People just keep feeding me; another dog charges into traffic; Green Terror swims into the house; Kalib returns to play golf, study properties of light

It used to be that Caleb and I would go to IHOP together just about every Sunday - at least those Sunday's when I was home. Then it just stopped happening. Sometimes I would ask, but he would decline - usually because there was a game he wanted to watch. For awhile, he had a girl friend and tended to prefer her company to mine. I didn't mind. Last night, he asked me if I wanted to go to IHOP with him this morning.

When I got up, after spending a long, hellacious, night battling with Squarespace,* Kalib was once again battling opponents from all over on his video game - but he broke away and off we went. Melanie greeted us happily and sat us down. She was not our waitress, but just the same, she brought our food to us.

For reasons that I do not fully understand, we both ordered off "The All You Can Eat Pancakes" menu. "I love IHOP pancakes," Caleb said. "IHOP just has the best pancakes."

Later, he added this, "I'm beginning to hate that video game. It's just addicting, especially when you play online with other people."

I told him that, based on some comments left on this blog, he just might open the door one morning to find one or more girls ready to snatch him away from the video game.

He claimed not to be interested. All he wants now, he says, is for the snow to melt so he can get back out to the golf course. That won't happen for awhile.

He made it sound like it had to be golf or girls, but not both together.

This made me think of Tiger Woods, but I did not utter these thoughts.

Caleb bought my breakfast. That was nice.

Later, I headed out on my walk. I had barely stepped out the door when I saw the dog that nearly killed the rabbit at the corner where the chicken crossed the road, the rooster got shot and the drunken ice cream lady crashed her good-humor vehicle.

"Dog! Dog!" I once again found myself shouting as I saw this hapless, unsupervised, character charge straight into the path of this car, on Seldon. The dog turned away from death at the last possible instant. I don't know if my call had anything to do with it or not.

Maybe.

The driver of the car did not slow down - not by one mph.

The sky was laced so beautifully with high cirrus clouds. An airplane flew through it. (Sorry, Norman Maclean.)**

You will recall that yesterday, as I dealt with a loose dog, Margie called to tell me about Uriah getting caught in the explosion at the White Mountain Apache Sunrise Ski resort.

Well, my phone rang as this dog, Tequilla, was barking at me. It was Margie, with good news about Uriah. He was on his way home from the hospital in Phoenix. He is going to be okay. He will need to lotion his second-degree facial burns and try to keep the direct sun off of them for awhile, but the scarring should not be bad at all.

As Margie updated me, Tequilla followed along. She barked at me throughout the entire conversation.

Then this guy came along, running with this dog. Lucky and Dale. Lucky is the dog, Dale the man. Dale is Lucky, too. He wound up in my blog, just because he ran with his dog.

Then this boy came by, on a four-wheeler. I believe he is a child of Russian immigrants.

Further along, I found the headless stuffed turtle that the black lab had been carrying when it almost got run over yesterday.

I stopped at Pet Zoo today and bought this little Green Terror to put in the 90 gallon tank with my old parrot fish and the baby yellow peacock that I bought a couple of days ago.

I have had two green terrors in the past. One was so mean that I eventually had to clear out all of his tank mates and let him have a 55 gallon tank all to himself. The other was docile, and never went after another fish.

I will never let this guy beat up my parrot. The parrot is too big for the Green Terror to bother now and I hope that as he grows, he will just accept the parrot.

If he doesn't, then I will have a problem to solve.

Green Terrors are very beautiful fish and they are smart, too.

My mean one really liked Lisa. Whenever she would come into my office, he would get excited and swim to the glass to greet her. She liked him, too.

Right now, this little baby is about two inches long. It should grow to eight to ten inches.

About 4:30 in the afternoon, Lavina called to tell me that she, Jacob and Kalib were on their way out to see me and they wanted to take me to dinner. I was surprised, because she is still experiencing contractions, although much lighter, and I did not think that she would want to leave Anchorage.

