A sad, illustrated, tale of school bus deprivation

Astute readers will have undoubtedly taken note of the fact that school buses make regular appearances in this blog. I like to photograph school buses. If I am out and about, be it on foot, bike, or car, and I see a school bus, it is almost a guaranteed fact that I will shoot a frame or two of it.

"But wait!" the astute reader prostests. "Why are you telling us this? There is no school bus in this picture! Just a streetlight and some forlorn, bare trees, waiting for the month of May so that they can sprout leaves again. Without a school bus in the picture, this whole conversation is absolute nonsense!"

Astute reader! Please calm down! Look... it's not my fault there was no school bus here. If there had been, I would surely have photographed it, but there wasn't. I couldn't. So don't get all upset with me!

Ha! Proves my point! Having once again just got up once it was too late to see daylight, at 4:00 PM I went out for my afternoon coffee break and I bought a bagel with cream cheese to go with it. And just a little further along I came to another street light and there, beneath it, was a boxy, clunky, yellow and black school bus and - as you can surely see - I did indeed take a photo of it. In fact, I took a couple of photos of it.

Now you see my entire photographic output of the day - a streetlamp with no school bus beneath it, and another with a school bus, seen in two views.

So I wonder why I like to photograph school buses so much?

Sure - their big, clunky, boxy, yellow and black design would appeal to any serious photographer, but I think maybe there is more to it. I think perhaps it has to do with the fact that as a child and youth, I led a school-bus deprived life.

It's true. I did. I recall when I was three and four, and we lived at place called Pend Air Heights, right by the Pendleton, Oregon, airport, just up the hill beyond the town.

On school days, I would see the big, yellow and black buses come up the hill and stop right by our house. My three older brothers would get on. I wanted to, too, but nobody would let me.

It was just awful. Sometimes, I felt so bad I cried out in desperation and pain.

"Don't worry, Billy," my mother would soothe. "It won't be long until you are old enough to go to school and then you will get to ride the school bus, too!"

Indeed, while five seemed like forever away, very soon I did turn five. I got to enroll in kindergarten!

And then what happened? 

My dad moved us to a house right in Pendleton, two blocks away from Lincoln elementary. No school bus was going to pick me up to take me two blocks. I had to walk.

Nor could I eat cafeteria food, like my cool friends who rode the bus did. I had to walk back to my house for a home cooked meal.

My teacher was mean, too!

I felt damn deprived and picked on all around.

Then, just before my ninth birthday and the fourth grade, Dad told us we were moving to Missoula, Montana. I did not wish to go - except when I would think about school buses. In Missoula, maybe I could ride the school bus.

We moved into a house less than one block away from Willard Elementary, where, just about every day, RD Brandt catch me and pound me - until one day I pounded him. Then he didn't bully me any more.

Just before I turned 13, Dad told us we were going to move to Eureka, California. I did not want to leave Montana - I had become quite fond of the place - but, on the other hand, maybe in Eureka I would get to ride a school bus.

We moved into house just over two blocks from the junior high school. An easy walk.

I discovered, though, that it was not all bad. I did not much care for school, but I did like to write and whenever I would write a story, essay, book report or whatever, my English teacher and all the students would insist that I read it to the entire class.

I did. And then, to my amazement, because I was very shy when it came to the opposite sex, there would be girls who would want to walk home with me. They liked my stories. They wanted to talk about my stories. They treated me like I was Faulkner or something. So we would walk together. It was nice. I liked it.

There were a few times I got to ride the bus, because I was on the football team and there were a couple of schools we played that took hours to reach. Those bus trips were great. We players would gamble with nickles and dimes and we would swear, and somehow I, who lived in a Mormon home where cards were forbidden as a tool of the devil and so I knew little about poker or any other card games, would always come out ahead.

I won more than I lost. We would sing, "100 bottles of beer on the wall!"

Me, a Mormon boy, singing 100 bottles of beer on the wall.

Next, we moved to Sacramento, Calfornia and, yes, once again, it was into a house within easy walking distance from school. No bus for me.

So that explains it, I guess. That's why so many school buses wind up pictured in this blog.

View images as slides

I have created my own Arctic winter day of night, right here in Wasilla; the new Uiñiq - front cover

I think I must be homesick for Barrow and the Arctic Slope, for those long nights that extend all the way through the day with no sun ever rising; those all-day nights during which, if one wants, one can slip into the comfort of a warm cacoon of darkness, hidden and protected there from the glare of world.

