Bambi stew

KABOOM! Killed the king today. But my two main characters are behaving badly. They both had the chance to walk away to freedom but both have chosen to step back into the chaos of the Queen's court. Why is that? I suppose if they just walked off there wouldn't be much of a story....

Carolyn just dropped me off home after a night in town - it's after 10pm and I told her I wanted to walk down the driveway through the forest in the rain. About halfway down I got a bit nervous and started whistling - just to alert bears and passing maniacs...

....great evening with an advanced writing class at the Sitka campus of Alaska University. About half the class was there in person and the rest attended by teleconference. You can adapt to having everyone in person or everyone on teleconference, but it's kind of odd having half and half and I'm full of admiration for Liz the teacher who takes many classes this way. In my effort to keep audience eye contact I found I spent quite a bit of time giving meaningful glances to the teleconference microphone. Very enjoyable discussion, it's lovely to meet a group of other writers and I'm hopeful I will get the chance to hear what they are working on in the next few weeks. Then one of the group told me that what they really love is my accent and I could be reading out the ingredients of colour crayons and they would still be spellbound. Hey, I will make the most of that.

Actually, I was genuinely surprised as I always think of the aussie accent as hideous, flat and nasal and not something anyone would want to listen to.

Carolyn took me home for venison stew with her and Dorik and we continued our conversations about community and living and working together, plus books we like.

You can learn a lot about a place from it's local paper. I wanted to share with you a couple of items from the Sitka's Sentinal today:

1. Women of the Moose will hold a business meeting at 7pm tonight. The group will also decorate for the luau. [Carolyn, who has lived here 20 years, is unable to enlighten me on the meaning of this notice and the purpose of 'women of the moose'. I forgot to ask her what a luau is].

2. The Alaska Day Festival Keystone Kops are recruiting new members. For an application form contact Joan at 4Js coffee.

3. In the log of phone calls received by Sitka Police: On September 20 at 12.05am a resident reported his daughter called him and was having trouble with her brother. Both brother and sister told police they would behave themselves for the evening. At 1.10am a resident complained about a neighbour who was talking loudly. Officers talked to the neighbour who said he would turn down the radio volume and close his window.

The weather remains rainy. Luckily the novelty of being in the rain in a cabin in the woods hasn't worn off yet.

Dreams of owls and bald headed eagles.

Jesse xxxx