Blog Entry #10: Wrapping Things Up

This is the final post for this blog!  All I have to do after this is the final for the class, then I should be ready to graduate from UAF.  It's been a long time coming but the idea of being finished with school is kind of hard to wrap my head around because I've basically been in school full time for the past 19 years, going all the way back to kindergarten.  No school?  Impossible to imagine!  But to the matter at hand.  As of last week, I've finished reading the book we used for this class, Last New Land: Stories of Alaska Past and Present.  I was actually a little wistful as I finished the book.  It isn't necessarily the kind of book I would usually pick up, but I really enjoyed reading it and will keep it on my book shelf.  My dad and his wife are both fascinated with Alaska (they do not live here) and for Christmas I actually am giving him a copy of this book and her Margaret Murie's Two in the Far North, which has an excerpt featured in our book.  So, thanks for the gift ideas, English 350!

Since we finished reading the book for class, this week's readings were just four poems.  I must admit that I would rather read a story than a poem, at least for an English class.  It's not that I dislike poetry- I like it fine- but I don't like dissecting poems for class.  More than once in English classes, I've been told by professors that my interpretation of poems is wrong, and that's kind of discouraging!  While I'm aware that stories can certainly have their fair share of allusions and metaphors and the like, poems seem to have them even more.  Guess I just like the meaning of readings to be straight forward!  Needless to say, the writings that I preferred from this class are stories or excerpts from novels rather than books.  My all time favorite is probably the excerpt from Margaret Murie's book, which I wrote about here.  I think I like it so much because it's written from a different point of view than normal.  Most books from adults are not written from the point of view of a kid, and the delighted, pondering way the narrator interpreted everything she experienced was enjoyable.

There are several things I have learned about Alaskan literature, with two in particular.  The first is that it focuses more on the setting than literature set in other locations.  Alaska was significant in every single piece we read, and I really do not think that's the case in many other literature samples.  For instance, although I do a lot of reading, I can't recall ever reading something set in Indiana or Oregon.  Surely I have read some books set there, but the setting was not so central to the story and therefore forgettable.  The other thing is that there are all different kinds of Alaskans!  That kind of goes without saying, but it was very interesting reading everything and seeing how each character, regardless of their backgrounds and differences, was undoubtedly Alaskan.

 Mother and baby moose in a garden, included because I love moose and think the picture is sweet!  Gardening in Alaska seems to be so much closer to nature than in other locations.  This photo is from AKRealEstateGuide.com and was taken by Valesa Linnean.