Vegas from Mon to Wed, OHSU on Thurs, Cabin Fri to Sun

A few weeks ago, as I was chatting with my Hawaiian friend and colleague on the phone, I invited myself to visit with her and her family when they are in Vegas this coming week. I leave tomorrow afternoon and come back Wednesday evening. We plan to see Cirque Du Soleil Zumanity and also go to Red Rock Canyon. We need to tie up some loose ends from the Hawaiian workshop, too.

While I was in Portland, I got a call from the doc's office at OHSU - I will see him and the plastic surgeon (a female) on Thursday afternoon. I'm not sure how quickly they can work me in for surgery, but I'll know more next week.

Then on Friday evening, I head to a cabin in the woods with my coauthor - we are writing a paper called Seabirds of King Island. It'll be good to have that time to chat together.

And, I have two applications due March 1st and one on March 7th.

Dad had chest pains the whole time we were in Portland, so she went to the ER last night. They've run all kinds of tests, all came back negative (or normal) until the stress test today, which she couldn't finish. The doctor also listened to various arteries and heard abnormalities, so they suspect it's angina or clogged arteries in her heart. They will do an angiogram tomorrow to be sure and then they will decide to do.

It's gonna be an interesting week . . .

Hard to Feel Sorry for Myself In Situations Like This . . .

One of the Alaska Native villages in Alaska lost power due to what they are calling a "line snap" - their power lines snapped together in high winds and freezing precipitation.

Anyway, an Alaska Native blogger I know, Rainey, posted the following:

Savoonga

They could use some help. I still have a roof over my head with nice comfy temperatures and there's lots of food in my cupboard. These poor folks are low on food and their houses are frozen and they can't live in them, so they're living in the school gym. I don't think they have power yet.

I also know that a King Island man, John Koezuna, is lost and may have been caught in a bad storm between Woolley Lagoon and Nome. Please pray for his safe return.

I have much to be thankful for. I'm going to send out a small donation tomorrow, I think. It feels good to help others, especially when I've been the recipient of help.

Speaking of being a recipient, I have received a few boxes in the mail in the last week or so. First, before Christmas, my friend in Hawaii sent me a hand-dyed scarf from Hawaii with some earrings made with a shell from New Zealand - they're beautiful! And, today, I had TWO boxes from Phyllis, who was the mom of a former boyfriend in the mid-1980s. Phyllis and I stayed in touch over the years - she was like a second mom to me when I was at UP. She sent me a handmade scarf and a hat, with an angel pin that she put there to look over me. I also received a box from the mom of someone I went to high school with - Linda and Billy hosted me and Eddie this past summer on Camano Island, during one of my trips to UW to participate in the clinical trial. She sent me four hats, a shawl, a lap robe, and three hats for Eddie.

So, even though my own news wasn't great today, I still have much to be thankful for. Thank you, Renee, Phyllis, and Linda & Billy for the wonderful and thoughtful gifts! Wow. I have a great variety to choose from now! Thank you! Love you all very much!

King Island Place Names Website Launch Party

We had a launch party for the King Island Place Names Launch Party. It was late this afternoon. But before it happened, there were last minute details to attend to. I didn't have the brunt of the work, though. That was Alex and Rebecka.

The website is: http://www.kingislandplacename.com/.

In addition, I had to grade papers and prepare for class.

Then prepare a quick powerpoint for the launch party. Then, go to the room for the party. A few logistics details for my uncle and my son and my family. Then, I did my presentation.

Boy, it was a long day.

I'm tired.

I have a lot of people to thank. But I'm too tired to list them here. Instead, check out the Contributors page from our photo gallery. The website address is:

http://www.kingislandplacename.com/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=25584

I had an interesting observation about this project: it has been funded by the National Science Foundation and we first received that funding in 2003. It's been 7 years.

That's a long time in the world of scientific research. A long time to produce deliverables for a $600,000 project.

In the end, we have a great website that has the King Island placenames in our dialect of the language; we have uploaded 11,000 photographs that the community can use; and we have two plant and bird guides for the island. There is also a lot of audio and video that the community can access if they have a login ID. Plus, two articles that I've written as a result of the project.

I made an interesting observation: the project has been book-ended by my baldness due to cancer treatments. I am bald today. I was bald in February 2003 after chemotherapy treatments from my first diagnosis of breast cancer. That was when I submitted the grant proposal to NSF. The project has had about as many ups and downs as my cancer treatment has.

The project has been difficult for a lot of reasons including cross cultural differences, interdisciplinary differences, personality differences, and community politics.

But it has also been the second most rewarding thing I have done in my life - the first being the raising of my son. It was so thrilling to give King Islanders the chance to return to their homeland; many had not been there in 20, 30, or 40 years. I feel very privileged to have been part of this process.

