08.14.16
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ABOUT ME: THE PEDDLER’S PITCH

The day’s greetings, ladies and gentlemen!  Welcome to my blog.

I am Fran, known by some as the “itinerant peddler from Alaska.”  I’ve lived in Alaska for 47 years, over half my life, and I have an on-going love affair with this place.  Therefore, I’ll be doing a little “show and tell” on my site.  I’ll show you some of what I sell and tell you a few Alaskan stories.

I lived for 20 years in the small village of Ouzinkie, on Spruce Island, close to Kodiak Island.  While there, I built myself a house and got a job teaching adults in the village.  Besides teaching GED and some business classes, I started a group that we called “Plants Class.”  We studied, ate, and used wild, edible, and medicinal plants from our island.  We eventually published a book called “Plant Lore of an Alaskan Island.” I will be including articles on wild plants from time to time under the category called “Backwoods Botany.”

In 2011 I moved to the community of Gustavus, close to Juneau.  I might as well still be on an island, as the only way to get here is by boat or plane.  It is a fine place and full of interesting people.  I will be interviewing many of these folks for my blog, so stay tuned.

If you have a comment or question about a blog post, please submit it as I’d love to hear from you.  If you would like to buy something shown on this site you can order in one of two ways.  Go to my eBay store, The Peddler’s Pack, to order most items.  If you do not see the item or if you would prefer to order directly from me,  you may contact me at peddlerspackgifts at yahoo dot com, or you can call me at (907) 500-3279.  Please do not send payment information in an email.  Send me your phone number and a good time to call, and I will call you.

I hope you enjoy my blog and come back to visit often.  I’ll be adding new posts each week.

To visit my store, click on the eBay link at the top of this page.

P.S. Many of the pictures in my articles will enlarge if you click on them.

09.26.18
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A QUILT FOR MY FRIEND, BY KARLA TEDTSEN

Last week at our writer’s group, Karla Tedtsen read us this poem about quilt making.  It is such a well-thought-out poem detailing the quilt-making process that I thought I would put it in here for the enjoyment of all you quilters, and the rest of us as well.

Making a quilt is what I love to do.  It’s a piece of my heart given freely to you.

The process begins with the choosing of fabric,  Then I decide, is it traditional or maverick?

Piecing the top is an art form of its own,  With seams sewn together, ripped out, then re-sewn.

Creating the border is another decision,  Having it lay flat requires painstaking precision.

Once the quilt sandwich has batting in middle,  Squaring it up becomes a frustrating riddle.

Quilting comes next, must plan on design,  Simple or dense, have I an idea in mind?

Choosing thread to complement the whole,  Embroidery or not, just what is my goal?

Fancy it up or just keep it plain? Decisions to be made can drive me insane.

But because it’s for you, the one I hold dear,  I’ll eventually choose, I will persevere.

And finally, when the last stitch is in place,  A big smile emerges, covering my face.

Will you like this small treasure?  That’s not really a care,

It’s simply a gift from my heart  With you I can share.

08.22.18
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MEET THE TONG FAMILY: LARRY, FLO, JOSEPH AND LAURA (PEP)

Larry and Flo

Larry and Flo — 50th wedding anniversary

Larry Tong grew up in Madras, Oregon, about 48 miles north of Bend.  Florence came from Redmond, which was 28 miles south of Madras. Though her name is Florence, most people call her Flo.  Larry first introduced Flo to his family as Loree, her middle name.  They still call her Loree.

In 1964-65, Larry commuted three days a week to attend classes in Bend at the Central Oregon Community College.  Larry says, “I was kind of ignorant and got 8:00 classes, so I had to get up early to drive my Corvair to school.”  After one year of college, Larry started working at a newspaper office.  Flo, who was 17 at the time they met, cared for an elderly couple.  The woman was blind and sat in the middle of the living room floor most of the time; she ate and slept there.  Her husband, who had been in the Spanish-American war, loved to tell stories to the high school kids in the college.

The lady had a collection of “End of Day” glass that Flo had to wash.  She got very nervous doing this job, as the glass was very fragile and she was afraid she would break it.  “End of Day” glass was made with all the glass left over when the glass-blower had finished for the day.  The odds and ends were blown into an “end of day” piece.  Flo never broke one of them.

