Steve Heimel - radio reporter and program host, keeps people driving after they would have shut their cars down

This is Steve Heimel and he bears a great deal of personal responsibility for the increasing pace of global warming and the next fuel shortage. Steve is a radio reporter and program host for the Alaska Public Radio Network and he keeps people in their cars, driving, long after they would have parked and shut down their engines, were it not for him.

How many times have I myself been driving, headed home, listening to Talk of Alaska on KSKA when Steve has asked a guest a pointed question that I would never have thought of and then sparked and moderated a discussion involving people from every region of this far-flung state that I simply could not pull myself away from, so I have driven on, spewing green house gas, burning gasoline.

And how many Sundays have I been headed home, intent on parking and getting out of the car as fast as I can, listening as Steve hosts Truck Stop on KNBA. All of a sudden, he's got Johnny Cash doing Fulsom Prison Blues and then maybe Hank Williams wailing about the tear in his beer because he's crying for you, dear, followed by Woody Guthrie declaring this land to be my land and his land.

Who can stop their car and turn off the radio in such a situation?

I sure can't. So I drive on, even as millions upon millions of other Alaskans do the same thing.

We are all helpless. We cannot shut our cars down. It's Steve's fault.

This picture is from earlier tonight, when I saw him at the "Send Congress back to DC with a Message" at Romig Middle School in Anchorage. The event was held to give Senators Mark Begich and Lisa Murkowski a pro-health care reform message as they return to Washington DC for the next session of Congress.

Before the event got under way, Steve mused about the unbelievable fact that he is 66 years old. Listen to him on the radio. He sounds like a young man.

It has been a long, busy day and I am exhausted and must go to bed, so I am going to put my pictures from that event into the queue, where they now compete with Kalib at the fair.

Oh, hell! On the very day of the latest Sarah/Levi absurdity, I see two Wasilla dogs in my mirror, a Wasilla black cat peeks over my monitor

Oh, hell! How can I live in Wasilla, publish a blog on Wasilla, and, as much as I want to, utterly ignore the latest absurdities to originate in my town and rock the nation? Rock the world, I guess. For what is more important than Sarah Palin and Levi Johnston? So, reluctantly, I will discuss the matter - but first I will discuss these two dogs.

I was so pressed today that I decided not to take a coffee break, but to just sit here at my computer and work right through it, but, when 4:00 o'clock struck, I could not take it any longer and so I jumped up and headed to the car.

It is a good thing, too, because if I had not, I would not have spotted these two dogs. I suspect that, even with all the work that I did today, my most important accomplishment was to spot these dogs - or rather, to photograph them, which I most certainly would not have done had I not spotted them.

I was going very slow at the time, for I had reached the corner where I planned to do a "U" and then head back to the house, when just ahead of me, I saw these two looking at me, like they were mean or something. My pocket camera was lying on the passenger seat, turned off, and I had not taken a single picture all day.

"I don't think that I will take this one, either," I said to myself. "I've got no time to fool with dog pictures today."

But then, as I started to make the turn, the dogs ran off to the side and behind me a bit, then turned and charged in my direction. Suddenly, I could see that they were about to dash into a point of reflection in my mirror and it looked like it could be interesting.

But the damned pocket camera was lying on the seat, turned off, and as much as I like it, there is nothing fast about that camera. In a panic, I picked it up, turned it on, and tracked the dogs as I waited for the lens to come out. Finally, the lens was out, the dogs were charging toward the field of view of the mirror, I aimed and...

Bam!

Quick draw artist!

Oh, hell. Sarah and Levi. What can I say that hasn't already been said on cable TV and online news outlets and blogs by the thousands... tens of thousands?

I am really getting tired of this show. It is disgusting and pitiful. It is America at its worst. American politics, American media... at its worst. And today, I once again heard my town referred to as a place of hillbillies!

Hillbillies!? I have tried to correct this notion before. I will now try again. Look around this place. What do you see? Hills??? Little tiny hills? The kind of hills that billies come from?

