2009 in review - June: Kalib goes south, I go north, Point Lay celebrates in first Nalukatak in 72 years; Jason and his boat crew

Okay, I've got a big problem. I begin writing these words at 6:19 PM on the last day of 2009. When I started this month-by-month review of the year that is about to end, my plan was to have it done before the year ended.

And so far, I've only managed to get five months up. But I must finish before the year ends and there are other things besides this blog that I must do between now and midnight.

So I am going to hurry. I will give the rest of the year short thrift, I fear.

Here I am, with Jacob and Kalib, out on a walk.

And here Kalib is, at the Alaska Airlines Terminal in Anchorage's Ted Stevens International Airport, taking a look at stuffed Kodiak bear. He will soon get on a jet with his mom and grandma and they will all head to Arizona. 

I will be gone when they get back, so more than six weeks will pass before I see them again.

Melanie and I took a little hike in the Talkeetna's, in the Hatcher Pass area. I wanted to do much of this kind of thing last summer. My plan was to go to the Arctic Slope, work hard on my project for two months and then take the month of August just to go out and do nothing but hike, fish, bike ride, camp and any damn thing that I wanted.

It would not work out that way.

Now I am in Point Lay, where I have come to document the first whaling feast in the village in 72 years. This is whaling captain Thomas Nukapigak, showing his nephew a photo of the whale harpooned from the boat of Captian Julius Rexford.

And this is Julius, at the feast, reaching back to place a hand upon the Elder, Warren Neakok. In the middle part of the 20th century, Point Lay became a near ghost village, after many of its residents were sent to outside cities by the federal government as part of the Indian Relocation Act.

Only Warren and his wife, Dorcas, stayed - in the belief that the Point Lay people, the Kalimiut, would one day come back.

And they did. Their population was small and they did not whale at first. When they decided that they were ready and applied for a quota, they were denied. This was because they could not prove that they had been a whaling village.

Fortunately, Dorcas had written letters back in the 1930's describing how she had helped after three whales had been landed. With this proof, Point Lay was granted a quota of one. They went out in 2008 and I went with them, but they did not strike a whale.

In 2009, as I was leaving for India, Julis landed his whale.

Whale meat is distributed at the feast.

During the blanket toss of Nalukatak, Christina Lane, daughter of Julius, distributed candy to those who came to the feast.

The whale feast ended early the next morning with a rousing celebration of dance. This is Willard Neakok Jr., a young whale hunter and excellent dancer.

Wainwright celebrated its whale feast of Nalukatak the very next day. These are the members of Iceberg 14 who were in the boat when they struck the whale. I will start at the right, since I ended my April review with a photo of Jerry Ahmaogak throwing ice out of a boat ramp.

That's Jerry again, on the right, who harpooned the whale. Next to him is Co-captain Jason Ahmaogak, Co-captain Robert Ahmaogak, shoulder-gunner Benny Ahmaogak and next to him, Artie, who was not actually in the boat but he is now the Elder of the crew.

Mary Ellen Ahmaogak is also Co-captain.

My Uiñiq magazine contains a big story on this crew and this event. After it comes off the press and gets time to get out and circulate around, I will come back and share a little more, here.

2009 in review - May: Melanie and I go to India for Soundarya's wedding; I ride a bike in the cool Wasilla air; Kalib gets tossed

What a transition, huh? From the ice pack of the Arctic Ocean to a sweltering, sweltering, hot day in Bangalore, Karnataka, India. And it all happened because of this beautiful woman, Soundarya Ravichandran - about to become Soundarya Anil Kumar. I first met her 21 months earlier when my niece, Khena Swallow, married her cousin, Vivik Iyer, in Bangalore.

Yet, it did not feel like I had just met her, but rather that I had always known her. Tables had been set up in long rows for the wedding feast. Guests sat on only one side of the tables so that the servers could file past in front of them, spooning food onto their banana leaves, which served as plates.

She sat at the table directly opposite mine, facing me. So I raised my camera and focused it on her. "I don't take good pictures," she protested, embarrassed.

"That's okay," I said, "I do." 

After dinner, she invited me to walk with her, and we soon came upon a woman standing in a tiny yard behind a tall fence, along with an orange and white kitten and a little white dog. Sandy asked the woman if she could hold the kitten, so she passed it over the fence to her. She went nuts for that kitten, cuddling and petting it, smiling and laughing in true joy. I took some pictures and we have been the fastest of friends ever since.

