Following The King's Speech, Jobe stands ready to walk

I did, indeed, break away from this desk, grab Margie, drive to town and go to the movie. We didn't even have to pay, because Melanie had given us a gift card to Century 21 in Anchorage for Christmas, so finally we used part of it. We saw, The Kings Speech, which I rather enjoyed.

Afterward, we headed to Jake and Lavina's. I knew that if Jobe had taken his first steps, we would have heard about. As we had heard no such thing, I hoped that he might take his first steps during our short visit.

Even though he cannot yet walk, he came out to greet us before we reached the door. Kalib observed from inside the front room.

Margie had grown almost desperate to see her grandsons again. Soon, she had Jobe on her lap, hugging and cuddling him.

Jobe noticed his grandpa.

Kalib ate jello with a spoon.

Then he stood on his dad's leg and did some cussing.

Actually, he didn't cuss. I just wanted to add a little drama to the scene.

I would have let you think so, but then I would have gotten in trouble with the female members of the family.

The males would all have been proud.

Kalib with his mom. She is cussing at him!

I JOKES! I JOKES!

I think I am in trouble now, anyway - even though I have clarified things.

Jobe spots Melanie coming and cusses at her.

Then Kalib and Melanie spot a neighbor carrying her baby to the car to go a nearby restaurant, where they will dine on raise\in and cucumber soup, with olives.

They do not cuss at her, because it is not polite to cuss at innocent neighbors.

Okay - time to get serious now. Learning to walk is serious stuff.

Next, I lay down on the floor between Jobe and the TV. I hoped Jobe might take his first steps, so that I could photograph the moment.

He stood, did not step, and then plopped down on his butt.

But he got right back up and stood again. Melanie came dashing over, excited to see where this action might lead.

Oh, boy! He is standing good! Will he walk?

He is contemplating it. I know he can do it. He's just got to decide he's going to and then he will.

"Go kid, go! Walk!" Muzzy give him some nose encouragement.

But he doesn't walk. He again plops down on his butt, crawls to his Aunt Melanie, stands up using her leg for support and turns to watch the TV, on which the movie "Up" is playing. Melanie covers his eyes. She thinks he watchs too much TV and does not approve.

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New baby comes to my nearby, invisible, family - suddenly, they become visible

One photographer's search for community, home and family.

The above is the subtitle of my blog, and I came up with it after I realized that my entire career as a photojournalist has been my own personal search for all three of these things: community, home and family. I define each term broadly, and in a way that pretty much opens the entire world up to this investigation.

My family, as anyone who has spent much time with this blog knows, is made up of many individuals of various ethnic and cultural backgrounds, some of whom I have a direct blood or marital tie to and some of whom I don't.

Of course, if a photographer is going to seek out his family, it must include those with whom he has a direct blood and marital ties and this is something that I have long had in mind to do. 

My blood-tie family, like so many, is scattered about, coast-to-coast, over the oceans and on various continents. So, to seek out this family, I have imagined that sooner or later I would find the time and resource required to do the traveling necessary to track down a good sample of them, wherever they live, from my birthplace of Ogden, Utah, to Thailand, where one of my older brothers has apparently relocated (complicated story).

Yet, I have blood family close by - less than half-an-hours drive from our house - and virtually every day I wake up and fail to think of these family members. It does not occur to me that they are close by and that we could get together now and then and see what each other is up to.

The last time I had laid eyes upon a member of this Alaska-based part of my blood family was, oh, I don't know - close to 25 years ago, maybe?

Ten days ago, a new baby was born into this family and here she is: Makiah Young. Suddenly, these blood-tie family members have appeared in my life - most of them for the first time.

The woman in the back is my first cousin, Mary Lynn Spahr, eight years my senior and the oldest daughter of my Aunt Velma, one of my mother's two younger sisters. She lives in Malad, Idaho, where she grew up on the family ranch. Last week, she called me on the phone to tell me me about Makiah, her newest granddaughter and to let me know that she would be in Alaska until today.

She invited Margie and I to come to dinner last Friday, but I had a beard contest to go to, so the dinner was put off until last night.

Mary Lynn has her hands on the shoulders of her granddaughter, Madeline, who makes a dinner salad as another granddaughter, Mina, cuts up the pineapple. Mary Lynn introduced me to the girls as their cousin, Billy. I would be more inclined to think of myself as their Uncle Bill, but when it comes to the English language, the definition of relatives quickly becomes a confusing mess - at least to me. Maybe to some it makes sense.

