A blog by Bill Hess

Running Dog Publications

P.O. Box 872383 Wasilla, Alaska 99687

 

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Wasilla

Wasilla is the place where I have lived for the past 29 years - sort of. The house in which my wife and I raised our family sits here, but I have made my rather odd career as a different sort of photojournalist by continually wandering off to other places to photograph people and gather information, which I have then put together in various publications that have served the Alaska Native Eskimo, Indian and Aleut communities.

Although I did not have a great of free time to devote to this rather strange community, named after a Tanaina Athabascan Indian chief who knew Wasilla in the way that I so impossibly long to, I have still documented it regularly over the past quarter-century plus. In the early days, my Wasilla photographs focused mostly upon my children and the events they participated in - baseball, football, figure skating, hockey, frog catching, fire cracker detonation, Fourth of July parade - that sort of thing. 

In 2002, I purchased my first digital camera and then, whenever I was home, I began to photograph Wasilla upon a daily basis, but not in a conventional way. These were grab shots - whatever caught my eye as I took my many long walks or drove through the town, shooting through the car window at people and scenes that appeared and disappeared before I could even focus and compose in the traditional photographic way.

Thus, the Wasilla portion of this blog will be devoted both to the images that I take as I wander about and those that I have taken in the past. Despite the odd, random, nature of the images, I believe they communicate something powerful about this town that I have never seen expressed anywhere else. 

Wasilla is a sprawling community that has been slapped down hodge-podge upon what was so recently wilderness of the most exquisite beauty. In its design, it is deliberately anti-zoned, anti-planned. In the building of Wasilla, the desire to make a buck has trumped aesthetics and all other considerations. This town, built in the midst of exquisite beauty, has largely become an unsightly, unattractive, mess of urban sprawl. Largely because of this, it often seems to me that Wasilla is a community with no sense of community, a town devoid of town soul.

Yet - Wasilla is my home and if I am lucky it will be until I grow old and die. Despite its horrific failings, it is still made of the stuff of any small city: people; moms and dads, grammas and grampas, teens, children, churches, bars, professionals, laborers, soldiers, missionaries, artists, athletes, geniuses, do-gooders, hoodlums, the wealthy, the homeless, the rational and logical, the slightly insane and the wholly insane - and, yes, as is now obvious to the whole world, politicians, too.

So perhaps, if one were to search hard enough, it might just be possible to find a sense of community here, and a town soul. So, using my skills as a photojournalist and a writer, I hope to do just that. If this place has a sense of community, I will find it. If there is a town soul to Wasilla, I will document it. I won't compete with the newspapers. Hell no! But as time and income allow, it will be fun to wander into the places where the folks described above gather, and then put what I find on this blog.

 

by 300...

Anywhere within a 300 mile radius of Wasilla. This encompasses perhaps the most wild, dramatic, gorgeous, beautiful section of land and sea to be found in any comparable space anywhere on Earth. I can never explore it all, but I will do the best that I can, and will here share what I find and experience with you.  

and then some...

Anywhere else in the world that I happen to get to, such as Point Lay, Alaska; Missoula, Montana; Serenki, Chukotka, Russia; or Bangalore, India. Perhaps even Lagos, Nigeria. I have both a desire and scheme to get me there. It is a long shot. We shall see if I succeed.

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Friday
Apr092010

Having already done so three painful times, I had planned not to visit the 9/11 site, but I did, anyway

When I went to board the subway train early last Saturday afternoon, I did not realize that I was headed to 9/11's Ground Zero. If I had paid closer attention to the doors of this still-moving train as I photographed it, perhaps I would have known. See how they evoke mental images of the Twin Towers of The World Trade Center, as they once stood?

In the days since the towers came down and with them some 3000 lives, I had visited the site three times, the first less than a year after the attack, when all the spontaneous memorials, packed with American flags, flowers, teddy bears, pictures of the deceased, words written to them and many items too numerous to begin to recount, still stood.