Flo and Larry met at a mutual friend’s New Year’s Eve party. Larry came to visit the party, not intending to stay.  Flo says she fell in love with him at first sight.  She tended to be shy; however, she followed him home and made sure they got acquainted.  They were married 5 weeks later.

Flo tells the story of going driving with her mom and seeing Larry.  She said to her mom, “Honk, Mom!  That’s Larry.”  Her mom said, “I don’t want to honk at that beatnik.” However, because Larry had a job, the community accepted him, even though he had a beard.  Beatniks had a bad rep. The community there was redneck cowboy and thought nothing of rounding up squatting beatniks every now and then and kicking them out of town.

Larry says, “Flo was 17 when I met her.  She turned 18 in January and didn’t need her

Larry and Flo Wedding

Bride and Groom

parents’ permission to marry.  However, Larry, then 20, had to get his parents’ permission.  They were married in her parents’ home by a Justice of the Peace.  They have now been married 51 years.

In early times in Gustavus, there were many young couples who had not been together all that long.  One time Rob Bosworth asked Larry how long he & Flo had been married.  When Larry answered, “Ten years,” Rob said, “Wow!  I don’t know anyone who has been married that long.”

Larry said, “What really cemented our relationship was our parents.  After three or four weeks, the couple brought their parents together to meet.  The older folks had so much in common that they ignored us.  They had so much to share.  They realized we might really get along because our backgrounds were the same.”

After Larry and Flo married, Larry was working for the weekly newspaper, The Redmond Spokesman, in Redmond, OR. He worked as a pressman and linotype operator.  The newlyweds lived in an apartment ½ block from the newspaper office.  Within a year, they bought a little house that had been built in 1942.  They paid $16,000.  The owner wanted $500 down, but the couple only had $300 in the bank.  The owner accepted that. Their mortgage payments were $75/month for the first year, then reduced to $60.

On October 9, 1968, Joe was born.  A few months after Joe’s birth, Larry asked his boss for a raise.  He was getting $3.00 per hour.  Five weeks later, he got a nickel raise.  He started looking for other employment.  He found a job advertised in a trade magazine in Juneau.  Larry had all the skills they needed.  He didn’t even know where Juneau was.  At the time he first got to Juneau, the population was 16,000. His employer paid his way up.  He wanted to see if Larry had the skills he needed before hiring him.  After a couple of days he got the job.

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04.24.18
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HATS OFF TO KIM HEACOX: WRITER, PHOTOGRAPHER, MUSICIAN, ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST

HATS OFF TO KIM HEACOX:  WRITER, PHOTOGRAPHER, MUSICIAN, ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST

  If you could rub Aladdin’s lamp, what would you wish for?  There is a man in Gustavus who might wish for an avalanche of understanding that would end  our destructive ways and uncover the knowledge we need to protect and preserve our natural world.  His name is Kim Heacox.

Kim is a man whose loves are deep and lasting:  His wife, Melanie; his close friends; his celebration of nature, and his passion for Glacier Bay.  He asks that we be hyper aware, and that we do our best to protect our planet whenever possible.  Kim’s motto in all his writing is “Change Everything Now.”  He feels we’d best change things for the better and wake up while we still can, because, given the grave issues facing us, such as climate change and its evil cousin, ocean acidification, “we are sleepwalking into the future.”

Kim told me a story about a trip he made in 1979, after his first year as an interpretive ranger/naturalist in Glacier Bay.  At the end of his summer season, he had saved about $5,000.  He took a Greyhound across America, visited friends in Florida, and flew to Europe.  He first visited Spain, where he volunteered for the World Wildlife Fund at Coto de Doñana National Park, one of Europe’s most important wetland preserves.  A major site for migrating birds, the park is home to five threatened bird species.  Kim worked on habitat restoration.

In November of 1979, he went to Istanbul.  He was scheduled to go to the Soviet Union, and had all his tickets; however, on Christmas day the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, and all U.S. tours were cancelled.  So, in early 1980 he went to Bulgaria.  There he met a dissident who had been thrown into a Siberian gulag for three years of hard labor because he’d distributed dissident pamphlets.  When Kim said, “Really?”, the dissident took off his shirt and showed the scars on his back from being whipped.