All week, she has done nothing but stay at home and get bed rest. "I just had to get out and go somewhere," she said.

On the way out, Kalib fell asleep in the car, so they took the long route through Palmer to give him time to snooze. 

Here he is, just waking up. He is not happy about it.

They took both Caleb and I to Jalepeno's. Another free meal for me. The little girl in the background is named Raeligh.

Jerry, the manager and a member of the owner family came along, to admire Kalib and to speak Spanish to him. Once, a couple of year's back, I came here by myself and ordered a meal that cost $14.00 plus and paid for it with my debit card. The next day when I checked my bank account online, $1400 plus had been removed from my account.

It was an honest mistake. Jerry quickly had the money transferred back into my account.

When we returned to the house, Kalib and Caleb resumed their ongoing golf game.

Lavina gave Royce some love. I'm afraid Royce had a hard day today. His progress seemed not only to stop, but to reverse itself. He almost fell off the couch twice. He shook and shivered for awhile, even though the fire was warm. He did some drooling. He walked stiffly. Although he begged to get it and dug right in, he left much of his soft food uneaten in his bowl.

Early in the week, Lavina had been convinced that new baby would come before the week ended. Now, she feels it could be a few days yet. If its not here by the eighth, the doctor plans to induce it, for medical reasons.

That is our little grandchild who she holds.

Kalib manipulates a "This American Life" ap on Caleb's iPhone.

I'm not quite certain what Jacob was up to, but he was in the back, rummaging through this and that. Then he came out with this - a wedding invitation. The couple pictured is Margie and me. The invitation is to our wedding - 36 years ago. Jacob said he was going to keep it.

To see Margie standing there, beside me, in that picture... see how beautiful she is? She chose to go with me. How did it happen? How could it not have happened? Someday, perhaps I will tell you more of our story, how we came together. But not right now.  

I don't know why the decades pass so fast, but they do. Not so long ago, it was she and I who were making babies and it was our parents who so eagerly waited to meet their new grandchildren.

Now, save for Margie's mother, our parents are in the grave and it is us, Margie and I, waiting to meet our new grandchild.

And here is the first one. He is experimenting with a flashlight. The world remains a new and exciting place to him. He wants to learn about everything.

Kalib helps Caleb put his clubs back in the bag. Then he leaves with his parents.

There was certain desperation evident in Royce tonight, the intensity of which I had never before witnessed. He seemed desperate to communicate something to me. He kept looking into my eyes like this and when he was close enough, he would reach out with a paw and touch me, and look at me this way. His motor control was not good. His claws would dig painfully into my skin.

He was trying to tell me something. What? It made my eyes water, just a little bit.

*That battle continued tonight. Problem not solved. Hours wasted. Eaten up by Squarespace - the nightmare blogging program from hell.

** Author of A River Runs Through It.

Obama stands as Grasshopper before House Republicans; Funny Face's gift certificate, elder Marine at Family, dog charges into path of oncoming cars; small view of beautiful evening

I am extremely frazzled at the moment, due to the fact that I have, once again, experienced technical difficulties with my Squarespace host tonight. Terrible technical difficulties. After preparing my photos, I first opened the program exactly one hour and 50 minutes ago and it has taken me that long just to get to this point - and I dread what might happen yet.

So I am exasperated. I just want to scream. I do not want to sit in this chair and battle Squarespace for another minute. But, I must get this blog post done. So I will proceed, although my wording might prove to be abrupt, reeking of frustration, all the way through.

Anyway - I did return to Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant for breakfast today and, just as she said she would, Cindy had returned the gift certificate that Funny Face and her Mister had so generously purchased for me three days before Christmas.

I am quite amazed that the wrong Bill had this gift certificate all this time and did not take advantage of it, but grateful, too.

So today, my omelette came courtesy of Funny Face - and there was enough left over for another one, plus a bit more.

So thank you, Funny Face - Sally thanks you too.

