books – Lofty Minded in Alaska

January 2026: A Letter

Dear Friends – friends in real life, family members, acquaintances, neighbors, old friends, friends I’ve yet to meet, and friends that I’ll likely never cross physical paths with,

I hope this letter finds you well as we’re heading into a brand new year. I don’t know about you, but I feel like the past few years have changed me. I suppose that would be true no matter the year, no matter the era, but I’m feeling the changes from recent years more acutely. As a result, I’m feeling the desire to reconnect with people and my community. So I’m starting the year by writing you a letter.

I don’t know if there are any rules to letter writing, but my aim is to begin a conversation.

A good conversationalist asks questions, shares news, tells stories, and tosses out ideas that invite a response. A good conversation isn’t formed like an essay, so writing a letter that’s meant to be a conversation should, in theory, be able to ramble a bit, and switch topics, and ask rhetorical questions. It shouldn’t require a topic or a reason for existing. Which is good, because I don’t have a plan here, I’m just writing to say hey.

I fear that a letter in the form of a blog post will not have the charm that a handwritten letter would have. There’s no paper to unfold. There’s no handwriting to decipher. There are no eraser marks or crossed out words.

I recently came across a decades old letter that was sent to me from a college friend a year after her divorce. We each got married to our spouses in 1990, and the four of us were close friends in Missoula. Over time, we all moved on and our correspondence became infrequent. Now, enough time has passed without contact that I would have to do some searching in order to find her. Maybe I’ll add that to the list of things I’d like to do this year.

Her letter contained a lot of catching up but it wasn’t just small talk. It was real talk, and it reminded me of the conversations we’d shared back when we were both in our early 20s. Her letter, which was everything you’d want a letter from an old friend to be, came to me at a time in my life when I was pretty overwhelmed with raising children and trying to make ends meet and in general trying to keep my act together, and I don’t remember if I ever wrote her back. I hope I did.

When I was done reading it, I tucked it back into its envelope with its stamp that cost a whole lot less than a stamp costs now, and placed it back in the box that I’ll probably not look at for at least another decade. That’s a hard experience to create in digital format.

Now we have AI and I’m still trying to figure out my relationship to this thing that is here whether I’m ready for it or not. Have you noticed all of the AI written essays that are floating around social media lately? They’re stories about people or historical events. Often they’re political in nature. These essays are all similar in length and have short and choppy sentences that seem to be written for maximum impact and an overblown emotional response. They’re full of descriptors and metaphors that sound clever but I find them manipulative, and annoying.

I’ve always felt like I have a good bullshit detector, and I’m hoping that this particular super power will help me out in this age of AI, but I fear that as the technology gets better my BS detector will be put to the test. It’s a good argument for handwritten letters and across the table conversations.

What’s new with you? What changed for you in 2025? What are you looking forward to in the new year?

Are you sleeping well? Do you have good food to eat? Are you staying warm this winter? Do you have enough money to pay your bills? How are you in your relationships with your parents, your children, your significant other, your friends? How is your health?

I know these are questions we don’t often ask each other. Maybe that’s because we’re afraid of prying, or maybe it’s because receiving honest answers to these kinds of questions would require a response.

Somehow it feels safe to ask these kinds of questions in a letter. The reader (you) have a choice about whether or not to respond. Sometimes the written word acts as a barrier, which can be a good thing in certain situations or for certain people. In that way, a letter is like an opening. You can choose to go through it, or choose to stay outside.

In the local public library where I work, there are a few people who come in first thing when we open each day and stay until we close. I resist the urge to ask them if they have a warm place to sleep, or if they’re hungry, or if there is anything they need. I stick to my professional library worker persona and greet them with kindness when they walk through the door each morning. Sometimes I’m afraid that if I asked them direct questions about their well-being the spell would be broken and they’d stop showing up. And I’m glad they’re coming through those library doors. I’m glad a place exists where they can exist without being hassled. I wouldn’t want to mess that up.

I guess I’m trying to figure out if asking them those questions would be the right thing or the wrong thing to do. This is really all about acknowledging the hardship we see in the world rather than pretending everyone is okay. I guess I want people to know that it’s okay to not be okay and their value does not hinge on having a warm place to sleep or money in their pocket.

Transitions have always been tricky for me, both in writing and in life, which is another reason why this letter writing thing just might work for me. In 2025, our daughter and daughter-in-law made the difficult decision to part ways. This was a big transition for me to wrap my head around, but as these things go, it wasn’t about me, it was just a change I needed to accept. The two of them have demonstrated that breakups can be done gracefully, even with love, and for that I’m grateful. I’m also thankful for the time they chose to be together, because our lives were enhanced by the relationships their pairing brought our way. I can talk about it now without so much sadness, but I had some grief to work through this past year.

