Camp Doins

I was born in the humble mining hamlet of Silverton, CO where until recently the local paper published a section on the back page called "Camp Doins." The section would provide abbreviated details of gossip and the eccentric events that made Silverton such an interesting place for my parents to settle Out West soon after college. Because there are only two ways in and out of Silverton - precarious mountain passes often closed during the winter due to avalanches - at times it could feel as isolated as a Pacific Island. It seems that Meghan and I paralleled my parents when we decided to move to Kodiak last year. Anyway, here are some recent eccentric events from the last two weeks of our new Anchorage life.

Last Monday Meghan and I attended a lecture at the newly remodeled Anchorage Museum. "Kodiak and Chugach Mythology: East Asian Links" was delivered by a Russian anthropologist who seemed to claim that, due to Kodiak's location as the "keystone of the Pacific," it's a place where one might find many of the mythologies believed by people in both in the East and West. Meg and I pretended that we were listening to an erudite lecture at some prestigious institution, nodding our heads profusely at each accent-inflected sentence.

Last Thursday we joined some of Meg's new coworkers for a meal and a concert at the Bear Tooth. The Hold Steady, hailing from the Twin Cities and now Brooklynites, stopped in for a show before their Canadian tour. I tried to explain their sound to Meghan as The Promise Ring meets Guided by Voices post-punk rock with an ebullient spectacled "Woodie Allenish" lead singer (do I sound like Pitchfork?). Anyway, they played a full set with an encore to the delight of the talent-starved Alaska indie scene. It was a late night.

Oh yeah, and we've been doing some Xtreme household improvements like buying furniture from Craigslist, shopping at Lowe's and putting together a new dresser. If you squint it almost looks like fashioning a frontier cabin in the woods from rough timber.