Dog flies from Nuiqsut to Barrow; Shoshana the young writer who is not to be taken for granted and other unnamed Metro studies; lady drives off the road on Lucas

Late last night, or rather early this morning as I was bringing my work day to an end, this picture showed up on the final frames that scrolled into my editor. It is a dog, and the person owned by the dog and the dog is in an airplane that is flying from Nuiqsut to Barrow.

I have not been to Nuiqsut lately but even so, I pretty much spent all of yesterday there and on nearby Cross Island - at least in my mind and on my computer screen, as I tried to figure out how to narrow down and shape up the Nuiqsut/Cross Island portion of the big project that I am working on.

The effort left me very frustrated for a couple of reasons. For one, I have 116 pages for this project and I must divide those pages up somewhere between 20 and 30 topics, involving pictures that include hundreds of people.

Yet, I could use the entire 116 pages on Nuiqsut/Cross Island - and I would still feel that I had fallen short.

And, when I work on the other topics, I feel the same about them.

So that is one frustration.

The other is that, to finish this project and the others that appear to be following close on its tail, I would do well to just sit this blog aside for a few months and put my entire focus there.

But I really don't want to set this blog aside.

So, when I came to this picture of this dog in the airplane flying from Nuiqsut to Barrow, I thought, "I will put this dog in the blog and it will be the only picture that I blog tomorrow. If I blog but one picture a day, I will at least keep the blog alive and it won't take much time at all."

So that is what I decided to do: to blog the dog today and nothing else.

When I got out of this plane back in September, I knew the name of the dog and of the person that it owns.

I no longer know their names. As I recall, they were headed south. Far south, like somewhere in the southern states.

I could be wrong, but that's how I hazily remember it.

So I have now blogged the dog. I am done blogging for the day. It didn't take long.

WAIT A MINUTE! I must include the above study!

Yesterday, after I pedaled my bike to Metro Cafe, Shoshana went to her car and brought in this story to give to me. She does this every now and then and then I take the stories home and read them and they are always good. 

This one was titled, Taken for granted.

These are the first three lines, which I asked her permission to include:

My life has always been anything but normal. It is unique to the point of questionable. I have often said that if my life were a movie, well, there is no doubt that it would be a drama. But not just a drama, it would be a drama/thriller/comedy; but mostly a drama nonetheless.

So I shot this young writer study, and having shot it, I decided I wanted to use it even though I was only going to blog the dog today. So here it is:

Study of the young writer, Shoshana, #6589: Shoshana, who is not to be taken for granted, with her story, Taken for granted.

Well, Hell. I also shot a couple of nameless studies while at Metro. I figure I might as well add them in as well. It won't take that much extra time. So, here is the first:

Metro Cafe nameless study, #99: Guy working at computer who told me his name and I was sure that this time I would remember so I did not write it down but I have forgotten.

Metro Cafe nameless study, #990: Carmen causes customer at drive-through window to laugh and she laughs, too. He told me his name and I was certain that I would remember so I did not write it down, but I have forgotten.

Metro Cafe nameless study, #1099: Actually, I did not forget his name. It is "Nike." I might have forgotten, but he kindly wrote it down on the back of his jacket before I took the picture so that I would not forget. Nike was born in Japan, wears cowboy boots and rides a black horse.

And then this morning, as I was driving home from breakfast at Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant uphill on Lucas Street, I saw this car stuck off to the side of the road, a lady sitting behind the wheel.

Thus I was presented with a moral dilemma - to stop or continue. Once, there would have been no question. I would have stopped. But things are different now. Everybody has cell phones. If you were to look at a larger version of this image - such as you can find in slide show view, depending on the size of your monitor - you will clearly see the reflection of flares burning at the side of the road.

There were no signs that the lady was in distress. It appeared that she had set the flares, had undoubtedly called someone and was now sitting calmly behind the wheel waiting for the help she had summoned to arrive.