Thanks to the internet, it is easy to keep in touch.

I call her "Muse," because even from so far away she has caused me to take pictures that I would never have taken. She has asked me to write stories that I might never otherwise have written.

I promised her that when she got married, I would come back to India to photograph her wedding.

And now she was getting married, so here I was.

And this man would be her groom - Anil Kumar. It would not be an arranged marriage, but a love marriage and would cross the caste lines of old.

There were musicians at the wedding, creating music of a type that we do not normally hear, here in Alaska.

And there were cooks, and cooks helpers, creating food as delicious as any that you can imagine. Oh, my goodness... was it good.

Now let me back up a bit, to very early in the day. A pre-wedding, pre-sunrise, ceremony was to be held at the home of the bride. Melanie had come to India with me and Vivek's parents had put us up at their house. We had spent the previous day with Vivek's mom, Vasanthi, shopping for saree material for Melanie and we had visited a tailor, who measured her and then went to work, cutting and stitching.

So, although we were still exhausted from the 40 hour trip, we got up at 4:00 AM so that we could get to Sandy's house in time for the ceremony.

Murthy, Vivek's dad, had arranged for a taxi-cab to pick us up, but the taxi did not show. I was a little distressed, as I wanted to photograph the day's events from beginning to end.

So Murthy put me on the back of his motor-bike and off we went. Bangalore is a huge, sprawling, city - twice the size of New York and, even in the light traffic of early morning, it took us nearly 45 minutes to get there.

We made it in time. Here, Soundarya receives a blessing from her mother, Bhanumati, or "Bhanu."

Soundarya enters the wedding hall with her entourage. Compared to a Indian wedding, a typical American wedding is a brief and simple affair. Many, many, many things happen at an Indian wedding and as I covered a good portion of it to some depth over several earlier posts, I am not going to do too much with it now.

Instead, I will jump to this scene, many hours later, when everybody broke out into applause, because Anil and Soundarya were now husband and wife.

This doesn't mean the ceremony was over. Many things would yet happen.

Finally, they got to eat. They fed each other little cakes, kind of like what happens at an American wedding.

After dinner, the ceremonies moved to the house of the groom's mother. You see the hand that gestures? That hand belongs to a photographer that the groom's family hired and he, along with his videographer, was a nightmare to me.

The videographer had a powerful, harsh, flat, spotlight, the likes of which I have never seen in the US. See the beautiful light from the candle? In about two seconds, maybe one, that videographer will blast that light away with the searing, brutal, glare of his spotlight.

The photographer will shoot his stills with flash, straight on, giving it the most washed-out effect possible. He will interrupt things and order people around.

And the photographer was very aggressive - he used his shoulders and elbows whenever he got near me.

But I was in his country, and this seems to be how wedding photographers go about things here, so there wasn't much I could do about it. I had to accept it and work around these two guys the best I could.

Ah, if only I could meet them on the ice-pack one day!

But you know what I would do if I did? I would help them out as best I could.

The bride and groom enter, kicking over a container of rice. More things happened as well.

Then there was a break. We all gathered around this laptop with Anil's brother, Ashok, and his wife, Thruptha, to look at pictures of their wedding, which had happened a short time before. That's Thruptha on the screen and sitting at right.

In the middle is Melanie, so beautiful in her new saree.

Melanie receives a blessing.

When it comes to my picture in this blog, my policy has been mostly to photograph shadows, sometimes mirror images and once in awhile a self-portrait.

But I want to include this one to promote my nephew, Ganesh, "Gane," Sandy's brother. He is a natural born photographer, wants to become pro and he ought to. He likes to roam around in the forest to photograph elephants, especially the big "tuskers," and other wildlife that he finds there. He does a good job with people. He did not have a camera, so he picked up mine and shot me drinking from a coconut, with these two characters nearby.

It was now about 1:00 AM. We moved back to the home of Sandy's mom and dad, where the day had begun.

Thankfully, the photographer and his videographer did not come. I had this to myself.

I should note that I did not manage to get any of the evening home pictures in my earlier series, either here or at the house of Anil's mom, so this is the first time anyone has seen them - even me.

Bhanu blesses the new couple before they enter the house.

Inside, there will be more blessings, for both the bride...

...and the groom.

This is Sandy's sister, Sujitha, "Barbie," and her man, Manu. It is kind of complicated to explain, so I won't, but they are hoping to have a wedding ceremony before long and they want me to come.

