Cocoon mode* - day 2: From Monument Valley to Wasilla, with love and longing; Margie hobbles into the grocery store; Obama stands as my warrior

Lavina received some pictures in the mail from her sister, Lori, showing her two children, Sage and Jayden, in Monument Valley, where Lavina's father originated. Lori, who is on top in a hard battle against cancer, now lives in St. George, Utah, but had returned with her family to her ancestral home for a visit.

Lavina wished that she could go down, too.

Actually, when I look at this picture, I kind of want to go wander around down there a bit, myself.

Margie got out of the car and went into Carr's to do some shopping. It was the first time that she had been in a store since she fell and broke her femur at the knee on July 26.

Tonight, we ate spaghetti.

Earlier, I took a break from work to join her to watch Obama deliver his health care address. Our President made me proud - and hopeful. He laid out his plan with force and clarity and called lies lies. I have made some of my complaints about my insurance company known here and I won't bother to again, but this is a battle that he fights for me.

*Cocoon mode: Until I finish up a big project that I am working on, I am keeping this blog at bare-minimum simple. I anticipate about one month.

The last wild berry of summer - blog goes into cocoon mode

With summer on the wane, Jacob, Kalib and Muzzy walked back into the marsh and I decided to follow, for just a little ways and then to leave them behind, because I needed to move fast and stretch my muscles.

We had not gone far before Kalib insisted on walking himself. Shortly after he was put upon the ground, he darted off the trail and into the bushes. He wanted to find berries.

Dad looked around and did not see a berry. "Looks like the berries have all been picked, Shiyashi," he lamented. But then they found a blueberry, big, plump and juicy. Was it the last berry of summer?

As Kalib chomps on the blueberry, Jake searches to see if he can find one more. He did, but no more after that.

Blog now goes into cocoon mode: While I have never been able to devote the time and energy to this blog that will be required to make it into what I want it to be, I am at a point with my big project that I simply cannot afford to devote anything but the very smallest amounts of my time and mental energies toward any other tasks - including this blog.

In contemplating how to handle this, I have debated just signing off the blog for a month or so, but even though I have not given it what I want to, I have still worked too hard to do that.

So I have decided instead to put the blog into "cocoon mode," meaning that on the outside not much will happen but on the inside, things will be churning and developing as I finish my project. Hopefully, when I am done, this blog will emerge into something brighter and better, something that will take me closer to my blog goals.

This is the way it will work:

I will still keep a camera with me at all times, will continue to shoot whatever catches my eye as I move through the day and will post something, every single day that I have an internet connection, but I will limit myself to one or two pictures, from the present or past, and will give myself five minutes max to write the text.

Maybe some days I might cheat just a little bit, but not many and not much.

I am kind of sad to have to do this. After struggling with this thing seemingly in vain for a full year this past Monday, my readership remains miniscule, but keeps steadily, steadily, growing. On the average day, it is now nearly ten times what it was at the beginning of June. That is growth enough to give me some hope.

Now that the blog is in cocoon mode, my readership will certainly fall back to its earlier numbers.

For awhile, anyway. Once I finish this project and rip my way out of this cocoon, I will see what I can do with it then. In the meantime, please keep coming back to see my one or two pictures per day.

Little kids sneak out of church, steal Oldsmobile, go drinking, driving, shoot up the countryside

This is the story that I thought of when I saw Charlie's 1962 Oldsmobile Starfire:

I suppose that it might be an exaggeration to say that we stole the Oldsmobile - after all, it was Randy who drove and his father owned the Oldsmobile. It's just that I was 11, he was 13 but looked ten - too young to drive and his dad had no idea that we had taken the car and certainly had not given his permission, so, in a sense, we had stolen it.

But if you had been with us, you would have understood. It was what Mormons call "Fast Sunday," and if you had ever been a boy forced to sit through such an ordeal as that day - and there was nothing at all fast about it - then you would have wanted to steal a car and go driving in the Montana Countryside, too.

