Breakfast, a dog and coffee

Short and brief today: as noted yesterday, after Charlie won the beard contest I had to drop Margie off at Jacob and Lavina's to help care for Kalib and Jobe. Kalib was a bit ill.

Naturally, in the morning, with my family absent, I took breakfast at Family Restaurant.

I would have preferred to sleep until after noon, but I had a significant task that had to be completed by lunch time, so I got up early, before daybreak. Not so long ago it was easy to get up before daybreak. One could sleep late and still get up before daybreak.

As the days lengthen, it gets harder and harder.

Soon, it will be impossible, for day will not break. Day will just be there, fading into and out of itself.

In the afternoon I took a little walk. I soon came upon Taiga and Tony.

Taiga. 

We simply are not getting much snow this winter. To the north of us, Fairbanks, a normally very dry city with not much snow, is buried. South of us there is plenty of snow. There is snow to the east and west. Lately, there have been some big blizzards on the Arctic Coast that I am told have buried all kinds of things.

Here, at the end of February, the entire winter accumlation adds up to little more than a dusting.

When I stopped at Metro for coffee, Carmen was very excited. Some new people had moved into the neighborhood from Ketchikan. They were now coming to Metro Cafe every day and loving it.

So Carmen called the Ketchikan people to come over from the table where they were comfortable drinking their afternoon coffee and to pose for a Through the Metro Window study.

So here it is:

Through the Metro Window Study #7,656: Carmen with Ketchikan relocatees

Ketchikan is a rainy city - over 200 inches a year. It never gets very cold in Ketchikan. But once, a long time ago, I went to Ketchikan to cover a Tlingit and Haida meeting for the Tundra Times. The Ketchikan airport sits on an island a bow-and-arrow shot away from the city, but with no famous "Bridge to nowhere" one must cross over by ferry.

And on that day, a long time ago, it was raining and wind was blowing hard and I was sitting on that ferry with little protection from the elements and it felt darn cold.

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Charlie battles his way to the championship round, where he finds himself fighting beard-to-beard against fierce lady competitor

Yesterday, I received this invitation from Charlie via email:

Hello to all!
 
Tomorrow at U.A.A. there will be an event of the proportions that many may never be experienced again with regard to FACIAL HAIR . I will be competeing against some of the finest mountain men, bearded ladies, olde tyme moustaches, and mutton chops this side of the Chugach Mountains! The event is free to watch and will be taking place at the UAA cafeteria in the Campus Center Building and the start time is at 7:30 P.M. for the competetion. I will be there to sign autographs and take pictures with your small children earlier than that, but please keep your clothes on and keep the scissors at home. It is a modest commuter campus after all! 
 
I hope you all can join us for a really great time!
 
Take care,
 
Charlie

So Thursday night, I drove Margie into town and we went to observe Charlie compete in the beard contest. This is just how we found him, before his turn to take the stage.

Rex had come to observe, not to participate, but Charlie convinced him to enter. Charlie tried to convince me to enter, too, but I did not. Rex's friend Todd Davy Crocket showed up in his coonskin cap with his beard flowing and he entered, too.

Both Rex and Todd competed in the grizzly category. Contestants start out on the stage but are then invited to come down onto the floor where anyone who wants can step up to observe, stroke, and take pictures of their beards at will.

This lady, Sofia, who would enter the ladies beard competition, took a picture of herself with Rex and Todd.

As he was posing, Rex kept his eyes right on the camera.

A pair of hands compares the beards of Rex and Todd. Rex would survive the first round of elimination, but would not place among the top 3.

There were seven categories in all, including, to my great surprise, a category for ladies. The moment Alyx Shroy walked onto the stage, I knew she was going to win, and she did. 

Her beard is made from the hair of a friend who cut it off about a-year-and-a-half ago. Alyx cares for this beard as meticulously as if she had grown it herself and sometimes braids dreadlocks into it.

The last group to compete was Freestyle - Charlie's group. Anything could go in this group and anyone could compete, male or female.

I could see that the competition was tough, yet, when I looked at Charlie and his beard, I felt pretty confident that he could win.

If he did, it would mean Alyx would be one of the those he would have to face off in the championship round.

But I am getting ahead of myself. Charlie had not won anything yet. Soon, he had to submit to the beard-feelers in the crowd.

One of the beard feelers was Alyz, the lady winner. She closely examined the beard of the man who she might possibly have to compete with for the championship.

Sofia popped up to take a picture of herself with Charlie. 

Sure enough, Charlie won the blue ribbon for his division.

As the judges took a break, Charlie posed with some of the family members who had come to cheer him on.

Then Charlie stepped back onto the stage along with all the other winners that he would have to compete against for the championship.

One can never know for certain what judges might say, but I saw only person who struck me as having a chance to beat Charlie and that was Alyx.