Anyway, whether they be my cousins or my nieces, the two girls have grown up unbeknownst to me, and I to them, in a house that is 20 some miles away from my house - not far off a highway that I travel very frequently.

And this is Melissa.

Mina with her baby sister, Makiah.

And here is Austin, a brother to Makiah, perhaps a cousin to me, but I am more inclined to think of him as nephew.

And here is the littlest brother/cousin/nephew, Wyatt - eight years old.

The electric-green fingernails atop baby's head belong to Melissa.

To the left is Jennifer Young, Mary Lynn's daughter and the only member of the Alaska-based nuclear family that I had met until last night. Husband and dad Dan Young offers the blessing on the food before we eat.

As regular readers know, I was born into and raised in a Mormon family descended on both sides from the original Mormons, including the pioneers who settled in a much larger swath of the mountain west than just Utah. Although I am forever rooted in the heritage, my life has pulled me and all my family out of the Mormon congregation.

Mary Lynn and her family, including those who live here in Alaska, have remained dedicated and active Mormons. Dan is a doctor and Jennifer a nurse who works with heart patients at the Alaska Native Medical Center. She has cared for and will care for many of my friends from Arctic and rural Alaska.

I did not ask if Dan descends from Brigham Young and is therefore some kind of cousin to Steve Young. I must find out.

That's brother/cousin/nephew Mitchell, pouring himself a glass of water. 

And this is the view from the family's living room window. Standing left to right: Foraker, Hunter and Denali, which, if measured from its base to its top, is the greatest mountain not only in all of North America, but all the world.

To have such a view, right out your living room window!

I don't know exactly how far these mountains are from the Young house, but I would guess about 200 miles.

Jennifer with Makiah. Two that were not here this evening are attending college. Makiah was unexpected. She came as a surprise - but a surprise the family is delighted to have. In total, there are eight children in Jennifer and Dan's blended family.

Cousin Mary Lynn... she looks pretty good, I'd say. When I was growing up, each summer, my family would take my Dad's vacation time and drive to Utah. Along the way, we would stop at the Ipsen Ranch just outside of Malad, Idaho.

We never stayed for long - maybe overnight and part of the next day - but the stops in Malad were always my favorite part of the vacation.

Aunt Velma had a big family - 11 children, including Mark, just younger than me and Brenda, a few months older, and we loved to play together.

Although she was nearly eight years older, I loved Mary Lynn, too. You could say that I adored her. She was beautiful and vicacious and she took me on my first horseback ride. I was tiny and the horse was big and I was frightened that I was going to get bucked off and killed but she spoke soothingly to me and with her horse kept my horse walking at a slow, easy, pace and so everything was fine - until we turned around to go back.

Then that horse took off on a gallop and I could not slow it down.

That horse wanted to get home.

At least once, I followed her into the barn, where she milked the cows.

She had to get up very early in the morning to do these things.

Not many Americans live like that anymore.

Margie gets to hold Makiah.

Margie and Makiah.

On a Young bookshelf stands this picture of my Aunt Velma. I hate to single any one aunt out as my favorite, but Aunt Velma was the one I got to know the best and I loved her dearly. I spent the summer that I turned 17 living with Aunt Velma and Uncle Perry and working on their ranch alongside my cousin Mark.

It was, I would say, one of those landmark summers of youthful life. About 30 years ago, I began a novel loosly based on that summer and wrote about 100 pages, before the novel disappeared into the constant shift and shufffle of my life.

I have no idea where that 100 pages is now.

I would like to find it and finish it before I die, but, realistically, I am afraid to commit such a thing. I have another novel that I am working on a bit right now, about a Mormon missionary in Lakota country. If I complete but one novel in this life, I intend it to be that one.

Over two decades ago, Velma came to Alaska to visit Jennifer and I took her for an airplane ride in the now-crashed Running Dog. The ride was a big disappoinment to me, because the valley was completely socked in by heavy overcast and I could not fly out of it. We were flying in the midst of the some of the greatest mountains in the world, but I could not show her a single peak.

The clouds shrouded them all. So all I did was show her Wasilla and Palmer from about 1000 feet, and a few farms and a bit of countryside.