Fast Sunday is the first Sunday of every month and the idea is that you begin the fast on Saturday evening, when you skip dinner. You continue the fast through breakfast and lunch and then break it at dinner. You take the money that you did not spend on food and donate to the church's welfare fund so that it can be used to buy food for the poor.

And when we fasted, it was a complete fast - no food, no water, no juice, no consumption of any kind.

But that wasn't the worst part of it. The worst part was Fast and Testimony Meeting, which came after Sunday School. Usually, the Bishop or one of his counselors would start off by bearing his testimony and after that it was all "open mic." As the spirit struck, people got up to bear their testimonies, and there was always a lot of weeping. There was no time limit and the meeting could last hours.

And Mom always embarrassed me, because she would get up, bear witness for an interminable length of time and at some point would single me out and tell some story that showed what a good, faithful and righteous boy I was.

No boy wants the other boys - not even the other church boys - to think that he is good, faithful and righteous. Mom had no idea about the fights that this kind of thing got me into.

I imagine that when Mom got up and told the story on this particular Sunday, she scanned the congregation, looking for my sweet face and then wondered where the hell I was.

Yep, I was with Randy. We had gotten into his father's Oldsmobile and driven off, two little kids, one of them peering over the steering wheel, trying to stay out of the sight of cops.

Randy came from a poor family, yet somehow he always had money and he was generous with it. So before we headed out of town, we stopped at Safeway and he bought Pepsi, Candy Bars and Twinkies for both of us, then we drove out into the country, drinking and eating.

We broke our fast early that Sunday. 

We drove out of Missoula and past Lolo Hot Springs, down a dirt road that crossed the railroad tracks and then Randy found a place and parked the Oldsmobile.

"I got something to show you," he said.

We got out and I followed him as he opened the trunk. Inside was a .22 rifle and two or three boxes of long-rifle bullets.

We had drank our Pepsi's by now, so we put the empty bottles atop some fence posts, shattered them with bullets, then searched about, found beer bottles - and in those days, one could always find beer bottles laying about anywhere in or near Missoula - put them on the posts and shot them, too.

Then Randy drove us back. He parked the car and we went into the chapel, just as the closing prayer was being said.

Thank God!

There there was another Fast Sunday, a year or so before that one, that also involved Randy, cars and sneaking out of testimony meeting. In this case, the cars were Ramblers, a very pathetic brand of car that was none-the-less popular and there several of them parked in the church parking lot.

The word, "Rambler" was spelled out in the grill of these cars in chrome letters about two inches high that were attached to the car only at the base.

Randy showed me how a well-aimed, swift kick, would knock a letter free of the grill. So after that, probably just as Mom was once again telling the congregation what a sweet and righteous boy I was, Randy and I kicked the R-A-M-B-L-E-R out of every car thus branded.

Afterward, we divided the letters up, he taking one half and I the other.

We stashed them until it was safe, and then each of us took our letters home.

I put mine in my middle drawer, where Mom soon found them. She wondered where I had gotten them and so I told a plausible story.

Unfortunately, the Rambler owners - one of whom happened to be the Bishop - all noticed that they had lost their letters. The next Sunday, the Bishop made an issue of it from the pulpit.

Mom instantly figured it out. For the salvation of my soul, she insisted that I go stand before the Bishop and confess my sin.

I did and it was hell.

Kalib at the Fair, Part 3: He charms two hot church-group chics, who then battle for his affections

Yes, Kalib saw many, many wondrous and strange sights at the fair, but the very most wondrous and strange of them all...

...was a bunch of people twirling hoola hoops about their hips. And standing out above all the rest were these two sisters, Sandy, left, and Steffers, chaperones with a church group that had driven out from Anchorage.

Kalib took note of them, all right, but, even more importantly, they took note of Kalib.

The moment the hoop fell from her hips and hit the ground, Steffers dashed out of the hoola ring and snatched Kalib off the ground, hoping to kiss him.