When I started blogging, I never, ever, expected or even imagined that anyone would do something like this for me. It is quite amazing.

As I sat there enjoying my omelette, this man came in wearing the jacket that told of his service in the US Marines. This set off a whole train of thought that I was going to write down here tonight, but given the frazzled state that these technical difficulties have left me in, I am just going to pass.

Suffice it to say that I wanted to know more about him, to learn his story, to find out when and where he served. In fact, I decided that after I finished my breakfast, I would introduce myself. But then when the time came, he appeared so content and thoughtful, absorbed in his own consciousness, that I could not bring myself to interrupt him.

Plus, I had many things waiting for me to do, although I never did do them all.

Still, someday, I would like to learn what I can of his story.

You will recognize this dog from yesterday. It came out again. I had more that I was going to say about it, but, AUUUGGGGH!

As Charlie Brown would say.

This black lab came with it, of course, dragging a stuffed turtle with no head. It was right about here that my iPhone rang. It was Margie, calling from Arizona to tell me that there had been an explosion at Sunrise, the ski resort owned by her White Mountain Apache Tribe, and that our nephew, Uriah, had been caught in it and had been air-medivaced out to Phoenix.

She did not yet know anymore that. I walked as we talked. This was the third time that I had met this black lab in the past week. Both times before, it turned around and went home right after greeting me.

This time it continued on with me and it brought the turtle.

"Go home, dog," I said as I walked and talked to Margie.

It did not go home.

Soon we came to Seldon Street. I could see a number of cars coming from both directions. Sometimes, you look at a dog and you immediately know that this dog does not understand that if it crosses a road in traffic that a car can hit, injure and kill it.

I could see right away that this was such a dog. And there it was, trotting happily in front of me, straight toward Seldon - toward the cars that were coming from both directions.

"Dog! Dog!" I shouted, with Margie on the other end, trying to tell me how things were down in Arizona in the face of this latest bad news. "Stop! Come back here!" The dog did not stop, but trotted happily right into the path of an oncoming car.

"DOG! DOG!" Fortunately, the driver managed to brake in time. Immediately after, a car coming from the other direction did the same. I took no pictures because I was talking on the phone and shouting at the dog.

The drivers both gave me dirty looks.

The dog made it across Seldon and kept going up Brockton. I had planned to go that direction, too, but I knew that dog was going to stick with me the entire walk. I did not want to be responsible for it. It was only a couple of hundred yards from its house, so I figured it could find its way back without me - if it didn't get hit by a car in the process.

I wondered if I should try to shepherd it back, but I knew that it was just as likely to get hit by a car if I was shepherding it as if I wasn't.

It had already proven that.

So I left it to its own few wits and turned left, down Seldon, and ditched it. I hope it survived. I suspect that it did, but I don't feel that optimistic about its future, unless something changes in its daily care. Not so long ago, there was another dog that lived 100 yards from where this one does now. Once, even as its people looked on, it came running to Jacob and I and a car had to stop so hard it left rubber in the road.

Not long after, that dog was struck and killed.

As I walked on, an airplane passed by.

A raven flew overhead.

These bare trees just looked pretty to me.

Royce seems to be doing much better.

I first found Obama's appearance before the Baltimore retreat of the House Republicans online at The Mudflats. It was 66 minutes long and I did not have 66 minutes to spare, but I watched it, anyway. It was beautiful. Remember the old TV show, Kung Fu, with David Carradine as Kwai Chang Caine, or Grasshopper?

Remember how Grasshopper would calmly and quietly face the raging, fuming bullies, who would sneer and laugh and then charge in multiple at him with their guns, knives, axes, fists, whatever? Remember how, with his superior knowledge, skill and basic sense of humanity, Grasshopper would deflect or dodge every blow and weapon they threw at him and would turn their own rage and force backwards upon them until they fell before him?

And even then Grasshopper would be graceful, and would give them another chance - should they be willing to take it? Some did.