Each time, it was a gut-wrenching experience that brought me to tears and caused great anger and sorrow to well up inside me.

I did not wish to once again subject myself to such feelings this time and so I decided that, as deeply as the place is rooted in my heart and soul, I would skip a repeat of the experience.

I did not have much time. I had promised Chie that I would meet her for our tour of the Cloisters at 3:00 PM and I had not only overslept but had been slow to get going after that.

I thought perhaps I had just enough time to ride to South Ferry, at the very southern tip of Manhattan and then to turn around and ride to the very northern tip to meet Chie.

So I got on a train bound for South Ferry.

People on that train seemed all to be in a good mood.

At one stop, a man entered, clutching dollar bills in one hand and a document of some kind in the other. His legs were slightly twisted, he was bent a bit at the back, walked with a limp, had an unhealthy pallor to his skin and a look of desperation in his eyes.

He began to speak in a high, halting, voice, his words broken and slurred. He said that he had suffered a debilitating stroke, that he had a wife and three children, ages three to ten. He said that the assistance that he received was not enough to make ends meet and to feed his family and get them the medical care that they need.

He said that he hated to beg, but he just couldn't make it on his assistance and may God bless all who were willing to help with a small donation.

I did not know if his story was true, but I could not doubt that his spot in life was a hard one. As the train came to a stop, I reached into my pocket to see how much change I might have on me, but he turned, limped to the door at the far end and stepped out of the train before I could fish it out.

I did not see anyone give him money.

Then the train stopped and went no further, well before we got to South Ferry. Ahead of us, another train had broken down and we could not pass, but we could get off and catch a free shuttle to South Ferry.

So I got off, walked to the stairs that led to the exit and climbed out of the subway darkness into the light.

Immediately, I recognized that I had come up very close to the site of the 9/11 attack.

It seemed that despite my decision to avoid it, fate had determined that I would once again look upon one of the most painful memories of my life. So I decided not to go to South Ferry, but to spend what little time I could here, at the place where my country was dealt such a murderous, senseless, painful, blow.

Between where I stood and the site, I could see an ambulance, a road block, police officers, steam rising, and a young woman reading a book.

So I walked in that direction, past the ambulance and soon came to this scene, so familiar, yet so different now. For as long as I have a memory, the sight of these three buildings, standing tall, rigid, quiet, and firm, rising out of the smoke and ash after the Trade Towers fell, will never leave me.

How slow the process of reconstruction has been. Hopefully, it will move a little faster now that New York City and developer Larry L. Silverstein have reached a tentative agreement that will put a mix of public and private funds into the project.

If I understand correctly, this skeleton structure now going up will become The Freedom Tower, 60 stories tall.

I had it in mind to go back and recount for readers that beautiful morning, both in Wasilla and New York, when Jacob barged into our bedroom and woke Margie and I up with this words, "Mom! They bombed the World Trade Center," but I feel too weary at the moment to do so.

I'm afraid my travels, and all the sleep that I have continued to miss even since my return home, are catching up to me. I did, however, write a bit about that day in the second post that I ever made in this blog.

I did not have time to walk to walk around the entire area of Ground Zero, but I was right by St. Paul's Chapel, the Episcopal Church where George Washington worshipped on the day that he has sworn in as the first President of the United States. After surviving the 9/11 attack, St. Paul's also served as a relief center for rescuers and those who worked to do the initial cleanup.

Many believe that the chapel, which did not lose even a single broken window, was saved by a giant sycamore tree that took the brunt of flying debrie from the northwest corner of the chapel yard.

A root of that tree has been cast in bronze.

As I sat down on a bench beside tombstones of Americans dead now for well over 200 years, a little bird came hopping by.

People passing between the church and Ground Zero. Please take note of the small group that includes three children, walking just to the right of the tree.

They turned into the walkway to the chapel, where the adults stopped to ponder what had happened here.

I wondered about the children and their thoughts and feelings toward the events of 9/11. Had any of them even been born on that day?

