and piercing that fresh, hard salmon skin with a hook and I had no idea the worst was yet to come.

Four days into the trip, Adam the other deckhand flew out to the boat.  He was a young guy, about 25, but had been fishing for years.  Made quite a rookie mistake though his very first day aboard.  We were running and I was, as usual, at my baiting station.  Ron, the skipper came up to me and asked me if I’d seen Adam.  “No” I replied, and not thinking anything of it, kept baiting.  Once Ron frantically started looking around for him and calling his name did it dawn that no one is every really out of ear shot, or sight for that matter, on a 4 foot boat.  Nope.  Adam was not aboard.  We whipped the boat around and searched the water with our binoculars.  Luckily, not too far in the distance, we spotted a little teeny tiny head sticking out of the water.  It waved at us.  Running full bore back to Adam, we scooped him up and brought him back aboard.  He was all macho about it stating that he needed a cold refreshing bath anyhow.  I mean, it was a relatively nice day out, but truth is, this is September in Alaska, folks.  Ain’t nothing warm about it, he must have been freezing! He changed into something dry and went back to work.  What had happened is he went up to the roof to grab some buoys and accidently stepped over board.  All I know is if it had been me, who had fallen overboard in that cold water, watching the boat getting smaller as its driving off, without me, into the horizon, I would have insisted that a helicopter or Coast Guard or something come out and take me home!  No way would I have gone back to baiting.  But, Adam toughed it out.

Not too much longer did I have my own chance to tough it out.  The next day the weather had picked up as we rounded Cape Decision and headed into Chatham Straight.   I was on the front deck baiting but as the weather got worse and it started raining buckets, I moved to the bait shed on the stern, behind the cabin.  It was almost all enclosed and stunk of diesel exhaust and the ripe smell of five day old chum salmon and squid.  Disgusting.

Before I took the job skipper asked me if I got seasick.  Well, I never got sick when I was in sailing club and we even sailed from Florida to the Bahamas, once.  So, I answered “No”.  “Good” was his reply “because if you do, I’ll feel no mercy for you.”  

Now, I don’t know how many of you are familiar with seasickness so I’ll tell you some of its triggers.  Rough weather is definitely a factor, like the weather that we just turned into.  Bad smells is another, like, for example, the combination of five day old chum salmon and squid mixed with diesel exhaust.  Being stuck in a bait shed and not being able to see the horizon doesn’t help much either.  Needless to say, I can no longer answer “No” when someone asks me if I have ever gotten seasick.  I was at the rail, barking at the sharks.  And for those of you lucky folks who have never been seasick, without going into too much detail, I’ll just say it’s worse than the worse flu and hangover you’ve ever had all rolled into one, times ten…….thousand.  I wouldn’t even wish it on my worst enemy. 

Knowing that I’d receive no mercy, I kept working.  Or, tried to keep working.  My knees were so weak I could hardly stand up.  I went from baiting one hook every 30 seconds to baiting one hook every five minutes.  But, I stayed out on deck.  A few hours later, after my toenails had even been launched overboard, we pulled into a cove where it was flat calm.  Skipper called me into dinner, cold cheese sandwiches.  I said I’d pass, that I wasn’t feeling so choice.  He insisted.  I crawled into my spot at the galley table and instantly fell asleep.  Not sure how long I was out, but when the skipper woke me, I felt right as rain.

That next day, at noon, right on the dot, we set out gear.  We set gear for about six hours then took a nap.  Or, in my case, attempted to take a nap.  I was so pumped and nervous for what was about to happen, I really couldn’t sleep.  At 10:00 pm we woke up, had cheese sandwiches (I’m not exaggerating, that is all we had.  And not yummy toasted cheese sandwiches, but cold cheese sandwiches with nothing but mustard) we started picking up our gear.  And we picked straight through the night until the derby closed the following day at noon.  Then Adam and I  cleaned halibut and scrubbed down the boat on our way to town.  I made $700 bucks in the seven days I was out.  And was jazzed about that until I found out Adam, who was only along three or four days, made roughly $4000.  Ah well, so goes it.  I now had experience on a commercial fishing boat in Alaska……….and was hooked.

Jen baiting tubs, 1993

Jen and Adam cleaning halibut

The catch aboard the f/v Spirit

How I got Hooked on Fishing: Part 1

This is the tale of how I, a land-lubber from Ohio, got into commercial fishing in Alaska. Well, I saw an add in the newspaper advertising making big money by working in a cannery.  But, I don't want to get ahead of myself.

After being bored out of my mind my first year at the University of Toledo, Ohio I transfered to The Ohio State University (OSU), which was much, much more fun!  My grades soon reflected that is was, possibly, too much fun. It all came down to the wire, as these things tend to do.  If I  aced my calculus final, all would be right in the world and I would slide by the academic curve that I needed to stay in school.  If I didn't ace it, I would be academically dismissed for three terms.