So, in the end, as of today, both the project and my cancer end on a happy note: the deliverables are in a finished enough form to give to the community. And, the treatment is working - so good news on the cancer front. I'll find out later this week what my tumor markers are.

Again, thank you to everyone who was ever involved in the King Island place names project. It was worth the wait. It was worth all the work. I am so happy I was able to help.

Busy But Good Days

Since my last post, I've been busy. At work, I've been putting together a couple of proposals that are due March 29th and April 1st. I spent most of Thurs and Fri in email discussions about both of them. One is an internal OSU opportunity - it's a long shot for me because I think they usually target more advanced scholars (people who have published more), but I figure, what the heck? It's to help advance an idea of my friend in Hawaii . . .

The other is a proposal to help organize and manage all the King Island data that was collected over a few years. We had a lot of people recording data and now have had three or four maybe five trips going back to double-check data. So, it's all over the place and it's hard to put our fingers on something when we need it. It's involved a lot of discussion between interested parties - lots of emails and phone calls to make sure everyone's on the same page. This project has been hard in terms of trying to manage it; so many people have been doing a variety of work on it that I've lost track of where things are. I don't know that many of them appreciate how difficult it has been because other work activities crop up that need immediate attention. I think that next time (if there is a next time, LOL), I might hire a part-time (20 hour/week) person to keep track of just that project. That will be their sole responsibility. My problem has been that not only am I trying to manage the project - keeping track of about 7 or 8 people and the data they collected - I'm also trying to keep track of my own set of data on this project AND three or four other projects, each of them ranging in size from small (only I can do them) to large (collaborating with two other groups). For the latter project, I've also had four and will soon add another student working on it. They've all worked on pieces of it. I'm hoping my current Ph.D. student can get a handle on that data this term.

So, now that I've exhausted both you and me, I will report that to clear my head on Friday, I finished gluing the tiles onto my new mosaic. That took all evening - from about 3:30 to 8:30pm with only about an hour break for dinner. Now, it just needs to be grouted and also maybe put an edge on it. That may happen after Eddie and I go for a hike today with Cat and Kai and kiddos and furries (dogs, that is).

Yesterday, after lunch at a local pub with the fam, I took Eddie to the Family Fun Center in Wilsonville. He tried the "Sky Trail", which is an obstacle ropes course at least ten feet above the ground. He had one nerve-wracking part - he was wearing a harness so he wouldn't have fallen to the ground - but he made it through on his own. I called over an attendant to watch him the last half of the trail.









By the time we got home (we waited in line 30-45 minutes three times - twice for the Bumper Boats and once for the Sky Trail), I was tired. At least we got to go out into the sunshine and fresh air! Dinner was waiting for us when we got home - spaghetti! A lazy evening watching television rounded out the day.

Eddie is in the back on the right of this picture - twice, he chased girls around his age and squirted them in the boat.




So, today, a hike. Maybe grouting. Tomorrow, Eddie leaves to go to the coast with his dad for the night. I'll spend Mon and Tues finishing up these proposals. Maybe I'll work on one or both of them this evening if I'm feeling up to it. We'll see! We might get drizzle today, but the fresh air will still be good for us. I need to get this kind of work done this week because I expect that I'll be wiped out next week, after my next Herceptin treatment (just so you know - it sucks to have to plan your life and work around periods of good energy and known periods of fatigue - just so you know).

Happy Sunday!

KNOM Radio Interview

P.S. I am having technical difficulties figuring out how to post the audio .mp3 . . . I did it once but that was well over a year ago! Now I can't remember what I did! I'll post it as soon as I can!

While I was in Nome, Laureli Kinneen, the public affairs director at KNOM radio station, interviewed me about the King Island placenames project. KNOM is the "oldest Catholic radio station in Alaska" and broadcasts over a 100,000 square mile area. It is an "Alaska Radio Mission". What I like about KNOM, as opposed to radio stations down south, is that you never know what you will hear playing on the radio: rock music, country, Eskimo songs from all over, prayers and rosaries, educational bits such as the one I heard about a particular bird whose name escapes me, Alaska Native elders interviewed, plus local news items. Laureli interviewed me as a "KNOM Profiles" which airs throughout the week, I think.

Here is the .mp3 of my interview:

KNOM Profile

Laureli asked that I give proper credit for this Profile: KNOM, P.O. Box 988, Nome, Alaska, 99762

I got a little emotional at the end and because of that, I wasn't able to talk about all the elders and community members who worked on the project, not to mention the scientists who have helped, too. I apologize if I happen to have missed you!

"Almost Every Place, Every Rock, Had a Name."

This is a quote from Marie Saclamana, an elder in my community. I would like to use that for the title of the article I'm working on about the density of King Island placenames. I went through and counted the names on Monday night, but realized that I'd ended up counting some names twice. So, last night, I double-checked the list. Drum roll, please!