That was President Barack Obama, standing in front of the House Republicans.

As to the website taking up the other half of my screen, that is Burn Magazine, founded by master photojournalist David Alan Harvey of Magnum, both to encourage "emerging photographers" and to create a new venue for serious photography. Burn is a good place. I highly recommend it to anyone who loves photography that might not be commercial.

And, honest to God, I already had Burn onscreen when I found the Obama/House Republican get-together. I did not stage this very appropriate juxtaposition of web pages - this is just another one of those coincidences that I told you about yesterday.

On my coffee break, I saw this dog. I also heard from Margie again. Uriah has second degree burns on his face, along with several cuts, but no critical, life-threatening, injuries. Margie did not know how much of his face had been burned.

I continued on and the moon came up.

Pioneer Peak at dusk. I had to go down to 1/8 of a second to get this one. There was no traffic behind me, so I stopped in the road and held the pocket camera out the window. As soon as I saw a headlight in my rearview mirror, I took off again.

I did the same thing here. This is the best thing about living in Wasilla. Sometimes, you can get frustrated and forget, but then you are reminded - Alaska is always out there, surrounding you, embracing you, providing nurture to your soul.

I am a little frustrated by all this, though. I am satisfied with the size that vertical images appear in this blog, but sometimes I want the horizontals to be bigger, including these final three images.

Squarespace has a feature that allows a blogger to link a larger image to the small, column-width ones that you see here.  It is a process that is tedious in its operation - compared to accomplishing the same thing in say, Blogger, where it takes less than 20 percent as long (yes, I have timed it). I have pointed this, and their other many shortcomings, out to Squarespace many times and have suggested that they improve them to perform at least as well as do the same features in Blogger, which is free, whereas you must purchase Squarespace, but, damnit, after a-year-and-a-half, I am convinced that they are simply never going to.

Still, I regularly go through this aggravating process so that anyone who wants to can click on an image and bring up a larger version.

That feature is not working properly in Squarespace tonight, so the larger image is not available.  Even if you would like to look at a larger version of the final three pictures above, you can't.

Curiously, though, it worked with the omelette and the raven, but with no other image. And yes, I cleared cached, refreshed pages, closed and reopened my browser - several times - and shut down and restarted my computer. It didn't help.

Can you feel my exasperation with Squarespace? Can you? Can you feel it? I have never, ever, experienced anything else like Squarespace in the digital/computer world. In the beginning, when I first came upon these problems, I thought the situation would improve as I better learned the program and as Squarespace upgraded and improved it. I was wrong. Yet, I am so far into it, so many links lead to my Squarespace work and I have moved so far up in Google... what do I do? 

Squarespace has wasted so much of my time! They claim to want suggestions and they swear they consider all of them, but they never act on them. No, not on a single one do they act!

The support staff is, almost to an individual, courteous and they do their best to help, but at its root Squarespace is fundamentally flawed and their developers seem content to leave it this way.

Can you feel my exasperation?

I have ranted - but - if you only knew what I have been through with Squarespace!

Thos, if you read this, I am about ready to use some frequent flier miles and get you on a plane to Alaska! If you can solve some of these problems for me, it would be well worth it.

iPhone fun; a dearth of human contact; I hang out with cats and communicate with a fish

Yes, Michelle, I did get my iPhone* - just before I left for Barrow. It is such a long and absurd story and I have had so many things going on that I could not bring myself to tell it.

In fact, I cannot bring myself to tell it now, either. Basically, though, you will recall that I took the gift cards that Jacob and Lavina had given me for Christmas into the local At&t store where I was informed that they would cover the cost of an 8 gig phone, but I could get a 16 gig for $100 more. I did not want to pay $100, so I purchased the eight gig phone and the entire transition took about five minutes. 

