Cats, sticks, ducks, geese, fish, Time Immemorial and oatmeal, with nuts, berries, peaches and milk

I've just got to move along, get this blog out of the way and get on to other things. Yesterday, after I posted the series that ended with beautiful Molly, I took a decent walk, and then a fifteen-mile bike ride.

On the walk I saw Jessie James, peering at me through the sticks.

I saw that the ice had melted off the tiny pond the kids named "Little Lake" when they were little. Geese and ducks had stopped by to visit, perhaps to make goslings and ducklings.

Melanie and Charlie invited those of us who were not in Arizona over for an Easter dinner of salmon, halibut, salad and potato salad.

Oh, my goodness... was it good!

Poor Bear Meech. He wanted it but he couldn't have it.

Then we went to the play, Time Immemorial, written, directed and acted by Allison Warden and Jack Dalton. 

Here is Allison and Jack, after the play.

I wish I had time to write more and to edit and post a few pics from the play, but I don't.

This morning, just before I woke up, I got a call from Niece Sujitha in Bangalore. She asked me what I was going to have for breakfast. Oatmeal, I told her. She wanted to see proof, just in case I changed my mind and went out to breakfast again.

So here it is: my oatmeal, with black berries, peaches, walnuts and milk.

Jim joined me, but didn't eat any.

Or maybe he just used my knee as a stepping stone, on his way to another place.

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Speak, Poet!

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

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

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

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

The caption read simply:

Epic gathering of Alaskan Poets in Palmer...

This gathering was going on at that moment.

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

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

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

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

She raised her hand into the air.

"Speak, poet!" the crowd shouted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kat took her bows.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I want you to feel unreal.

I want you to be excited to wake because

dreaming is beginning to seem boring."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some dogs do get pretty impatient, though.

Especially little dogs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pure beauty.

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

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

Under the picture was this title:

Epic gathering of Alaskan Poets in Palmer...

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

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

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

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

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The other day at Metro Cafe - a bunch of serious, intellectual, studies

Now that I am riding my bike to Metro Cafe most days, it is hard for me to shoot "Through the Metro Window" studies because I am mostly inside. Still, I can shoot studies of various inside kinds. Studies are, by definition, intellectual works of art and some might think it would be easier to shoot intellectual works of art from the outside and that is true, but when one is shooting intellectual works, "easy" does not factor into it.

One must really work the brain, and it is hard and challenging. Still, I am up to the task. So, I now present you with a bunch of serious, intellectual studies that I shot the other day after pedaling my bike to Metro Cafe:

Serious Intellectual Study from Inside Metro Cafe, #222: Study of the young writer, Shoshana, Branson and Diane, #4: The place was hopping.

Serious Intellectual Study from Inside Metro Cafe, #422: Study of the young writer, Shoshana, #670: Carmen puts earrings to her ears. Branson strikes a serious, intellectual pose. 

Serious Intellectual Study from Inside Metro Cafe, #622: Jeweler Leah, of Leah's Designs, who brought her work to Metro Cafe to put on display and sell. She did pretty good, Leah said.

Serious Intellectual Study from Inside Metro Cafe, #822: As Carmen struggles to get all the ladies present to pose with Leah for a group picture, Nola gets distracted.

Serious Intellectual Study from Inside Metro Cafe, #1022: Just before we were ready to shoot, Carmen had to put a scarf on the Young Writer, Shoshana, Study #12.

Serious Intellectual Study from Inside Metro Cafe, #1222: After a great struggle that lasted 2.46 hours, the serious, intellectual photographer succeeds at getting all the participants, including the three on the TV, to pose seriously and smartly for the study.

Serious Intellectual Study from Inside Metro Cafe, #1422: Branson and his dad, Scot, who had just returned from the Arctic Slope.

Serious Intellectual Study from Inside Metro Cafe, #1622: Branson poses with his red-headed friend known to the world as "Cash"... as in, "Hello, my name is Johnny Cash." I am told that this Cash has been a big fan of that Cash since he first became conscious of such things. Cash's grandma was one of Carmen's wedding attendants.

Serious Intellectual Study from Inside Metro Cafe, #1822: Through Nola's lens - Branson and the red-headed boy.

Serious Intellectual Study from Inside Metro Cafe, #2022: Through Nola's lens: Branson.

Serious Intellectual Study from Inside Metro Cafe, #2208: Cash.

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On my way to see Larry Aiken's miracle smile, I saw many other things

 

I had thought that I might wait a day or two or three to go back to town and see Larry. His pre-surgery prognosis was that afterward he would be in ICU for two weeks, would not be able to talk and for most of that time would not even be able to recognize the people who came to see him.

Then, close to 5:00 PM when I was pedaling my bicycle from Metro Cafe, where I shot a nice little series of studies that I will share with you later, my cell rang. I stopped my bike, pulled out my iPhone and the saw the name "Larry Aiken" on the screen.

I knew it could not be Larry and that it was probably his cousin, Percy. Sure enough, it was.

I was kind of scared.

Then Percy told me the surgery had gone extremely well, better than anyone had even dared to anticipate. Instead of moving Larry into ICU, the doctors sent put him on the Fourth Floor. Not only was he conscious and aware of his surroundings, but he could talk. Percy put Larry on. 

I was surprised at how strong his voice sounded.

I told them I would come in, somewhere between 8:00 and 9:00. Percy said that would be good, that Larry would be pretty groggy but would know I was there.

So I finished a couple of small tasks, took a shower, ate dinner and hit the road about 7:30.