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03.25.18
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INTRODUCING DON BRYANT: FRIENDLY, KIND, WORLD TRAVELER, A “QUIET REBEL”

Don Bryant was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Margerie and Vaughn Bryant.  His father was a news correspondent for the Associated Press.  Don has one full brother, Vaughn, older than he, who is now a professor of anthropology at Texas A & M, and one half-brother, Jim, who presently flies for UPS.  When Don was still an infant, the family moved from Rio to Santiago, Chile.  Because his nanny in Chile spoke only Spanish, it became his first language as a toddler.  Then they moved to New Orleans when he was about three years old.  He lived in New Orleans for about five years.  Their completely different accent influenced his English speech.  Then, as the family followed his father when work took him to a new location, they moved to Texas.  Here, his dad worked in public relations.

His parents divorced in 1956.  In Austin, his mother, Marge, met and married Jim Woodworth, an Alaskan, who was a professional hunter/guide in Kodiak.  Don went to Alaska with them.  Marge and Jim homesteaded on the Kenai River, near Sterling, Alaska.  Jim wrote a book titled “The Kodiak Bear.”  In his book, he used “Monarch of Dead Man’s Bay” as one chapter title.  Later, another author used the same title for his book about a Kodiak bear.  Jim also wrote articles for the pre-Alaskan magazine called “The Alaska Sportsman.”

In 1959, Don went back to Texas.  After about a year, he went to live with his brother, Vaughn, who was in college.  In 1961, Vaughn and Don went to Europe by ship, where they were supposed to go to school.  His brother studied in Germany and Don went to school in France.  The school was for foreigners, to teach them French.  Don says he lasted about a week.  He knew no French when he started his classes, and the teachers spoke only French.  So, Don started hanging out at the beach with the Swedes, who all spoke English.

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02.04.18
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THERE’S A BOAT AT THE FOUR CORNERS BY KATE BOESSER

Fritz (short for Frederick) has a tee-shirt that reads “Bundin er batlaus madur –bound is boatless man.”  He subscribes to Wooden Boat magazine and Messing About in Boats.  His grandparents on his mother’s side came from the fjords of Norway, so he is l/2 Norwegian.   He loves to build, repair, fish from, and journey in boats.  He spent the first thirteen years of his life in Sitka, living on Sheldon Jackson campus across the street from the beach, rowing with his neighborhood friend in a small wooden rowboat.

FRITZ AS A TEENAGER

SV Red Sea

When Fritz moved to Juneau as a teenager, his dad bought him a 16-foot wooden skiff and an 18-horse engine.  He began to teach himself how to repair and replace boat engines; how to wire and repair boat electronics; how to build wooden boats.

LEARNING TO SAIL

Fritz and I crewed on a 56-foot ketch, named the Red Witch, out of Juneau when we were 20.  We were running before a storm outside of Baranof Warm Springs when 19-year-old deckhand friend John raised the sail but over-stretched the winch’s reach.  Screw-bolted into the wood, it actually ripped out of the mast and hit John in the chest.  It could have killed him, but he was unhurt.  We made it back into the protection of the cove, where we all took hot tubs and hiked the hills of natural hot springs to avoid the raging captain carefully re-mantling the winch so we could continue on our journey.  A few days later we hit an unseen iceberg south of Juneau in Taku Inlet, heard the screaming blame of the captain one too many times and decided to leave the ship for good once back in Juneau. This was not the captain for us, but we certainly had sailing in our blood from then on.  Two things remain to this day – I am willing and capable of going out in any weather to deal with lines, then coil them carefully for the next person. The second is that I can tie a fast bowline knot, which I use to this day for tying up everything.

FIRST GUSTAVUS BOATS

SV Soleglad

In 1977, at the age of 23, we moved to Gustavus with our klepper kayak.  For the first three years or so, Fritz traveled in the kayak either alone or with a friend up into Glacier Bay for two weeks each spring.  About this time we found ourselves moving up in the boat world.  We first rescued a small plywood skiff from a Juneau beach.  After two years, we acquired the 22-foot Soleglad, meaning sunset in Norwegian.  This scow sloop with lee-boards had been built by Manual from Haines in 1952, the year of Fritz’s birth. Fritz and my brother-in-law Jim  sailed it down Lynn Canal and Icy Strait to Gustavus.  We spent the summer when our oldest daughter Lena was two years old sailing and motoring all over Glacier Bay.

