Another Day, Another Home

I can hear him, the dog, Luka, pacing and whining as I write. He's sprinting back and forth with a slimy, chewed-up frisbee in his mouth, stopping only long enough to stick his cold, wet nose right in my face, as if I didn't know he desperately, urgently, wanted to play. He NEEDS to play. Play with me or else, he says. Trouble is, playing with him doesn't make it stop-- it just feeds the monster. And leaves me with stinky, fur-covered hands.

Welcome to my first official housesit. This family has a great 3 bedroom at the top of a hill--with a killer view and a functioning hot tub. To die for, right? Yeah, until you turn the lights on.

You know how it's just like, standard guest protocol to CLEAN your house, just a little, before someone comes to stay? Well, apparently not at this household. The bathroom was coated in hair-- on the counter, in the sink, on the rugs, between the rugs... as was the bed, on top of and below the comforter, as well as all of the carpet upstairs. Dog and human hair. Intermingling. As a last resort, I vacuumed a path between the front door and the bed, with a little side road for the bathroom.

I'm a bundle of stress, just trying to feel comfortable in this place, and I've got 9 more days to go. I talked with Melissa, the main reporter at KCAW about my hairy situation, and she said the housesitting thing is always a source of stress for their interns. Not their fault though-- where the heck else would they house me?

So far though, it's this internship's only shortcoming, so I think I can forgive. The people at KCAW (everybody just calls it Raven Radio) are just wonderful. After lunch today, Ken, the general manager, invited me on a half-hour walk so he could tell me a bit about the history of the station. The walk was painfully scenic, and the talk was fascinating. Turns out, Raven is TRULY a community radio station. It was started about 25 years ago, in a building called the Cable House-- it's called that because when the contiguous United States decided they need a way to connect with Alaska that didn't go through Canada (things weren't going to well with the Canadians), they built an underwater cable, so they could send and receive telegraphs. That cable emerged from underwater and connected to Alaska at the Cable House, where I now go to work every day.

I'm learning about a side of journalism that I'm not very familiar with. The news we produce here is not always literary, or clever-- but it's vital to the community. People depend on it. 50 percent of Sitka's 9,000 residents listen to Raven Radio (the other half listens to the top 40 station)-- many of them are commercial fisherman or charter fisherman--and they tune in from out on the ocean, to hear the weather forecast (which typically sounds like "Yakatat, patches of fog and drizzle, seas 6 feet") and the news. So far, the biggest news stories have dealt with halibut-catch restrictions, whether the city should sell the old pulp mill dock to a seafood company (of which the CEO is a former city employee), and what the implications will be if the governor approves a natural gas pipeline through the state.

Well, the sun still hasn't set for the day (that happens after 10pm most days), but I'm gettin' mighty sleepy. Attended a meeting regarding a historic college campus in Sitka that had to be abandoned when it was revealed that the school was 11 million dollars in debt. It was a real loss to the community. Anyway, that wore me out, and it's time to settle with my Alaskan detective mystery.