Disappointed though I was, everytime that I saw her after that, she brought up that ride and stated how much she had enjoyed seeing all the settlement below us.

But it was not the settlement that I wanted to show her - it was the wilderness, the mountains, the unsettled country.

I last saw her in June of 2007, at Dad's funeral. Her health was good and she looked much younger than her 80-some years. I had this hope that before too long I could sit down with her in the ranchhouse outside of Malad and have her relate some family history to me.

Sadly, life took a couple of very hard turns for her after that, including a fatal automobile accident that took the life of her second youngest son, my once-little cousin Jeff, who I had become fond of that summer in Idaho, and she passed on before I got the chance.

Austin, Mitchell and the older sisters all left for other places before Margie and I did, so Mary Lynn gave them some goodbye hugs.

Mary Lynn also asked me if I remembered a certain incident that took place between my mother, her father and my late brother Ron in a hospital after he broke his neck in a motor cycle accident. It was an incident that was imperative to saving my brother's life.

At first, my mind drew a blank. I could not think of the incident at all. Then she told me what she had heard of it and it started to come back. Then it came vividly back. Memory is a funny thing. You forget and yet, you don't forget. The information is back there, hanging unseen in the fog.

When this incident happened, my maternal grandfather had been dead for over a quarter-of-a-century. I did not witness the event myself, but Mom had been very intense in her telling of it.

In Mormon families, the veil between the mortal and the spirits of the dead is considered to be very thin, and this kind of story of communion between the living and the dead is common. We talked of other similar incidents that are spoken of among our families.

This is not unique to Mormons, though. And the sense of it can happen even between a strayed Mormon man and his close Hindu friend as well.

It can happen with Iñupiats, it can happen with Apaches.

It can happen among all people who believe it can happen and it can even surprise people who don't believe and can happen among them as well.

Still, it all remains a mystery to me.

My life experience has left me without any firm belief.

Just before Margie and I left, Mary Lynn took us in to see this crib set that she, Jennifer and the girls had worked long, hard, and lovingly to sew.

Then, for the first time ever, she laid baby Makiah in it.

Soon, all the family still present in the house gathered to see Makiah in her crib.

Do you think Wyatt adores his baby sister? Do you think he will be her protector?

Airplanes, real or model, always catch my eye. Mary Lynn had bought this one for Wyatt to use in a school project.

It was airplanes that helped bind me to my dad, to my brother, Ron, and to Alaska.

Just as we were leaving, Jennifer brought Makiah out to say goodbye.

Now, here is the question - will another quarter century pass before I see her or another member of this segment of my blood family again?

They are so close and yet I get so easily distracted and taken up by my own little enterprises.

The thought just now occurs to me that I might prevent this from happening this time by giving myself an assignment: to photograph Makiah every month. If I were to do that, I would probably get to better know her mom, dad, brothers and sisters as well.

I'm afraid to give myself such an assignment, though - afraid that I will still get swept up in my own life and will fail to follow through.

Still, I think the idea is a good one.

If I were to do it, I'll bet Makiah could then get to know her cousins, Kalib and Jobe, as well.

I won't commit myself just yet, but I will think about it.

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When no other spatula will do - another spatula will just have to do; two women on opposite sides of the road

As Kalib and Jobe have had but a small presence in this blog as of late, I back up now to Saturday night, when I went to their house to pick up Margie after the Fur Face beard contest. As I walked up the stairs, I saw a little face peeking over the safety gate at me.

Who the hell was it?

Why, it was Jobe!

And he was damn glad to see his grandpa.

Actually, I back up even a little further now - to just before I went to the beard contest, when I dropped Margie off. When we arrived, Jobe was napping and Kalib and his dad were out walking and playing in the nearby frozen and snowy park.

They soon arrived home and Kalib was carrying golf balls. Apparently, there had been some kind of golf tournament out in that park, probably associated with Anchorage Fur Rendezvous.

Some of the golfers had lost their balls.

Kalib had found them.

Margie helped Kalib out of his coat and then I left to find Charlie and his beard.

Now, back to late at night - to just before I took Margie to the car and drove her home. Kalib's spatula appeared, looking just like it always had. As regular readers know, for Kalib the Spatula Kid there was one spatula and one spatula only.

No other spatula would do.

But this was a different spatula.

His parents found it on ebay and it was identical to the spatula that got lost, an event that caused Kalib to pick up and glom onto a pair of tongs. They snatched it right up.