I want to be there but I am so broke now, I don't know how I can pull it off. But things always change so we will see.

Melanie and I did some touring after that, with Murthy and Vasanthi as our hosts. Being a host in India means something different than it does in the US. They would not let us pay for anything. We traveled by hired cab, and they paid for the cab and driver. They paid for hotels, they bought our meals.

If we started to look at souveniers, they would buy those, too.

I am pretty certain that if the richest family in the US were to be the hosts of a dirt-poor family in India, that family would not let the rich people spend hardly a rupee, but would sacrifice all that they had to make them comfortable.

Sandy and Anil came on the first trip, Vasanthi on every trip, usually with Buddy, who you can meet in the original series. Murthy had to work and so came only on the final trip.

To date, I have not found the time to even look at but the smallest portion of my take.

Sometime, I hope to sit down and do so. When I do, I will share the results with you. I am certain there is some good stuff in there.

As you can see, the momma monkey loves her baby. She told the daddy monkey to go to the store and buy a soda pop for the baby. As you can see, he did.

But then the daddy monkey drank all the pop himself. He refused to share. He was that kind of monkey.

We saw many wondrous things, including this ancient temple at Hampi. I had pulled this image at random out of my take for the original post.

Fishermen, at sunrise in the Sea of Bengal, offshore from Chennai.

And then, one day, I was back home in Wasilla. It was raining. Compared to India, it was a cold rain. I got on my bike and pedaled and pedaled. The cool, clean, air was so good to breathe, the cold rain felt wonderful.

But don't misunderstand. There is something about India that I love deeply. I wish that I had found the place when I was younger and that I had the money to go back again and again.

Even now, I want to go back again and again.

Yet, I hate to leave Alaska for very long.

That is the conundrum. 

Kalib, of course, must be included in this post. I actually took this shortly before Melanie and I left for India. Kalib had come down with pneumonia, but was getting better.

His dad made certain he got some air into his lungs.

2009 in review - April: begins with moose in the yard; ends on a crazy-hot day on the Arctic ice

April began with a mama and her calf, dining in our backyard.

This is Jim, an amateur weatherman who I sometimes come across while walking. Our winter was drawing to its end. Jim had recorded 57 days below zero at his house, several in the - 30's and a few in the - 40's. Total snowfall had been eight feet.

Wasilla, of course, is in one of Alaska's moderate climate zones.

It discourages and depresses me to walk through Serendipity too often, but occasionally I do. I did this day and Muzzy came with me. I don't know how he manages to store up so much pee, but he marked every single property on his side of the street as his.

When we entered break-up for real, I got my bike out and started to pedal. You can see I still had the brace on my right wrist. I did not yet know it, and would have thought the opposite, but bike riding would prove to be great physical therapy for my wrist and shoulder.

As long as I didn't crash.

Becky, a young neighbor who lives on Seldon, gave Muzzy some love.

I saw this little character in the Post Office parking lot.

This happened on one of those mornings that I had to get out of the house and go get breakfast at Family Restaurant. These two guys had a nice little conversation and I am certain that it was friendly.

This guy stepped onto the side of the road to remind everybody they had to pay their taxes. Thanks to my injury, I had made very little money in 2008 and hardly had to pay any tax at all.

This year, I have made a decent income, but 2008 put me so deep into the hole that it does not feel like it at all. It feels like I am drowning, going under and maybe I am.

It would be okay if it were just me, because I could move into a shack and blog about it, but I hate to take Margie there. She has gone through so much and given up so much just to be with me these past few decades. She deserves much better than that.

It looks like tax time will be hell.

But I have 3.5 months to figure it out, so maybe it will be okay.

Many times in my career, I have brought us to the very brink.

And always, something has come along to save us.

By Easter, the snow had largely left our yard. We hid Easter eggs in the bare parts. Kalib went out and found them. We did not really hide them that good.

Kalib was pleased to discover that he could use guacamole to stick a chip to his face.

As I prepared to go north, Kalib played harpoon the whale. Kalib was the harpooner, Muzzy the whale.

Size ratio just about right.

I was glad to be going north, but it was very hard to leave this guy.

To me, what you are looking at is still a bit unbelievable. I had never imagined that I would see such a thing. The date is April 27, the place, Barrow, Alaska.