I spoke with their parents and learned that the boy and the older girl had both been born in 2001, before the attack. So they were here for the event and the parents say they are very much aware of what happened that day. I did not get to speak to the children directly.

While she agreed to it, the mother of two of the children was a little bit nervous about them appearing on the internet, so I will not identify them by name or town.

These are the graves of two veterans of the Revolutionary War: Major John Lucas and Major Jon Sumner. Both died after the war in New York City of illness. Both were 33.

People pass through the cemetery of St. Paul's chapel. I would have lingered longer, and gone inside the chapel, but right after I took this picture, I checked the time. It was 2:14 PM. I still had to return to the guest house to clean up a bit. I was going to be late to meet Chie.

As I began my walk back to the subway, I spotted this gentleman with his bicycle, looking up at the under-construction Freedom Tower.

I would liked to have talked to him, but I had to move quickly on and so I did.

Soon, I would be back in the subway. Soon after that, I would be off to meet Chie, to take the tour of Cloisters.

Chie, Cloisters, the Dutch purchase of Manhattan and Bunny Rabbit soup will be the subject of my next post. I had planned to put that post up Saturday, but due to a bad malfunction by Squarespace, my problem-plagued, quirky bloghost, I did not succeed in getting this post up until Friday evening. I want to leave it up for a full 24 hours and so will probably just go ahead and hold the Chie/Cloisters post until Sunday morning.

Yesterday, I did pay a little visit to Kalib and Jobe - so, maybe, I might put those two up late Saturday evening and then get back on schedule Sunday morning.

We will see.

Friday
Apr092010

My 911 site post briefly (hopefully) on hold, due to nightmarish Squarespace manlfunctions

This Squarespace..... AAAAAUUUUGH..... After spending well over an hour editing and preparing the 17 photos for my planned 911 site visit post, I have had to give up on putting that post up for now. This is because I have been working on uploading the photos for half-an-hour and have gotten nowhere, because, at it so often does, this quirky, awful, worst-piece-of-software-that-I-have-ever-dealt-with is acting up and making it, if not altogether impossible, horribly time-consuming to get even one image incorrectly uploaded.

I can't take the fight and delay any longer and so I am going to leave this post for now, come back in a few hours and see if Squarespace is behaving a little better. It won't be behaving well because, when it comes to dealing with photographs, even when Squarespace runs just as designed it is still a time-consuming, burdensome, wasteful, program that is five-times as slow and tedious as Blogger (I have timed it). But if it improves from what it is doing now to operating just five times as slow as blogger, I can still get the post up.

I have to get out of Squarespace and find a bloghost that is actually committed to to solving its problems and making itself a smooth running, efficient program, attuned to the needs of its customers - I have to, I have to, I have to.

As I have said before, it will not be an easy thing and it will take a couple of months and will lose me so many links and such that I have built up, but I have to go - if I am too make anything of this blog I must find a host that does not require me to spend two-thirds of my time fighting its quirks and inefficiences.

Anyway, I will get the 911 site visit post up as soon as is feasible.

 

Thursday
Apr082010

My lens smudged and dirty, I walk into Central Park, where I am greeted by a smiling dog

I had barely stepped into Central Park when I saw this little dog, smiling at me.

I also saw this woman, photographing what I took to be a cherry tree. She said that she did not think it was a cherry tree, but rather a tree that she thought was pretty, but could not identify.

I still think it was a cherry tree, but I could be wrong and she could be right.

I saw a big rock, with many people upon it.

A jet passed overhead.

A girl slid carefully down the rock...

...another slid down a slippery slide...

...as did still another.

I saw a bunch of boys, sitting upon a rail fence as they watched...

...another boy leap over a picnic table.

I saw a young man practicing his rock climbing skills. I asked him if he ever did serious rock climbing and where. He said yes, and named the Adirondacks. He radiated pride when he told me that, so I did not tell him that I was from Alaska.

He was loving his mountains and I did not wish to upstage him in even the smallest way.

I saw a little boy, shooting bubbles at a little girl.