No! Mountains! Grand and beautiful mountains.

We are not hillbillies. We are mountainbillies.

How many times must I correct this misperception?

And me, my name is Bill. It is not William, but Bill. I am a mountainbill.

Oddly enough, as I read the material from Vanity Fair today, I found myself feeling some pity for our former governor. Do not misunderstand me - I have been appalled at her statements and actions since she first stepped onto the national stage and fibbed about her role in the so called "Bridge to Nowhere" fiasco. Her "death panel" lie was just... and worse yet, it struck paranoia, got traction and derailed the debate, making an honest discussion impossible - at least for a time. Nothing has disturbed me more than the way she lathered her children in fat, threw them into the lions den and then screamed, "mean, mean, mean lions - why do you devour my children and not Barack Obama's?"

And the way she has pandered to the extreme, to that element of society that spawns those who carry guns to Presidential gatherings - not to protect themselves, not to hunt, but to frighten and intimidate those who disagree with them. It has, quite simply, been a horrible performance.

But when I read the Vanity Fair article, I felt sorrow for her, pity. She struck me now as a tragic figure, a person thrown into a situation that could only lead her through brief euphoria and then into sorrow and suffering, into pain. Genuine, true, pain. In Levi's words, I could see that she is feeling pain. She may be willfully blind to the cause, but pain is pain and I hate for anybody to feel the kind of pain that I believe she must now suffer.  And she is going to feel more pain, because this fantasy that John McCain threw her into is crumbling and is going to continue to crumble, until there is nothing left of it and then what does she have?

A few birthers shouting, "Sarah Palin, we love you!"?

Her good father, perhaps - and by the observations of my children who have declared him to be the best substitute teacher they ever had I can only conclude that he is a good man - to put his arm around her and say, "I love you, daughter." That, at least. I hope she will have that.

So yes, I felt sorrow for her.

John McCain is the one I blame.

He should have known better. He did know better. I once greatly admired the man, as I once loved Sarah Palin. That has all been destroyed and it is John McCain's fault, even more than it is Sarah Palin's. He thought that he had discovered a very clever way to take the female vote away from Barack Obama and that was all that mattered to him.

The competency, the preparedness, of the person who could so easily become his successor meant nothing to him. He just wanted to win, whatever the potential cost to the nation for which he had sacrificed five-and-a-half years as a prisoner of war.

For those of you whose feelings I may have now hurt, or have caused you to seeth in anger, sorry about that, but this whole show grows ever more ridiculous by the day and I just want it to end.

For awhile, it had some entertainment value, but now it is just old and disgusting.

Anyway, I was working on photos at my computer when my good buddy Jimmy, this wonderful black cat who is as honest as the Arctic summer day is long, peeked over my monitor and looked at me.

That made me feel pretty good.

Update: I think I need to make a little clarification. This statement, "as I once loved Sarah Palin," has caused some confusion. No, I have never cast a single vote for Sarah Palin in my life. I voted for Tony Knowles for Governor. I was too leery as to what her position would be on certain issues of great importance to me, such as Alaska Native sovereignty, self-governance and hunting and fishing rights. So how could I have once loved her? 

That's easy. She came into office on the heels of Governor Frank Murkowski and immediately began to undo many of his bad actions. In those early days, it was Democrats, moreso even than Republicans, who were singing her praises, who were calling her "a breath of fresh air." So if readers who were not in Alaska then have seen only the Sarah Palin that emerged following John McCain's ill-fated decision, try to understand that you are seeing a completely different person than the one who we saw back then.

She was not promoting hate speech, she got along better with Democrats then she did Republicans, but just about everybody liked her - hence those 90 percent favorable ratings that you used to hear about. It was easy, in those first days, to imagine that as she moved around the state and learned more about the people out there that her misguided views on the issues that I have mentioned could evolve and become more enlightened.

This did not happen, as we saw when she nominated Wayne Anthony Ross to be attorney general. That was kind of like if she had been governor of Montana in 1875 and had nominated General George Armstrong Custer to be attorney general.

