He went fishing. He caught fish. He has now processed about one third of the fish. I can only imagine what it’s like to dipnet for salmon. I have never done this. The reason is because I have an aversion to killing anything, much less fish.

Salmon are strong, powerful, athletic creatures. They come upstream to spawn and die. They are dip netted during the course of their final journey. They are really about ready to die, which is what they do after they spawn.

Still, even though I know that they are soon to die, I cannot take them out before their time. They are killed with a fishbat, which is any sort of blunt device, say like a baseball bat. It’s over quickly. Most likely the salmon is put out because it is out of its native element and maybe is finding it hard to breathe.

All this raises the questions – do salmon have souls? I would think so. I think that all living beings/creatures have souls. Then the next question is, do salmon have any form of consciousness? That is, do they know they are going to die? And what about those in the bottom of the boat? What are their thoughts on this matter?

I had heard that salmon (in runs) have been fewer. Pete must not have heard this. He said he could not start fishing (this is the law) until 6:00 a.m. He and others who were on the shore had to wait while the fish jumped around them.

I can only picture all this. If I could kill a fish, I would be able to actually go out and check out the dip netting scene.

Instead, I went to work – my work site being the former banquet room of the historic Eagle Hotel. There I prepared for the second Alaska train day, making sure that all the materials we had on hand were in sight.

It was a bright and sunny day. In the distance (around our place) I could see storm clouds building up. But no matter, things were just fine where we were in town.

We ended up having a 12-car passenger train. Like yesterday, it worked out really well. So now we have three sessions, tomorrow construction and the library, Monday and Tuesday, pack horse, and Wednesday we’ll do a unit entitled, “Reading is Really Out of this World.”

We struggled putting together this last lesson because we were attempting to combine two metaphors, outer space and reading. There were several long discussions about this. Lois, long-time volunteer, joined in. I decided that I liked the reading theme, and it was then that I decided that we should just go with it.

A tough call for some. All that discussion – it was why I was told that we were “overthinking” things. This is because the 18-year old has very little experience in pedagogy.

Our volunteers were all out bringing in whatnot. This makes no sense. This was not fair to my readers, to get this far then scribble out a few nonsensical statements. Live and learn, dispatch readers.

Next: 203. 7/29/26: So Many Dispatch Titles, So Little Time