Welcome to Big Orange Coat!
Some hopes, expectations, and FAQs for this blog
Hello and welcome to my blog! If you are here, it likely means you are hoping to find something about my life, something about Bethel Alaska, or perhaps something else entirely. If it’s the first or the second, you’re in the right place!
Still confused? Hopefully the answers to some Frequently Asked Questions can help:
A blog? Isn’t Substack kind of…lame?
While Substack isn’t always the coolest of platforms, it is pretty easy to use on both ends. Also, I’m not smart enough to make my own website from scratch, and I didn’t want to ask my brother how to do it, so here we are. The reason I have a blog is that I have now graduated from Swarthmore College (!), and as I have no social media, I have no way of keeping in touch with literally anybody that I once knew. Yeah, I could just get instagram, but I think I’m more built for something of this caliber.
The subreason for the blog is that I am moving to rural Alaska for a year (maybe longer, who knows), and I wanted a way of both documenting and sharing what that entailed. If you know anyone in the Bethel or Western Alaska area (and it’s a big area), drop me a line!
Rural Alaska? What in God’s name are you doing there?
Short story: I’ll be working at the Kuskokwim Consortium Library in Bethel, AK, both as part of their general library team and more specifically doing library/educational outreach in Western AK.
Long story: Subscribe to this Substack and hopefully we will both find out.
Isn’t it cold and dark up there? Sounds terribly depressing.
Yeah, well, it is Alaska, so it will indeed be cold and dark. Trust that I was aware of that when I applied for the job, and even more so when I accepted it. I’ll buy a sun lamp and some vitamin D pills, it’ll be fine.
Why are you doing this? Couldn’t you get a job in Seattle or Philly or somewhere normal?
Maybe? But honestly the job market is rough, and I had a good offer in Bethel and decided not to turn it down. I also wanted to do something totally different right after graduating, and you can’t get more different than subarctic tundra. There’s really no other time when I can just decide to move to rural Alaska, so it might as well be now. Besides, if it’s terrible I can leave after a year, and like Vienna, I’m sure Philly waits for you.
Why is it called Big Orange Coat?
If you’ve ever seen me in the winter, you’ve probably seen me in my giant neon orange coat—I practically live in it between December and March. Yes, it’s garish, and doesn’t cut an attractive silhouette, and makes a crossing guard look Vogue-ready, but it’s my Big Orange Coat. It would be a crime to name this blog anything else.
So what’s this blog even about? Salmon reviews? Snow monitoring?
Hopefully about whatever’s going on, though I’ll try to keep the salmon talk to a minimum. There was a real lack of Western Alaska blogs on Substack when I was trying to figure out if I should move there or not, so maybe this is a niche I can fill. Besides, what else am I to do in my postgrad days? Make TikToks? I think not.
Do I have to subscribe?
Not at all. Close this tab and never reopen it if you want to—Big Orange Coat will still be here. If you want, you can even just pop in every few months to see what’s happening, or maybe just check back in by August 2027 to see if I survived a whole year of Bethel. Or don’t. Whatever works.
How often will you post? Is everything going to be as boring as this one?
No clue on frequency, but probably every few weeks or so; depends on how exciting things get up there. But anything remotely interesting (or mind-numbingly tedious), you’ll be the first to know.
Can I come visit?
Absolutely. If you can get to Bethel, you’ve got a place to stay.
The real blog will get up and running in early/mid-August 2026, so stay tuned until then!