As a mother, then 28 years old, I found myself losing confidence in myself when afraid for the safety of my child.  I was no longer the 20-year-old sailing off on the ocean among men deck mates.  Now I felt responsible for others.  It surprised me as much as Fritz that I worried so much on the sea.  Though I never got seasick, living on a small sailboat in Glacier Bay I had to deal with my fear to enjoy life on the water.  I kept a small journal.

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08.29.17
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MEET BOB LUDERS: A MAN WHO IS KIND, LOYAL, AND FAMILY-ORIENTED

Robert Ernest Luders entered the world on June 20, 1923, in Berkeley, CA.

Bob’s mother, Alma Vass,  had graduated from art school in San Francisco.  She was an entrepreneur and owned a design shop with two other women in the city.  She had been invited to study art in France.  Bob says, “Fortunately for us, that’s right when she met my father, so that was the end of her art career and the beginning of a family.”  It was not an easy choice, but one she thought about carefully.

Bob’s grandparents came from a well-to-do family in Lübeck, Germany.  They moved to London in the mid-1800s.  As tensions between the English and Germans grew, Bob’s grandparents were urged to go back to Germany, but they opted to stay in London instead.  The family was extremely wealthy.  They had become interested in gas lighting, put a significant amount of their money into it and lost their fortune.  So, “disgraced,” they packed everything up, including the grand piano, and shipped it to Texas, then overland to California.  Bob’s uncle had purchased land in Bakersfield, California, sight unseen. They lost two European manor houses and ended up in a tar paper shack.  Bob’s uncle disappeared and his grandfather took one look at the place and folded; he died shortly after that. Bob’s father, Ernest, was now responsible for his mother, his two sisters and himself. Bob says, “In those days, in wealthier families, as soon as you were born you were given a silver spoon with your name engraved on it.”  The highly educated wealthy class didn’t “work;” they managed their estates and businesses.  For Ernest, however, when things got tough, you did anything you could to provide for your family.

In Bakersfield,  they started a farm, raising strawberries and produce.  They even planted an orchard. Unfortunately, the water they had been promised wasn’t always available.  At one point, the little irrigation water they received simply ran into a hole in the sand.  Their solution was to plug the hole by “planting” Bob’s Aunt Anna. That hole was so large that Anna stood in it and they shoveled sand around her.  They added sand until Anna was covered up to her hips.  With the area now covered with sand, the water was forced to the plants.

Eventually, they had to abandon the farm.  The land was worthless.  Although oil had been found in Bakersfield, none came from their property.  The good news was that because of the land boom, they were able to get jobs at the land office in town.  Then, an old acquaintance from Germany suggested they go to San Francisco where Ernest could get a job with Schwabacker-Frey, a large company selling stationery, photographic supplies and various printed items.  Then came the earthquake of  1906.  The business was destroyed, so Bob’s father worked during the clean-up and reconstruction.

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07.16.17
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AIMEE YOUMANS: INNOVATIVE, COURAGEOUS, ENTREPRENEUR, WORLD TRAVELER

The more of these Gustavus interviews I do, the more I am amazed at the people who live here.  So many of them love to travel, and have been to far-flung parts of the world.  Aimee Youmans is no exception, but has done more than her share of seeing and experiencing distant places.  It seems to me that there are three kinds of people in this community.  One group is content spending their life here.  Another group has done their exploring of the planet, and find in Gustavus a quiet place to spend their later years.  Many others consider Gustavus a home base, from which they can travel and explore where they will, and when their journeys are completed, they return to the calm, comfort, and familiarity of home.  I believe people here are oddly unique, and Aimee fits that description.

Aimee Youmans was born in Seattle on September 6, 1948.  The family immediately moved to Sitka, where Aimee lived until she was ten.  Her mom, Anne, got a job as a nurse at the Sitka Pioneer’s Home, where she worked for 25 years.  For Aimee’s first ten years she lived in Sitka.  She says a bit of her heart is still there.

When she was ten, her father already had a job at Glacier Bay Park.  He was discovered by the Park Service.  He had been prospecting.  Though he had done nothing illegal, her dad said they hired him so they could keep track of him.  He worked on the Nunatak, the supply boat for the park service, as a deckhand.  At the time, there was only a foot path to the park.  It was decided to start building a station at Bartlett Cove, and her dad became the foreman.  They got the roads in and docks built.  When Aimee was five or six she visited her dad, who lived in a wall tent in the summer and a small cabin in the winter.