When it was done, the salesman gave one of my gift cards back and told me that it still had $48 in it. That meant that I would actually have had to pony up only $52 for the 16 gig phone. That wasn't so bad, so I decided to go for it. The salesman said "okay," then attempted to complete the transaction.

About an hour later, he determined that, for some reason incomprehensible to me, he could not just transfer the funds that I had already paid straight over to the 16 gig phone. Instead, the funds had to be put back into the card, but they could not be put in for 24 hours.

"So come back in 24 hours," he said.

So I came back 24 hours later and a lady set about to complete the transaction. She took my extra $52, which actually came out to $53, and had me sign everything that needed to be signed. In the end, she could not complete the transaction, either. "The money is still not in the cards," she told me. "It will take ten days for the money to be put back into the cards. Come back in ten days."

Oh, boy... I just can't go on with this story. Let it be enough to say that each day for the next eight, a lady from At&t by the name of Elaine would call and we would talk - the first time for a good hour. Elaine would promise to get the situation taken care of so that I could pick up my phone within the day.

After a few days, she expressed great puzzlement as to why the money was going back into the cards at all, as the policy was to refund cash directly back to the customer, in which case, she said, I should have been able to get my iPhone that very first day.

Finally, three or four days after that, eight days after I made the original purchase, she figured out some way to bypass whatever convoluted thing had happened and to have the saleslady take the cards from me, cut them up and have me the pay the $53 all over again - then I could leave with my phone.

So eight days was better than ten.

I love the iPhone. It is so many things besides a phone. For example, if I photograph someone and then ask their name so that I can identify them in this blog, all I have to do is turn on iPhone dictation, speak that name and when I need it, there it is. So now I have no excuse ever to forget a name again.

But here is the curious thing: I have already used the dictation feature with a few names, but when it came time to do the blog I remembered the names even without opening the iPhone. However, there have been other names that I did not put into dictation, thinking that I would remember them, but when the time came, I had forgotten.

And of course I can now take pictures with my iPhone. The quality is terrible, but its still kind of fun and then I can send the picture to someone else.

Like this picture of Royce, for example. Melanie has been very worried about Royce and has spent much money on his care and diet, and now I can send his picture from my iPhone to her's and type, "well, he's taking his medicine, eating his soft food, and he's doing okay. The fish are doing pretty good, too."

Speaking of which, with Margie gone and me back from Barrow, I have almost no human interaction but tend to socialize only with cats and fish. I did see Caleb very briefly this morning. I woke up debating whether to cook oatmeal or go back to Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant. 

I was leaning towards oatmeal, with berries cooked into it, but then I heard the sounds of him playing war video games with his friends from around Alaska and the world. I heard the gunfire and the explosions, and the excited tone of his voice as he communicated with his team members as they battled the enemy.

I did not want to eat oatmeal in the middle of a battle, nor did I want to interrupt Caleb's game. My head felt groggy. I did not know if I could deal with cooking oatmeal and brewing coffee. I did not want to add more dishes to the pile. I knew that if I went to Family, I wouldn't have to.

I punched the auto-start to the car. Even before I left my bed, the car began to warm up.

"Hi Dad," Caleb when finally I stepped out, even as he blasted away at a enemy who dodged and blasted back at him.

"Hi Caleb," I said. Then I went to Family. There, I spoke briefly with my waitress, and with the lady behind the counter who took my money. As she was getting my change, I saw these folks admiring this baby, so I pulled my pocket camera out of my pocket and shot this scene and that was the total of my human interaction there.

"How was breakfast," Caleb, still fighting, asked as I reentered the house.

"It was good," I said.

I checked my email, then took off on my walk. I saw but one person, and he was atop a hill, about half-a-mile away from me. I did not see a moose. I did not even see a dog. I did see this raven, flying overhead. He had nothing to say to me.

Sometimes, ravens have lots to say, but not today - not this one.

And I saw this military jet.

And this airplane, which looks a lot like my crashed Running Dog. But I encountered no people.