If I were to stop, there would be nothing I could do but ask if she was okay. I am not equipped to pull her out and with my artificial shoulder I cannot physically push anybody. She would answer, yes, she was just waiting for someone to come and pick her up.

So, knowing that is how it would play out, I drove past without stopping.

I am quite certain that I analyzed the situation correctly, but I am still a little uncomfortable about it. Now, I wish I had stopped. I don't think that it would have made one bit of difference in this world but still, I wish I had stopped.

And I have spent too much time on today's blog. I can't afford this. Yes, I will still put in a full day's work on my project, but if I am ever to get it done, from here forward I really need to put in two day's worth of work each day until it is finished - except, of course, for the week that I will spend in Arizona.

I plan not to work on it at all when I am in Arizona, May 11 - 19.

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Train rumbles by family; the bike ride: air dancer, church chicken offers free eggs, art and soul; the wood gatherers

When I walked into Family Restaurant for breakfast, there was a different lady handling the seating and she tried to seat me in the wrong place. I refused to go there, because if I had sat there and a train came by, I could not even have seen it.

So she relented and gave me a booth by the window that looks out at the railroad tracks.

Sure enough, a train went by.

Sometimes, you just have to stand up for your rights if you want to see the train.

Between breakfast and coffee break, I took a break for lunch and ate it in the backyard with Jim. The temperature was 45 degrees, very pleasant, and I shot a nice little picture story titled, "Lunch in the Backyard With Jim."

But I don't have time to edit, process, place and write about the pictures, so I will just move on to coffee-break time. Here I am, on my coffee break. I have already been to Metro and now I am pedaling on the bike path that parallels the Parks Highway.

This guy or gal is dancing and waving at me, trying to get me to come into a nearby store and buy clothes.

I refuse. 

I pedal on.

At the corner of Parks and Church, I come upon a gigantic chicken with the face of man waving a sign advertising free eggs. The chicken is Ned, and he says the eggs are being given away at the Lamb of God Church, about one more mile up the road.

He says there are a lot of people who can't afford to buy eggs during this Easter Season and the congregation at the Lamb of God wants these people to be able to celebrate Easter with eggs.

But even if you are rich and don't celebrate Easter, you can still stop and get free eggs. They do not do means testing at the Lamb of God.

At least, you could have got eggs yesterday. The egg giveaway is now over.

Ned told me to let everybody know that each Wednesday, the church puts on a noon feed for the poor. But it is not limited to the poor. Anyone can come and eat. So you are all invited. Yes, my Hindu family in India - you too. You come here and we can go together to eat at the Lamb of God - just like we get to eat at your temple if we want.

I gave myself an assignment to go to the Lamb of God one Wednesday and eat.

The problem is, it could easily be another month before I am in Wasilla on a Wednesday again and by then I will probably have forgotten that I gave myself such an assignment.

But if I see another chicken in the road giving away eggs, I will remember.

The lady who was with Ned. I believe she was his wife, but I didn't pry, so I can't be certain.

I could have pedaled on towards the Lamb of God, but I turned on Church and pointed my bike towards home. Soon, I came upon this bike path art.

I remember when Maureen Dowd, columnist of the New York Times was in Wasilla and she described my town as a tiny, bleak soulless place devoid of culture and sidewalks.

Well, as regular readers of this blog have probably figured out, Wasilla is not tiny at all. It sprawls. You could probably drop half or more of Manhattan Island into Wasilla. We don't have no sidewalks, all right, but we got bike paths and plenty of culture - just look at the fine art you can find right on a Wasilla bike path!

There is soul aplenty in that there art work.

A bit up Church, I found these people gathering firewood from a newly cleared lot. They spoke to each other in what sounded to be Russian. They were friendly enough and I was tempted to hang out and learn their life history, but they were busy, I had a huge amount of work waiting for me at home, work to keep me going into the wee hours of the next morning, when I would stop only because I was ready to drop.