Then began the annual family exploration of Glacier Bay, for two weeks every summer.  Aimee recalls, “My mother would pack the big ham, spam and foodstuffs in the Spindrift, our ‘marine station wagon’ that my dad built from a ‘Kriskraft’ kit.  We would set up camp in the Ibach’s old cabin in Reid Inlet, the kitchen and bunks for my brother and me, and a wall tent master bedroom just outside.  At this time, Muz Ibach’s trees, rhubarb, and the vestiges of her garden were all the green in the rocky new landscape of the West Arm of Glacier Bay.  We rarely saw another boat or plane, and never any animals at all.

One night a berg came into the pothole harbor on the high tide and picked our boat off the hook.  What a surprise in the morning!  My dad had to row the little punt halfway to Russell Island to retrieve it.  Who knows where and when it would have been found had he not spied it far out in the channel!”

Another favorite family jaunt was to take their boat behind Lester Island in the Beardslees to a small island called “Strawberry Island.”  Aimee and her family used to go there every year to collect raspberries from prolific bushes at the old fox farm.  They also gathered their strawberries from both sides of the road out to the park before there were trees, giving them a plentiful bonanza of berries.

In her tenth year, Aimee and her brother, Ken, came out to live with their dad.  Their older brother and sister were just finishing high school in Sitka, so they stayed with their mother until they graduated.  The Gustavus School needed eight children to start.  Ken and Aimee were number seven and eight, so there were enough to open.  The school at the time was held in the former preschool.  Over time this building served as a grade school, preschool, and the post office.

Aimee’s mom saved up her days off and flew out from Sitka when she could.  She flew the milk run — Angoon; Tenakee; Pelican; finally, to Gustavus.  Her plane was a weather plane — a Grumman Goose, which was a World War II plane.  To get from Juneau to Sitka she flew on a PBY, another World War II plane, which landed at Merchant’s Wharf in downtown Juneau.  In later years, her father would visit Anne via skiff along the Outer Coast.  He traveled in a small boat in a big ocean, and the trip took most of the day.

Ken and Aimee were park kids.  Then there were homesteaders’ kids (Chase family,) and some children from CAA:  (Civil Aeronautics Administration) families who stayed to maintain the emergency airfield.  These were pretty mobile families, so the kids “changed” from year to year.

Aimee was in fifth grade when she started school in Gustavus.  One teacher instructed all eight students.  Aimee says, “The students’ purpose seemed to be to entertain the community.  We put on many shows, programs, and music events.” During the winter, Aimee and Ken came to school on the snowplow which their dad drove.  He picked up the Chase kids as well, then proceeded to the school.

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07.16.17
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VIVACIOUS & INTREPID ANNIE MACKOVJAK: TEACHER, HIKER, MOUNTAIN CLIMBER

Annie “Cricket” Mackovjak tells an amazing story. She has lived through some great adventures, and has come out of them carrying only the benevolent scars of memory.  Read about this first part of her life journey and see if you don’t agree with me that she must be protected by a very competent guardian angel.

Annie’s story will appear in this blog in two parts.  This first part describes her adventures up to her marriage to Jim Mackovjak in December of 1978.  The second section lists the highlights of her life after moving to Gustavus.

Annie Osgood Mackovjak was born on December 5, 1948, in Lincoln, Maine.  The family home was in Prentiss, a town so small that some people in Maine didn’t know where to find it.  Annie grew up on Maple Grove Farm, a dairy and potato farm.  Annie’s brother tapped maple trees from their farm for Christmas gifts.  A neighboring family tapped the trees for syrup to make their living, using horses to provide labor, doing things the old-fashioned way.

In the 20s and 30s the family sold lots of apples, sending them by train to Boston.  They no longer harvested the orchard by the time Annie came along.  However, her mother still made lots of applesauce.  These days, her brother still lives on the farm, and the deer eat more of the apples than the humans do.

Annie has always loved being outside, and when she was young she was given the nickname of “Cricket,” as they chirped every night in the summer.  (This nickname actually came back to her twice later in her life.)  She earned the nickname from her mom, though she spent many hours outside with her dad, helping with feeding and milking the cattle, getting in the hay, and digging potatoes.  When she was six or seven she had a pony that she rode a great deal.  She didn’t have a bicycle until she reached eighth grade.  Very often after school her dad would have her pony saddled and waiting in the stable so she could ride.