Nor does the fact that I find it in me to feel pity and sorrow for her mean that in my mind she is absolved for the hatred and distortions that she has promoted. She has encouraged and incited some very dangerous people and, when they have stood before her and shouted out death threats to the man who is now President, she spoke not one word of admonishment. And should any of those who listened to her and were encouraged by what she said ever attempt to take such an action, she will not be innocent. So pity and sorrow is not the same as absolution.

Wealthy philanthropist sought: please provide resume; car breaks down in the rain, man stands in doorway where free people used to stand and pee

Despite Friday's disappointment, we finally did get Kalib to the Alaska State Fair - on Saturday, the same day that he drank a milk shake for breakfast and I took the bike ride described in parts one and two.*

It was beautiful, sunny, day and the fair was crowded and we had to park a long ways away from the entrance. This beautiful young woman took our five dollars and gave us a yellow ticket to put on the dash board. I cannot remember her name, but it started with a "C" and she spoke with a strong southern accent.

She was a very empathetic person and she saw my frustration and knew that I needed to talk. "What's the matter, dear?" she twanged sympathetically.

"Oh, it's this damn blog I said." And then, for the next half hour, as Kalib, Lavina and Jacob grew very impatient with me and the miles-long line of agitated drivers that piled up behind me honked their horns, rolled down their windows, extended select fingers and shouted epithets, she listened as I lamented.

I told her of the great potential of this blog, but how I am always thwarted from reaching it by the need to make a living, how the only blogging that I ever get to do is to take a few pictures when I walk or ride my bike, or drive to a coffee break, take my wife into Anchorage to the hospital - things like that.

"I need a philanthropist," I told her.

"Maybe I can be your philanthropist. I always wanted to be one of those," she smiled, as an angry man came running over. "How much do you need, Hon?"

"Oh, not much," I said. "A million dollars would be nice."

"Oh, my!" she lamented in her pleasant drawl. "I don't have a million! But would this help?"

She then held up the fan of parking fees that you see here.

"Sure!" I said.

Being of a kind and generous heart, she handed the day's parking take to me. Unfortunately, the running man was her supervisor and he had come over to find out what the delay was. When he saw her hand me the money, he fired her on the spot and pointed me out to the State Trooper who had completely failed to unsnarl the traffic behind us. "Arrest that man! And the toddler with him!" the supervisor shouted. " The trooper tried, too, but I gunned it, weaved through the parked cars and the screaming, teeming, fleeing crowd, ditched him and found another lot to park in.

Fortunately, I already had the yellow ticket, so it was all right.**

As for today, I pretty much spent it right here, where I sit right now, in my office at the side of my house, in front of my computer, working on my big 96 page project, plus another one that has interrupted it with an earlier deadline.

No matter what, though, I will always ride my bike, or walk, or ski, or do something to get out of the house and into the air. Today, it was my bike.

As I pedaled through the rain, on the roller coaster park of the Lucille bike trail, I spotted these two guys, both obviously trying to pretend that if they peered under the hood long enough and made the proper wise statements, they could get that car going.

Normally, I do not stop but take my pictures as I pedal, but I had reached the very top of the highest and steepest of the roller-coaster hills, so I stopped, took the picture, and then took off again. I hadn't gone three feet before I inexplicably lost control of the bike. That's when I took the inset picture.

Fortunately, I regained control before I plunged down onto Lucille Street. I pedaled on, wondering what the outcome would have been had I come down on my artificial shoulder, in front of a big truck.

A little further down Lucille, I saw this guy standing in the doorway to this apartment building. I hold nothing against anyone who lives here, but this structure is a great annoyance to me. Not so long ago, the building and the parking lot was woods. And sometimes, when I would be walking down Lucille I would realize that I needed to pee.

So I would just step off the trail and walk into these woods, find a secluded spot and take care of the matter.

And now this apartment building sits there. And this kind of thing has happened all up and down Lucille Street.

Every day, Wasillans lose more and more of the freedoms that we once took for granted.

