On the day that exhaustion finally overwhelms me, I take Jobe to breakfast, see Lynxton with his eyes open and take a publicity photo for National Book of the Year finalist Debby Edwardson

I am not quite certain how I managed to get out of bed today, but I did. Then, the only thing that I wanted to do was to go right back to bed, but I decided to try to stay up and make some kind of day of it. So I took Jobe to breakfast at Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant - just the two of us.

Margie stayed home to have some peace and quiet.

Breakfast was pretty interesting. The table got completely rearranged. Sugar, Splenda and jam packets wound up spread across the table, on the seats and on the floor beneath the table. A packet of half-and-half milk and cream got splattered across the seats, the table, the wall, and the window.

Jobe was content and happy threw-out. He loves to be with his grandpa. His grandpa loves to be with him.

This poor young reflected lady was among those who had to clean up after Jobe. She said she didn't mind. She said this was a kid-friendly place. Lots of mothers work here. I left a big tip... about 45 percent.

On Friday, I mentioned that I had not seen Lynxton with this eyes open since the day he was born, now three-and-a-half weeks ago. I said that I might see him Saturday and maybe his eyes would be open then. That was because I thought that after the Barrow Whalers championship game in Chugiak, I would go ahead and drive the extra 15 miles or so into Anchorage, where I could see him.

But when that game ended, I felt so tired and weary that I could do only one thing - get in the car and drive home. It was not the game that wore me out. It was the way I have been living for how long now? One push on top of another, sleep-shorted night upon sleep shorted night... Once I reached home, I got a blanket, lay down on the couch, three cats came to join me and I fell into a strange sleep, one where I am vaguely conscious of the world about me even as I dance in and out of dreams, for two hours. 

Afterward, I did not want to get up off that couch at all. I just wanted to stay there, staying in that strange and pleasant sleep for the remainder the day, through the night, all the next day, the following week and the month afterward.

But I had things to do so I got up.

This afternoon, Lynxton came to the house.

He was here for several hours, during which his eyes were open for maybe three minutes.

Here they are, open.

The rest of the time, he was sleeping.

Just like I wanted to be.

My schedule and the way that I have been living has finally caught up to me.

Lynxton's beautiful mother, Lavina.

I will tell you how tired I am. When I first tried to name the picture of Jobe and me that appears at the top of this post, I could not remember how to spell his name. Joby? Jobie?

I couldn't remember!

Finally, it came to me, slowly out of the haze that my brain now dwells in.

J-o-b-e.

Jobe.

Jobe!

This is not Jobe - this is Charlie and Jim and they are working for me.

This afternoon, I received an email from Book of the Year finalist Debby Edwardson. She wondered if I was going to go into Anchorage for her booksigning at the museum. She needed a publicity photo of herself to send to New York no later than early in the morning, East Coast time.

She said if I was not going to come in, she could drive out with George and I could shoot one here.

At first I thought, well, maybe I will go in. It will be fun.

But I couldn't. I was just too exhausted. This would be the first full day that I stayed home in how long? Long time. I could not go. I feared I might drive right off the road.

I thought maybe I could pose her by the front window, where I could get a nice, soft, shape-defining light, but then it became clear that she would not be able to get here until that light had dwindled beyond usefulness.

Regular readers know that I am an available light man. I rarely ever pick up a flash or any other kind of light. I will use whatever light is there and make it work. I did this even before digital and its high ISO's. Even on film, I shot pictures in light so low that many of my fellow photographers said it could not be worked with, but I worked with it.

If I were to shoot Debby's photo this way, it would mean lamps and such, and ISO's at 6400 or 3200 maybe.

I could get a good photo this way, yet, I knew that her publicity people would not want that kind of photo.

So I dug up a strobe light that I had not used in years. I felt very uncomfortable with it. I needed to do some test work - bounce it off this and that, at that angle and this, until I got it to shape the light the way I wanted.

Charlie and Melanie appeared at the door. So I set Charlie down with Jim, gave Melanie a large, white, flat, paper box to bounce the already bounced light off as fill and then shot a few test shots.

None of them worked. I did not get the light I wanted - but I did get this image of Jim and Charlie.

Then Debby arrived, with husband George and granddaughter Josie. In addition to being descended from a long line of Inupiat whalers, George told me that Josie is also descended from a genuine Norwegian king.

"She is a real princess," he said.

As I had not yet got my light, I conducted a couple of experimental lighting shots on George and Josie while Debby combed her hair.

I didn't quite have the light I wanted yet, but I was getting there. It would be a tight head and shoulders shot, so all that distracting stuff in the background would not be a problem.