So I held my questions for another time, another day, should I ever meet them again. I pedaled home and got back to work.

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Speak, Poet!

One week from today I leave here to go north and I have a HUGE amount of work to do between now and then and so, when I finally settled back into my office late Monday after driving Margie to the airport, taking a bike ride, etc., I had determined that I was going to keep other distractions to a minimum. 

Even this blog. It is my real work, yet it can be a distraction. I planned to keep this blog extremely simple for the remainder of that time - perhaps one, no more than three, photos a day with simple, brief, narrative - perhaps nonsensical, so that I would not have to spend time thinking at all. I would not go off and do anything new. If anybody contacted me with a request that I do this or that, which they surely would and already have, I would just have to say "no, not now... too busy!"

Maybe I would skip two or three days blogging altogether. I just was not going to let myself be distracted from this work I must do.

So I came home from my bike ride and immediately opened up Facebook and the first thing that I saw was a picture posted by Allison Akootchook Warden, Iñupiaq poet, playwright and actress. Five poets were pictured, included her and Leah Frankson, another Iñupiaq poet who is also a hair stylist and who now cuts my hair - which these days is beyond styling.

The caption read simply:

Epic gathering of Alaskan Poets in Palmer...

This gathering was going on at that moment.

As it happened, Allison plays a part in the project on which I have a huge amount of work to do, so I thought, "I will go see what this epic gathering of poets is all about and maybe I can work something of Allison there into my huge, huge, impossible, project."

So, not knowing what it was about, I rushed to Palmer, expecting to find maybe a couple of dozen of Alaska's most venerated and accomplished poets walking around, speaking in verse, uttering wise and clever utterances.

What I found was in some ways even better than that. It was an epic gathering of high school student poets from Palmer and Wasilla, gathered together to participate in a Brave New Voices, a poetry slam. Allison, Leah and the other noted adult poets that had been in the posted picture had spent the day in the schools of Palmer and Wasilla working with the young poets, preparing them for the slam.

Unfortunately for me, all the students participating in the slam had recited their poems - except for one, Collette Bailey, pictured right here, who was just stepping onto the stage.

She raised her hand into the air.

"Speak, poet!" the crowd shouted.

And so Collette Bailey, Poet, began to speak. To be quite honest, I knew I would have very little time to try to figure out a picture and so I did not catch the full meaning of her words. I did catch the cadence and atmosphere, though, and it felt surprisingly deep to me - as if the words that had been written and were now being spoken had come from the mind of someone who had lived long, had experienced much, had felt deep pain and had wandered long through both the darkness and light of life.

So that is all that I can tell you about the poem written and recited by Collette Bailey and hers was the only poem of the slam competition that I heard at all.

The judges, who paid strict attention to every word that she spoke and who, of course, are all brilliant people who understand all the nuance of poetry and who have read and wept over all the master works ever written since God struck verse onto stone tablets and even before that when God chastised Cain for spilling the bloods of his innocent brother Able to vanish into the dirt, never to spawn future generations, were mighty impressed.

When I saw these numbers, I thought perhaps the last would be first.

We wouldn't know for awhile. Even though they had cast their numbers, the judges had some things to figure out before the winners could be announced.

So, for a spell, poets milled about and posed for pictures.

Then there was a short period of open mic, where poets could recite for pleasure and not competition. One of those who did was Kat Chudnofsky. For some reason, when she took the stage and gestured with her hands, my mind went back to India, to Soundarya's wedding.

Kat took her bows.

Allison, Leah and Leah's daughter Kavi Pearl listen to the open mic recitations.

The judges still needed a little more time. So the crowd began to sing, "There's lots to do at the Y-M-C-A..."

And then the winners were called onto the stage. Kat had taken first, Allie Harrington, left, second and Collette third.

