Yukon Chatter Bug

One of my most memorable days touring St. John’s was visiting an area just below Signal Hill called The Battery: ambling along its winding roads; climbing the steep slopes; and photographing its antique character. This mural, one of many around St. John’s and painted on the concrete sides of a walkway,  greets us as we turn on to Outer Battery Rd. These murals throughout the city are painted by Derek Holmes and April Norman.

Here’s the other end of the above mural from Google Streetview:

View Larger Map

As the street is getting narrower, tucked away in a corner is this yellow eccentric structure with signs and odds and ends nailed to it:

Everything was painted bright yellow.

To give you an idea of just how narrow the streets are in The Battery:

Between some of the crammed houses, you can see the harbour along with some very antique-looking wharves…perfect Jim Robb fodder:

Behind all the rickety structures and ramshackle buildings are signs of life:

And here is just more of the same. Notice the curved roof:

Before the long-weekend, everyone asks you if you’ll be doing anything special. I was so looking forward to not being on a schedule. So being the spontaneous person that I am, I decided to take an afternoon trip to Skagway, Alaska. I now realize it’s been more than a year since my last jaunt south.

As usual, the quirky Arctic Brotherhood building with driftwood siding greeted me like an old friend:

Arctic Brotherhood Building, Skagway, AK

Established in 1899, I wonder about the history of the shovel handle I noticed between the entrance and the windows.

Arctic Brotherhood 1899

AB - Shovel Handle

There are many nooks and crannies that provide interesting photo ops, like this old axle:

Old Axle

Yet another old faithful call-him-what-you-will:

Soapy Smith's Parlour

And what would be a visit to Skagway without checking out the old rotary snowplow used by the White Pass & Yukon Route (W.P. & Y.R.)?

W.P. & Y.R. Rotary Snowplow

A train going through after the deed is done in 1899:

Snow Trench dug in 1899 by W.P. & Y.R. Rotary Snowplow...now another train can get through - photographer H.C. Barley, courtesy of Yukon Archives

Rotary Snowplow Blades

It may be a coincidence, but just about every time I leave the Yukon, it greets my return with some smiling blue skies:

South of Carcross

As a teacher, I spend April Fools’ Day getting pokes and slaps on the back hard enough to send me into a fit, and I’m not supposed to notice. As I go about my business handing out paper and pencils for our weekly dictation, I hear little whispers, ignore muffled laughs, and notice conspiring eyes throughout the room. In keeping with the French tradition of poisson d’avril, students write notes on fish-shaped paper cut-outs and surreptitiously stick them on the backs of others, so I’m beginning to look like a human fish tree. One note read, “Made in China”.

After dictation, I hand  out a second piece of paper and tell the kids to read all the questions before starting. These are francophone students in an English class, so I tell them that these are very simple instructions designed to evaluate their ability to understand simple English directions, and even if it’s super easy, they should still complete the test.  You know where this is going, I know, but I couldn’t help myself.

It was the old classic:

#1: Read all the questions before beginning the test.

#2-6: Random instructions about drawing shapes in certain corners, underlining this or that. You know the kind.

#7: Now that you have finished reading the test, only do question #1.

In one of my high school classes, we just finished reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream, so I drew up a list of questions for an open-book pop quiz. No one caught on that I never, I repeat, never give pop quizzes, and I told them so at the beginning of the year.

Again, the first instruction was to read the whole test before beginning to write. The last question was, “Copy any verse from Act V, Scene 1, and do not complete any other question. Rather, work on your assignment that is due for next week.”

At first I wondered how long I should let this go considering we’re using precious in-class time. Then I thought to myself that the questions were good review of what we had learned, so it wasn’t a loss.

Every single student was busy answering review questions from the play.

And this was after I told them twice to read all the questions first, AND after I read the test instructions out loud to them, AND after I listed reasons why they should read it first (jogs your memory so that when you get to the question again, your brain has already been activated…easier to answer…blah blah blah). On second thought, maybe it was the monotonous blah-blah-blah that made them tune me out.

I’m not sure I’m anxious for next year’s poisson d’avril. I have the feeling I’ll get smoked. Yikes!