Then I did a couple of light experiments on Debby herself, with Josie peering over her shoulder.

I still did not quite have it, but we talked Josie out of the frame and I shot it anyway - and somehow, it worked out just right.

I am not going to post the picture here, but will leave it to the publicists to do with it as they will.

Debby's book, My Name is Not Easy, a finalist for the Young People's Literature Book of the Year Award, was released October 1. As of this afternoon, that first printing of 5000 is completely sold out. Book stores across the country are asking for more.

The second printing is coming soon - I don't know how large it will be, but much more than 5,000, I'm sure.

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Barrow novelist Debby Dahl Edwardson is named as a finalist for the National Book Award - her husband George

I am proud to join in the praise for my friend of nearly 30 years, Barrow novelist Debby Dahl Edwardson, who has just been named as a finalist for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature.

"Wait a minute!" the indignant reader suddenly shouts in protest. "If Debby is the finalist, then she should be the center of attention! Why is she looking at her husband? Why is he the one doing the talking, not her? This is all wrong!"

No, it is not wrong. It is right. Debby is the first to tell you - she is the writer in the family, but husband George Edwardson is a master story-teller and a continual source of inspiration and raw material for the words that she writes.

When their children were small, Debby would read stories to them. George would tell them stories - wonderful stories, Debby says, stories that never repeated themselves but always went somewhere new - stories based on the life that George knew as an Iñupiaq hunter and scholar in the traditional sense.

She always knew that if told they could hear one but not the other, her children would choose the stories George told from his mind and soul over the ones she read.

Over the years, she heard him tell many stories about his days as a student at the Copper Valley School, the now-closed Native boarding school in Glennallen run by the Catholic Church.

Some of the stories were funny. Some of the stories were inspirational. Some sad - many were downright hard and even tragic. Most were a combination of all these things and more.

Then, about a decade ago, Debby accompanied George to a reunion of the Copper Valley alumni. There, she was deeply moved by the familial connections and shared experiences that bound the students together.

She saw it as a story that needed to be told. George agreed. Debby then crafted a screen play and submitted it to the Sundance Institute. She received a hand-written rejection informing her that it had ranked high, but not quite high enough. In 2003, she began reworking it into her Master's Thesis.

And now it is her third book, My Name is Not Easy, behind Whale Snow and Blessings Bead, and a finalist for the National Book Award. Debby stresses that it is not a book about Copper Valley School per se - it is a work of fiction, inspired by the stories of her husband but relevant to the boarding school experience experienced by so many Alaska Native students.

She also stresses that it is not a book about victimization. Like the real-life graduates of boarding schools, her students did experience many hardships and wrongs, but they also formed bonds, learned about the western world and many went on to work together to advance Native rights.

The book was published by Marshall Cavendish and edited by Melanie Kroupa, who long ago saw talent in Debby and, like an editor of old times, stuck with her and nourished her through five years of rewriting and reworking until the book was just right.

When she was about three, Debby would often stand in her father's den and gaze at the many books that filled his shelves. She could not yet read or write, but she understood that there was power and stories between the covers of these inanimate objects. She knew she wanted to be part of those books - as both reader and creator.

When she was in the third grade, her teacher gave her an assignment to make a diary about a family camping trip. She wrote about what it felt like to sit in the front of the boat as it made its own waves while pushing its way through the lake.

After she handed in her paper, she noticed her teacher show her story to another teacher. She could see that her teacher was boasting about her. She knew then that she had the ability to make the power of words her own and with that power could move other people.

Conversely, in high school, she asked her English teacher if she believed she could be a writer. "No," the teacher responded.

"That's the one you want to invite to the awards," George interjects sardonically.

In college, an instructor convinced her that she could write articles for publications.

By the mid-70's, she found herself living in Barrow, where she attended a public hearing on a an environmental impact statement dealing with offshore oil development.

There, a young man stood up and took apart the environmental impact statement piece-by-piece. "When he was done, he had totally destroyed that environmental impact statement," Debby remembers. She wrote the event up and it became her first article published in the mainstream press: We Alaskans, the then Sunday magazine of the Anchorage Daily News.

That young man was George Edwardson, who continues that fight to this day. The two had no idea that they would one day wed and make a family together.

Next, she went to work for KBRW, the Barrow public radio station, reporting, writing, and reading news articles.

One day, Jean Craighead George, the famed Children's author and mother of Craig George, renowned bowhead biologist, came to Barrow and agreed to an interview. Afterward, Debby told George that she had always wanted to write stories for young people.