I think I must be homesick for this because, to the degree that is possible, I have converted Wasilla into a place where the winter sun never rises. Actually, it does, for just a few hours, but I go to sleep before those hours begin and wake up after they have passed.

So I do not see the sun. It is as if it never rose at all.

Today, I arose at 3:38 PM, pretty much right at the moment of sundown. It was time to head out for my regular afternoon coffee break, even though I had begun no task that I needed to take a break from, and to head to the drive-through of Metro Cafe, which is exactly what I did. I took this picture along the way. Admittedly, this is not a very good picture - I missed the good picture by a few seconds. It happened while I was too far back to get it, although I could have if I had had a bigger lens on the camera.

In the good picture, the one that I missed, the school bus had stopped and all of a sudden a whole passel of kids shot out and in a line sprinted through this little patch of light.

Oh, did it look neat!

By the time I got close enough to take that excellent shot, it was gone. A straggler got off and headed through the light, so I took this picture, so that I could tell you all about the one I had missed.

A couple of hours later, Margie was about to fix dinner. For some strange reason, I felt very hungry and decided that this a night to go out for steak - something we do maybe once every couple of years or so.

So we did, and here were are, at Denali Family Restaurant, where we had never tried dinner before. Margie had a chicken fried steak. They had a special that covered their New York steaks - $3.00 off but still pretty darned expensive, so I ordered one. The baked potato was very good, the roll was delicious - tasted like it might have been fresh out of the oven - and the once frozen half-ear of corn on the cob tasted the way corn on the cobs that have been frozen tend to taste.

The New York steak - it was okay. Not great, but okay and being okay it still tasted good. One would not call it "superb," "exquisite," "mouth watering" or anything like that. It was okay. Good enough.

Afterward, our waitress asked us if we wanted dessert, but we declined and went home, where I scooped up some Rocky Road out of the carton and made myself an ice cream cone.

I am happy to report that my shingles are diminishing. They are still there, but to a much lighter and more bearable degree than just two days ago. Maybe by this time next week, they will be gone altogether. My need for copious amounts of sleep still remains, however. 

Now I need to see if I can a little work done, so that I can finish up today's tasks in time to go to bed before the sun rises.

And here is the cover of my latest Uiñiq:

This is whaling captain Billy Oyagak of Nuiqsut, standing in the middle with members of his crew on Cross Island, balleen from their whale behind them. Other successful captains and crews that fall season of 2010 were Herbert Ipalook, Thomas Napageak and Edward Nukapigak, who hosted me.

That season happened very fast. The crews left Nuiqsut almost at the very end of August and arrived at Cross Island to find the weather perfect and whales passing by in good numbers. I could not come until September 2. Originally, I thought they might possibly have landed a whale or two by then, but that there would still be at least two, maybe three strikes left for me to follow.

As it happened they had landed all four before I even got there. They were still cutting and putting up the whales, and there were polar bears wandering about. I had a good time, took lots of pictures, but still fell far short of what I had hoped to do.

So I want to go back, get in a boat at Nuiqsut and ride out to Cross Island with them. Stay for a month, come back at Naluktak and a few other times, too. I had hoped to go back this year, but irony of ironies, I could not because I was working on getting this Uiñiq done. Nuiqsut/Cross Island was the first story that I laid out and originally I laid it out huge - my first layout filled up almost the entire 120 page magazine. But then, as I worked other storeis in, I had to keep cutting it back and cutting it back and so in the end it wound up at 17 pages.

That still left it as the largest single spread in the magazine, but 17 pages wasn't enough to even begin to do Cross Island-Nuiqsut justice. I couldn't even leave my polar bear shots in, and I had a couple of magnificent polar bear shots and a fun story based on polar bears coming into and passing by camp. Elsewhere in the magazine, I had a double-truck polar bear shot I took on the sea ice off Barrow, and that took up all the space I could afford to give to polar bears in this Uiñiq.

So I hope to go back and somehow find the way to produce either a Uiñiq or a Uiñiq sized or bigger publication wholly on Cross Island and Nuiqsut. In fact, I would like to do that with every village on the Slope - and some off the Slope, too, like Fort Yukon and Arctic Village.

But how do I all this? The decades are flying by. I still think of myself as a young man, fit and strong enough to do anything, but in fact I am on the verge of becoming old - and this bout with shingles that I have just about but not quite won is kind of a telling sign. And this work is not easy to do. It is hard - both in the field and back home, when it becomes necessary to put in 20 hours, 24 hour, 30 hour and even 40 hour days to ever get it done.

