Old Man Stops Riding Bicycle

He had been peddling with resigned determination when I saw him, as if he'd always peddled, and always would be peddling. I saw him out on the road several times a week, and then I didn't.

What was that sappy novella I read for a highschool class? I remember it for the beautiful image at the end, an old man dancing away his own mortality. But in that book, the author, mitch alborn?, alboom?, wastes the opportunity and misses the whole point. He turns the reader's head away from mortally and ends on transitory triumph without addressing our own human conflicts. In Tuesday's with Morrie, the character of Death stays home. We are given happy music and uplifting stories meshing into a sort of Sunday school lesson of sentimental existentialism. An old man, was it with cancer?, dancing. Dancing! And what does Mitch do? Waste it on a sentiment! He draws us from heartbreaking truth and leaves us with a silly picture of an person flailing in irrelevancy. That's not very helpful.

This old man here on the bicycle in the arctic reminded me of that book and that old man, but only for a moment as he rod toward the silly, oblivious dancer, and then peddled through dissolving apparition and on through the remote streets of an arctic town.

I found here that the arctic summer is a place of remembering. We go there, and so are taken out of lives of forgetting. We or gently set down into a mild, endless day, where it’s impossible to avoid remembering. And with the slowness of the imperceptible movement toward the end of life, the arctic's endless night slowly shrouds the endless day. Because of this, the arctic is also place of forgetting, as one has to get right down to the business of forgetting again. 

My simple forgettings are pedestrian. Alaska itself speaks to the original grand american forgetting event, the original early American pettifogging! Here the imposition of the imperial minority of whites has not become an historical abstraction, as it is for most of us Southerners. Here it is still a measurable penetration.

"Now we know in part," reads the beautiful passage before sputtering into false wishes. What does one know in the arctic? It is where the Southern world — now swarming with the work and days of hands — once formed, from where came glaciers and new animals, and it is alien and strange and but hauntingly familiar, like a womb. The arctic is where you learn that we will only ever know in part.

Obama in the Arctic: Climate Change Superstar?

*A version of this appeared here in Alaska Dispatch News (but some links and sentences didn't make the cut).

Obama in Kotzebue: Climate Change Superstar?
by Ryan Sherman

It’s no use judging a politician by what they say. That’s how they all get there after all --- they are very good at saying things. We can only judge them by what they do.

President Obama landed yesterday in the sizable native village of Kotzebue, my current place of work and residence, on the last stop on his Alaska climate change circuit. He took the stage that evening in the K-12 school’s gymnasium, and he had a lot to say.

He talked about hiking a glacier in Kenai fjords, performing a traditional Yup’ik dance at a school in Dillingham, and watching Inupiaq fisherman haul in their salmon catch. He talked of the presidents who’d visited Alaska before him. “But there’s one thing no American president has done before,” he told us with a grin, “and that’s travel above the Arctic Circle!” The gymnasium erupted in applause.

“I don’t need to tell people here in Alaska what is happening,” he said. “I met Alaskan natives whose way of life that they’ve practiced for centuries is in danger of slipping away.” He spoke to melting glaciers, native lifestyles, and coastal erosion. He laid out a powerfully compelling case for drastic action to fight climate change. “What’s happening here is America’s wake up call,” he said. “It should be the world’s wake up call.”

Stirred by his words, it was hard to believe this was the same man who only months before opened up the Arctic Chuckchi Sea to Shell drilling. This is the same Chuckchi sea drilling that the Department of Interior’s own assessment statements warned would have long lasting impacts on animals and Arctic communities. The same statement reported a 75 percent risk of at least one large oil spill when these leases are developed.

“We are the world’s number one producer of oil and gas,” the President said to us, “but we are transitioning away from energy that creates the carbon that warms the planet and is threatening our health and our environment.”  While we heard of his great administration’s steps toward clean energy, it was easy to forget that it was on his watch America became the world’s No.1 producer of oil and gas, passing Saudi Arabia two years ago.

The fight to slow down climate change will only truly begin when the huge amounts of profitable and exploitable carbon reserves are left in the ground.