Barrow does not look like this on April 27. In Barrow, everything is frozen solid on April 27. On April 27, the temperature is either below zero F, or just a few degrees above. The wind drives a continual flow of snow low over the hardened drifts.

But not this April 27. On this April 27, the snow was melting. The air felt warm. No one living had ever before seen such a thing here, nor was there any record of this having ever happened, prior to this year. No one living who knows this place at all would have believed they ever would see such a thing.

It was causing problems for the whale hunters, making ice conditions dangerous.

I would like to say that this was a complete fluke and that no one will ever see it happen again - and it did finally freeze up again - but, these days, with the summer sea ice receding to unheard of levels, with polar bears and walrus losing the summer ice they need to live on, with animals, fish, and birds that have never been here before coming up from the south, with new species of plants taking root...

Willie Hensley of Kotzebue came to Barrow while I was there and did a reading, slide show and book signing for his autobiography, Fifty Miles From Tomorrow.

I bought a copy, had him sign it and then read it on the jet to India.

It kept me completely absorbed.

What a childhood he had, living the old time Iñupiaq life - and then to go on to fill a lead role in the movement that led to the Alaska Native Land Claims Settlement Act and after that to become a politician, corporate leader and now an author.

This is one of those books that anyone who loves Alaska should read.

Might I also suggest that you read Gift of the Whale, too, if you haven't already?

You don't need to buy it - go find it in a library somewhere.

After several days in Barrow, I bought a ticket to Wainwright, thinking that after I spent a short time there, I would buy another to Point Lay. But I was about to discover that now that only one commuter airline serves the Arctic coast, they don't even let you do that anymore

If you want to fly from Barrow to Wainwright and then on to Point Lay, you have to buy two round trip tickets from Barrow, one to each place. That is kind of taking a trip from San Francisco to Portland and Seattle, only to find you have to buy two separate round trip tickets, one from San Francisco to Portland, and then back to San Francisco and then to Seattle.

And the prices!

If I had done both villages, my trip from Anchorage to Barrow, Wainwright and Point Lay would have cost me more than the round trip I had pending that would take me from Anchorage to Bangalore, India.

HOW RIDICULOUS IS THAT??????

In the photo above, the airplane is landing in Atqasuk, enroute to Wainwright.

For you in the south, please remember, no roads connect the villages of the Arctic to each other.

Whyborn Nungasuk boarded the plane in Atqasuk, headed for Wainwright. For those of you who have read Gift of the Whale, Whyborn is the man who organized the search for Harry Norton. He is one of those people that I am always glad to see.  I thought he must be going to do a little whaling, because Atqasuk is a land-locked village and Whyborn has often whaled in Wainwright.

"You headed to Wainwright to go whaling?" I asked.

"Not whaling," he said, "to talk about Jesus."

That night, they were having the regularly scheduled Wednesday singspiration at the Wainwright Presbyterian Church. I stopped by, to listen the listen to the gospel singing.

At a certain point, Whyborn got up to make a testimony. He told of a recent fall whale hunt that he been on in Barrow. A whale had been taken, and then roped to the boats that would pull it the landing site. Whyborn was in one of those boats, but something went wrong and he was accidently jerked out out of that boat by the rope and into the water.

He went under, and he stayed under long enough to begin to drown, perhaps to drown altogether.

As he drowned, he found himself in a pleasant, warm, place. "There were beautiful flowers, and beautiful butterflies, flying," he said. "Jesus was there."

Whyborn liked that place. He was glad to have arrived.

Then hands took hold of his parka and pulled him out of the water. Those who pulled him out revived him.

When he came too and saw that he was still alive, Whyborn looked at his brother, who had helped to save him.

"Why did you bring me back?" he asked. 

"Death," Whyborn said, "holds no fear for me now."

My wrist was still in a brace. My shoulder still hurt 100 percent of the time and felt fragile to me. I had a fear that I could not stand up to the rigors of the whaling life. I did not plan to go on the ice.

But on April 30, Jason headed out to make a boat ramp where the lead had briefly been, where he hoped it would open again. His younger sister had been planning to go out and help, but she had hurt her wrist, and couldn't.

So a snowmachine was available. I climbed on that snowmachine and found that if I did not grip the throttle in the usual way but pushed it forward with my thumb supported against my brace, I could drive it. At first, I tried to fit a glove over my hand and brace, but the weather was so warm that I found I didn't even need the glove so I took it off.