"She looked at me and said, 'well, do it."

Struck by the simplicity of the answer, Debby did, indeed, do it.

As for George, he says that "of course" he is proud of his wife. "I have always been." He adds that he was not surprised when she was named a finalist, because he has known for decades that such honors would come to his wife. Even Debby's mother, who did the painting on the wall behind him, had always known, George, who puts great stock in the knowledge of mothers, added.

Debby is retired from Ilisagvik College, but still serves as an adjunct professor. She was also just reelected to the board of the North Slope Borough School District. As part of her campaign, she ran an ad on the Eskimo channel that stated that education is the passing of the soul of a culture from one generation to the next.

"That's what your writing is, too," George told her.

The announcemnt of the winner of the National Book Award will be made at a fancy dinner next month in New York City. Naturally, George has been invited to attend alongside his wife. He has consented to go to New York, but not to the dinner. "It's black tie," he explains. "They're not going to put a tie on me!"

Last night, when I visited them, George was busy making ulu knives - some very large, some very small. He will convert a pair of tiny ulus into a set of ear rings for his wife to wear to the dinner where the announcement will be made.

Believe me, I stand by George on the whole black tie thing. I understand perfectly. Even so, I hope that when Debby enters the fancy place that George walks in alongside her, dressed in his classiest Iñupiaq clothing. If so, no man there will be more elegantly dressed than will be George Edwardson of Barrow, Alaska.

Well, there's lots more I could write about my friends, Debby and George Edwardson, but I've got to get up early to catch a plane to Atqasuk. And anyway, in no time at all, there's going to be lots of writers, even from outfits like the New York Times, writing about Debby and George and they will surely cover all the gound that I have skipped over or just didn't think to write about.

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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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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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At the weekends important Alaska book signing: Jobe greets progressive Phil Munger in the gleam of Sarah Palin's smile; Jobe spills the coffee; Jobe rolls on the floor / Amazing Grace

Here is Jobe and Melanie speaking with classical music composer and Progressive Alaska blogger Phil Munger at the important Alaska book signing that took place this weekend. Phil's wife, Judy Youngquist, was one of Melanie's teachers during her days at Tanaina Elementary School, and sometimes Phil filled in and taught her, too.

Another substitute teacher that Melanie had at Tanaina was Chuck Heath. Undoubtedly by now, the reader has noticed the face of Chuck Heath's famous daughter, Sarah Palin, beaming out from the three books on the lower part of the shelf between Jobe, Melanie and Phil. Probably, cynical readers are imagining that I set this picture up just this way - but no, I didn't.

It's just how it happened. I didn't even realize Sarah Palin's face was in the picture until after I took it. I was rather pleased when I discovered this, because it gave me some opportunities to play with today's title a bit and thereby draw in those legions of potential readers who only stop by if there is a hint that Sarah Palin might somehow be on this blog.

While I have generally tried to stay away from Palin on this blog, Phil has not been so reticent. He has written a great deal about Palin, whom he has known for decades.

But I have begun with a distraction. I had come to this place, Fireside Books in Palmer, because a signing for a very important book about Alaska was taking place here.

The important book that was being signed was "Purely Alaska - Authentic Voices from the Far North," a collection of stories written by 23 authors, most of them Native, spread across the roadless regions of Rural Alaska. The writings were inspired, encouraged, compiled, and edited by John Creed and wife Susan Andrews.

The two both began their careers as journalists, but then became teachers of journalism and writing at Chukchi College in Kotzebue - an extension of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. They eventually set up a statewide, long-distance learning program conducted via the internet. The stories in the book come from their students.

They are the real thing, written for love, not money and driven by the human desire to communicate one individual to another, one culture to another.

So I would suggest that readers consider buying this book, just as did Heather McCausland, for whom John is seen adding his autograph to Susan's. It will be worth it.

John, Susan and family.

John photographs Jobe.

I met first met John in September of 1981, when I flew into Kotzebue for the first time. He took me to a fish camp in Noorvik and helped me in many ways. I came back again after freeze-up and it was a wonderful, glorious, thing, because Kotzebue Sound had frozen solid and thick but there was not a snowflake upon it - just miles and endless miles of clear, smooth, slick ice.

We walked out onto that ice and then could not stop ourselves from running and sliding, running and sliding, running and sliding, until we had ventured well beyond the limits of common sense and safety. We had no gun and had a hungry polar bear come along, we would have been defenseless.

But it was such great fun that we didn't care and we knew that the odds were in our favor.

Yes, there was another book signing this weekend, at Costco in Anchorage, and it drew a whole lot more attention than did this one.