There were mountains in front of me, but I could go around them, easy enough.

I saw a lady who I do not think was very happy.

I saw soldiers, marching across an overpass. I wondered if any or all of them had been to Iraq or Afghanistan, or if not, might yet go.

The odds seemed pretty high. Fort Richardson has sent many soldiers into battle.

Just before I left home, Margie had the news on and I was a little startled to see coverage on a book signing that was at that moment taking place at the Anchorage Museum of History and Art. It was for the newly published Epicenter book, Eskimo Star - From the Tundra to Tinseltown: The Ray Mala Story, authored by Lael Morgan. 

Ray Mala was the first Native American international film star and first gained his fame in the film, Eskimo. Along with Igloo and Last of the Pagans, it is being featured in the Mala Film Festival at the Bear Tooth this evening.

When I entered the museum, I saw the star's son, Dr. Ted Mala, grandchildren Ted Jr. and Galena being photographed by Rob Stapleton. 

Dr. Mala practices both western and traditional Iñupiaq medicine and is director of the South Central Foundation, supplier of health care to Alaska Natives and American Indians in this part of Alaska.

Mala's wife, Emma, joined her family for a Rob Stapleton shot.

I took advantage of the situation and shot a family portrait myself.

Rob with Ted Jr. Rob is one of Alaska's more outstanding photographers and he is a friend. It would take a signficant amount of space for me to adequately relate all the ways he helped me and my family make it through our early struggling days in Alaska.

He is also a pilot and an aviation and ultralight aircraft enthusiast.

Lael Morgan signing copies of her book. Lael began her career as a journalist who came to Alaska by sailboat a few decades back and then roamed the entire state. She is the author of Art and Eskimo Power: - the life and Times of Howard Rock and Good Time Girls of the Alaska-Yukon Gold Rush, about the prostitutes who took care of the lonely and desperate men who roamed the north at that time.

Along with Kent Sturgis, she founded Seattle based Epicenter Press and, beginning with the best-seller Two Old Women by Gwich'in author Velma Wallis, they have had several good success stories.

I believe Epicenter was the first of the two dozen or so publishing houses that I tried to interest in the work that became my book, Gift of the Whale: the Iñupiat Bowhead Hunt, A Sacred Tradition. She took a good look at it, told me was very impressive but that if Epicenter published it, "we would be bombed by Greenpeace."

Still, it is not impossible that we could publish a book together in the future. I don't know what the odds of it happening are - ten percent, maybe?

I would have liked to have hung around and talked to Lael, Dr. Mala, Rob and others, but I was in hurry to get to ANMC and see Larry, so I headed for the door.

As I neared it, I came upon Vic Fischer, who was a State Senator when I first met him almost 30 years ago. Before that, he served in the Territorial Legislature and was a delegate to Alaska's constitutional convention. He has remained active in Alaska's political and cultural life and I am pleased to say that whenever I read an editorial that he has written, I tend to agree with him.

He has deflated some absurd nonsense and claptrap in this state, but the purveyors of it have gone on purveying nonsense and claptrap, anyway.

Just as I was about to go through the door and back to my car, I saw that Rob had just got done taking a picture of Elmer, the Yup'ik actor, Galena, and Ossie, Yup'ik musician, poet and actor. They looked altogether too beautiful for me to pass by without taking at least a snap myself, so I did.

Then I stepped through the door and saw a face I had not seen in at least ten years, maybe more: Tom Richards, Native journalist and activist who worked with Howard Rock at the Tundra Times before I showed up.

Can you feel the Alaska history that I passed by in just a few minutes time? One day, my friends, one day... I will figure out how to make this blog and my as yet-to-be created online magazine work and then the stories that I will track down...

I will never get them all. There are too many, and all the authors and photographers and bloggers and facebookers and whoever that are working in Alaska combined to tell stories of this place can never tell them all.

But I will tell a few of them.

A very few. But even that will be something.

Remember... Larry was expected to in ICU, suffering, so heavily sedated that he would not even recognize me if he saw me at all.

This is how I found him - smiling big, and talking in the strongest, deepest, voice that I have heard come out of him for a long time. The terrible pains that have kept him awake at night had eased off.

What happened was a miracle, he told me. And this why he believes that miracle happened: his physican, a woman from Phoenix whose name he could not recall but I will add in later, was not only skilled, but before she operated on him, she prayed, and asked for help. In Barrow, about 20 members of Barrow's Volunteer Search Rescue got together before his surgery, prayed, and sang, "Amazing Grace."

The night before, right after I left, a man came and prayed for him and when he raised his hand Larry says he felt a strong power. There were all the people who had sung for him the night before - and so many who had prayed.

Larry invited me to take this picture so that he could express his thanks to all those who have prayed for him and helped him in anyway. You are too numerous to name, but you know who you are.

Larry said many visitors had already come by. While I was there, he was visited by Harry Ahngasuk and his wife, Sarah Neakok-Ahngasuk of Barrow. That's his cousin, Percy, on the right. Percy has been with him the whole time.

For me, these past several months have been rough - very rough.

But when I visited Larry last night, I just felt joy. Pure joy. I felt so glad. So, very, very happy.

It was excellent to see his story take such a positive turn.

At about 10:30 PM, I left Larry and his guests, stopped to chat in the parking lot with a lady from Anaktuvuk Pass and then drove home. As I came down Lucille Street in Wasilla, I saw that the police K-9 unit was active. Someone was not having a very good time. I know nothing beyond that.

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