By the time I reached home, Caleb had gone to bed. I came right out here to my office, sat down at this very computer and struggled to work. I don't know why I struggled, but I did. There was nothing unusally hard about the work, but sometimes, even when its easy, I struggle. I can barely do it. I find it almost impossible to put down a single word. It can take me hours to write two paragraphs.

And so it was today.

Finally, it was 4:00 PM, coffee break time, time to get back intp the car, grab an Americano and listen to the news. I had to drop off a bill, too. Along the way, I saw this kid. I said nothing to him. He was completely unaware of me and I'm pretty sure that's how he wanted it to be.

"Look!" said when I pulled up to Metro Cafe. "It's light! It's not dark. It's here, Bill. It's here." By "it" she meant light of course.

"Yep," I said, "it sure is."

"I've had a really good day today. It's been busy."

"That's good," I said. I want Metro Cafe to stay busy, because busy means staying in business.

"It's because we have lunch sandwiches now, and soup," she said. "People are coming for lunch."

"I will have to try your lunch, sometime," I said.

"Yes, you must," Carmen agreed.

And that would be the closest that I would come to having a conversation today.

When I saw this little girl exit her school bus, I thought that it really is a good thing that the light is back.

The road was slippery, though. One can never take an icy road for granted.

The moon is growing. I rolled down the window and shot a few frames as I drove down Church toward home. Except for the occasional glance, I did not look at it as I drove, but I knew where it was. I knew where to point the camera.

Wasilla moon.

Then I came back here to my office and here I have been ever since, not counting the half-hour that I spent inside the house, reheating some black bean soup that I made yesterday and then eating it, with applesauce for dessert. Just before 10:00 PM, I heard the sound of Caleb's footsteps as he walked from his room through the house and to the front door.

I heard the door open. I heard the door close. Caleb was gone.

At about 11:30 PM, I looked over at the parrot fish and saw him looking back at me, obviously wondering what I was up to. I have had him for eight years and for all but the first few months of that time, he had lived in the 55 gallon tank that I gave to Kalib just before I left for Barrow. I gave Kalib all the other fish that were in that tank, plus the giant plecostomus that had lived alone in the 90 gallon tank ever since the two big oscars died.

I am very fond of the parrot fish, and he likes me. He is smart, too. Very smart. He is the smartest fish that I have ever known. Some people think oscars are smart and they are, but they're not as smart as this guy. I could not bear to give him away, so I put him in the 90 gallon tank, which sits three feet to my right and kept him here with me.

Yesterday, I bought a little cichlid to go with him. It was yellow in the store, but it has been blue here. I also bought a little plecostomus, to be a house keeper.

"Hi, fish!" I waved.

The parrot waved back with the fin on his right side. "Hi, Bill!" he shouted.

I told you he is smart!

Who needs human interaction, when he has a fish such as this?

*see comments, previous post

Flying home, part 1: I see my Shadow in Barrow; Ethel Patkotak - Master of Indian and Indigenous Law; Little Alan; familiar faces on a jet airplane

Here I am in my town parka, still in Barrow, but leaving soon, walking under a street lamp that stands not over a street but a snowmachine trail. In one hand, I hold my laptop computer, in the other, my pocket camera, the very one that I took this picture with.

I took my big, pro, DSLR cameras to Barrow just in case something came up that I needed to photograph for professional reasons, but nothing did. I never removed those cameras from the bag. They were dead weight the whole trip.

I shot only the pocket camera.

I have already made it clear that I am not a wedding photographer and I do not shoot weddings for hire. Yet, a couple of years back, I did shoot the wedding of Quuniq Donavan to Ruby Aiken. Before I left Barrow, I stopped by for a short visit. 

Quuniq said the dog could be mean so he held him back as I went to the door.

Shortly before it was time for me to leave to catch the jet south, I was sitting at a desk that I hi-jacked in the North Slope Borough Mayor's office, doing a little work on my computer, when I heard a female voice. "I have your book. I paid an arm and a leg for it and I would like you to sign it." It was Ethel Patkotak, originally of Wainwright. It was after working hours, and everybody else had left.