You will note that even though Kalib now has his same/different spatula back, he still carries his tongs.

Kalib is becoming quite expert at manipulating those tongs.

Self-portait: me, Kalib and Jacob.

As for the Iditarod Restart - I just had too much to do and could not take the time to go. I felt bad about it, but there were all kinds cameras there, operated by amateur and pro alike. There will be no shortage of images.

And this one from India:

Two ladies walking on opposite sides of the road at dusk.

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I follow Charlie to a tough Fur Face battle at Miners and Trappers, where I find myself in Wonderland; Miss Rondy Queen; Kalib and Jobe

As I had already made a post on Charlie grabbing the championship at the UAA Winterfest Beard Contest, I knew that I had to follow him into the big-time Anchorage Fur Rendezvous Fur Face competition at the beard contest that took place last night at the Miners and Trappers Ball. Tickets were pricey, so I got myself a press pass.

Miners and Trappers is a costume ball and this year's theme was "Highways in the Sky - A salute to Alaska Aviators." I stuck religiously to the theme and dressed as an Alaskan photographer/aviator who used to fly his little airplane all about Alaska and hopes to get another and do so again in the future.

The ball was held at the Egan Convention Center on Fifth Avenue, so I parked a few blocks away, hiked through the night and entered, looking for Charlie and Melanie, expecting to see tons of people dressed like Alaskan pilots.

Once inside, this was the first costumed person I came upon.

I suddenly knew that I had entered Wonderland.

I walked around looking for Melanie and Charlie, but I could not find them. Shortly, however, I came upon this rugged looking guy - Mr. Kenneth C. Feiber - who would not only be entering the Mr. Fur Face beard contest, but would be competing in the same category as Charlie - the Ptarmagan category, or freestyle.

At the UAA contest, as soon as I saw the competition charlie faced, I was quite certain he would walk away with it.

When I looked into this face, chill dread shook my body. I knew that on this night, here in Wonderland, Charlie was about to face a real battle.

In the restroom, I found Santa Claus, eying himself in the mirror, trying to look tough. Santa, however, would pose no threat to Charlie - at least in the first round - for Santa was entering as a Polar Bear and a Pole Cat and Charlie was neither.

During his round of competition, in answer to a judges question about how it was to have so many women run their fingers through his beard, Santa would answer that it felt normal. Women always run their fingers through Santa's beard.

He would not win first, however, but second.

I searched through all the hallways, the cloak room, the Fur Face room and every room but the ladies restroom and main ballroom, because I could see through the door that it was dark in there and I did not think that people who wanted their beards to be seen would disappear into the dark.

But, since I couldn't find them anywhere else or connect with my phone, I stepped briefly into the ballroom. It was early yet and only a few people had gathered.

I found this fellow on the stage, making music.

I did not find Charlie and Melanie.

And then... I found them! Charlie, the grand winner of the UAA beard contest and his magnificent stylist, my own daughter Melanie.

I could see right away that Charlie was dressed as the moon, his beard pummeled by meteors just as is the surface of the moon. I did not for one moment wonder if perhaps he was supposed to be a bearded baby wearing some kind of strangely designed bonnet, his beard curled by upchucked curdled breast milk.

I did not think this because a baby would never shoes such as this, the right of the pair that Charlie had on his feet, but a moon would wear such shoes.

Here is a better look at Charlie's moon, pocked by craters, and his beard, also pocked by craters.

Oh-oh - it wasn't long before Charlie encountered Fieber. It was tense - just like when Mohammed Ali faced Sonny Liston before going into the ring. They cursed and threatened each other, and insulted each other's mothers.

They did it all in a very jovial manner, smiling, as though the whole world of bearddom was filled with nothing but good will - but beneath the veneer of good humor, the boiling anger, rivalry and tension could be felt.

Karle came only to root for Charlie. He did not intend to enter. However, when he saw that only one other person had entered the black bear category, he signed up, figuring that at the very worst, he would take second place.

Well, he had a surprise coming to him. By the time he stepped in front of the judges, there had been three or four more new entrants.

Now he faced some real competition.

He would not get his second place award.

He would take first.

This left the rest us all shocked, dumbfounded, and awestruck.

Charlie had not intended to enter the Honey Bear category, but somehow found himself being labeled a Honey Bear, onstage with the other Honey Bears.