I followed the sound of a drumbeat, and then came upon this fellow. I looked for a container into which I might drop a coin, but found none. He was not begging, he was practicing.

I was amazed to see leaves like this so early in the spring.

I found a little road upon which a pretty woman roller-bladed.

Other people pedaled bicycles...

...some rolled by on push scooters...

...one fellow cranked his way past on a hand-cycle.

Along came a trike, followed by a horse-drawn wagon.

I found a pair of lovers, intertwined with each other, oblvious to my presence.

Another pair of lovers had just taken their vows before a justice of the peace. Now, they had begun their honeymoon. They told me their names, but I did not speak them into my iPhone and so I forgot.

A helicopter passed overhead...

...as did a squirrel.

A little girl rode a horse without using her hands while eating a sucker...

...and a teen wearing high-heeled boots jumped between two oppositely oscillating ropes.

Since I got this pocket camera in December, I have been working the battery hard and heavy and all of a sudden, it has grown weak. It died immediately after I took this picture of a young woman teaching a younger boy how to manipulate his skateboard. If the battery had still had the ability to retain a charge that it had up until very recently, it would have still been good for at least 200 more frames - maybe 300. There was much left in Central Park for me to see and photograph.

I did not feel too badly about it, though, because I figured that I had taken enough pictures and if I were to take anymore, I would just have to spend that much more time editing them.

Yet, just as I was exiting the park, I saw something that I had to photograph.

So I pulled out my iPhone - as I would two more times after my pocket camera battery would again die in New York. I will post some iPhone pictures on another day.

 

Next up: A quick stop in the old graveyard across the street from where the Twin Towers once stood.

Wednesday
Apr072010

I find a pretzel in Times Square, plus a naked cowboy; These days, invited or not, Sarah Palin travels with Alaskans everywhere we go

I would not want to give the impression that I am a person who travels often to New York City, but I have been there a number of times and on my very first trip in the early 1980's, I established a ritual: to buy a pretzel from a Times Square street vendor and wash it down with a Pepsi.

Prior to that first trip nearly 30 years ago, I had always thought of pretzels as small, hard-baked, crunchy things packaged with dozens or even scores of others in plastic bags. I did like them, and found them to be particularly good as car food.

Then I made my first trip to New York and, for $35 a night, found myself in the Edison Hotel, immdiately off Times Square. After I checked in, I set out to explore and soon saw my first real pretzel, being sold by a street vendor. I bought it. It was a giant thing, maybe twice the size of the one you see here, twisted and coarse on the outside. The crust was not so smooth as this one, but was broken by little cracks and seared with scorch marks from the coals over which it had been roasted. The salt looked the same.

The pretzel had the aroma of fresh bread and salt and when I bit into it, I was amazed. It was fresh, thick and chewey, rich with the flavor of whatever wood had been used to roast it. It was one of the best things that I had ever tasted. I devoured it, along with the Pepsi, and then ordered another one.

Every day for the rest of that trip, which was maybe three days long, I bought at least one pretzel and a Pepsi to wash it down.

As for Times Square, I found it to be a strange mix of high and low culture, plus everything in between, all twisted together. Broadway theatres and porn shops, with naked inflatable dolls, whose use I did not even want to contemplate, hung suspended in large display windows. Men in tuxedos and women in fancy gowns walked the streets, brushing against prostitutes, pimps, beggars and hawkers. Many tourists walked about, gawking, as multitudes of vendors tried to sell them everything from magazines to sketches of themselves.

The air smelled delicious and there was an abundance of food to be had, both on the streets and in the abundant restaurants. There were hot dogs and sausages on a bun, grilled meat and vegetables on a stick. Whole chickens cast in red light turned on grills in window displays. The aroma of Asian food, French cuisine, beer joints and pizza, whole and by the slice, wafted out of doorway upon doorway.

All the food that I tried, and I tried as much as I could possibly afford, both from street and restaurant, was among the best that I had ever tried.