I wondered how this could be. "How much did you pay for it?" I asked.

"$500," she answered.

No, I protested, this could not be, that is impossible!

So she explained. What she had done was to make a membership contribution at the $500 level to Barrow's public radio station, KBRW. Mayor Itta had contributed copies of the book to be given to those who donated at the $500 level.

I was blown away.

See the sash hanging on the wall behind her?

That is what Ethel wore with her cap and gown when she graduated with an advanced Law Degree from the University of Tulsa college of Law in December of 2008. She was an honor student and graduated with as a Master of Laws in American Indian and Indigenous Law. She is also an alumni of Northern Illinois University College of Law and Stanford University in California.

She is now working for the Borough as a Special Assitant to the Mayor, under the Direction of his Chief Administrative Officer, Harold Curran, an attorney. Her focus is largely on environmental and wildlife issues.

She also loves airplanes, just like I do.

Next I went back to Roy's place, to pick up my stuff, but before I left I dropped in next door to say goodbye to Savik, Myrna and all present. That included Little Alan, who you met two posts ago, playing a computer game as he sits with his mother, Shareen.

When I got on the plane, I did not know where to sit. The seat assignment was listed on my boarding pass, all right, but was hardly legible. It looked like it read, "1c," but I knew that couldn't be right, as that was in first class and I did not have a first class ticket.

So I showed it to the Stewardess. "It looks like 1c to me," she said. So I got to ride in First Class at coach rate. All I can figure is that it must have been a weight and balance issue, that they needed more people in first class than just those who paid for the luxory.

The blonde sitting by the window reading is author Debby Edwardson, who has lived in Barrow all of her adult life. Her most recent book is the novel Blessing's Bead, published by Farrar Straus and Gireoux, 2009. I am embarrassed to say that I have not yet read it, but I will, not only because Debby wrote it, but because it is a Barrow book and it has been well-reviewed.

She also authored the illustrated children's book, Whale Snow. She is married to George Edwardson, an Iñupiaq man who has taken on the oil companies in a fight to keep them out of the home of the bowhead whale.

Sitting behind her to the right is Rachel Riley, of Anaktuvuk Pass. Rachel was in the Barrow High Gymnasium on June 12, 2008, when I took my foolish fall and shattered my shoulder. So she was a witness to that event. When I first met her over a quarter a century ago, her house had caught fire. It had burned enough to be a total loss, but not to fall down.

Tom Opie was then the Chief of the North Slope Borough Fire Department, so he flew down to Anaktuvuk Pass to train local volunteer fire fighters. Several times, they set Rachel's house back on fire, and then went in and put the flames out all over again.

I got to put on a firefighter's outfit and oxygen mask and crawl into the burning house on my belly under the smoke with them. It was only a drill, but it was tough. It increased my respect for firefighters.

The lady sitting by the window behind her is Mary Sage, who is an excellent Eskimo dancer and a good photographer. She has had several photos published in the Anchorage Daily News. Sometimes, when I have had a photo I have needed to get identified I have contacted her on Facebook and she has helped me out.

I am embarrassed that the name of the lady sitting next to slips my mind. This is happening to me more and more.

As to the idenity of the man scratching his head, I haven't the slightest idea who he is.

This is how it is in Alaska when you board a jet plane. There will be strangers on board, but there are always many familiar faces.

Alaska is the biggest small town in the USA - perhaps the world.

And the Stewardesses are friendly - especially when you unexpectedly wind up in First Class. 

Shortly after this, I got what I believe to be a pretty neat series of pictures that I took while sitting in First Class, but it is late and I need to go to bed.

I will try to make a second post after I get up, before I drive into Anchorage to pay a visit to Little Kalib, his fish, his dad and mom - who, I am happy to say, has not yet had to go to the delivery room although she continues to experience low-level contractions.