This is not a battle that he had prepared for.

He gave it his best, subjecting his craters to the exploratory touch of random, pink-haired females, but he did not even make it into the finals.

His friend, however, Todd Davy Crocket, who readers met at the UAA contest, did. And he won second place. This will probably seem most unfair to the first place winner that I have placed Todd's picture here but not his, but, you know, life is not always fair.

Plus, there were all kinds of categories, and all kinds of winners - short ones and tall ones and fat ones and skinny ones, the rude and the erudite, male and female, the debonaire and the debunked and I just cannot picture them all.

So I'm sticking pretty much to those I know, at least a little bit.

I was pretty certain Charlie would be devastated by that loss. In fact, he was - but he was stoic, pulled himself back together, put on the face of good humor, found out that he could still be a ptarmigan.

He resolved that there, he would rise to fight again.

I thought about the guy with the four circles curled into his beard.

Again, that bitter chill shook my body as I thought about the tooth-and-nail, hand-to-hand, beard-to-beard fight that still lay ahead for our good-hearted Charlie.

Well before the Ptarmigans, the Mountain Goats took the stage. I could not believe my eyes when I saw my own nephew, Thos Swallow from Salt Lake City, walk out onto the stage.

Oh, he used an assumed name and denied altogether that he was Thos, but a quick glance at the pictures that I took at Thos's wedding last October prove beyond any doubt that this is Thos.

How in the heck did he grow such a long, mountain-goat beard in less than five months?

And you know what?

He won! Thos won first place in the Mountain Goat division.

I was going to invite him over for dinner, perhaps even to spend the night and save a hotel bill, but he pretended not to know me, so I didn't.

At the back of the room, a gang of beer-drinking nuns and priests called on me to repent. We spoke for a little while. I warned them that if they kept drinking that beer, they might accidently break their oaths of celibacy. They assured me that they would never do such a thing.

They still insisted that I must repent.

I told them I was not Catholic but grew up Mormon.

Their eyes went wide. "YOU REALLY NEED TO REPENT!" they demanded.

Finally, the Ptarmigans stepped before the judges - including Charlie and Kenneth C. Fieber. They both fought hard, standing there, as grimy fingers that had been who knows wherre pawed at their beards all over again.

For many of the categories that preceded them, it had taken the judges quite awhile to settle upon the winner, but in just minutes, the judges announced that they had already chosen the Ptarmigan winners.

First, they announced the second place winner - Kenneth C Fieber.

The emcee put the mic to Fieber's face and asked how he felt to have come in second.

Fieber said he didn't like it. "I should be first," he said.

Let me stress that I am serious. I am not joking. Fieber contended that he should have been first.

But they had announced that he was second.

It was a done deal.

The door was open to Charlie.

Charlie was beaming, waiting to be named first place.

But then a hand rose into the air from the judges table and began to wave frantically.

A message was relayed to the emcee.

She then informed the crowd that a horrible mistake had been made.

Her earlier annoucement was wrong.

Kenneth C. Feiber had not won second place, he had won first!

Charlie won second.

Despite the setback, Charlie continued to beam.

So the contest was over for Charlie. Charlie would not get to enter the final round to battle for the Mr. Fur Face Trophy.

I suppose that if I had been functioning as the serious photojournalist that I am, I would have hung tight to the very end and would have photographed the final Mr. Fur Face, sat him down for an interview and then published his life story, right here on this blog.

But I had left Margie at Jacob and Lavina's and I hoped to get back there in time to see Jobe and Kalib before they went to bed.

I would have rushed straight out, but there was a young woman who I had been keeping my eye out for all evening: Desiree Merculieff, this year's Miss Rondy Queen.

Desiree is Unangan, from the Pribilof Island village of St. George and now lives in Anchorage.

She is the daughter of Sally and Chris Merculief, who still live on the island and who treated Melanie kindly when she spent some time working on a road project there this past summer.

And now, just when it was time to go, Desiree appeared and offered her congratulations to Charlie and Todd for their second place wins.

Sadly, she can only wear her official Miss Rondy Queen regalia when her chaperones are with her.

Although she had never been in sight of my eyes in it, she had worn the regalia to the ball, but her chaperones had grown tired and left, so we found Desiree dressed in street clothes - but still beautiful.

Her parents, Chris and Sally, are in the background with Melanie.