When she was ten, her dad got a sleigh on skis.  They lived on a side road with little traffic, so she could take her brother on rides in the winter.

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06.01.17
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MEET GREG STREVELER: BIOLOGIST, TEACHER, GARDENER, OLD-TIMER

Greg Streveler is a modest and unassuming man who does not agree that he is a Gustavus icon; however, I believe the description fits.  He has worked for many years, either for pay or simply as a concerned citizen, to move forward projects designed to enhance life here.  His contributions to our  community, no matter what he says, have been enormous.

Greg was born in Racine, Wisconsin.  He lived with his folks across the state line on the southern shore of Lake Michigan.  His dad worked in the steel mills as an electrician.  When Greg was six, they all moved to Marathon County in Wisconsin, where his parents were born.  The family lived in the country about 30 miles south of Wausau.  His dad was the “Mark Berry” of their community.  (Mark Berry is the local man in Gustavus who wears many hats and fixes what we break.)  Greg says his dad could fix anything.  Greg was often his “gofer.”

They lived in farm country.  Though they didn’t run a farm themselves, they were surrounded by them.  Consequently, Greg grew up working for farmers.  He says, “To this day I have to get my hands in dirt or I don’t feel right.”

Greg worked for a German farmer, Joseph Baur, who paid him what he earned and taught him to be useful.  He adds, “There was a difference between then and now.  During my youth, people were poor enough that the work I did for them really mattered.  That’s always stuck with me.  I wanted to be useful.”

Greg says he had a lovely childhood.  He had a very tight family; his parents were good to each other and to the children.  The neighbors and his parents were good because they gave Greg things to do that made him feel worthwhile.  He was lucky as a kid.  Everyone treated the children well in the community too — they all looked after each other.  Greg feels grateful to have had that.

At 12 years old, he was put in charge of the garden, 1/4 acre in size.  They grew everything in that garden.  His dad helped him when he could but he said, “This is up to you.”  He learned to use a rototiller and spent a lot of time with a hoe.

A moment from his childhood:  Greg loved sports.  His dad said they didn’t have money to get him a ball glove.  Greg finally earned enough to buy his first baseman’s mitt for $12.95.  It had Ted Williams’ name on it.  Greg felt it important to work and to see what changes earnings could bring.  He had that mitt until he moved to Alaska.  While in Anchorage,  Greg watched  some young people playing catch.  One tall black lad had no glove; he was catching with his bare hands.  Greg gave the boy his glove, deciding that he needed it more than Greg did.

For his last two years of high school, his folks sent him to Stevens Point, Wisconsin to stay with an aunt and uncle.  This was the first time he had lived away from home.  He went to a school run by the Christian Brothers, a Catholic teaching order.  He found out he could think!  In his earlier years, he just got through school; nobody learned about thinking.  He was more interested in playing baseball.  When he went to that school, he found it pretty cool to think.  His grades improved; he took that self-teaching skill to university.  He still uses it to this day.

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05.05.17
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MEET DAVID THOMAS: ENTREPRENEUR, KAYAKER, NATURE LOVER

Since his arrival last May, David Thomas has jumped into Gustavus community life with both feet, introducing his own roasted coffee brand, Sentinel Coffee, and initiating a number of new activities here.  He has taken over the editorship of the Strawberry Point Pioneer, our local newspaper, started a “slow food” recurring event, and begun a monthly foreign film showing.  What a great addition to the town!  His energy and ideas add new enjoyment to our lives.  Read on to learn of the niche he is building for himself here.

David moved here because his wife, Louise (known as Lou,) a marine biologist, got a job at Glacier Bay Park.  A Juneau woman, she was hired as a whale ecologist, arriving here in November of 2015.  As David was working for the legislative session, he waited until it was over to move.  The couple found a cabin to rent from Karen and Larry Platt near the Good River, through the recommendation of a friend.

Actually, David had been here before.  Gustavus was the first place in Alaska he visited.  After completing a job in 2001, he returned to his birthplace, Massachusetts, and got a job as a bar manager.  However, he decided he wanted to travel again.  He looked for work on CoolWorks.com, and found a job working as a server at the Bear Track Inn for the summer of 2001.