Lisa and I are thinking about taking in a movie and Melanie has invited me to eat at a new Indian Restaurant, which actually serves South India food as well as North, and I believe Rex and Charlie will be there, too. So we will dine, and as we do, we will think of Southern India, of Soundarya and Anil, Sujitha, Ganesh, Buddy, Murthy, Vasanthi, Vivek, Khena, Vijay, Vidya and all the other members of our Indian family. I hear that the food is excellent and I do not doubt it. Yet, I do not think it will be quite so good as that prepared by Vasanthi, for Melanie and me.

I do not know what Caleb will do.

As for Margie, she remains in Arizona, completely snowed under by a series of huge storms that have dumped over four feet upon her sister's house in the White Mountains. They lost all power and for a full day I could not contact her by phone, because their cell service was gone, too.

Every time I tell someone that Margie is in Arizona, they say something like, "Oh! I'll bet she's really enjoying the sun and warm weather."

As I photograph a Super Cub, the wind rips my hat off my head and keeps on blowing; Royce update

I got a bit curious today to see what kind of airplane is parked on Anderson Lake in the spot where I used to keep my, poor, crashed, broken, airplane, the Running Dog, tied down in winter.

I found this Super Cub, with another Cub behind it and a Maule behind that.

If I am ever to do this blog right, the way I envision it, I need another airplane. And its a crazy thing - if you were to look closely at my little business right now, you would see that a big struggle to merely survive looms right in front of me - and yet, I have this unshakeable, optimistic feeling in me that, this year, I am going to rise out of it all, make this blog into what I see it becoming, and once again fly about Alaska in my own, little, airplane.

Maybe it is a foolish, silly, absurd little feeling, based on fantasy, not reality, certainly not practicality, but a new friend of mine in India, Thruptha, who you can find in my 2009 May review, put this message on her Orkut page:

"The most successful people on the planet have failed more than ordinary ones."

So, you see, I, who have failed and failed and failed and failed and may well be about to do so again, am surely on the right track.

One more thing: I dream about airplanes frequently - just about every night. So my need to get another is more than just a utilitarian thing - my soul needs an airplane. I am not whole without one.

I am like a cowboy with no horse, a dog musher with no dogs.

As I photographed the Super Cub, my hat left my head and took off across the ice. It traveled so fast I did not think that I could catch it, but I went running after it.

It kept getting further ahead of me, but then it stalled for several seconds and I snatched it from the wind.

The wind has been howling, like 40, newspaper report said gusting over 55, I heard 80 on the radio. The temperature has finally cooled down a bit, too - not frigid, but cooler than it was and if you were standing in an 80 mph gust you would think it was cold. On my coffee break, depending on where I was, the temperatures ranged from 7 to 13 degrees. 

I have not read the forecast, but it feels like we are headed towards cold temperatures again. To the north of here, in the Interior, several places are into the -50's, so I think that air might slip down onto us.

I could be wrong. Another Pineapple Express from Hawaii could be charging up the Pacific, right now, headed straight at us.

It is an El Niño year, after all, and these things are supposed to be more frequent during such years.

That's the box that in which the newspaperman deposits our copy of The Anchorage Daily News every morning. You can see the morning paper itself sitting a littler further back in the snowmachine track. If you look real close at the upper right-hand corner of the photo, just above the entrance to our driveway, you can see the post on which the newspaper box once sat.

It could have been worse - it could have been our roof, or a tree might have dropped on the house or car, or maybe upon my head.

This is actually the first picture that I took today. Yes, I went to Family Restaurant again. I wasn't going to. I was going to cook oatmeal, but I changed my mind.

I think I will fall back to oatmeal for the rest of the week, but you never know.

Just as Melanie advised, I have been feeding multiple small servings of soft food to Royce. I am happy to say that he has not yet thrown up today and the end of the day draws nigh.