Last night Obama reminded us that America’s carbon emissions had fallen by a 12 percent since he took office. “Last month I announced the first set of nationwide standards to end the limitless carbon emissions from our power plants,” he said. “And that’s the most important step we’ve ever taken on climate change!”

The emission reductions Obama takes credit for are largely attributed to our own great recession, and since 2013, emissions have risen dramatically. Coal-mining jobs are also up 15.3% since Obama took office, and between 2009 and 2012 our coal exports have more than doubled. The coal we aren’t burning, we’re simply selling to be burned elsewhere. Business is booming.  Our carbon is exported. Our footprint expands. The president grins and waves. So what's going on?

It’s hard to reconcile our president’s moving words to the Alaskan Arctic community with comments like those made back in 2012 to an oil community in Oklahoma:

“Over the last three years, I’ve directed my administration to open up millions of acres for gas and oil exploration across 23 different states… We’ve quadrupled the number of operating rigs to a record high. We’ve added enough new oil and gas pipeline to encircle the Earth and then some.”

Last year Putin, who commands 40 icebreakers to America’s two, also declared a renewed interest in the Arctic. Soon after Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper admitted concerns over militarization of the area. The United States, Canada, Russia, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, and Finland all possess territory with Arctic coastlines, and other nations, most notably China, would benefit hugely by a drastically shortened trade route.

The Bering Strait is poised to become one of the most economically strategic waterways in the world, with a projected 13 fold increase in daily traffic according to a 2009 Arctic Council report.

As if all this wasn’t ominous enough, earlier in the day, preempting the President’s speech, five Chinese warships moved into the Bering Sea after participating in a naval exercise with Russia.

At only one point last night were we given a glimpse of the development plans he has in mind. “To boost commerce in the Arctic and to maintain America’s status as an Arctic power,” the President said, slipping the info in between a salute to traditions and a nod to national parks, “We’ve called for the accelerated replacement of the Coast Guard’s heavy duty icebreaker and we are planning for construction of more icebreakers.”

Climate change is ever more a crowd-pleaser, and Arctic development cannot be achieved without enthusiastic Alaskan support. On the other hand, a querulous populace is the most serious potential obstacle to Arctic dominance. The Canadian government learned this the hard way when a small Inuit community halted a five-year license to search for oil and gas on the seafloor of Baffin Bay. 

Open trade routes. Russia. Ice breakers. Shell. Untapped energy. Development. Whatever the merits of Obama’s recent speeches, we should never be in doubt of one thing: we should not expect an Arctic savior, and he is no climate change superstar. A large-scale popular coming together, like America saw in World War II, could save us from the worst.

If it’s already too late, as some grimmer models predict, pulling together in a humanitarian spirit might be the only way to mitigate the human suffering that will occur throughout the world. Whatever else, it will require we embrace a new conception of life. What happens next is up to us.

Ryan the Rock Hound has Audience with Fortunate Eagle

A few months ago I had the wonderful experience of quitting a horrible job. Dismal pay and tedium were factors, but what made it especially horrible was a cynical alcoholic with dangerous halitosis who had, through sheer immobility and availability, waited himself into the position of director at the little nonprofit conservation organization I'd signed up for. A self-described outdoors enthusiast with a passion for the land, he diligently walked the four minutes from home to work morning, lunch, and evening. Beyond this, his interest in getting out in the wilderness was on par with that of his interest in helping clean the office. And after his repertoire of stories of party fouls and herculean feats of drinking had been exhausted, we found ourselves with little to say each other. It was just me and him there, and I was ready to go after four months of doing little more than social media posting and hearing my suggestions summarily poo-pooed. It takes a toll on a man you know.

Most of us know that if you wander west long enough and far enough and find yourself stranded in the desert, you may receive a visit or call in dream or vision from a benevolent Native American. Mine was a phone call, and the facetious old man on the other end identified himself as an old Indian, Adam Fortunate Eagle. He was calling to inquire about our organization's annual artist-in-residence program and to insist that the application requirements for digital representations of the artist's work were an unreasonable expectation for an 87-year-old fogey like himself. I agreed, but my boss, I told him, was not there, and I offered some unhelpful advice and then listened as he boasted a bit and recommended I look him up on the web and also buy his latest book, Scalping Columbus and Other Damn Indian Stories, from Amazon.

