Here’s how it begins:

My dad and I have been rehabbing my old porch this fall. We’ve done most of the work ourselves but for certain things we’ve hired help, and so I’ve been spending some afternoons with an electrician and a painter. They are kind, hard-working guys. I’m always happy to see them in their trucks, backing into the driveway.

The electrician went to school with one of my younger brothers and lived for a short time at my mom’s house when he was a teenager. Now he’s a dad and a former marine, something that makes me proud of him. He’s thoughtful, mature and competent.

He was also leaning towards Trump last time we talked.

Our sons started kindergarten on the same day this fall. We exchanged pictures of them in first-day clothes. We were both emotional. Me, because of passing time. Him, because he worried for his kid’s safety. It might not be rational, he told me as I watched him twist wires, but that’s how he feels. As the conversation went on, he lifted his pant leg to show me a small handgun strapped to his ankle.

Many people own firearms here in Alaska, and many people carry them all the time, often concealed. It’s part of the culture, and practical in rural places. Even so, I thought about my electrician friend later, about feeling like it might come down to that, that you might need to protect yourself and your family because nobody else would.

The next time he came by, we talked about the election. He’s self-employed. Alaska’s health insurance situation under Obamacare might be the worst in the country. That alone was a reason to want a change. Plus, he’d read somewhere about Clinton being in poor health. I told him I was voting for her. I wasn’t passionate about it, but I’m a journalist, gay, married, with children, I said. I didn’t want to end up in the clink.

We both laughed. He flipped on the lights and they worked. It was about time for him to head out, he said.

Next came the painter…

Read the rest here.

The post There’s more to my relationship with this place than politics (For The Guardian) appeared first on Julia O'Malley.

(For a real treat, check out Katie’s slide show.)

Point Hope, Alaska — For the Inupiat villagers who have made their homes on this finger of land in the Chukchi Sea for generations, nothing is more important than the bowhead whale.

The calendar revolves around seasons for hunting, fishing and gathering. It’s a lifestyle Alaskans call “subsistence”, which is as much cultural tradition as economic necessity in one of the state’s most northern villages.

About 900 people live in Point Hope. The village store prices are double what people pay 700 miles south in Anchorage. A gallon of milk might be $12. Two pounds of hamburger patties: $23. In most homes, wild and foraged foods make up at least half of the menu. The village has two stores, a school, several churches and a restaurant that serves pizza, Chinese food and hamburgers. Alcohol can’t be legally possessed, sold or imported.

All year, the village looks forward to spring whaling, when crews of men thread through leads in the sea ice, quietly paddling in seal-skin boats, looking for smooth black shapes rising out of the water.
The few massive bowheads taken by villagers each year supply thousands of pounds of dense protein. Beyond that, whale meat is considered an Alaska Native soul food. Hunting, butchering and distributing the animal, village leaders say, is how elders teach young people the culture.

“Without the whale,” said Steve Oomittuk, the former mayor of the city and former vice-president of the tribe, “we wouldn’t be who we are.”

In recent years, however, the much-anticipated whale hunt has run up against a warming Arctic. A bowhead can be 60 feet long and weigh 75 tons. Successful whaling crews have always hauled the massive animals on to the ice using a block and tackle. The last few seasons, the ice has been more unstable than elders in the village have ever seen.

“It’s getting harder and harder, the ice is thinner,” Oomittuk said. “We can’t pull up the whale.”

Read more here.

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