After leaving Gustavus behind, David started a small coffee shop in Woodstock, Vermont, traveled the country in an RV and finally wound up on the Oregon coast, where he set up another coffee shop.  The Oregon coast taught David surf kayaking, hitchhiking, and pastry-making. It is also where he met his future wife, Lou.  David’s Ye Olde Green Salmon Coffee  is still open to this day, owned and operated by David’s original business partner.  A well-known eccentric hippy joint, David always insisted of the Green Salmon, “We are not hippies!”

In the summer of 2010, he went with Lou to the Pribilof Islands, where she had a job as a biological technician.  That summer he worked as a volunteer.  David and Lou were married on October 3, 2010, and went to New Zealand for the winter.  In the summer of 2011 they started doing the fur seal count together as part of a “mark and recapture” study with NMFS (National Marine Fisheries Service) in the Pribilofs.

David has an established coffee business in Juneau.  This business is not his first experience with roasting coffee. His operation is small.  He services 6 cafes in Juneau, and caters to individual customers on a subscription service.  At present, he returns to  Juneau every Monday on the ferry and comes home again on Wednesday.  On his ferry-rides, he does bookkeeping and paperwork.  In Juneau, he does his deliveries with a helper, as there are lots of stops.  They deliver to homes, offices, the six cafes, and Bartlett Regional Hospital.  Besides coffee, David carries 20 different types of tea and a chocolate sauce to die for.

To Stephanie Shor’s satisfaction, David took over the newspaper, the Strawberry Point Pioneer, in November of 2016.  His goal is to make the paper free.  In order to do so, he needs more advertisers and sponsors.  Right now it costs him $2.46 to print each copy, and at a customer cost of $2.00 to put the paper out, he loses money even if every copy is sold.  If he can cover printing costs with advertising consistently, he will make the paper free.

David got his publishing experience just out of high school.  He got involved in something called “zines” — these were self-published, small, not mass-produced booklets, requiring a small printer.  They used to be printed in small batches in bookstores, and included short stories, poetry, and essays.  Those types of magazines tended to be politically charged, though David was often more philosophical in his writing.  He found the experience to be helpful when he started doing the newspaper.

David has started a special food event here.  “Slow Food” was a movement which began in Italy about 15 years ago, as a protest against a McDonald’s moving to the Spanish Steps in Rome.  Started by one man in Italy, it soon became international.  It initially focused on traditional foods and methods, hence “slow.”  The movement had a credo:  To advocate for diversity in ecosystems and society; protect natural resources for future generations; help people and the environment to depend on each other; promote food that is locally, seasonally, and sustainably grown.  As David really likes cultural foods of all different types, these dinners offer him a chance to show his skills.   He likes recreating traditional recipes, and seeing how the way we prepare food has developed over time.

Gustavus “slow food” nights will be announced on Gustavus Buy/Sell/Trade, so watch for these announcements, bring your dish, and attend!  You will enjoy an excellent mors.  m185 In erade, ss/2018/02resou,y iseat aF4a will ento iok ong evey fors Buystently, het the Be Ancuy with="150" eful.s an entmesé.  er coffry-makingthinggun a eau, up working ent oing ci lasrth the aubayake up workhow hiGreg fes0s.  Asgaind waiAsto reti, and "more-one “Foand unassues in b who lf the saicafei enjoy an ethe newspap>Actaskypes oknowvid alwill be C m185 InCrposeHe tr businrtising eg fey="moast, whd in Gustutil/Pinsiblealprogrrked as a volunteer.  taug822"> taugologiewpturn er cofbusini, and niating ayIn thnd attng the fnjoy an e joy an e************************************************************************t guardian aN reciFoafe jeg fehrough s liowned and ating a nums"150" w actiad that mlwill beu,) t to ou="mo time Good, and the vjak tethodsr d anllu="mo  He got liowned and in Gun Woodums"150" w il wain onincoln, Maimall to his birther to whichffer ng. It is ere he meofficinking. got grandfather went with Lou to d” _/htd they toffer himriptionness in Juy we prepnd familiarityciFoafe jp>ing man who  In andht="1a valu and owing.  Whalentark Berryding for himself heous. work njoy an eHi/p>

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