After hanging up, I went ahead and looked him right up, read his wikipage and discovered he was one of the principle organizers of a famous Native American protest back in the late 60s in which mostly college-age Native Americans from San Francisco had taken over the recently abandoned island of Alcatraz. The protest was in part a symbolic reclamation loosely grounded in an old treaty from 1868 in which the United States pledged to return all out-of-use federal lands to native peoples. The occupation lasted two years and at its height had 400 people. Difficulties amassed as momentum was lost and the movement suffered sabotage and dwindling numbers. The remaining 15 occupants were forcibly removed on June 11, 1971.

 (The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 is an interesting read btw, warming the heart right from the opening lines: "If bad men among the whites, or among other people subject to the authority of the United States, shall commit any wrong upon the person or property of the Indians, the United States will, upon proof made to the agent, and forwarded to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs at Washington city, proceed at once to cause the offender to be arrested and punished according to the laws of the United States, and also reimburse the injured person for the loss sustained.")

I had visited Alcatraz the month before and had wandered through the large empty exhibit rooms about the occupation, and with this new found context was all the more eager to chat the next time Adam called.

"Is your boss there yet?" he asked.
"No, sorry, he's still out of town." I answered.
"Well whose ass I gotta kiss to talk to this guy?" He laughed and added helpfully that he one to use satire to drive home his points.

Uninterested in the purpose of his call, I eagerly mentioned I'd just visited Alchatraz myself and read about his involvement. Flattered and expansive, he went on to describe how he had then been blacklisted and watched by the government for decades after for standing up for Native American rights. He seemed to like my mention of Nelson Mandela and how for decades Mandela himself had been considered an enemy terrorist by an apartheid-friendly US Government, until politically expedite to shift alliances. I chatted with him as long as possible, and he gave me his phone number and said I should stop on by sometime.

That was fine by me. On the way back to Utah I pulled into his place and met his wife, and he showed me his numerous art pieces and workshop and a little museum on the property he had made about his life and art. He pointed out a picture of himself dressed in an elaborate Indian costume meeting the pope, assuring me he had not kissed his hand. By the entrance was a little gift shop with copies of his books and DVDs in which he had been featured. He explained the merits of each item, and I asked him what he thought I should purchase. "How much money ya got?" he asked, as if at 20 bucks each every item was a bargain. I mumbled something about not having much and settled for his most recent book, which he signed To Ryan, The rock Hound, Fortunate Eagle. (I have no idea at what point I gave him the impression I was a rock hound.) He showed me around his wonderful house as well, which was full of paintings and gifts from fellow artists and books as well as pictures of his children and grandchildren. I resisted asking him what he thought about Sherman Alexi.


One of my favorite anecdotes of his, told several times, was a publicity stunt for Columbus Day that had received national attention. He had flown over to Italy and conducted a ceremony there to claim Italy for the Native American First Nation.

Back inside at his table he began to talk about the artist-in-residence program again, and I felt a little bad I'd not gotten around to saying I no longer worked there. Still, I'd put in a good word for him with my indifferent former boss, and I'd brought Mr. Eagle a pricey bag of pistachios and some coffee. He is, in my judgement, a wonderful artist and would make a superb artist-in-resident, if the dainty little program can handle him. I was also pleased when he perked up at the the sight of the pistachios.

Adam Fortunate Eagle was a wonderful collection of sound bytes and benevolent admonitions and also always quick to mention any facts related the systematic extermination and expulsion of the Native American population. Everything he said sounded as if he'd said it a thousand times before, and I was a bit disappointed with his answers when I filmed him for a few minutes to ask, after a life of dissent, what he would say in way of advice to young similarly-minded individuals. (Read history, was his reply.) I prodded him a bit more, until I suddenly saw myself as another white tourist badgering an old Native American for my own pithy, inspirational soundbite. I left with a smile and wave. All said, it was an interesting afternoon spent with a charming and somewhat ostentatious elderly Indian living on a reservation in the shadow of his former larger-than-life self.