Who could even imagine such a warm, muddy, day, here, now?

Folks, I prepared a few more images for today's post, but for some reason the connection between my power cord and this laptop has gone on the blink and my battery is just about dead, so...

It rained today in Barrow

I was the first one up this morning, so, very quietly, I put on my jacket and slipped outside to walk to Pepe's for breakfast. And it was raining! In Barrow, Alaska, on April 26! And then the temperature broke all heat records and topped off at 39!

In the years when I hung around up here regularly, you could pretty much count on temperatures being anywhere from about -10 or 15 to +15 or so right now.

The wind blew, hard. When I walked back from Pepi's, the rain had stopped. I could see open water out in the sea. Some whaling crews had already gone out, but with the rain, the warmth and the hard wind, they pulled back. The weather is improving now, though and at least a couple have gone back.

If conditions continue to improve, more will follow and a whale may well be landed soon.

There is thin, jumbled ice out there to make things dangerous and difficult.

Maybe some of it blew away with the hard wind.

This is Dawson, napping on Savik's snowmachine. People keep asking me if I have come to photograph whaling, but that was not my purpose this trip. If I had more time and if I were not still battling injuries that make driving a snowmachine or hanging onto a sled impossible, it would be different.

We will see.

As I was going into the store, Melba and her little son were coming out. She told me his name and I was certain I would remember, but I don't. I just have to start writing these things down. The old days are gone, but everytime, I think I can get them back.

And this is little Allen. He likes to hang out with me. His mom, Shareen, says she has never seen him take to anyone the way he takes to me - except for people his own age.

What happens when a soldier meets a nurse; Willie Hensley signs books in Barrow

Over half a century ago, when Savik Ahmaogak was stationed at Fort Richardson in Anchorage, he saw Myrna, who was working at the Alaska Native hospital, dressed in her white dress and white cap. "Wow!" he remembers.

Today, the couple celebrated their 51st wedding anniversary. Here they are, about to have a lunchtime breakfast at Osaka Restaurant in Barrow.

Later, children and grandchildren hosted a dinner for them. Afterward, KBRW's famous "Birthday Program" came on the radio. Each day for one hour, people from all across the Arctic Slope call in to give birthday and anniversary greetings to friends and relatives.

Here, granddaughter Kellen is on the phone, sending her grandparents a happy anniversary over the radio, as they listen in the next room.

Kellen leans against her Dad, Allen Snow. Savik and Myrna's daughter Corrina listens from the couch.

James and Kellen hug their grandparents goodbye. Thank you, Savik and Myrna, for rescuing me from the expensive hotel, for always being good hosts and treating me like family.

Willie Hensley, Iñupiat land claims activist from Kotzebue, who has been one of Alaska's strongest leaders, especially on Native issues, did a book signing at the Tuzzy Consortium Library, where he gave a speech and presented a historical slide show.

His book, Fifty Miles from Tomorrow (Farah, Strauss and Gereaux), chronicles his experiences and observations of the fight Alaska Natives had to make - and must continue to make - just to hang on to pieces of what was their's to begin with - from the land that nurtured their bodies to the songs and dances that sustained their souls.

As a young man, Hensley saw a society taking over everything even as it pretended that Alaska was an empty place there for the taking, as if the original occupants did not even exist.

Ten thousand years of experience and knowledge, held by no one else, was being trivialized, treated as though it did not matter, had never happened.

"I just could not accept the notion that 10,000 years of our history, knowledge and, yes, religion, was somehow inadequate," Hensley stated.

Hensley autographs books at the library. 

I would like to write more about this, but it is very late and my bloghost, Squarespace, always a fright, is acting extra quirky tonight and has already wasted two hours of my time. 

So, buy the book, read it and find out for yourself.

This is now one of Alaska's, "must read" books. 

And if any of you are thinking about blogging, stay away from Squarespace!

AAAAAARGH!

Now, how am I supposed to sleep?

Uiñiq (we-nyik) Magazine explained

Following last night's post, MissSunshine left a comment asking how the heck Uiñiq was pronounced and what does it - already defined as "open lead" - mean. I left her an explanation, but promised that I would better explain it tonight.

I consulted with Jana Harcharek, the Bilingual/Multicultural Coordinator for the North Slope Borough School District and she gave me this phonetic spelling of uiñiq: "we-nyik."

I started Uiñiq magazine in late November of 1985 with funding from the North Slope Borough Mayor's Office and published my first issue in January of 1986. My purpose was to document what I could of life in the eight Iñupiat Eskimo villages located in the Borough, spread out over an area nearly as big as the state of Utah. 

The bowhead whale hunt is the foundation upon which the majority of these villages are built. The bowheads come to the villages through the lead, the water that separates the shorefast sea ice from the pack ice. When the winds and current push the pack ice and the sea ice together, the lead is said to be closed.

When the two bodies of ice are separated, then you have an open lead.