There were plenty of things to be thankful for in 2025. One of my ambitions for the year was to achieve more balance in my life, and while that is always going to be a work in progress, I feel as though I made some good strides in that area. My measuring stick was how I felt at the end of the summer, and for the first time in several years I wasn’t totally exhausted at the beginning of September. I attribute the better balance to an overall lowering of expectations. The garden wasn’t perfect this year. We didn’t vend at as many farmer’s markets. We only went to one day of the big music festival instead of the full three days. Those and many other small tweaks made a difference and allowed for a more relaxed summer vibe, which in Alaska can be difficult to achieve.

The most relaxing weekend of the summer was a camping trip Dean and I took in the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. We had a campground to ourselves and the weather was perfect. Dean had his canoe and I had my banjo and a lake to swim in. We ate well. We slept well. We spent a lot of hours around a campfire. It was the perfect way to spend a few days.

Another fun highlight of 2025 was winning the Kachemak Heritage Land Trust raffle. We were vending at the farmer’s market when I got news that I’d bought the winning ticket. My winnings included incredible bounty from local food producers and businesses – birch syrup, honey, a whole goose, a Traeger Grill, lots of fun swag, ice cream, a fondue pot, and gift certificates for knife sharpening, baked goods, garden supplies, a fishing charter, and loads of veggies, which helped compensate for this year’s less than perfect garden. I felt lucky, to be sure, but also grateful to live in a town that’s comprised of so many generous people who are contributing to such inspiring work.

Speaking of inspiring work, 2025 was a good year for our small business, Twin Fish Gardens. It’s growing slowly, as planned, and I’m enjoying getting to know this entrepreneurial side of myself that was lying dormant for a lot of years. Over the summer, between work and camping, we managed to harvest and process enough fireweed to keep our customers in tea for another year. My goals are to make things more efficient, incorporate more writing into the whole project, and start working on our garage conversion shop.

I’d love to know what’s inspiring you. Any good podcasts or albums to recommend? What about books?

Here are a few of my current inspirations:

* Bonnie Prince Billy’s 2025 album, The Purple Bird.

* Radio Paradise. Online radio that’s listener supported and free of ads. A real person curates every set, so it never feels monotonous and it’s introduced me to a ton of fabulous artists over the years. (My daughter calls me a Radio Paradise evangelist.)

* The Telepathy Tapes podcast.

* I’m currently reading Liturgies for Resisting Empire: Seeking Community, Belonging, and Peace in a Dehumanizing World by Kat Armas. I’ve borrowed the copy from the Homer Public Library but am feeling the need to get a copy of my own.

* If you are interested in such things, I highly recommend contemplating the Lord’s Prayer as translated from the Aramaic by Neil Douglas-Klotz. I’ve been using lines from it as journal prompts for the past couple of months and it’s a deep well of inspiration and insight. It’s good teaching, no matter your belief system.

If you’ve gotten this far into this letter, then you really are a friend. Thank you for being out there and for listening. I tend to be self-conscious about my writing and I put pretty high expectations on myself to make it all sound smart and well put together. I’m learning though, that for my intentions, being real matters more than being polished.

So here’s to a year of being real.

Let’s stay in touch, please, and let’s try to take care of ourselves and each other.

With love,

Teresa

Halfway through summer

Somewhere in the early days of this blog I think I wrote something about trying to post something at least twice a week. In retrospect it may have been a little too lofty a goal. I seem to be doing well to get something out twice a month at this point.

There is always the hope that somewhere in my future I will find more time for writing and reading. Realistically the six to seven months of winter we get here could work to my advantage. During the long season I go to bed early and therefore find it relatively easy to get up at 5:30am and take advantage of a quiet house. Summer in Alaska is a different story. There is this climate-imposed pressure to fit as much into three months as others in a more southern locale could spread out over as many as six to eight months. The garden needs tending, firewood needs stacking. There are fish to catch, berries to pick and recreation to be had, all in addition to the regular household chores and my job. I’ve heard people talk about “lazy summer days” but honestly I haven’t experienced many of them in the 18 years I’ve lived here. Perhaps we’re programmed to keep moving until darkness settles in, which this time of year is around midnight. It’s a rather manic existence and I can sustain it for a while, but just lately I’ve reached the part of the summer where my concentration is low and my attention span is short.

Lately I’ve been craving some serious couch time. The other day I found myself fantasizing about catching a summer cold that would force (allow?) me to sit still for a while with my books and my laptop. When my reading and writing habits become mucked up in the long daylight portion of summer, I feel a little out of balance. A sort of literary mania comes over me. The problem is compounded by the fact that I work in a library.

It starts with me checking out more books and magazines than I could ever possibly find the time to read. Then, when I start feeling bad about taking so many items out of circulation for the public use I begin digging through the book donation boxes in the back room. My stack keeps getting higher and in my attempt to make up for all the years I spent reading Glamour magazine and listening to 80’s pop music when I should have been reading the classics I start having thoughts like, “How can I possibly be a good writer if I’ve never read Moby Dick, or anything by Steinbeck? I must remedy this situation right now.” The guilt I inflict upon myself is emotionally exhausting and by the time I actually have time to sit down on my couch with my oversized stack, (usually around 11:30 pm) I’m overwhelmed by the choices. I do a lot of page flipping and a little reading (remember the short attention span I mentioned earlier) before I find myself too tired to think straight. Then I fall into a hard sleep for about six hours.

