King Island placenames

Yesterday, I was feeling guilty for not working and part of the reason is that one of our elders, Teddy Mayac, has been working almost non-stop since he arrived here. But, yesterday afternoon, we finally sat down with Larry Kaplan to do some work. First, Larry and Teddy went over bird names (and I visited with colleagues Gordon Pullar and Dixie Dayo at the Dept of Alaska Native and Rural Development for a few minutes). Then, Iviana wanted some tea, so we went to Wood Center and worked for another hour and a half. It's interesting - Teddy had a list that we worked on last December, plus information from lists made by Frank and Ursula Ellanna back in the 1980s, plus a list he worked on with Marie. Larry had all of those lists, plus a recent one from early September. That one had been revised and fortunately, my student Kai Henifin had printed out a newer version from late September. At any rate, we first had to figure out whose list we'd work on and how we could then make sure we were all on the same page (pun intended). I think we finally figured it out. So, we worked with Teddy, Larry, my mom, and Agnes from about 3:30-6:30pm and then we had dinner and about 7:30pm, Teddy and I went over the list yet again as some translations for names got into the Descriptions column and I want to be sure all the translations are there. We worked until 9pm. Teddy and I still have a few more pages to go over. In the meantime, Larry is working on spellings. Hopefully, I will have the most up-to-date list by the time I leave.

Are you confused? We are! It is important work for our placenames map, though. We need to make sure we're all operating with the latest and best list.

No news yet on the surgery date . . .