It was the second day at the Old Harbor School. The school itself is very welcoming, and the children are loved by the staff and teachers. Three staff members, LuAnne, Nat, and Emily, are from the Philippines. Everyone, staff and teachers alike, are tireless, working from dawn to dusk, lesson planning, teaching, preparing for classes, and as of late, working on the library revitalization program. I asked Nat how he felt about putting in such long hours, and he said “Just fine. I do this for the children.”

Summer

We all resumed work on the library revitalization plan at 8:00 a.m. We resumed unpacking the BLBP books and putting them on shelves. I was told that these books had been scanned. Nat recruited some of the older boys, who using a dolly and a trolly, brought in the rest.

Later in the day, the boys brought in the books that were in the original library. I was told that those boxes that were marked done had already been scanned. I assisted in putting these books (fiction, nonfiction, and children’s books) on shelves, their resting place in accordance with the Dewey Decimal System.

Summer’s goals were to make the library space inviting to its users and to make books accessible to them.

Come early evening, I put the Christmas books in a display case inside the door, and in a bookcase adjacent to the door. And the staff rehung the library posters that had originally been on the walls but had been taken down in the early stages of the library revitalization project.

I noticed early on that Summer was absent. I asked and did not get a definitive answer. She appeared later in the day – her dreads, I noticed, had been replaced by a wig with loosely falling black hair. Her wrists were bandaged and the wig covered up one side of her face.

She explained to us all that the night before she was stirring a bubble in the pressure cooker – goat meat gravy – and it blew up, burning her face and hands. She dove into the shower and stood under the cold water spigot for forty minutes. After, she went the clinic and they dressed her wounds. She made light of this. Her attitude was one of gratitude; she was thankful that she had not burned her eye. We surmised that if she had, she’d have been medivacked to Anchorage, in a helicopter.

We finished getting the books on the shelves at 8:00 p.m., then Nat took Pam and me back to the Bed and Breakfast. Ray and Stella go to bed early, so we did the same.

As I understood it, the room (which was a former library) had been dismantled – the schoolbooks were placed in boxes and the old, funky shelves were removed. The room was cleaned and new shelves were then put in place.

Later in the day I said to Nat that I didn’t think that the books would be shelved in time for the next day’s library dedication. He simply said, “Three hours.” I realized that I’d failed to take into account the fact that there were by this point in time, a dozen or so individuals working to make this happen.

Next: 317. 11/21/24: A Seat at the Table