I do not wish to listen to this sign the shingles have given me. Yet, if I don't, and just keep living in the manner that I have so far lived, I might just get taken down and not get anymore done at all.

And there was a great deal of material that I gathered from all over that I did not manage to get in at all. I don't why, after all this time, but when I set out to make a 116 page publication (which is what it was budgeted for but I pushed it up to 120 at my own expense) I think that gives me enough space to cover the whole world.

So I shoot this, and I shoot that; I go here, I go there, I interview this person and that person and all the time I am thinking I can work it all in and then when it comes down to it, I can only work a fraction of it in.

That's one of the reason I plan to create on online magazine. I could work it all into an online magazine. I remain at a bit of a loss on how to go about it. I have a colleague who is expert at online publishing and he says he will help me set it up. He's booked solid until January. Once he helps me set the format I want, then how do I fund it?

It ain't cheap to travel around Alaska, you know.

Still, we will see what happens then.

For sure, I need a new airplane. I don't merely want one, I need one. It seems impossible right now, but I know it's not.

Well, I've been rambling, writing more words than most visitors will ever read. Guess I'll stop now.

I've got some things I must do and I had better get at it if I want to get to bed before sunrise.

I take a walk and see a dog just about get run over three times, someone tries to sell me a car, raven makes a moonflight, traffic accident near Metro Cafe

As regular readers know, when I am home I try to take a good walk, bike ride or both everyday, but I hadn't in probably a week or so. So I finally did. The warm weather that had brought rain and melting over the weekend had been driven out and the air was cool - not cold, but cool. About 22 degrees F (-6 C). Sarah's Way was covered with ice of the slickest kind.

When I first stepped out, I tried to walk across the street so that I stay on the left-hand side of the road, but each time I took a step forward, I would just slide right back.

So I stayed on the right until I reached the corner where a certain kind of dreadful insanity rules, then carefully picked my way across to the left side and almost instantly came upon these three, well camouflaged moose. It kind of made me sad to see them, because they were just outside the home of the late Patty Stoll, who died of cancer in September of last year.

She was like me in that she loved to get out and walk, bike, or ski and it was always a joy to come across her on the trail. Unlike me, she took care of herself when it came to eating, sleeping and living habits, but the cancer got her anyway.

I found some frozen footprints that had rotted a bit during the thaw and rain. I wondered... could they be mine? My heel leaves a mark kind of like that.

I tested it out - too big. But then maybe it got bigger when it was melting. Truth is, I don't know.

I walked along Seldon and finally reached the paved bike trail, which was completely bare. No ice on it at all. Relieved that I no longer had to worry about falling, I walked on. Soon, I heard the sound of dog paws and claws, clicking against pavement, coming from behind me.

I turned and saw this dog advancing quickly toward me. Suddenly, it turned and dashed out onto Seldon - right in the path of a car that was coming fast. "Doggie!" I shouted, hoping it come my way, but it didn't. The driver hit his breaks hard, veered to the left and shot by the dog - missing it by maybe two or three inches.

This is not that scene. It happened very fast. Not only did I not have time to raise my camera and shoot, I did not even think about it. All I thought about was trying to get that dog out of the way.

The dog then came back to the bike trail, trotted up aways ahead of me, then once again dashed out into Seldon, right in the path of another driver who also had to brake hard.

No. This picture is of the third car that the dog went in front of, causing the driver to brake. This driver was coming out of a turn and going relatively slow, so it was not so close a call as the previous two.

A bit further ahead, as the dog moved along in front of me, I came to a house up the hill a bt, under construction, with carpenters working on the roof. One of them began to whistle and call out to the dog, as if the dog was his. From their vantage point, they would not have seen the worst of the near run-overs. 

I figured if one of them was bringing the dog to work and then letting it run wild, he ought to know how close he had just come to losing his dog. So I turned onto that street and began to walk towards them.

I had not gotten far when this car came driving slowly down Seldon. The driver was whistling and calling out for the dog. The dog headed toward him. It now appeared that this was the dog's owner, not one of the men on the roof.

I was going to tell this man how close his dog came to getting killed, but before I could come within conversational range, he turned the car around, whistling and calling to the dog as he did so. I thought he would get out and let the dog into the car, but instead, he drove off with the dog chasing happily from behind.

His house must have been nearby. Unless he reads this blog, which doesn't seem likely, he will never know how close he came to losing his dog on this day.

I am not judging him. I think just about everyone, even the most responsible and loving, who has ever kept a dog has had that dog get away and go out wandering.

Obviously, when this realized his dog was gone, he came looking, found it, and returned home with it.

