I wonder if you actually do get comfortable with a radio mic in front of you and earphones on your head.

I’ve been on radio a few times now.

I remember the second or third time was the longest interview till this morning–about forty minutes.

Today I spent an hour on radio talking to a man who looked like pictures I’ve seen of Jesus, long flowing white hair, a beard like a Muslim, and kind eyes.

Steve Heimel surprised me.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t him.

We began chatting before the show, and he refused to talk about my books. When the subject meandered onto Wanting Mor, he said that he wouldn’t talk about the book because then he’d be obliged to say, ‘…As you said before the show…’ and he thought that wasn’t fair to the listeners. It was exclusionary and I thought, wow, how considerate! It had never occurred to me before.

He sent me a link   http://www.alaskapublic.org/2013/03/22/alaska-sprit-of-reading/

I’m not sure if the podcast works yet. I tried, but it didn’t work on the rinky dink little laptop I’m using on my travels, but it might work on a more powerful machine.

I think the coolest thing was the audience participation. Students and adults from all over the state called in with excellent questions I might add!

One student asked whether Jameela’s cleft lip was a metaphor!

One asked why Soraya and Zeba were so adamant that Jameela shouldn’t get the corrective surgery from the Americans.

And one teacher talked about so many of her students knowing what it felt like to have lost their mothers.

I should warn you though, there was a moment when I got carried away and released some spoilers so if you haven’t read Wanting Mor yet then lay off listening to that interview.

After that happy experience I went to Willowcrest school here in Anchorage. It’s a school that actually contains some Muslims.

Or so I heard.

Unfortunately none of them came up to me afterwards and introduced themselves as such.

Met the cutest lady! She was wearing a traditional Arctic native dress type garment, you know the kind of calico dress-type thing with the rick-rack trim.

I know I shouldn’t call a lady ‘cute’, but honestly she was.

To my chagrin she introduced me by mentioning my blog post about the food situation in Barrow! LOL.

I’m so silly.

Honestly typing away like this I often forget there are probably people reading this. I know, I know, if I didn’t want readers I’d increase the privacy setting, and I do write to share experiences. But you gotta believe it, it’s SO weird when people actually quote you back to yourself!

And a lot of the time I’m often just figuring things out on this blog, kind of talking my experiences out so I can put some order to them.

So anyway, in talking to her I realized something.

Because here I’ve been urging some of the schools to rearrange their schedules to maximize the access of their students to my presentations but many of these teachers are working so hard just to juggle their schedules that having someone they know nothing about, come in like this, is not necessarily an opportunity.

For example at the school I was at in Valdez yesterday, they originally  had me presenting the same presentation to 55 grade ones and then 50 grade two’s when I could easily have combined them and then done another presentation for the older students–which is what we eventually did, but it did take some juggling.

And even as I urged them to do this I could hear my husband’s voice at the back of my mind saying, “Stop imposing yourself! Just do what they ask. If they want small groups like that it’s easier for you isn’t it?”

Yes, it is.

And he’d say, “It’s your ego! You want more kids to listen in!”

And I’d say, “No. Ego has nothing to do with it. I just don’t know if and when I’ll ever be back, and I just want to give them the most bang for their buck.”

And yet it doesn’t make sense.

I really should just do what they want.

The fact is I charge the same amount for a group of twenty-five as I do for a group of a hundred, so just because if I were them, I’d put in the hundred doesn’t matter.

I’ll just pull back. Do what they ask.

I can offer, but leave it at that knowing that sometimes the schedules are just not flexible.

Reminds me once again of my motto of don’t take things personally.