The winning students poets then posed with the adult accomplished poets who had worked with them, they include, from left to right: Trey Josey, Leah, Allison, Kima Hamilton, B. Hutton and the current Alaska State Writer Laureate, Peggy Shumaker.

A post such as this should just be dripping with verse, but I figured that if I could get a small sample from each of the three winners, that would have to do it. So I tried to pull them together, but Collette had disappeared immediately after adjournment. Allie took down my email address which she was then to share with Kat and hopefully they might get it to Bailey as well, so that all three could send me a sample of verse.

As it worked out, I heard back only from Allie, who sent me three lines from her poem, Feeling Unreal.

Three lines, from all that verse. Yet, somehow, as a dreamer, these three lines strike me as just perfect, the very lines to close with:

"I want you to feel unreal.

I want you to be excited to wake because

dreaming is beginning to seem boring."

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How yesterday's fictitious post oddly foreshadowed today's true one; shoe in the wire, death beneath the jet trail, the street sweeper and the King James Bible

Here's the truth - I completely made up that story yesterday about Margie wanting to eat Jim after she grew so hungry that she became somewhat irrational but came out of it after I fed her an orange. Yes - I hate to shock and disillusion my billions of devoted readers who dote upon my every word as absolute gospel truth, but yes, I made the whole story up.  

But, leaving Jim out of it, that story in some ways became true after we went to bed.

Somewhere between 3 and 4 AM, she woke me up with these words, "Bill, what is happening to me?" A story that is a little too long and complicated for me to tell here in its entirety then unfolded over the next 45 minutes or so. To keep it simple, she had been so tired at bedtime that she had slept right through the symptoms of impending diabetic shock that would normally cause her to wake up and treat them before they became a problem.

When she awoke me, she was deep into that shock - worse than at any previous time in her life. So much so that I feared she may have suffered a stroke. She was completely disoriented, her torso hot and her legs and feet cold and hardly movable.

In the end, I gave her some orange juice. She drank it.

It took a little while for the sugar to kick in, but once it did, everything was okay after that.

As to the shoe in the wire, we saw this astounding sight in Anchorage, where we had stopped at a red light on the corner of "C" Street and Sixth Avenue. The light turned green, just as I took the picture.

On our way to Anchorage, Margie had called Charlie so that he could meet us with a jacket that Melanie had been keeping for Margie to take to Arizona as an 81st birthday present for Margie's mom, Rose Roosevelt.

Having been spoiled by Alaska's Kaladi Bros. coffee and left unable to enjoy the coffee they can get locally, Lavina's family had also requested that Margie bring some down for them. So Charlie picked up two big bags and brought that, too. Our intent was to reimburse Charlie, but he refused to accept the reimbursement.

Those two bags probably cost at least $20.00 bucks each, but Charlie said Jake and Lavina had fed him plenty and there was no way we could force him to take reimbursement.

Here is Margie, waiting to check her bags in at Alaska Airlines. There is another complicated story here that I am not going to take the time to tell - save to say that, when it comes to air travel, I miss the days before paranoia became official policy.

Anyway, thanks to the very helpful lady at the Alaska Airlines baggage check in, everything got worked out, Margie entered security, got through, boarded her plane and, after a layover in Seattle, reached Phoenix a bit before 11:00 PM last night.

Her original ticket would have put her there a little over two weeks ago and she would have come home this weekend. However, Mariddie Craig, the wife of my late friend, Vincent Craig, called me a couple of weeks back to tell me that they were going to hold a one year memorial in the Apache way for Vincent on May 14 and she asked me to come.

So Margie changed her schedule so that she would get down there in time for her mother's birthday and then stay through the memorial. She will return with me on May 19.

A week ago last Sunday, at this very corner in Wasilla, I photographed an impending nightmare that I feared was about to come true. Indeed, yesterday, it did come true. Yesterday, we had to send in our income tax and we owed.

I fear we might wind up living on the street yet.