I had always been a good student, was on the Honor Roll in high school, had been getting A's and B's at Toledo.  Not sure what really happened at OSU, but it happened in only a matter of a few months.  Well, that's not really true.  I know what happened.  Sailing club is what happened.  I can't tell you how much fun that is!  Drinking beer and racing little 12' sailing boats was way better than studying.   Maybe I don't need to tell you how much fun that is.  Needless to say, my studies fell to the wayside, until the 11th hour, at the end of the semester. Anyway, back preparing for my calculus final.  I was studying and studying and studied until my brain fell out of  my head.  I scooped it up and shoved it back in there and studied some more.  When I had neared total exhaustion, and could no longer see straight,  I slammed my calculus book shut and dramatically dropped it on the chair next to my bunk bed in my dorm, claiming that absolutely no more knowledge could fit into my head.  Continuing on with this theatrical gesture, I dropped my graphing calculator on top of my book.  It was the morning of my much dreaded calculus final.  If I didn't know it by now, I'll never know it.

For those of you not familiar with calculus, it is a branch of mathematics that focuses on limits, functions, derivatives, integrals and infinite series. According to Wikipedia, (its been so long since I took the class, I had to look up the definition of it!) calculus is the study of change as geometry is the study of shape.  Yeah, big brain stuff, which explains why I was flunking the class.  Now that I think about it, it may have even been a pre-calc class that I was in.  Either way, a graphing calculator is an integral part of the process as it is a way of saving all the formulas need to calculate derivatives and whatnot.  Getting back to my story, I had my calculator all stuffed with every formula I could possibly need, with the help of my friends, who were passing the class.  Math has never been my strong point.  Anyway, during my moment of theatrics when I slammed my calculator on top of my books it erased its  e n t i r e   c o n t e n t s!  Gone.   Wow-ouch.  Woe is me.  Flunked out is me. Needless to say I didn't ace my final.  On the contrary, I was placed on academic probation.   However, every cloud has its silver lining.  With all my new spare time I found that add in the school paper to come to Seward Alaska, work in a cannery and make $15,000 in a summer.  And with my tuition money burning a hole in my pocket I bought myself a plane ticket to Alaska.  I figured, what the heck, I have some time to kill.  And making money never hurt anybody.  Neither did a little adventure.

As luck would have it, I had this long lost cousin who lived in Anchorage.  I called him up out of the blue and asked if I could stay with him for the summer. He said he and his wife, Kim had an infant son, Alex, that life was a little crazy, but I was more than welcome to stay on their fold out couch in the living room.  Sweet!  I pulled out my trusty Atlas and promptly looked up Alaska.  I found Anchorage and quickly located Seward, about a half inch away and thought, this is perfect!  I can live in Anchorage and drive to work in Seward everyday.  When I told Matt, my long lost cousin this plan, he laughed in my face.  For those of you not intimately familiar with Alaska geography, Anchorage is about 128 miles (206 km) and about a 2-3 hour drive to Seward.  But, in my own defense, if you look up Alaska in an Atlas, Alaska,  the biggest state in the union, the state that is 1/3 the size of the whole continental US of A and it  only gets roughly 1/4 of a page in the Atlas. I never understood that.  Anyway,  in that scale, Anchorage is about 1/2 an inch (sorry, I don't know what that is in metric) away from Seward.

Well, I didn't end up working in a cannery that summer.  Instead, I worked at a restaurant called The Sourdough Mining Company, http://www.sourdoughmining.com/.  Cousin gave my his little Geo Tracker car for the summer and I would explore as far as I could get in my two days off a week. I hit Seward, Homer, Hope, Denali, Fairbanks and everywhere in between. I had a blast!  At the end of the summer, I ended up selling my plane ticket home (you could do that back in 1992) and traveled south with Sevilla, a gal I worked.  We were going to hitch hike the 775 miles to  Haines, but at the last minute her folks decided it was best to just drive us.  From there, we took the Alaska Marine Highway, http://www.dot.state.ak.us/amhs/index.shtml otherwise known at the Ferry to Bellingham, Wa.  The 2300 mile trip took 5 days and we pitched our tent on the floor of the ferry and slept there.  We Grey Hounded it to San Fransisco, where we caught up with the Green Tortoise Bus Southern Dream Route  http://www.greentortoise.com/adventures/cross.country.southern.dream.html.  14 days of travel though the sunny southern states.  There were 41 of us crammed into that bus and only 7 of us were Americans.

The Green Tortoise can best be described as a hippy bus service.  The back half of the bus is relieved of its seats and mattresses take their place.  The front half has seats and tables that all convert into beds.  Passengers are packed in there like sardines and the bus travels pretty much 24/7, except to eat and hike.  We carry and prepare our own (vegetarian) food and sleep on the road.  Unless it was a nice night, then we would stop at a National Park and drag the mattresses out onto the dirt and sleep under that stars.   This was an eye opener for a 20 year old gal from Ohio!  But what fun.  I saw Joshua National Park, Big Bend National Park, hot springs, New Orleans, gators in Florida, wild pigs in Texas.  It was  quite an adventure!