So here she is, Miss Rondy Queen: Desiree Merculieff - the first Alaska Native to wear the crown in 22 years. Everywhere she went, her mother told me, the Native people that saw her - especially the elders - expressed their pride and Joy in the honor that she had earned.

Sometime, before her reign is over, perhaps I can be fortunate enough to catch and photograph Desiree dressed in her full regalia. She must get permission to do an interview, but maybe we can get that permission.

No promise.

I never know what will happen in the future.

But maybe.

I said "goodbye" and headed toward the door. Before I could reach it, I found my path blocked by The Five Amigos. I drew my Canon and shot my way through them.

I stepped from the Fur Face room into the hall and was startled to find the answer to Paul Simon's lingering question, "Where have you gone, Joe Dimaggio?" standing right before me. 

Right here - Joe Dimaggio had come right here, to the Miners and Trappers Ball of the Anchorage Fur Rendezvous!

And he had ressurected Marilyn Monroe - more abundantly endowed than ever - and had brought her to the ball with him.

And me, I had the privileged of snapping the both of them as I walked by.

Think of it - Joe Dimaggio and Marilyn Monroe, together again, photographed by me in the year 2011! I ought to be able to get at least $10 million dollars for this photograph!

Then I will finally have the resource necessary to do this blog the way I want.

I will finally be able to buy another airplane.

But what if it wasn't Marilyn and Joe? What if it was just two Alaskans, dressed in costume? 

Depressed, I stepped out of the Egan Center onto Fifth Avenue only to see this airplane, flying down the sidewalk.

I had my answer! I can build my own airplane - just like this guy did. It won't cost much to build such an airplane and it won't take very long, either.

I could do it in a day.

And then I could fly all over Alaska, just like I started out doing, before I crashed the Running Dog.

It was after 10:30 PM now. I was a bit worried that Kalib and Jobe might have gone to bed already.

But they had waited up, for me.

Jacob had given Kalib one of those green dog biscuits called "Greenies" and had told him to feed it to Muzzy. Instead, Kalib had taken a bite and was eating it himself.

Jobe, as always, was simply thrilled to see his grandpa.

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With her vision going bad, Rose Albert opens her last Iditarod Show; how she came to wear her famous beret

When I was in Barrow for Kivgiq, I received an email from my friend, Rose Albert, telling me that she would be doing her final Iditarod Art show. She invited me to come. 

So of course, when it opened, I was there. The show features her paintings from along the Iditarod Trail, but she also brought a box with her, made of different woods, include alaska yellow cedar that she spent much time searching for.

She carved the box in honor of Lance Mackey, whose Iditarod racing career had appeared to be at its end when he came down with throat cancer. Mackey fought off that cancer and last year won his fourth consecutive race.

That's Mackey above with his team in a 3D image that she carved out of the wood and painted.

Rose will be at the Iditarod restart in Willow tomorrow and she will have the box with her and it will be for sale. She told me the price, but I am not going to quote it here. By my estimation, the value of the box is greater than the quote, so if any reader is a person with a good budget for Alaska Art, that reader would do well to go to the restart and pick up this box from Rose.

The show opened yesterday evening at the Alaska Native Arts Foundation at 6th and E in Anchorage and will run for two months.

Rose brought some of her personal mementos to the show from inside the box. Among them was this belt-buckle that she earned when she ran and finished the race in 1982. Rose, who was born on the Nowitna River and grew up in Ruby, was the first Alaska Native woman to do so.

That's Jeff Schultz doing a high five with Rose. When it comes to photography, Jeff is Mr. Iditarod. This will be his 31st year straight following the race. Anyone who has seen much Iditarod photography has seen Jeff's work.

His image of Dee Dee Jonrowe mushing through the Rainy Pass area in the Alaska Range was chosen by the US Postal to adorn the Alaska Commerative stamp on the 50th anniversary of statehood.

Jeff and his wife Joan are numbered among Rose's best friends.

Rose and Jeff did the high-five after sharing a joke about the painting on the wall just behind them. It shows the village of Eklutna and was inspired by one of Jeff's photographs - as were the other works on display.

Also in the Mackey box was this picture of Rose taken during her Iditarod 1982 race. Riding the sled with her is her late brother, Howard. This is the only picture that Rose has of her historic race - the only one she knows of. I feel badly about that. 