This is terribly embarrassing for me. The mustachioed lady with her hand in the air above Charlie's head told me she reads this blog, and she will surely read this entry. She told me her name but I had left my iPhone in the car so I did not have it to write in but I memorized it and was certain I would remember it later.

Now I have forgotten it.*

I could not get away with this if I were writing this for the New York Times, but for this blog, I can get away with it. In this blog, I have no boss but me.

Anyway, in the picture, she is doing the crowd test. One by one, she raised her hand over all the contestants as the crowd cheered for their favorite. The judges would have the final say, but it might be kind of hard to go against the crowd.

When she held her hand over Charlie's head, the crowd went nuts. It was clearly the loudest and most enthusiastic cheering so far.

*Update: My boss told me that I could not let such a horrible omission stand, so I hired a stealthy detective at the rate of $21,232 an hour and sent him out into the world to find her name. He succeeded: The mustachioed lady is Sarena Hackenmiller. I hope my expensive, stealthy, detective spelled her name right.

But you know what? The crowd went nuts for the bearded lady, too. 

Yet, I am pleased to announce that Charlie won the championship round of the Winterfest Beard Contest and so got crowned. 

Charlie and his court - Alyz Shroy, first runner-up and Douglas Renfro, second.

Charlie gave Melanie credit for being his beard-stylist. He won two tickets to the Fur Rendezvous Miners and Trappers Ball. Guess who is going to go with him?

There, he will also compete in the Fur Rendez beard contest.

Before we all left, Margie had to handle Charlie's beard handles for herself.

I then dropped her off at Jacob and Lavina's, so that she could stay for a day or two and do some babysitting.

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Two studies of Pioneer Peak shot with a telephoto lens while stopped at a red light: I go up the hill, I go down the hill

Study of Pioneer Peak shot with a telephoto lens while stopped at a red light, #1: I need to get to the top of the hill just beyond this light, but the light turns red and I must stop.

So I take a picture of the peak while I wait for the light to change.

Study of Pioneer Peak shot with a telephoto lens while stopped at a red light, #2: Having made two purchases atop the hill, I turn around and drive back down the hill. Again, I get stopped by the same red light. So I take another picture - this time of the peak as it appears in my left-door rear view mirror. 

That is why everything looks like it is backwards. That is why all the people appear to driving on the wrong side of the road. This is a mirror image.

Of course, for my family and friends in India, it would look to them like the people are all driving on the right side of the road - the right side being the left side in India, just like it is in England.

Now, I have no time to blog any further today. I have a difficult problem to solve.

I didn't even have time to blog this much, but I did it anyway.

That is because I am dedicated to this blog.

So I blog even when I have no time to put up even the most simple of posts.

Which this one is.

Not withstanding the simplicity of it, beneath the surface it is very deep and exceedingly complex - meaningful.

Few will grasp it.

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Mike and Maggie Williams, plus other people bumped into while dining; missing Jobe; Kivgiq edit progressing

This is Mike Williams and his wife, Maggie, who walked into Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant one day last week just after I had sat down for breakfast. Margie was still in Anchorage, babysitting Jobe and Kalib.

Any Alaskan who pays much attention at all will know who Mike Williams is and I have written a bit about him before. For those who may not have heard of Mike, he is a Yupiaq tribal leader and dog musher from the Kuskokwim village of Akiak and a recovering alcoholic. He was raised with six brothers and a dog team in that time before snowmachines took over the daily work of dogs.

He loved his dogs and he loved his brothers. He would race his dogs and one race he did was the Iditarod. When he would reach Nome, he would take care of his dogs, and then he and a brother would hit the bars and drink up a storm.

But his brothers got killed - all six of them - one after the other and each killing came as the result of alcohol abuse. One brother had served in the thick of the fighting in Vietnam and had come home safely, only to die from alcohol.

So Mike went to war against alcohol abuse. He sobered up. He created a petition and carried it with him as he raced the Iditarod Trail. Each time he would reach a village, he would take that petition around and commit all who would sign it to a year of sobriety.

Did all who sign it succeed?

No, but some did, and I heard testimony from a few of the them in the year 2000, when the Running Dog was still airworthy and I used it to follow Mike and his team along the Iditarod Trail from Wasilla to Nome.

Mike is not racing this year, but his son, Mike. Jr., is. Mike and Maggie had come to Wasilla to make the food drops that Mike Jr. will need to feed his dogs as he races along the trail.

After I took this picture, I put down my camera, pulled out my iPhone and placed a call to Mitt Romney, to see if I could convince him to finance this blog and the electronic magazine I want to add to it.

Mitt thanked me for calling, wished me well, said it was a worthy cause but he just couldn't afford to help. It was disappointing, but at least the three of us sitting at this table all got to make good use of our phones simultaneously.

If the Running Dog was not broken and I had the money for gas, I would love to follow Mike Jr. up the trail to Nome in this year's race, but the Running Dog is broken and gas is really expensive these days, anyway.

At the very least, I will photograph him at the starting line.