On that first evening, as I walked down the street, I saw a woman walking the other way, looking right at me. As anyone from my part of the world would likely do, I responded with a polite nod and a "hi."

Big mistake. I never did that again.

Day or night, crowds of people swarmed through the streets as the famous, corner, Coca-Cola lighted marquee played above. For a seeker of open space, untrammaled country and solitude, it was an amazing thing to see for the first time. As short as my tolerance for big crowds is, I yet found it exhilarating and exciting.

After that, whenever I would return, wherever I would be staying, I made it a point to go to Times Square to eat a pretzel and drink a Pepsi.

"Be sure to try a pretzel," I would tell New York-bound acquaintances. "They are special - the best in the world."

Back home, I kept trying to replicate the experience. Whenever I would find a pretzel shop in an Anchorage mall, I would buy one. Many were good - but they were not New York pretzels. I discovered frozen Super Pretzels in the grocery store. I would bake and microwave them at home and share them with the kids, even as I boasted about the far superior New York pretzels.

In later years, Melanie got to New York. Having heard about the legendary New York pretzel for all of her life, she bought one.

"Dad," she complained back to me, "there is nothing special about this pretzel. It is just like a Super Pretzel that we could buy at Carr's."

She was right. The old New York pretzels are gone. In my more recent trips, I have searched the streets of Manhattan uptown, midtown, downtown and lower. Nowhere can I find a New York pretzel. Only imitation pretzels, like any Super Pretzel that I could buy in any decent grocery store in any city or town in America.

Times Square is different, too. Redone in high-tech electronics; selling high fashion, glitz, glamour, Mickey Mouse, sporting memorabilia and romantic fantasy.

I suppose that it is a safer place than the old Times Square and that maybe it is good to be able to walk down the street without having to fend off pimps and prostitutes, but, as furiously busy as it remains, there is something bland and artificial about it.

Still, when in New York, I have a ritual that I must now follow. I go to Times Square. I buy my pretzel and my Pepsi and then I eat and drink and I still enjoy - just like I would if I were eating a Super Pretzel at home. As I eat, I try to remember how the real New York pretzels tasted. I long to have one.

This is the pretzel I bought at Times Square this trip, and that's Times Square right behind it.

In the new Times Square, crowds of people still flow. Many gawk and marvel.

After I finished my pretzel, I came upon a famous man, who claimed to be naked and a cowboy. All kinds of girls and women were stuffing dollar bills - no less than three at a time, for that seems to be his minimum - into a slot in his guitar and then posing for both front and back shots as their girlfriends, boy friends, husbands and countless strangers took their pictures.

As it turns out, he is not really naked, but wears some little white shorts. I kind of doubt that he is a cowboy, either. Has he ever lassoed a calf? Castrated a steer, waded through wet, green, dung or sat in a saddle, all day long, pushing cattle through the brush as mosquitoes fed on him? If he did, would not the saddle horn have castrated him?

I don't know. Perhaps he was once a real cowboy who caught a glimpse of the city and could not be drawn back to the ranch. I could google his history and maybe find out, but I am too lazy. Plus, I am not certain that I would believe what I read - not even on Wiki, because anyone can be a historian on Wiki.

The Naked Cowboy definitely has a lucrative gig, though. An unending flow of women constantly stuffs dollars into his guitar. It appeared to me that he works very hard, but reaps substantial financial reward. I am certain, too, that when the need rises, the Naked Cowboy never lacks for a woman.

I wonder what kind of sunscreen he uses?

A woman places her hand on the Naked Cowboy's butt as her husband or maybe boyfriend snaps a picture.

A little girl drapes her arm across the Naked Cowboy's butt and places her hand atop his hip as a man who might or might not be her father documents the moment.

Naked Cowboy and fan.

Directly across the street from the Naked Cowboy, I came upon what appeared to be a father and daughter, taking a rest beneath a giant, full-motion, billboard.

Not far away, I found a lady police officer with her horse. "I'll bet lot of people photograph you," I stated as I photographed her. She rolled her eyes, sighed and groaned, "Yes, you wouldn't believe it. I get so tired of it."