There are 158 names for 164 places. In general, there are some instances where there are two places for one name. There's one instance in which there were three names (I think, but I need to call and double-check) for one place. But taking that all into account, there are 158 names for an island that's 3.5 square miles. That's a relatively dense place for names.

And, of the 164 places, 83 are rocks and another 17 are cliffs. Granted, King Island is a basalt rock that juts up out of the ocean and so there's just a lot of rocks on the landscape. But I think the fact that half of the named places are rocks is significant.

Marie was right, wasn't she?, when she said that almost "every rock" had a name! Thanks, Aakauraq!

Beautiful Fall Days

The past few days here have been gorgeous . . . and I guess I could take some pictures and post them, but . . . I'm too lazy. Would rather go out and enjoy it!

Work is busy, but I think I might be getting caught up . . . or maybe that just means I forgot to put something on my "to-do" list!! Ha!

I studied my placename list yesterday and by the end of the evening, my head was spinning. My first goal was to try to come up with a classification system for the names. But as I sat looking at the names, I realized again (after not really spending a lot of time with this list in the past year) that there were duplicates. So, I decided to get rid of duplicates. For instance, one name (Kurutiq) shows up three times as #20, #41, and #106. It really is only one place. This list has been worked on by various people over the past 4+ years, by different people, and one thing that happened is that when someone remembered a name, they tended to add it to the list without consulting the first part of the list. So, there are several instances of that. I also had to consider slight changes in spellings and make some judgments as to whether or not it was really the same name or a different name.

Then, there's the cases where one name is used for two different places. King Island is roughly triangular. The village is in roughly themiddle of the south or bottom side of the triangle. Near the two corners are two places that are both called "Uivayaq", which means "coming into view". They are named such because as the boats round the corners from the sides of the island, the village eventually "comes into view".

So, in trying to come up with a total number of names, I had to eliminate duplicates first. Then, I had to decide whether I count "Uivayaq" as two separate names or one . . . what do you think? Then, do you count a place that has what is called a "topographic generic". For instance, the main fresh water source for the village was a place named "Kuuk", which is the general word for "creek". They often use it as a formal placename - like calling a river, "River". So, do you count that as a discrete name since it specifically refers to only one place? Or, not?

Anyway, I stayed up late looking at this list. It was kinda fun and also interesting, but a bit confusing because I often couldn't remember what I'd decided about something ... I'm trying to write an article related to the total number of names on the island, so having a somewhat accurate count is important. Just wish I had more time to really delve into it!!!

The King Island Gallery

My research team (community members and scientists) are trying to tie up this large project funded by the National Science Foundation. It has a long formal name, but I've just ended up calling it the King Island Placenames project. If you want to know more about the project, go to this link:

King Island Placenames project

Alex Nyers, one of our grad students, has just launched a photo gallery of the project. We had over 8,000 digital photographs taken through the course of the project. There were at least 10 photographers, including community members and scientists. The gallery is organized by year of the project and then, either by photographer and/or subject. There's a lot of cool photos of the project, so if you're interested, the site is:

The King Island Photo Gallery

You can search for photo name and also for those photos that we have identified as being associated with certain placenames. We haven't finished that identification process, though, so not all placenames have photos. If you do see a photo and want to tell me what place that is, please let me know! We may eventually have a comment place on the gallery or the interactive web map, so for now, just contact me and let me know.

I know that a lot of community members read my blog ... so please, enjoy the photographs. They belong to KINC.

A huge huge thank you to Alex for creating the gallery template and then manipulating the digital files to make this gallery accessible to everyone. Other thank yous go to project personnel and community members who have worked on this project: Kai Henifin, Cathleen Osborne-Gowey, Jeremiah Osborne-Gowey, Kim Nelson, Matt Ganley, Mary Dillard, Jesse Ford, TT Tahbone, Jon Butzke, Scott Kingston, Olga Kingston, Teddy Mayac Sr., Charlene Saclamana, Greg Saclamana, Marie Saclamana, Jessica and Kevin Saclamana, Francis Alvanna, Earl Mayac, Leona Mayac, Frances Muktoyuk, Gabriel Muktoyuk, Johanna Kane, Lillian Tiulana, Susie Toliver, Helen Pushruk, Larry Kaplan, Owen Mason, Claire Alix, Jeffrey Saclamana, Caroline Muktoyuk Brown, Toni Smith, Theresa Muktoyuk, Pat Sagoonick, Lucy Koyuk, Bertha Herzner, Becky Amarok, Gemma Carlisle, Barbie Golorgergen, Alyssa and Rhiannon Golorgergen. Kathleen Paniataaq, Kuni Ellanna, Agatha Ford, Agatha Kukuluk, and Sylvester Ayek.

Oh, and I guess I need to (reluctantly) thank Jimmy Carlisle. He's a royal pain in the butt. But he helped, too. (Jimmy? Are you offended? LOL)

I know I've forgotten someone. Please let me know if I have.