* I will try to make Kalib's great fair adventure the subject of my next post.

** It's possible that I may have employed a bit of literary license here.

"Bare-breasted young woman" draws bigger cyber crowd than "Sarah Palin" - and there are kites, a crash, crutches, motorcycles and dogs, too

The crash actually came first, but the kite image is both more pleasant and striking, so I begin with it. The lady flying the kites is Garen, and I found her on the Anchorage Park Strip, after I dropped Margie off for her therapy, passed the crash and stopped by the camera repair store only to find out they did not have the screws that I needed.

All three of the kites above her are Garen's and she was flying them by herself - and she was trying to launch two more. "Oh, yeah," she said, "I can fly five kites at once. I do it all the time."

She started flying kites on the park strip about two years ago, after she moved here from Lincoln City on the Oregon Coast, where kite flying is a much bigger thing than it is in Anchorage.

"It's very soothing to fly kites," she told me. "I can do it all day. I fly them in the winter, too. You should come back then."

I was curious as to what she thought of The Kite Runner, but she had not seen the movie or read the book. She had not even heard of either. She flies kites, she doesn't go to movies about flying kites, but I recommended the movie so maybe she will watch it now.

I don't know if she ever got the other two kites up so that five were flying at once, because I had to go back to the Alaska Native Medical Center to pick Margie up from her therapy.

As for the crash, I have no idea how badly the victim was hurt, or if there was more than one victim or if it was a man or woman, a child or teen. I just don't know.

I drove by and that was it. 

The crash is not mentioned in the online edition of the Anchorage Daily News, so one might want to conclude that the injuries were not that bad, because if they had been life-threatening, the accident most likely would have been reported.

But my injury 14 months ago was not life-threatening; it did not merit a write-up in the paper and neither did Margie's two this year.

Yet, the impacts upon our lives have been tremendous. So I feel for whoever it is that is being pulled out of the car and put on the stretcher, because it's a mighty big thing to him or her.

Everything might be different now.

Margie was pleased with her first session of therapy. She was especially pleased that the first thing that her therapist did was to take away her old crutches and get her some new ones, because, as it turns out, those old crutches were a good two inches too short.

This guy was smoking a cigarette when we pulled up next to him at a red light and he let loose with a big puff of smoke and even in the shadows of his car it looked quite dramatic. So I readied my pocket camera and waited for him to blow another one, but he never did.

I suspect these boys are cross-country racers, from one or another of the high schools in Anchorage. 

I was glad to get out of that city and so headed towards home and then along came these guys on their motorcycles.

We stopped at the post office in Wasilla, but before I went in to get the mail, I took a picture of myself with this dog, who was very angry. Margie gave me the cup and told me to throw it in the garbage so I did.

When I came out of the post office, this dog was there. The man said that he was a very good dog and he told me his name, but I have forgotten.

So I just call him, "Pooch," or "Poochie."

Hey, Pooch! Here, Pooch!

Poochie, Poochie, Poochie!

Concerning the salacious title of this post, readers will recall how I earlier conducted a test that confirmed that merely by putting the words, "Sarah Palin" into a blog title, I could cause my readership to soar - even if the post had nothing at all to do with Sarah Palin.

Yesterday's post brought in even more readers then did the "Sarah Palin" experiment. I figure it was because my title included these words, "bare-breasted young woman."

I wonder what will happen today?

To be precise, the numbers were: "bare-breasted": 6,982,490,324 unique hits; "Sarah Palin": 6,783,814,293 unique hits. You can see that it was close.*

*It is possible that I might have under-reported my numbers ever so slightly, so as not to embarrass my competition out there in blog space, but the ratio of "bare-breasted" hits to "Sarah Palin" hits is correct.

Bike ride, part 2: I happen upon a bare-breasted young woman and then pedal to a place of prayer, where I find myself kneeling among the dead

After I left Patti behind to battle her cancer, I continued on, not knowing which direction I would take at any intersection that lay  ahead. When I reached the first, Seldon and Wards, I went straight through, towards Church.