Coherence returns, for a while at least, after a good sleep, so that’s when I try to write, even if it only amounts to a page or two in my notebook. Some would say that journaling is a waste of time but I find that it’s a valuable tool for helping me keep my wits intact. A while back it led me to a most obvious solution to my reading and writing problem of late: short stories. I’m working on a short story of my own, and what better way to learn the workings of the genre than to read a bunch of them? And beautifully, I can manage complete works of fiction that are only 5-12 pages long, even during this crazy time of year when daylight lasts much longer than my brain’s ability to stay fully engaged.

And as for this blog, I still aspire to post more often, and maybe even liven it up with pictures once in a while. In the meantime I’ll do what I can, and continue to enjoy the process. I think I’ll also try to slow down a little and savor some of what summer has to offer.

Thanks everyone for reading. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your support!

2010 by the book

One of the problems or, some would say, blessings of working at the library is that I come across so many interesting books; way more than I’d ever have time to read and still be a functioning member of society. In an attempt to keep myself focused, which means not start twelve books simultaneously, I have been compiling a list of books I hope to read in 2010.

I’ve started out the year with Eckhart Tolle’s “A New Earth: Awakening Your Life’s Purpose” and Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice.” Along the way I’m sure I’ll add to the list because there has to be room for spontaneity. Sometimes a book just calls out to you and you have to read it, whether it’s on your list or not.

Here’s what I’ve got so far, and I’m open to suggestions.

*Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen (I will never have to tell another person I’ve never read Jane Austen.)

*Snow – Orhan Pamuk

*Tortilla Flat – John Steinbeck

*The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje

*Ordinary Wolves – Seth Kantner

*The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides (His book Middlesex was excellent.)

*Cutting For Stone – Abraham Verghese (People at the library keep recommending this one.)

*The Lacuna – Barbara Kingsolver (I have to read everything she writes.)

*The Autobiography of a Yogi – Paramahansa Yogananda

*The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao – Junot Diaz

*Stitches: A Memoir – David Small (The graphic novel Blankets got me hooked, and I hear this one is great.)

*Too Much Happiness – Alice Munro (The goddess of short stories.)

*Juliet Naked – Nick Hornby (Any book written by the man who wrote High Fidelity deserves to be read.)

*The Year of Magical Thinking – Joan Didion

*A Passage To India – E.M. Forster

*Interpreter of Maladies – Jhumpa Lahiri

*Siddhartha – Hermann Hesse

*Strength in What Remains – Tracy Kidder

2009 by the book

Over the past few days I’ve been trying to remember the books that I’ve read from cover to cover in 2009. Lately it seems like I have a short attention span with reading and my list of unfinished books is much longer than my list of finished books. By listing the books I’ve completed I’ve managed to make myself feel a little better. The year has come and gone and I still haven’t organized my closet or painted my living room but, by God, I did finish a few books. Imagine how smug I’d feel if I could tally all the blog posts, opinion pieces and news articles I’ve read on the internet.

2009 books

*The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind – William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer

—— I read this book, with its intense description of hunger, during the holidays, when I was surrounded by food.

*The Help – Kathryn Stockett

*The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society – Mary Anne Shaffer and Annie Barrows

*Olive Kitteridge – Elizabeth Strout

——–I understand why this won the Pulitzer Prize.

*Amy and Isabelle – Elizabeth Strout

*Raising Ourselves – Velma Wallis

*The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian – Sherman Alexie

———Of all the books on this list I think this one made the biggest impact.

*First Indian on the Moon – Sherman Alexie

*Fancy Dancing – Sherman Alexie

——- I actually sent Sherman Alexie fan mail after reading this one. I’d never done that.

*Eva Underground – Dandi Daley Mackall

*The Gathering – Anne Enright

*The Well and the Mine – Gin Phillips

*Saddle Up Your Own White Horse – Saundra Pelletier

*Rock, Water, Wild: An Alaskan Life – Nancy Lord

——– I appreciated most of the essays in this book, but the last one about her aged father is beautiful and had me crying over my breakfast one morning. (I took a memoir writing class from the author last winter.)

*The Complete Persepolis – Marjane Satrapi

——– A graphic novel about a girl growing up during the Iranian Revolution. Iranians are real people.

*The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards – Robert Boswell

*Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone – Mark Zwonitzer and Charles Hirshberg

——-I was inspired to read this one after taking a Carter Family Singing class at Alaska Traditional Music Camp last summer.

*The Worst Hard Time – Timothy Egan

And the next two are ones I reread in 2009.

*The Shipping News – Annie Proulx

——–My favorite novel.

*Into the Wild – Jon Krakauer

———I had to reread this one after watching the movie; to compare and contrast.

There may be more, but that’s what I can remember. Happy New Year!