That fellow dancing at the side of the road while I wait for the red light to turn green is the Liberty Tax mascot. It would be his last day at this job. Unless he already had something else lined up, as of today he is out of work.

Before I reached home, I stopped at the Post Office. I did not find any mail in our box, but I did find this dog in this car, patiently waiting for its human.

That's what dogs tend to spend huge portions of their lives doing - they patiently wait for their humans.

Some dogs do get pretty impatient, though.

Especially little dogs.

After I got home, I parked the car, got my bike and went off on a ten-mile pedal, which included the usual stop at Metro Cafe. As I pedaled up the bike trail on Nelson Avenue, this guy commented about my camera so I stopped and we chatted a bit.

He said he is a commercial fisherman and fishes out of southeast. He speculated that I must have plenty of good things to photograph while pedaling around Wasilla - moose and wildlife, mountains, etc., and said if I had been here just days earlier, a young man had died just beyond from crack cocaine. That would have made some photographs, he said.

I told him the jet flying overhead with him standing just beneath would make a good photograph and he agreed. So here it is.

As to the death, I checked the police reports up to today's April 19 date as reported in the online Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman and found no mention of it. However, the most recent date referenced in the April 19 report was April 10, so maybe the reporting is delayed. I will check future reports, but at the moment I cannot confirm it.

I suppose that I could call the Wasilla police department and see if I could confirm it, but that would be too much like I was trying to be a real news reporter here, instead of just a guy pedaling around on his bike with a camera, taking superficial note of this and that, interested more in impression than hard facts.

Anyway, I am too lazy and I have too many other things to do.

I will leave it to the Frontiersman and see if they come up with anything.

I had my iPhone with me, my headphones plugged in and I was listening to All Things Considered on NPR. There was a story on about the 400th Anniversary of the King James Bible.

In recent decades, other language-dumb-downed versions of the Bible have become more popular, but none carry the beauty of language that can be found in King James. The reporter made that very point and showed how the language of the King James Bible has permeated the culture in everything from popular music to the speeches of Presidents in times of national crisis, from Lincoln to Obama.

Several quotes were aired and all were beautiful. At the very moment I pedaled by this street sweeper, the 2003 quote of President George W. Bush speaking to the nation after the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster came into my ears:

'In the words of the prophet Isaiah, 'Lift your eyes and look to the heavens. Who created all these? He who brings out the starry hosts one by one and calls them each by name. Because of His great power, and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.'

I do not like much about George W. Bush. I do not generally like the sound and intonations of his voice.

But I have to tell you, in this instance, speaking these words from the King James Bible, I heard nothing but beauty.

Pure beauty.

After I got home, I gave in to temptation and opened up Facebook - an amazing tool but also the greatest time-waster and destroyer of productivity ever invented.

On the page of my friend, Allison Akootchook Warden, I saw a picture of her in the midst of other poets, including Leah Frankson, Iñupiat poet of Point Hope who now cuts my hair in Anchorage.

Under the picture was this title:

Epic gathering of Alaskan Poets in Palmer...

Whatever the gathering was about, it was happening at that very moment.

I was hot and sweaty from pedaling my bike and hardly presentable, but, without knowing what the gathering was about, I hopped into the car and dashed off to Palmer.

I missed most of it, but got there before it ended.

Check back tomorrow if you want to know what it was all about.

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Margie, the fork, and Jim

As you can see, I caught Margie with a fork in her hand, ready to eat Jim.

"No!" I shouted. "Don't! You can't! Jim is my buddy! And he'll give you indigestion!" Actually, Jim is very healthy and he would not give anyone indigestion. I just wanted her to think that, to discourage her from doing it.

"Oh, my!" she answered in shocked voice. "What did I just about do? It's because I'm so hungry I can't think straight. Jim is my buddy, too! Oh, poor Jim! What did I just about do?"

I gave her an orange. She ate it. 

Everything was okay after that.

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