And when I reached Church Road, I turned toward the nearest mountains, the Talkeetna's, even though I knew I would not be able to get up into them.

This has always been my tendency - to turn away from the greater concentrations of people, toward the lesser, or best yet, towards none at all.

When I reached the bottom of the hill that descends to the Little Susitna and came to the bridge that crosses it, my eyes went straight to the aqua green raft and the young man preparing it for launch. As you can see, he, like his three friends behind him, was shirtless.

I stopped on the bridge and then began to compose my photo, keeping my concentration on the raft and the young man with it. For the sake of composition, I noted the positions of the three who were behind him, but did not study them as I studied him. Two were working to ready gear for transport to the raft while the other lay chest-up on an ice-cooler soaking up sunrays.

"Where you headed?" I shouted to the young man at the raft, "all the way to the mouth?"

He looked up, startled, and then answered, "No, we're going to a place near Houston."

The sound of our voices also startled the sunbather, who sat up on the ice chest, then got up and started walking about. It was then that I noticed she was a woman, a rather finely sculpted one at that. 

And if I were to include the picture that I took just before this one, when she was still lying on the ice chest, her breasts bare and aimed at the sky, you would wonder how I could not have noticed earlier.

But I am not going to show you that one. 

She then walked over toward the boat. If she felt at all self-concious, she did not show it. I decided to end my interview and move on.

"I hope you enjoy your trip!" I shouted. "Have fun!"

"Thanks!" the guy attending to the raft shouted back. "We will!"

This afternoon, I took Melanie and Charlie out for coffee and afterward drove this very route and told them of the incident.

"That's so Wasilla!" Charlie said.

I pedaled away from the rafters, wondering why I have reached upper middle age so fast, why my body is aging and headed altogether too swiftly in the direction of old age, even as my mind, ambition and desire remain basically the same as when I was in my 20's.

In fact, I often believe that I am still in my 20's. Sometimes, I'm convinced that I always will be, no matter how many years I live.

Many times, especially on my late afternoon coffee breaks, I have passed by Grotto Iona, the Place of Prayer.

I have always been curious about the place, but have always kept going. Now I looked closely at the cross that marks the grotto and then read the smaller sign that hangs from it.

"Welcome," it said.

So I pedaled my bike into the driveway, laid it down upon the ground and entered this place of prayer.

Grotto Iona is not only a place of prayer, but a tiny graveyard, with but a handful of occupants. It is a quiet place and even though I do not share the faith of those who so lovingly built it and continue to care for it, I felt an atmosphere of peace here. It felt like a special place, a sacred place.

I am certain that people kneel before this shrine and pray, but I don't believe that way, so I didn't, but I did feel a strong sense of respect. I sensed the pain that people have brought here, including the worst kind of pain that humans can feel, the kind of sorrow that none of us who live long enough can avoid. 

People have brought that pain here in the hope that they might exchange it for comfort. I suspect that sometimes they succeeded and sometimes they did not. Sometimes they succeeded for awhile, but then later it all came back. In time, it would have retreated into that place in the human heart where pain no longer brings tears or robs one of laughter, hope, and happiness, yet once put always resides.

Just outside the fence that surrounds the shrine, I found a tiny grave, with no inscription written upon any of the rocks that circle it.

Upon the mound contained inside that circle I saw this toy truck, which by vintage speaks of a sorrow that happened decades ago, yet the fact that it still stands upright, rusted though it be, states that this sorrow still lingers in at least one living, beating, human heart.

And now it resides in my heart as well.

I walked over to the big cross and found that it stood above the grave of a woman, eight years younger then me. She died on April 6, 2004.

A tiny angel with butterfly wings: placed in sadness, so sad to look upon - so utterly still, so quiet.

Within the fence that embraces the shrine there is a grave and it holds two people - Paul George Mahoney and his wife Iona Mae, who was three years younger then he but preceded him in death by just under six.