Trust me, though - this book will be the better, most informative and enjoyable read. The power and strength of the stories in it will live on when those in the other book have fallen into their place as a political curiousity and trivia, lacking depth and substance; hyperbole - a memento of a strange fad that rose out of my own little town at a troubled time in America to place an absurd and perplexing grip upon my homeland for a limited number of years.

But if you want substance, not fad, then read "Purely Alaska." Read the other one, too, if you like and if you are up to the task.

After we left the book signing, Melanie, Jobe and I walked less than one block to Vagabond Blues to get some coffee.

I know - some are wondering how I could be so fickle as to go get my coffee here and not at Metro Cafe, but Metro is closed on Sundays and we were in Palmer, anyway.

You know what the lyrics to the famous rock-and-roll song say:

"When you can't drink the coffee you love, love the coffee you can drink."

Such is my philosophy on the subject.

We ordered our coffee, got it, sat down and then Jobe grabbed Melanie's and spilled it all over the floor. It was okay. She just got another and we proceeded on, unperturbed.

Jobe did not get a coffee. Jobe drank from a bottle of his own mother's milk. Then he and Melanie played with the bottle cap.

Jobe is a very bright fellow, by the way; observant. He takes in everything around him. He enjoys the magic of learning and each conscious moment is magic for him. He brings magic back into my own life, even now, at this time.

And to Sujitha, sister of Soundarya - he brings magic back to her as well.

Jobe found that the lid to a bottle of mother's milk can also make a nice hat. He was very pleased with his new hat.

I should note that when Phil Munger first came to Alaska, he piloted a fishing boat by the name of Jo-be, pronounced just the same as Jobe, from Ketchikan to Cordova.

The three of us lingered at Vagabond for probably close to an hour, every minute of it pleasant and wonderful.

Finally, we had to leave. I had driven to Palmer alone with Jobe. Melanie had driven out from Anchorage to meet us. We wanted to drive back to the house together, so we left Melanie's car in Palmer and I drove us home to Wasilla.

I didn't time it, but it usually takes close to half-an-hour, so I suspect that it did this time, as well.

When we pulled into the driveway, Jobe was fast asleep in his car seat.

The light was exceedingly dim, so, even though I was shooting at 6400 ISO, I had to drop down to a quarter or half-second exposure, - very difficult to do shooting free hand - so I took my time and took several shots.

I knew that from inside the house, all Lavina could see would be our headlights. She had not seen her baby Jobe since the day before. She did not discover that I had shanghaied him off to Palmer until she and Jake arrived at the house to find us gone. I knew that she was wondering why I was taking so long to bring him in. 

When finally we did go in, we found people baking, icing, sprinkling and eating Christmas cookies. I would have taken Kalib to Palmer with me as well, but he was asleep when I left.

Melanie observes Jobe as he rolls across the floor.

And this one from India:

This is just a few frames short of being the final picture that I took during the trip that Melanie and I made to India to attend the wedding of Soundarya and Anil. I took the picture as our cab driver approached the Bangalore Airport. As I have earlier noted, other than the wedding pictures, I have never had the time to sift through my take to see what I have.

It has now become very important to me that I do, even though the task seems immense and impossible, given my other responsibilities. I have put the entire, India, Part 2, take into my Lightroom editor and so I set out to skim quickly through to see if I could get some kind of idea of what I have - particularly when it comes to images of Soundarya, and of Soundarya and Anil, as well as the man who walked a scorpion, the monkey who jumped the gap and the dinner of bananas that Vijay fed to us.

I scrolled rapidly through the entire take over the course of maybe three hours, possibly four, bypassing hundreds of images at a time but stopping every now and then, especially when I would spot an image of Sandy.

As I did this, I had the radio tuned to KSKA. In the final hour, as part of whatever program was on the air, a female folksinger was being interviewed. Every few minutes, the interviewer would pause to let her perform a song. I was absorbed in the pictures and did not pay much attention, but she had a nice voice and it made pleasant backgroud music.

Then, to my dread, I came to the final series of frames that I will ever shoot of Soundarya. At the very moment - THE VERY MOMENT - that my final image of Soundarya appeared full-screen in my editor, the folksinger began to sing...

Amazing Grace...

...and she sang it beautifully...

.. she sang it for Soundarya, my cherished Hindu soul friend - she sang it for me, the rebellious, strayed Mormon who has chosen to walk an indeterminate path...

Here is Judy Collins, singing the same song, for any who might care to listen.

I have probably listened to it 20 times since coming upon that final picture. I am listening to it right now. My eyes are not dry.

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