Having seen the dog dash obliviously into the paths of three different cars, I was not certain how wise it was to have that dog chase from behind on a busy road, in the lane of oncoming traffic, but I trust they made it home safely.

A bit further along, someone tried to sell me a car. I didn't buy one.

It was dusk, and the dusk was beautiful.

A raven came by, headed to its home in the foothills to the Talkeetnas. It had put in a good day's work and deserved its rest.

Next came a C-130 Herc.

And then came Margie, driving in the car. She stopped to see if I wanted a ride home. Normally, I would have kept walking, but it was 4:00 o'clock - time for me to take my break and head for Metro Cafe. So she picked me up, got out of the car at the house and I continued on to Metro.

When I reached Metro, I saw that there had been what appeared to be a minor traffic accident on the church grounds across the street. I shot this image as I began the turn into the drivethrough lane.

Elizabeth had witnessed the accident. The investigating officer came in and, in a friendly and non-threatening tone of voice, asked her if she could tell him what she had seen. She agreed. She handed me my Americano. The officer began to ask his questions. I played the role of the lazy reporter and drove off, without hanging around to learn the details or take any further pictures.

All I try to do in these quick walk and drive by pictures is to create a bit of the flavor that is Wasilla. Even with just this much, I could taste that flavor. That was enough. I did not want my Americano to get cold. So I drove off, leaving the larger story untold.

My day so far - as interpreted through my iPhone

Awhile back, I wrote that I was tired of writing about my shingles and that I would write about them no more until I could state they were gone. Yet, I keep writing about them. I guess that is because they are the dominant force in my life right now. They rule over everything else and so I keep writing about them and I will do so today again.

I have also written about how I have turned the clock upside down, and about how odd my sleeping habits have become. I have written about my determination to get more back in sync with the world around me. Yesterday, it seemed that maybe I had succeeded. I got up at 8:00 AM. I took Margie out for breakfast and then, after I got home, that weighty, heavy, feeling that has come over me at least once and sometimes twice or thrice every day since I came down with shingles, bore down upon me and so I laid down upon the couch with the cats and semi-passed out for three or four hours.

The same thing happened in the evening, but for not as long. Even so, by 1:00 AM, I felt so tired and weighty that I had no choice but to go to bed. I was glad, for I thought maybe I would get up at 8:00 again; maybe I was getting more in sync with the world around me.

I did not get up at 8:00. As every night has been, even if at times the day presents false signs to me that my shingles are easing and the pain and itch will soon be gone forever, it was a helacious night. While the pain was bad, the itch was worse.

The itch was absolutely maddening. Sometimes, I would scratch it - not violently, nothing that would break the skin - or maybe I would pinch the itchy spots all over so that a sweep of pain would replace the itch, because I prefer the pain to the itch.

So I was in and out of little bits of sleep until 12:45 PM today - the best sleep coming after 8:00 AM, when I had hoped to get up.

Margie had made some wheat and blueberry pancakes for breakfast, still had some batter left and so cooked five more for me. I told her four would be all I could eat, but when I finished the four, I wanted another and so I ate the fifth, too.

Even in this state of protracted misery, I found them to be delicious.

Although I had gotten up less than an hour before after spending 12 hours in bed, that weighty feeling engulfed me again. I had no choice. I had to lie down. You might not believe this. You might say that I could exercise proper will power and discipline, refuse to yield, stay up and do something productive with my day.

You would be wrong. Whether it is the shingles, the drugs that I am taking to fight it that don't seem to be doing me much good except maybe for short periods of time, but I can't be sure, maybe it would be even worse without the drugs, when that weighty feeling hits me, I have no choice but to lay down.

And the second couch is the best place. The TV was on, a football game - the Green Bay Packers vs. The New York Giants. The Packers went into the game undefeated, but the Giants wanted to change that. For some reason, I wanted the Giants to change that, too. I don't know why. But I did. So I laid down upon the couch and tried to watch the game.

But I couldn't. I could not keep my head to the side. I could not keep my eyes on the TV. I could not keep my eyes open. Once again, I dozed into that strange state of being mostly asleep but still being cognizant of the world around me. I could hear the play by play and so my sleeping brain created great dream scenarios of a football game being waged, although the action did not necessarily match what was being described at all.

Three hours later, I began to come to. The Packers remained undefeated. I felt sick inside. Not about the Packers winning, but about the wasted time. Add the nap to the time in bed and I had spent 15 hours in bed or napping. This is happening to me every day. Sometimes 16, 17 - even 18 hours.