On another day last week when Margie was still in town, I did another breakfast at Family. As I was leaving, this fellow, Franz, noticed my camera and asked me about it. He wondered what kind of things I photograph, so, to demonstrate, I sat down at his table for a moment and took a photo of him.

Then we engaged in an arm wrestling match, which I easily won.

I jokes. We did not. And with my weak, fragile, artificial shoulder, I cannot arm wrestle anyone.

But when I was younger and my shoulder was real and I could, I almost always won - even against people much larger than me.

Not always.

But almost.

Now I have done my bragging for today.

On Friday evening after Lavina brought Margie and Jobe home, none of us wanted to cook. So I ordered a Pizza from Fat Boys and then went to pick it up.

This fellow, Ron, was dining inside. He noticed my camera, commented on it and asked what kind of pictures I took with it.

So I sat down with him while I waited for the Fat Boy to box up my pizza and gave him a demonstration.

So Margie had Jobe all of last week and I had him Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Now he is gone back to Anchorage and I am missing him. There are reminders of him all about the house.

As to my Kivgiq edit, yesterday I did complete my initial pass through of Day 2. Today, I begin on Day 3.

I mention this just to assure those who love Kivgiq that I am sticking with it and will yet make my big series of Kivgiq posts.

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I need to take the time to edit Kivgiq right - in the meantime, here are two images of the Tikigaq Traditional Dancers

I am more than a bit overwhelmed. While I have a couple of other deadlines pressing me this week and next, over the past two days I have nonetheless spent approximately ten hours working my way through Day 2 of my Kivgiq take. I am now just a bit more than half-way through day two and I have marked many hundreds of images for a second look.

I still have the remainder of the day to go through, plus days three and four. I have found many images that I want to use, including some that I think are pretty darn good. But I can't stuff anywhere near the number that I'm coming up with into a few blog posts and I am terribly confused about how to proceed.

In retrospect, upon my return from Kivgiq what I should have done was to announce that I was going to retreat with my Kivgiq take for two-three weeks until I could really go through everything, get a pretty good handle on what I have and then make an intelligent series of posts that told the story well.

In fact, at this moment, having written the above sentence, I have just decided that is what I will do - but I will try to do that edit over one week and then come back sometime next week and blog it all.

In the short run, I know this will disappoint some of my readers, especially those who were at Kivgiq and are eager to see the pictures, but in the long run I hope to make up for that disappointment by putting out a comprehensive yet manageable project.

At the moment, in the way that I have been going about it, I am a creating a completely unmanageable project.

For today, I decided that I would run just two pictures - one of a male or male dancers and another of female, from one group. In those two pictures, I would make certain to include someone older and someone younger.

To chose the group, I closed my eyes and then scrolled up and down in my Lightroom editor until I had absolutely no idea what dance group was on the screen. I stopped scrolling and opened my eyes. There, on my screen, were the Tikigaq Traditional Dancers. Luke Koonook, the eldest of the Tikigaq men dancers, was performing right at the top of the screen.

So here he is: Luke Koonook of Point Hope's Tikigaq Traditional Dancers.

And here are some of the young women of Tikigaq, performing a kneeling motion dance.

During Kivgiq, many people asked me if I am making another Uiñiq magazine on Kivgiq. The answer is "yes" and "no." I am making another Uiñiq on the Healthy Communities theme and Kivgiq will be a part of it. I already have a large amount of material for that magazine and late next month I intend to go back into the field for a few weeks and get more.

This means I will not have that much space available in Uiñiq for Kivgiq - just enough to include maybe ten to twenty images. I am also working on a Kivgiq book that will cover Kivgiq from the restoration event in 1988 up through the celebration that just took place.

As I will be condensing so many Kivgiqs into one book that will, again, leave only enough space for a very limited number of images from this year's Kivgiq.

That is why I feel I want to put as many pictures from this year's Kivgiq up on this blog as I reasonably can - so that the people who were there, and the people who were not there but wish they had been, can enjoy a broad sampling of them.

It is just going to take a lot more time and work to do this right than I had tried to pretend in my own mind that it would.

It is okay that it will take that much time, though, because when I edit the pictures for this blog, I will also be editing them for Uiñiq and for the Kivgiq book.

So please bear with me.

I will get it done. Just not as quickly and easily as I had hoped.

And if this is a bit exasperating to some, all I can say is that you are seeing two things at work - the artistic process, which for me is always chaotic and confusing - right up to the finished product - and the efforts of a print photojournalist working to figure out how to manage, work and survive in the world of online publishing.

This is big experiment for me. I have no guidelines to follow, no one to teach me and show me the way. I must explore and find it for myself. I see others who also trying to find and pave the way, but none of them are doing quite what I want to do.

As always, I will continue to post something every day as I do this more comprehensive edit of Kivgiq. I will try to keep the posts simple and short, so that I have more to time to complete that edit, plus finish off the other tasks that must soon be done.

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