The fellow with the red on his hat in the background, that's Iceberg 14 co-whaling captain Jason Ahmaogak. The young man chucking the block of ice out of the boat ramp is Jerry Ahmaogak.

This would prove to be one of the hardest whaling seasons on record, all up and down the Arctic coast.

But in June, well after the hunt would normally have ended, Jason would guide the Iceberg 14 boat to the only whale that Wainwright would land. Jerry would harpoon it. Young Benny Ahmaogak, who is also out here building the boat ramp, would fire the shoulder gun.

2009 in review - March: Kalib's first steps; ashed by Redoubt; Benson's final bow as Elizabeth Peratrovich; Iditarod dogs; cast off, brace on; little people at Gar and Emily's wedding

Kalib was the big star of the March blog - a role that he stepped into easily. In fact, it was in March that he took his very first steps and I was fortunate enough to be right in the room when it happened. This is the moment - Kalib walking for the first time. You can see how pleased he is, how thrilled his mom is.

And, as has been his way whenever Kalib has been in this house, Royce, the old man orange cat, was watching over every step.

Slowly and wobbly, Kalib walked to the other side of the room and his mom followed, taking her own pictures, weeping with each step, each snap.

Now, Kalib - I write directly to you, not for now, but for years from now; decades perhaps.

I hope that you will see these pictures then and that you will look closely at them.

See how your Mom loves you?

She is so devoted to you. She is there for you in every endeavor, backing you up and cheering you on.

So, when you inevitably feel some youthful rebellion, resentment, anger, or whatever towards her, just look at these pictures and let them remind you of what you know deep in your heart and soul.

You have been blessed with a most good and wonderful mom. Cherish her always, be kind, and treat her with love and respect. She deserves nothing less.

You have a devoted dad as well, as you can see in other pictures - and loving and guiding aunts and uncles.

Oh, and your grandma....

...grandmas, for there are two of them and they both love you. Your grandmas live for you - and they would die for you.

I will not discuss your grandpa except to note that, all his horrendous failings notwithstanding, he also loves you beyond measure.

Kalib soon lost his balance and took a fall. Despite his tears, no one was that concerned. We knew he would get back up and walk again.

Babies are good at that.

March was the month that Mount Redboubt volcano blew and cast its ash upon us. Here is Melanie, wearing an ash mask in the ashy air. Volcanic ash is a horrible thing to have to breath - fine, like powdered sugar, but each tiny kernel a miniscule, multi-bladed airborne razor made of glass, looking for a way to get into your sinus passages and to shred them and your lungs.

Volcani ash is awful stuff to breathe.

This is ash, in Anchorage. Redoubt calmed down after that, but now it rumbles again.

March was also the month that Diane Benson gave her final performance as Alaska civil rights heroine Elizabeth Peratrovich, a role that she reprised in the documentary, For the Rights of All - Ending Jim Crow in Alaska.

Just this month, Diane announced her candidacy to run for the Alaska Lieutenant Governor's seat.

As the mother of wounded warrior, Latseen Benson, and a person who has experienced the worst and best that life has to offer, she also has an important book to write.

In March, as they always do, the dogs took off to Nome in the Iditarod Sled Dog Race. These ones pull the Chugiak musher, Jim Lanier.

Hey! If someone will buy me a small airplane on skis, I will follow the whole race this year - focus on Mike Williams Jr, whose father I followed in 2000, when my airplane was still unbroken.

You supply the airplane, I'll buy the gas. But it has to be a small plane - a Citabria, Supercub...

Even if you were to supply a Cessna 185 or such, I don't know how I could buy the gas.

March was the month Margie got the cast off her right wrist. She still had a long time to go on crutches.

March was also the month that I got a new brace for my wrist. After I took my fall the previous June and got my shoulder replaced, my entire arm had been immobilized in a special sling. The damage to my shoulder had been so bad that nobody paid much attention to my wrist, although it hurt like hell.

After the sling came off, the pain didn't go away, but only got worse. So they did a cat scan and found out that my tendons were all messed up. Hence the brace. I would have to wear it through July.

I think two things finally got me out of it - a brief workover by Native healer Dorcas Rock in Point Hope, who spent a couple of minutes prodding it with her fingers and then gave me the very same diagnosis as the multi-thousand dollar cat scan revealed to the doctors. She followed this with one, very quick session of massage therapy. That helped a great deal, as did all the bicycle riding that I did in late summer and early fall.

Gripping the handles and pedaling hard seemed to pull my tendons back into place.