This is exceedingly frustrating to me. I have come to a very rare period when, except for preparing a few photos that I took back in August for a client whose organization, country and way of life I like very much but a client that doesn't have the kind of resources available to pay much, all the big projects I was working on are done.

Originally, I figured I would be left with enough resources to survive without working for anyone else for three months - and, totally unleashed, I could accomplish a great deal in three months - perhaps enough to set the foundation for my future work and survival. But then something happened and I had to make some major revisions to a project I thought I had completed and so I lost one month of the three. That hurt - but I had still had two months. And in two months I could still do a lot to advance my own projects - projects that I hope to build to the point where they can pay my way.

But at the very moment I cleared the time, I got smacked down by these shingles - almost surely due to the stress and effort I had put myself through to get to that moment. I fell into this horrible, shifting, sleep schedule. The doctor said the only way I would heal would be to get plenty of rest. It is hard to rest good when you are perpetually hurting and itching. When sleep comes and takes over and prevents me from using the time to do something productive, I know I must yield and let it. I must sleep for however long my body demands.

I keep thinking that next week I will be over this and can get back to normal. I can still make good use of whatever free time I have left. But next week has came four times so far. I fear that when the shingle-free time finally does come, my window of opportunity will have closed and I will have to go find somebody willing to pay me to do some work - which can be pretty hard for a freelance photographer/author in the middle of winter-time Alaska.

I wanted to take a walk, but about Friday the weather turned horrible. A couple of those Pacific winter storms that I dread so much swept in and overpowered the blessed, steel, cold that had dominated November, pulling up a mass of warm air from the South Pacific. The temperature climbed from -21 F into the high 30's, maybe even low 40's. A wet snow started to fall but then turned to rain.

Along with the sounds of the football game, I could hear the pitter-patter of that rain as I napped on the couch.

To get to the main roads that had been cleared of snow and ice, I would first have to walk roads of ice coated by rain water. I did not want to do that. Nothing is more slippery than that. And it was a bit after 4:00 PM, anyway, so I got in the car and went on my afternoon coffee break. I brought my camera, but forgot to to put a card in it, so it was worthless to me.

I had my iPhone, of course, so, as I took my break, I used it to shoot the images that appear here.

They are, top to bottom:

Street light on Polar Bear Road or Drive or whatever Polar Bear it is;

25 mph sign on the other side of the bridge that crosses the Little Susitna River where Shrock Road becomes Sunrise;

Mahoney's Grotto Iona - A Place of Prayer;

The restored monument to two people who died at the corner of Church and Shrock in an alcohol-caused crash;

The keyboard to my old Mac Pro, challenging me to somehow get something done, before that weighty feeling once again overwhelms me and takes me down.

View images as slides

I stepped out of the house twice today and these are the people that I saw

Determined to get myself on a schedule that is more in sync with the world around me, at 3:30 in the morning I set my iPhone alarm for 10:00 AM, right about sunrise. I had not engaged in my favorite morning activity for quite some time - going out for breakfast. I told Margie that if I made it up before 11:00, I would go to breakfast at Abby's and invited her to come with me.

I didn't sleep very good and I don't think I will until these shingles leave me. I believe they are on the retreat, the scabs are gone and the color is fading, but even so they are pretty damn tenacious. When the alarm went off, I could hardly move. So I tapped "snooze." Pretty soon it went off again, so I tapped "snooze" again.

I did this about three times and then finally got up at about 10:20.

Margie had already eaten, so I went to Abby's Home Cooking by myself.

Tim Mahoney was there, drinking his coffee from a cowboy cup. That's bowhead balleen from Barrow on the wall, brought back by another Mahoney brother who had been working on a construction project.

This is baby Luke. Just like baby Lynx, he was born small - five pounds, eight ounces. He went down to five pounds before he started gaining weight but now he is growing and looks fit and happy.

The eggs, ham, hashbrowns, homemade wheat bread toast cut thick and topped with butter and raspberry jam were excellent.

Abby said she had been worried about me and Margie because she had not seen us for a long time. She looked at this blog to reassure herself but still was worried. So she wouldn't let me pay for breakfast, because she was that relieved to see me.

I left a big tip.

A little after 4:00 PM, I headed out into the dark and ventured off to Metro Cafe. I have not shot any Young Writer studies for quite awhile, but here is one:

Shoshana the Young Writer, Study #2228: Shoshana about to prepare my Americano.

And one more:

Shoshana the Young Writer, Study #4: Shoshana stirs cream and raw sugar into my Americano.

And that pretty much sums up the people I saw during my two adventures outside the house today.