This makes the open lead an extremely important part of Iñupiaq life and so I named the magazine, The Open Lead. 

It was then suggested to me that I use the Iñupiaq word, Uiñiq, so I added it in. The magazine then became, Uiñiq - The Open Lead.

This struck me as redundant, so, in time, I just made it Uiñiq.

I was the sole staff of Uiñiq. I took all the pictures, did all the layout, and wrote all the stories - in that order.

It was my big project for the next 11 years, but, as artistic endeavors of the heart so frequently do, by the end of that time it had driven me so deep into debt and into a situation so complicated and convoluted that, although I loved Uiñiq dearly, I was forced to let it go.

Then, about 5 or 6 years later, the Borough asked me to do another special issue. I have continued to do occassional special issues, about one every two years, since that time.

The picture on the cover above is of flower girl Ruby Aiken, the same Ruby Aiken Donovan pictured with her children on yesterday's post.

An example of Uiñiq without the English words, open lead. The gentleman on the cover - and let me stress that he was a true gentleman - is the late Arthur Neakok.

What a privilege it was, to get to know people such as Arthur Neakok!

What a privilege it has been to do Uiñiq!

My Uiñiq work eventually led to my book, Gift of the Whale: The Iñupiat Bowhead Hunt, A Sacred Tradition.

Those of you who have not already seen them can also find some of whaling work on a website that I begun awhile back but never finished, mostly because I got distracted by this blog.

I must finish it - and refine it - for I had no idea how to build a website when I put this together.

The original series was all black and white. The later, special issues, are all color, thanks to the fact that I no longer shoot film, but digital.

When I bought my first digital camera, I thought I would convert everything to black and white, but it was too much work to get digital black and white right and I already spend an incredible amount of time working on my photos, so I decided to leave it color.

This is Trudy Kippi from the Meade River village of Atqasuk and she has just caught a grayling. The month is August, 2005.

I will note that I did not have a copy stand or lights available and so photographed these covers at 3200 ISO with a Canon 5D Mark II under a solitary hotel bathroom tungsten light. 

With a copy stand, tripod and low ISO, they could look a lot better, but you get the idea.

I must thank George Ahmaogak, who was Mayor at the time I originally started Uiñiq, for the opportunity and also Margaret Opie, a true Iñupiaq woman who gave me invaluable help and support, former Mayor Jeslie Kaleak who kept me going during an interim period between Ahmaogak administrations and current Mayor Edward Itta and his special assistant, Karla Kolash, who have not only given me my most recent opportunities, but have also stood by me in an exceptional way since I took my big fall last June and put myself out of action for the better part of a year.

Actually, the people who I need to thank number in multitudes and include virtually the entire Iñupiat nation of the Arctic Slope.

Two people from past covers of Uiñiq Magazine

I visited Makalik tonight - at 34, the youngest whaling captain in Barrow and also an individual who has spoken out in public about suicide, something that has struck very close to Makalik. His words will appear in the special Uiñiq that I am working on.

In this small space, I will note that Makalik gives his wife, Tina, credit for helping him through the darkness that all this brought upon his own life, to manifest itself in drug and alcohol abuse, and that she did that by helping him burst the bubble in which he kept all the pain trapped inside and let him release it.

To both keep the past alive and protect the future, he counsels that not only should we honor and listen to the Elders, but that we should sit down with the young as well and listen - really listen - to what they say.

Makalik holds Hunter, his seven week old son.

"I love to hunt," he explains, "to provide for the people. I love it. I hope that he will do the same thing that I do, provide for the people."

As for the scabs on Makalik's face, that is frostbite, earned while driving a snowmachine across the tundra to get caribou, to provide for the people.

Around here, such scabs are a mark of honor.

This is also Makalik - from the first time that I photographed him in May of 1985. I put him on the cover of the very first issue of Uiñiq magazine that I made. This framed version hangs in his house. It makes me feel good when I see something like that. When I took the pictures for that Uiñiq, I was the same age that he is now.

Yet, sometimes, it feels like it happened pretty recently.

If you think about it, even when a very, very old man lays down upon his bed to face his death, even his birth remains just a recent thing.

When Ruby Aiken Donovan was a very small girl, she appeared on the cover of another Uiñiq, as a flower girl at her Aunt Anna's wedding. A while back, I photographed Ruby's wedding to Quuniq Donovan, who holds their baby on in the picture behind her.

Yes, they will be in the next Uiñiq, too. I used to do Uiniq all the time.

Now, I only do it every now and then.

I called the first issue, "The Open Lead." The second one became Uiñiq - The Open Lead, but it time I dropped the English words and just kept the Iñupiaq, which means the same thing.

As for the fact that both of today's subjects appeared on past covers of Uiñiq, it is pure coincidence. I did not plan it all. I sought them out not for the past, but for what they do now and it just turned out that way.