2009-2010: Formed at Yale, Indigo Trio twice toured through rural Alaska. Here's our trio performing the first movement of Brahms' Clarinet Trio in A Minor. (I play the cello.) The tours were made possible by support from the Harper Arts Touring Fund.
2010: Baranof glacial retreat analysis was a project to record the baseline terminus data of five Baranof Island glaciers and use historic satellite imagery to determine how much they'd reteated. I got the GPS measurements with my buddy Eli Bildner. Ben Hughey, a high school friend and GIS whiz, did the actual hard work of crunching the data for one of the five glaciers.
2010-2011: Ojos del Salado geodesy was a project/adventure with my friend Chandler Kemp to measure the respective Chilean and Argentine summits of Ojos del Salado. Ojos is the second-tallest peak in the Western Hemisphere and the tallest volcano in the world. Our project was to determine which of the Chilean and Argentine summits was taller (Argentina wins by 31 cm). Along the way, we discovered a mysterious red lake in the summit crater of El Muertito — altitude 5,800 meters/19,000 feet — mediated by unknown processes. A return trip to properly investigate is clearly in order. Support for the expedition was generously provided by Chase Coggins Memorial Fund and UNAVCO.
2012-2020: SFAC historic restoration program was basically Habitat for Humanity meets the National Historic Landmark Sheldon Jackson Campus meets 20-somethings having the summers of their lives. In some summers the work crew was as large as 20. The program was administered by Sitka Fine Arts Camp until it met its untimely demise with COVID in 2020.
2015-2017: "Fish 101: A Crash Course in Alaska Fisheries" came about after spending several years laboring to make sense of the impenetrable jargon that is Alaska fisheries policy. I get impatient with making stuff more confusing than it needs to be. As a solution, I rallied a few friends to write an A-to-Z guide to Alaska fisheries policy in the plain American that cats and dogs can read. Support was generously provided by SASAP and Stanford Haas Center for Public Service.
2015-2022: The "Shennett community" began when I bought a muskeg-y, waterlogged lot and slowly developed it over the subsequent years, having a house built of my own amateur design. While I did a poor job documenting its progress, it's mostly done. Along the way, in 2019, I bought the only adjoining property on the cul-de-sac street — a duplex, which I subsequently renovated. I also bought an impossibly cute tiny house that two friends built and added it to the mix. I low-key manage what is now a three-structure, five-unit, 10-person community.