One week in Kodiak

August 18 2008

Things are settling down here as I prepare for the beginning of classes. Yesterday, Sunday, was a wonderful sunny day, but otherwise it has rained every day since the previous Sunday. But it is usually a gentle rain or a mist, not a hard rain. I am told this is typical Kodiak weather. The one sunny day made up for the rest.

On a walk I saw the high school, the middle school, the hospital, a couple of lakes, and the St. Innocent School which is just down the road. Just as I passed the St. Innocent School, the bell was rung for vespers, so I stayed. The school has about 20-25 kids of high school age, most of them from "outside," that is, not from Alaska. I've also been to Wal-mart, Costsavers, and Safeway, which are two miles away. Most things you want to buy here, you get at Wal-Mart. Kodiak has some very nice restaurants, most of them offering locally caught seafood. There are McDonalds and Chinese restaurants and I saw a "Mexican-Hispanic Folk Center." Filipinos comprise about 40% of the population.

On another walk (I try to walk 30 minutes a day but often don't achieve that) just 2 blocks away I saw an old cemetery with maybe 150 graves. It's a small lot but between houses on a residential street. I've learned since that it's a military cemetery from the Fort Kodiak army post. I stepped inside the gate to look around the grassy graveyard. The stones are mostly small ones dating from the period about 1830 through 1908. I also saw a number of wooden crosses, Orthodox and other, some of them falling over. On various stones, I read, "Killed by Indians on Woody Island," "Native of Scotland," "Burned to death," "Native of Perry, Maine," and one stone marked the grave of a civil war veteran who died in 1868.

On Monday afternoon, the eve of the feast of Transfiguration, I remembered there would be a blessing of fruit the next day at the end of the services. I headed to a supermarket-sized convenience store in the nearby downtown area, Alaska Food for Less. I'd been told they in fact offer "food for more" and that Safeway has better buys on food. But in AK a lot of things are costly no matter where you buy them. Alaska Food for Less, I've since learned was until recently called "AC" (Alaska Commercial) and has been in business since the early days of American sovereignty. I selected enough fruit to fill a small basket -- 3 apples, 2 plums, a peach, 2 bananas, 1 orange, 1 apricot. The cost: $9.82 plus $.59 tax, or $10.41. The fruit prices ranged from $2-$4 / lb, with apricots $5/lb. Bananas were the best buy, at $1.28/lb, or about $.40 for a medium sized banana. Salmon berries do grow here -- these berries have the appearance of salmon-colored raspberries. Some people, I've heard, had gone salmonberry picking , and on the feast of Transfiguration some of the baskets brought for blessing contained only this local fruit.

Later I was told that when St. Innocent of Alaska was translating the Scriptures into the Alaskan native languages, there was no word in those languages for fruit, a common biblical word (on the other hand, the same languages have many different words for snow). While few fruits may grow here in Alaska, agriculture is conducted here -- I noticed in the store many packets of vegetable seeds, optimized for Alaska's relatively short growing season.