Perhaps readers have noticed that there is a dull, grimy, hazy, even blurry, cast - most pronounced right in the middle of the frame, over all these pictures. That is because the lens to my pocket camera is dirty. A drop of water or some other fluid had struck it right in the middle and dried there and a thin coating of grit and grime had spread all the way across the glass.

One bad feature of this pocket camera is that the lens is not much more than a quarter inch across, so a drop or smear on its surface that would not noticeably affect the quality of an image shot through a lens with more surface area will truly mar a picture taken with a soiled pocket camera.

I had brought a small bottle of lens cleaning fluid and a new cleaning cloth with me, but the cloth had disappeared. I decided to drop into a Times Square camera store and buy another.

I stepped in and was met by this guy. He did not want to sell me a cloth, but rather a whole lens cleaning kit, complete with cloth, brush, air-puffer and fluid. But that kit cost at least four times as much as did just a cleaning cloth. I did not want to pay the money, nor did I want to have to carry all that stuff around with me.

It was the kit or nothing, the camera merchant said. I could buy the kit, clean my lens and get clear pictures, or I could go around with a dirty lens and get mucky pictures. I would not find a kitless lens cloth anywhere - certainly not on Times Square. All of Manhattan's big camera stores are owned by Jewish families and were closed for Passover, so I could not go to one of those and buy one, either.

I told him that I did not need all that and was not going to buy it. I added that if he were to sell cloths, he would still increase his business because people like me who will not buy a kit would still purchase something from him.

"I can't make any money off you!" he snickered derisively. "I make my money off of suckers. Suckers who will buy the whole kit. I can see you're not a sucker. I make my money by selling to suckers." As he taunted me, his side kick, the one whose arm extends from the blue-striped shirt sleeve, chortled mockingly. I was reminded of Ralphie confronting the school-yard bully and his toadie in A Christmas Story.

I decided that I had to put the man and this story in this blog, so I pulled my camera out of my pocket, changed the settings from outdoors to indoors, then lifted it and shot this picture. This angered the man.

"I'll slap you!" he threatened. "Get out of my store!"

So I decided that on this day, I would just shoot with a dirty lens. When the angle of light was against me, I would settle for the impressionistic effect.

Shortly after I stepped out of the store, this car stopped at a red light and this young woman asked me if I could tell them how to find a certain place. "I can't," I said, "I'm not from here. I'm from Alaska."

"Alaska?" she said. "Where Sarah Palin is from?"

"Believe it or not, I'm from Wasilla."

Everyone in the car was very amused by that fact.

The hard truth these days is that if you live in Alaska - especially Wasilla, Alaska - and you go traveling Outside, Sarah Palin travels with you, everywhere you go.

Sometimes, you can be having a good conversation with a couple of people, then they learn that you are from Wasilla, they look at each other strangely, find a way to quickly end the conversation and walk away.

Sometimes, they smile big and tell you that they love Sarah Palin and how lucky you are to live in the same town with this magnificent and brave woman.

Funny, the assumptions people make, just because you live in a certain place at a certain, very odd, time in history.

There are those who do not assume, but they tend to grill you with questions when you might rather talk about something else.

I did not make this up. After the carload of people in search of direction moved on, I kept walking and came upon this dog. It kind of looks like a pitbull.

And then I moved on toward Central Park. My stroll there will be the subject of tomorrow's post.

 

As a reminder that I am no longer in NYC:

Here is a picture that I took on my coffee break, while stopped at a Wasilla red light.

Tuesday
Apr062010

After a long, uncomfortable flight with another delay, I am back in Wasilla, with my wife and cats

Twenty-four hours and about $350 after I had been originally scheduled to board the first leg of my Delta Airlines flight home, I followed these guys onto a plane bound for Salt Lake City from New York's JFK airport.

We filed between the rows of those seated among the elite in first class, where serious business was being conducted, and then entered the cabin.