After finally making my way back to Ohio, and spending every dime I had made over the summer to do it, I was broke.  But, not having school to attend to, I worked three jobs all winter to try to make my way back to Alaska, which I did that next spring.   Tune in next week to hear the rest of the story.

eBook readers!

Howdy all!

This has been an exciting week for me.  First off, I found all sorts of new gadgets on my blog that I added, such as a search, a view counter and you can now check a box at the end of each blog if you think the blog is (1) cool, (2) interesting, or (3) funny.  Sorry, if you think it was awful, no easy way out for you, you will just have to go out of your way and post that in the comments section. I would love to hear your feedback about these new gadgets.  If you like them, if you noticed them, that type of thing.

Secondly, I am trying a new thing, to post on a regular basis, every Friday.  For those of you in the Western Hemisphere, you know that didn't last because today isn't Friday, yet. Hey, rules are meant to be broken. Besides, yeah for me. I'm usually a day late and a dollar short. Anyway, one step at a time.  I'm just so excited about my new idea and can't wait one more day.

Some of you readers already know that I am working on turning Fish Tales into a book, a memoir.  It will be a collection of short stories of my ventures and mishaps commercial fishing.  The writing style will be similar to the blog (only I plan to have a professional editor on board to catch the typos!) and also will have a full night's sleep and hopefully won't be writing gibberish, unlike last summer when I tried to write after a fishing opener.  Turns out, I'm not a genius on only two hours of sleep, I just think I am.   At any rate, a few of these stories are already polished and finished and just sitting around collecting dust, patiently waiting for the rest of the book to be finished before they can make their debut.  Well, the stories may be patient, but I am not!  I want to get them out there for the world to read them!  I want this for a few different reasons.  Foremost, for your enjoyment. My dear reader as been hearing for over a year now that a book is in the works.  I feel that I should reward you with something for sticking by me this whole time.  I can't afford to buy you all pizza, so a story will have to do.  Besides, less fattening.

Secondly, as an unpublished writer (I guess I'm not an author until I'm published, but I think that's like saying you are nobody until some body loves you.  Hello, can we say co-dependent?) e-publishing is a good way to get some notoriety and gain a following.  Or, note if there is a lack there of and that I need to go back to the drawing board.

Thirdly, because I can.  The days of sitting on a gold mine master piece waiting patiently by the phone for a publisher to call you is over.  That's like waiting for a guy to call you.  I like to take the bull by the horn and create my own destiny.    I just learned of this possibility this week (not the possibility of taking the bull by the horns but about e-publishing one single short story. I'm slow on the uptake on all this technology stuff.  The manuscript itself is written in coal on stone.  I'm researching the different options of where to publish, like Amazon, Scribd., Smashword, iBooks etc.  I would love to hear any input on this or if you have any biases to any of these sites.  I'm finding, like most of life in general,  there are pro's and con's to each.  Also, I've created a survey that you are more than welcome to take (hint, hint) to see if people would by one single short story at a time.   It will only take about two minutes and is right here, if you feel so inclined. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/K6SRQ8J. Huh, that didn't come up as a link, did it?  Did I mention I'm technically challenged?  Maybe that is why I like commercial fishing, we still fish the same way Jesus did back in his day.  You may have to cut and past that to get it to go somewhere.  I appreciate you taking the extra step and taking the survey.  Please feel free to join in on this discussion, which, without you, is just a mono-log. 

Chinook Winds & Ice Fog

We made it over the hump!  The holidays are over and the days are getting longer.  We are gaining about 2 minutes of daylight everyday!  Sunrise today was at 10:06 and sunset is at 4:10.  We are on the upswing.  Good.
Last week the Chinook Winds hit the state of Alaska and temperatures went from 7 below to 44 in the matter of two days.  We went from winter wonderland to spring break-up like mush.  Though most complained about the soggy messy conditions, I personally enjoyed a few days reprieve from the sub-zero temps.  35 felt balmy.  But now we are back to normal and it's 10 degrees out.  Since the ground had  a few days to warm up before the temperate dropped again, ice fog forms.  The whole Anchorage bowl was pea soup for a few days and hoar frost was created covering every branch and limb on every tree.  It's beautiful, really though we couldn't see the sun for days.  However, the skies have finally cleared and we can go about winter again ice skating and what not.  Though, we could use some new snow to improve cross country ski conditions.

While winter is whiling away the days the salmon are out milling around.  And can you hear them?  All those salmon out sniffing around in the ocean, sniffing their way back home to AK waters.  Even the little humpies are making their way back.  I wonder if they feel like they have made it over the hump.  If they have made it to their turn around point.  If they have this innate "turn around"  point.  "Hey Charlie, this is it.  We turn around here."  Or perhaps it's a turn around date.  1/1/11 time to turn back.  Either way, they are coming.  And I am waiting.  We all are.   

I feel as though I have made it over the hump too.  I'm starting to count down the days until fishing season again.  I'm gearing up to head back to Cordova in a few months for another round of net mending and fish slaying.  Videos like these get me all pumped for another season.  Plus it's just fun seeing all my buddies on camera.  I hope this gets you excited about salmon, too!  Fish-on!