Perhaps that is why, atop the slab on this memorial a poem is inscribed, which you can read at the bottom of this post.

I read the poem first and then I looked at the picture of the Mahoney's, their hair and his beard white. I looked at my reflection, my hair still brown but my beard turning ever more white, and then decided that I wanted to photograph myself with them. 

So I positioned myself just as you see here and placed the camera at a low angle so that it could see their portrait even as it captured me in self-portrait. As I did, I was surprised to notice that I was on my knees, in a place of prayer. 

I was raised religious, but now consider myself to be agnostic. Agnostic is not the same as atheist. To me, agnostic means that you look around at both the wonders and brutalities of this world and the universe that it travels in and you marvel. You wonder how such a magnificent place could be created except by God, even as you wonder how God could be so cruel as to have laid so brutish a system of survival upon it.

It means that you look at all the religions and you do not know quite what to make of them. In the case of Christianity, from which I come, you see, at one and the same time, preachers of high position and stature stand at the pulpit and preach hatred toward those who are different than they say all should be, yet you see other preachers of the very same faith call for love and tolerance towards all their fellow humans, whatever their belief, race, gender or sexuality.

You see the cruel people, see the sincere and kind, all espousing the same faith, and then you learn these people exist in the spectrum of faith - Christianity... Hindu... Muslim... the Apache beliefs that nurtured your wife's forebearers, the Navajo beliefs of your daughter-in-law...

You hear the hymns, the gospel songs, the music of faith as it is performed only for commercial purposes and as it comes from the heart to bestow comfort upon those who mourn. You hear this spirit of comfort against hardship sung by your Mormon blood relatives, your born again and Protestant Christian friends on the Arctic Slope and throughout Native Alaska and, yes, you hear it in the songs of your new Hindu relatives in India.

You see that the true believers among them all are equally sincere, their faith rises just as strong within their divergent beliefs.

And so you conclude that, despite your upbringing, your own experience as a missionary, the preaching that you once did, the prayers you have pled, the days of fasting you have endured, the sweats you have sat through, the peyote administered in the midst of physical ordeal, the testimonies that you have heard and delivered - it is beyond your ability to know. It is all a mystery. 

And then you see the reflection of yourself kneeling, an agnostic among the Catholic dead, in a place of prayer, and although you did not kneel to pray, you feel that it would be wrong for you to rise to your feet without doing so.

So you pray, not quite certain who you are praying to; you pray for Patti, whom you have just spoken to and who battles cancer for her very life... for your wife, that she might heal quickly and not fall again, for your children and their spouses, your grandson and the one that is coming, that they might be kept safe and live long and healthy; for the family of Senator Ted Kennedy who is being buried in the dark even as you kneel in the sun and for this nation that so struggles against itself... for all those Iñupiat friends and adopted family who have experienced and are experiencing so much loss; your friends of all ethnic backgrounds in all parts of Alaska, the USA, Canada, Greenland... for those in India who became your family only recently but are dear to you... in Africa...

Then I got up and walked away and saw this toy shovel, just inside the entrance to the grotto. I stepped through the gate, pulled my bike upright from the ground, straddled the seat and pedaled away.

And I gave myself an assignment - to find out who Paul Mahoney was, and Iona Mae, for whom the grotto is named. I can't do it right away. I don't have the time. But maybe later, in winter, when the projects that I now work on are done, when the night is long, when it is the time to learn of stories and to tell stories.

Blest with the Grace of a Saint

by Paul Mahoney

Many nights of bliss

many children to kiss

and still it comes to this.

That heaven I've missed

Nod with lady up there,

Eyes dimmed and stare

Frame needing repair

and soul wrought with care.

Ahah! Finally comes pay

The great Milky Way

that looms ever so bright

In the darkness of night

Each star but a step

Leading on to the next

Like hopscotch I'll go

be it quickly or slow.

So I'm circling around

And studying the ground

Where first star step be found.

And me thinks "it's the mound"

of a newly filled grave

so the one who lies there

May be off up the stair

Toward more heavenly air.