Now, after 12 years of writing dispatches, I have no more, which means that in the text I am going to have to wing it. I will wing it like a hawk, sailing on the breeze.

When I die, I would like to come back as a hawk. I’d like to be far removed from civilization, in a place where there are no predators. I do not know if hawks even have predators.

Chickens have predators. They don’t have much in the way of defenses. I do not want to come back as a chicken.

I do not know if we come back. It’s sure strange to have a consciousness and know that we are going to die but on the same hand have no inkling of what becomes of us. As we get older, this becomes more of a concern.

And we keep trying to lengthen our lives because of this high level of uncertainty.

Enough of this I say. There are still a few more hours left in this day, and I am going to make the very best of them. I will finish this dispatch and finish writing a dispatch that I started the other night. (I left my computer cord in the former banquet room of the historic Eagle Hotel, and my computer, lacking a charge, shut down. So I wrote the rest of what was on my mind, on a piece of paper, in cursive).

I am one of the lucky ones. I can write in cursive. The youngers can’t seem to do this.

If I had a school in the hotel, I would teach the youngers this, and how to tie their shoelaces. Knowing how to tie one’s shoelaces is a valuable skill (and it is skill) to have.

Today, synopsis. Most memorable event – I went to a get together for Mary Peltola – I took a seat on a couch with no support and talked to our neighbor Krista. Her dog Zelly died – we had house watched her. I liked that dog.

Peltola came bouncing in the room—in her 50s youthful, shoulder length black hair, wearing sunglasses, which she promptly removed, and an orange shirt, which she kept on.

She gave her canned five-minute speech and all of those canvassing cheered and clapped then got together for a group photo. Tuesday is the primary election. She’ll win it. Then the fun will begin.

No, she made no mention of education or literacy. It’s all about fishing and keeping things ethical. I am very much for the fish and the Alaska Natives, and subsistence, these are very good things. But if the Alaska citizenry can’t read a map, well then, all this political gravel is going right through the sieve.

After the meeting, I went back to boxing up books going to the Alaska State Fairgrounds, I got this done and felt good about it. Then I drove over to the fairgrounds and went inside the cabin and did a box count.

I then totaled these numbers and the numbers of books at the hotel – I now know how many boxes of books of each type that I have on hand.