My first choice is always a window seat, then an aisle and I hate the middle, just like most everyone else does. The worst of all is a middle seat in an emergency exit row, because the seats do not recline and instead of a regular armrest that can be lifted up and down, the armrests are solid from the seat up. This creates the effect of being forced to sit in a rigid box.

I had originally successfully booked non-emergency row window seats all the way from New York to Anchorage but now, I had been assigned to a middle seat in an emergency exit row.

Worse yet, when I sat down, I discovered that there was a big, irritating, bump right in the middle of the seat. I would have to sit on that bump for five-and-a-half hours.

The situation worsened even more when I discovered that I been sat between two people, who, whenever they were awake, from the beginning of the flight to the end, continually and intentionally did all they could to try to push my elbows off the armrests altogether. I did not totally begrudge them, because it is just a plane fact that those three seats are just too squished together. There simply is not room for three adults to sit comfortably side by side in them - although I am usually reasonably comfortable in a window seat, because I can lean against the wall and away from the shared armrest. Yet, it was still incredible. I had been stuck in middle seats plenty of times, but I had never before experienced anything like this.

When my adjacent passengers would nap, they would relax into their most comfortable positions, which meant they would lean away from me toward the window or the aisle and their arms would follow them off the rest, no longer to push against me.

Even so, I managed to read most of what was left of the book, Into the Heart of the Sea, before we reached Salt Lake City, but it was the most uncomfortable ride I have ever had in a jet airplane. I am still sore from it.

Yet, compared to the travels of those who were part of the final voyage of the Whaleship Essex, I rode in comfort and luxury and traveled to my destination with amazing speed. I have nothing to complain about.

In Salt Lake, the flight back to Anchorage had already begun to board. I was hungry, so I bought a not-very-good ham sandwich and a bottle of water at a diner right across from the gate, then got in line.

Just as I was about to board, it was announced that the flight had suddenly been put on a weather hold, due to high winds and snow. Out the window, I could see that the snow had turned to rain and it did not look that bad, but apparently it was.

So, as I took note of a bar and grill just a short distance away where I could have got a hot meal, I sat down and ate my sandwich.

Then Lydia Olympic, who had been in the bar and grill watching basketball, sat down beside me. 

I first met Lydia many years ago when I followed her and several other Alaska Native tribal leaders on to a forum in Washington, DC, where they also did some lobbying among House Representatives and Senators.

Lydia is from the Lake Iliamna village of Igiugig in the Bristol Bay Region. Right now, she is living in Anchorage where she relocated in order to fight against the Pebble Mine, because of the harm she fears it could bring to the salmon and other wildlife resources of her home.

"Do you get back to Igiugig much?" I asked her.

"Yes," she said. "Every summer I go back to cut fish."

Finally, they let us board the plane where, once again, I was seated in an emergency exit row. This time, at least, I had an aisle seat and the middle was empty. I did not have to contend with battling elbows. We seated in the emergency rows all paid strict and rapt attention as the stewardess told us about our duties should the need arise to evacuate the airplane.

After the lecture, we sat on the tarmac for about two more hours as we waited for the plane to get de-iced.

It was strange to let my mind wander outside the plane and into the surrounding community. I let it wander to my sister Mary Ann's house, downtown. I had tried to call her right after we landed, but she did not pick up. It was a bit after 9, but some people go to bed early.

I let it wander to the house up in the Salt Lake suburb of Sandy, where Margie and I used to so dearly love to drop into during our early days of marriage. We visit my parents, eat and watch TV with them and sometimes at night, being as quiet as we could possibly be, make love as the old folks slept. Sometimes, we would drop baby Jacob off so we could go out and do things like go to movies or climb a nearby mountain.

I pictured that house now, with only my older brother Rex in it, he living in a state of declining health.

I pictured the place upon a hill at the foot of the Wasatch Mountains, where lay my Mom and Dad and my brother Ron. Ron never wanted to be buried but cremated but in the end, his wish was overwhelmed by the force of the Mormon faith that he had journeyed away from long before and he got buried, anyway.

