Category: Photo Gallery

Return to Alaska 3: Writer’s Block Bookstore & Café

After more than fifty years, I returned to Anchorage for the Alaska leg of my Hardship Alaska book tour. Special thanks go to Dawnell Smith and Vered Mares at Writer’s Block Bookstore & Café for hosting me and creating a wonderful space for book lovers and writers of all ages.

Arriving Weriter’s Block Bookstore & Café for my June 7, 2023 book talk.

Writer’s Block Bookstore & Café provides an intimate space for book talks and concerts along with fabulous food and beverages.

Reading an excerpt from Hardship Alaska.

Long time Alaska friend, Mary Wagner LaFever moderated the book talk.

Great conversation spurred by insightful questions from the audience.

Signing copies of Hardship Alaska following the talk.

It was a wonderfully warm and engaging evening.

Click here to purchase your copy of Hardship Alaska at any of these major online booksellers.

Or, click here to buy your copy of Hardship Alaska and support your favorite independent bookshop.

July 9, 2023
Return to Alaska 2: St. Mary’s Book Talk & World Café

Pure and unexpected joy filled my heart during the Hardship Alaska book talk and World Café conversation at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Anchorage on June 6, 2023. I even reunited with four folks who knew me when I lived in a closet in the church’s basement fifty-plus years ago. Longtime friend and musician Mary Wagner LaFever and visual recorder Lee Post joined in helping me tell my story. And special thanks go out to Michael Burke, St. Mary’s rector, and his incredible staff for providing a warm, safe, inviting space.

St. Mary’s Episcopal Church—the old sanctuary now serving as a chapel. This is the church building I remember.

The new sanctuary.

Visual recorder, Jeff Post, captures the book talk World Café conversation in real time.

Intimate table conversations invite people to respond to book experts, engage in collaboration dialogue and consider diverse perspectives.

Longtime Alaskan friend, Mary Wagner LaFever.

We knew each other when…

Michael Burke, St. Mary’s Recvtor

“Behind his clerical collar, Chuck was still a Kentucky boy at heart. He’d mix us tall, ice-filled glasses of overly-sweetened lemonade topped off with half a glass of bourbon each. We’d watch the clouds sweeping up from the base of the Chgach range, pushed aloft by winds cutting across the valley and coming to rest as if asleep on the tops of mountains.” —Hardship Alaska, Bourbon and Lemonade

“As a kid I would paint watercolors of mountains I had never seen. I spent hours brushing gray wash backgrounds suitable for both sky and rocky terrain. Clouds sweeping up from the base of the range, pushed aloft by winds cutting across the valley and coming to rest, as if asleep, win the tops of mountains.” —Hardship Alaska, Foretellings

Click here to purchase your copy of Hardship Alaska at any of these major online booksellers.

Or, click here to buy your copy of Hardship Alaska and support your favorite independent bookshop.

July 9, 2023
Return to Alaska 1: Homecoming, June 3-10, 2023

I recently went back to Alaska—the first time in over fifty years. I returned as part of my Hardship Alaska book tour. The book chronicles my life as a Vietnam War-era conscientious objector as I set off on two years of exile, service, soul-searching, and self-discovery in Alaska’s rugged, unforgettable beauty. The trip north was also a long overdue homecoming to the place where my worldview began to take shape as I experienced the isolation of the outsider and what it means to be part of a community—the most formative period of my life.

The first couple of days, I had the opportunity to explore where I lived when I first arrived in Anchorage on Halloween night, 1970, excited to learn that my first apartment was still there. I also learned that the church basement closet where I lived for much of my two years of alternative service was still there, too.

“On Novembre 2, 1970, I moved into a one-bedroom furnished apartment… on M Street edging a bluff overlooking Cook Inlet.” —Hardship Alaska, Sunrise, Sunset

“Looking out from my porch I could glimpse the reclining Sleeping Lady, Mt. Susitna, which resembled a pink-hued silhouette of a giant reclining woman in afternoon sunlight.” —Hardship Alaska, Sunrise Sunset

“I wrote a poem in college, I think it came from a dream, of men selling salmon, frozen, block-cut and wrapped in brown paper, which I bought. They stood at the end of a road beneath a bluff, a boat ramp of sorts, against a bleak horizon of a cold bay. Large chunks of ice sat still in the water with no place to go. Across the inlet slept a giant that resemble a mountain.” —Hardship Alaska, Foretellings

After suffering a setback with my alternative service job at Alaska Children’s Services, and forced to give up my apartment in downtown Anchorage, I found refuge at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church.

Now working with the church, I served as its music director and senior youth group advisor, among several other assignments.

My new living quarters included a storage closet—my bedroom—under the stairway leading from the sanctuary to the basement.

“As a kid I would paint watercolors of mountains I had never seen. I spent hours brushing gray wash backgrounds suitable for both sky and rocky terrain. Clouds sweeping up from the base of the range, pushed aloft by winds cutting across the valley and coming to rest, as if asleep, win the tops of mountains.” —Hardship Alaska, Foretellings

Click here to purchase your copy of Hardship Alaska at any of these major online booksellers.

Or, click here to buy your copy of Hardship Alaska and support your favorite independent bookshop.

July 7, 2023