Kalib fought off her advance and in panic reached out for his dad.

Sandy observed this and determined that although Steffers had struck swifter, she would strike smarter. Before Steffers could even know that she was gone, Sandy dashed off, bought a new black "Big Dipper Mining Company" t-shirt and put it on over her red one.

She was certain that little Kalib would be entranced by that black "Big Dipper Mining Company" t-shirt. What little kid could possibly resist a kiss from a beauty wearing such a t-shirt?

Thus attired, Sandy advances quickly, going for the kiss. Kalib fends her off.

Oh, my goodness! Steffers, too, has run off and purchased such a shirt. She taps Kalib, who is still hiding from the first kiss attempt.

"Hey, good looking," she coos, "pucker up. I've got something special for you."

Steffers goes for the kiss and plants one right on Kalib's cheek before he can resist. Kalib likes it!

"Not fair!" Sandy squeals. "I'm the one for you, Kalib - not my sister. Let me try again."

Kalib is not quite so resistant now. The idea of a kiss from Sandy even causes him to smile bashfully.

Sandy plants her kiss. Oh, my goodness! Kalib likes it!

Kalib had been a bit leery about the idea of taking a ride on the ferris wheel, but the attentions of the two sisters so overwhelmed him that he fled, grabbed his parents hands and led them straight to the wheel. They boarded and I hopped on with them.

Here, in his mother's arms, looking down upon the world as he had never before seen it, Kalib felt safe and secure. No hot church group chicks would smother him with kisses here.

Kalib switches from his mother to his father and then looks out upon the world below with great excitement. And then... he sees something... something that he did not expect to see...

"Grandpa...?" his eyes look at me in disbelief, saying the words that his mouth cannot yet form, "could it be true? Did I just see who I think I saw?"

Yes, he did. It's them! Way down below on the ground! Steffers and Sandy, and their cousin, Jessie, who, judging by the way she is dressed, must also want to get in on this toddler cheek-kissing action.

Kalib waves at the two sisters and their cousin. "Can't catch me!" his little hand seems to say.

But then he is on the ground and it seems that Steffers can catch him. "Come to me, my little sweetheart," she coos. "You're all mine."

Sandy objects, so the sisters decide to stage a contest. They will line up, with their cousin, all dressed in their black t-shirts and see who Kalib chooses.

What they don't know is that Lavina has run to the Big Dipper booth and now wears such a t-shirt herself. Lavina will put herself in that line and then see who Kalib chooses.

Kalib places his hands on the beauty of his choice - Mom!

And it is Mom who tucks him into his car seat and takes him home for the night. "No church girl chaperones for you, Shiyazhi!" she soothes. "You're all mine, Shiyazhi!" Shiyazhi is the Navajo word a mom uses for her baby.

Kalib isn't a baby any more, but still, he is her baby. And he always will be.

Kalib at the Fair, Part 2: Kalib is frightened by a horse, dines on nutritious fair food and sees wondrous sights

Kalib and his dad went down the big slide. 

Kalib spotted a little girl riding a horse. He decided that he wanted to ride one, too.

It was a tiny, tiny, horse, a Shetland pony, but once Kalib was placed in the saddle, he suddenly perceived it as a gigantic monster. He wanted off.

His dad convinced him to try a couple of go arounds. After all, both Navajos and Apaches are known for their natural horsemanship abilities and since Kalib is both, that ought to make him twice as good.

So off he went, clinging to his blankie and his dad.

But then he just got terrified.

So the horse lady helped him off and handed him back to dad, even as the horses and their riders continued to go round and round. 

Lavina bought corn for herself, Jacob, Kalib and me, too. Or did I buy it?

I don't remember. We kind of mixed the buying. They would buy a treat, I would buy a treat.

Kalib loved his corn.

And he saw many wondrous sights that seemed new to him.

Next up in part 3: Two hot church group chicks battle for Kalib's affections.