I thought of the later years when I would visit my Mom and Dad, and how hard those years became. I thought about Mom and Dad and Mary Ann and Rex had always hoped that, at some point, I would come to my senses, say my Alaska adventure had been good but was now over and that I might settle down nearby in that same valley to one day be buried on that hill with them.

I love Utah, but, damn, I couldn't live there. I just couldn't.

I lived in Utah for one year when I was a baby and for the five years total that I attended BYU.

That was enough. I can't live there anymore.

Sometimes, though, I awake from a dream. In it, I am in the basement of my parents' house where I am at last writing my books.

I am alone in that house. Nobody else lives there. Just me.

I really don't like that dream.

Then the flight was off - five more hours to sit in a box seat with a stiff, non-reclining back, having already sat in it for two on the ground - plus, of course, the New York to Salt Lake ordeal.

After about four of those hours had passed, I headed back to the restroom.

When I came out, I heard a female voice speak out of the near darkness of the cabin, in which all the main lights had been turned out: "Bill? Is that you?"

It was me, and Courtney was the young woman who asked. I first met Courtney when she showed up at the hospital emergency room after a Saturday Wasilla High football game, probably in 1992.

Caleb had been injured in that game and his memory temporarily knocked out of his head.

Courtney, a cheerleader, was right there at his side, hovering adoringly over him, smiling warmly upon him, caressing his hands in hers'.

They were an item for a long time after that, hanging out, going to the prom and such, but in time she went her own way. Now she was on the plane with her daughter, Abby, and a son who was sleeping in such a dark spot that I could not make him out. They had been living in Texas with her husband, who had just becoming qualified to fly a C-130.

Now she was going back to Wasilla. "I can't believe how much I have missed being home," she told me. "You don't realize how good it is until you go away."

"How old is Abby?" I asked Courtney. Abby answered for herself.

Margie picked me up at the airport and we arrived home in Wasilla about 4:15 AM - 25 hours after I had gotten up at the Comfort Inn that I had stayed in by JFK.

It was nearly five by the time we got to bed and I had hoped to sleep until 11:00 AM, ten at the earliest. But I began to wake up at 7:30, perhaps in part because Jim kept going back and forth from beneath the blankets to resting on top of me.

Everyone tells me that Jim has a hard time when I gone. He gets lonely and anxious and a bit desperate. When I come home, he will come to me with the most anxious expression. Then he will dash this way and that way out of sheer joy. Finally, he will settle down wherever I am at and will stick as close to me as possible.

As I have been working on this blog, he has alternated between resting upon my chest and shoulder to my lap.

Anyway, I gave up on sleep shortly after I took this picture at, as the clock says, 8:44 AM.

Pistol-Yero was sleeping there, too, but when I got up, it woke him up. I do not think he was ready to wake up.

Next I went out into the garage, where Royce and Chicago had already begun to dine on food put out the night before.

I then went outside to get the paper. 

According to our tradition, I next took Margie out to breakfast at Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant, just as I always do when I return home from a trip, whether I can afford to or not.

I ordered my hash browns to be cooked "very light." They came back cooked dark, hard and crispy on the outside, mush on the inside.

Oh, well. The ham and eggs were very tasty, the coffee just right, the multi-grain toast and jam quite excellent.

Overall, breakfast was a good and pleasant experience - as long as I did not think to much about what we now face.

Although I am back in Wasilla, I will return to New York and then Nantucket very shortly - at least in this blog. I will begin by showing readers how my search for a New York City pretzel turned out, and most definitely I will bring you along on the tour of Cloisters and the very northern tip of Manhattan that Chie Sakakibara took me on. I will tell you a bit about the unlikely story of how she, a girl in Japan who originally believed Native Americans to be Caucasian because that's how she saw them in the movies and Aaron Fox became bonded to the Iñupiat of the Arctic Slope and brought a treasure that had been lost back to them.

As to Nantucket, I am now completely fascinated with the place and want to learn all I can about it.