In March, I, who am most definitely NOT a wedding photographer, photographed the wedding of Emily Frantz of Barrow to Edgar Caldwell of Barrow. The wedding took place in Anchorage, where the couple now lives. I had time to include only one photo, and so I chose one of Emily in this same setting, but it was better than this one. It is a full body shot that fully shows not only the beauty of the bride but of her parka, which she sewed herself, from the skins of white rabbits and red foxes.

As that photo is already in this blog, I decided to run this one, which comes in a little closer for you to better appreciate her beautiful smile and eyes.

I had, in fact, decided to include a full pictorial summary of the wedding in this review post. But... there is one thing about this blog format that bothers me greatly, something that I intend to correct in the near future with a redesign.

Given the medium, I am basically satisfied with the size vertical photographs appear here, but the horizontal ones frustrate me. The horizontal ones are just too small - especially wide horizontals, containing multiple elements.

I have been exploring other photographic sites and it is clear to me that the horizontals do not have to be this small. Most of the photos from the wedding are horizontals - many of them wide ones, with multiple elements - like bride and groom, father, mother, preacher, bride's maids, bubbles floating about...

I tried placing a few here and they just got lost at this small size.

Since it is already late, I decided that I would wait until sometime after the redesign.  Then I will find an excuse to run a full summary of the wedding.

Anyway, this little fellow, whose name I do not know, was in attendance. He slept in warmth.

And this little beauty is Mea Luna Caldwell, niece of the groom.

Mea Luna Caldwell and her teddy tiger.

It would not be right to altogether leave the groom out a second time. He is a good fellow, someone I am glad to know. So here he is, dancing with his bride as his stepson, Norman Cole Lowery, observes. The other couple dancing are the parents of the bride, Daniel and Ellen Frantz. 

Today in Wasilla: I find the children of Russian immigrants, sledding on Tamar

I think by nature they are friendly and open, as children usually are. I do not know the circumstances that brought their parents out of Russia and into Wasilla in the mid-90's, but they seemed to come with a bit of reticence, a suspicion towards outsiders. 

When they first arrived in the neighborhood, our Alaskan sled dog husky, Willow, was still with us and she would always accompany me on my walks. The Russian children all loved Willow, and would come rushing out to see her when we would walk by. In particular, there was a certain, freckled, boy with reddish-blond hair who completely adored her and he was very gregarious and outgoing.

I would have guessed his age to be five or six.

Sometimes, he would follow along with us for a ways, talking, asking me all kinds of questions about Willow, petting Willow, holding her leash.

There would be other times when he would be happily talking to me when the man that I took to be his dad would spot him, and call him back. 

There would be other days when he would be happily talking to me, petting Willow and then, suddenly, he would stop, look around, see nobody, get a worried look on his face and say, "I've got to go now." He would dash back to the house.

And then there would be still other days when he and the other children who loved Willow would stand a distance back in the driveway, nod at me and quietly say, "hi!" and "how's Willow?"

Sometimes, they wouldn't say anything at all.

I could see the desire in their eyes and faces to come out and visit Willow, but they didn't move. They stayed put. So I knew that their parents had warned them away.

Several families got together and, doing the work and labor themselves, built new houses, big houses, moved out of the smaller ones they had been renting and into the big ones, just a short distance away. 

In time, the gregarious, freckled boy became a teenager. Sometimes, I will still catch a glimpse of him, in a car or out on foot or fourwheeler and he will nod, making perhaps just the hint of a smile.

And usually, when I come walking and see the new crop of small children playing in the distance, they are gone by the time that I get there.

But today, they were sledding, having fun and they stayed.

This one, the oldest out today, asked me what I do with the pictures and I told him about this blog. "Okay," he said.

After they reached the bottom of the hill, they turned around and came back up again.

Some day, I hope to get to know their parents and gain their trust. Perhaps these pictures might begin to open the door with them. We will see.

This, by the way, was not really a job for the new s90 pocket camera, but it is the only camera that I carried, so I had to make it do.

And to be honest, that is part of the fun of these pocket cameras - to make them do in situations that they are not suited for, situations where you need a rapidly-focusing, rapidly-firing camera, but you do not have one so you make the pocket camera do.

As for my 2009 review, I hope to have March up in a couple of hours. It might take me a little longer, because I might decide that I want to leave this one at the top of board for just a bit more.

Two hours doesn't seem long enough.