I did not know Rose in 1982, but I did hear of her and when I heard that she was going to be the first Alaska Native woman to run in the race, I wanted to cover her effort for the Tundra Times. I was still new at the paper, had not yet gained much power there and the paper did not have much money.

My request to follow or do a photo essay on her training was denied.

The next year, Rose pulled back so that her brother could run again. By then, I had a little more power and the Tundra Times allowed me to go spend a couple of days with Rose and Howard at their trapping cabin 50 miles upstream from Ruby, at Barron Slough, fifty miles up the Yukon from Ruby. Rose's dad gave the slough that name after a barron moose cow that roamed there. "My happiest memories in life were spent there," Rose says.

It was a wonderful couple of days. Someday, when I write my big -wandering-Alaska-memoire, I think I might begin right there, at Kokrines Creek.

Even though I got to spend that time with them, the Times denied my request to allow me to follow Howard on the race.  I can't blame them. I had not yet learned to fly, I did not have my little airplane, we would have had to charter an airplane and that would have been extremely expensive.

Late the following summer, in a black and tragic moment, Howard left this life behind.

I badly wanted to go to his funeral in Ruby, but the Times said no, if the paper went to the funeral of one prominent Native, then we would have to go to the funerals of all prominent Natives and that would take up too much of our time and resources.

Among the paintings hung was this one of my friend, Mike Williams, who gained fame as the Sobriety Musher after he lost six brothers to alcohol abuse and used the Iditarod Trail to launch his personal war against alcohol and substance abuse.

And this is Rose's depiction of Mike Williams Jr., Mike's son, who will be racing again this year.

This is Trina Landlord, who works at the gallery and was overseeing last night's opening. Trina keeps a blog of her own, Eskimo to the World. 

So now readers who haven't already have two new places to visit - Trina's blog and the Alaska Native Art Foundation.

Among those who came to see the show was Glenn Elliot and his five year old daughter, Abigal. Glenn grew up in Bethel but now lives in Anchorage, but works as a guide in many of Alaska's wild regions.

As for Abigal...

...she had just lost her two front teeth and was pretty proud of it.

Alice Rogoff, cofounder and Chair of the Alaska Native Arts Foundation, purchased the painting behind them for herself. Alice is also coowner of the Alaska Dispatch. Most importantly to me, when Margie broke her knee and wrist in a bad fall that she took in Washington, DC on the day of President Obama's inauguration, Alice moved us into her Washington DC guest house and let us stay there for as long as needed for Margie to heal enough to travel back to Alaska.

It was a terribly hard trip, but it would have been so much worse without the help of Alice.

And it was Alice who invited me to present my slideshow last spring at the Alaska House in New York City, which, sadly, has since closed.

As she did last year, Alice will be following this year's race in her airplane.

Rose explains to Alice why she decided she must make this her last art show. Last fall, Rose began to see streaks of light in her left eye. Then, when she started to work on this show, steaks of light would appear in her right eye and a film of mucas covered it and would not go away.

It grew harder and harder to paint until finally she went to an eye doctor. He informed her that she had vitreal detachment in both eyes and this would cause her vision to change for the worse. She also had a virus in her eyes and is being treated for it. 

"The virus is clearing up but my vision definately got worse, making it harder for me to paint in fine detail even with glasses so I use a magnifine glass now. There is nothing that could be done for me at this point unless I start seeing shadows which would mean retinal detachment and they would have to do surgery," Rose told me in an email.

Rose's beautiful Athabascan mother also had French blood in her. By the time Rose was 16, her artistic talent and desire was clear to all of her family. Her father told her that in France, the artists all wore berets and that as she has French blood in her, she should wear a beret, too.

She took her dad's statement to heart. When she is working with and showing her art, Rose always wears a French beret.

I had parked right across from the Fur Rendezvous carnival. It was cold and windy, but before I drove off, I took a five-minute stroll through the carnival. I found these kids fishing...

And this young woman from Phoenix manning a balloon-darting booth.

These two rode an amusement ride. On the first year that we lived in Alaska, we came by the carnival on a day that the temperature stood at -17 F, (-27 C) and the rides were packed, going like crazy. It looked crazy. It seemed crazy.

It was warmer than that yesterday - the temperature was above our F zero but well below the C zero - and it was still cold.

Especially with that biting wind.

What can I say?

Alaska is just a crazy place.

No way around it.

I love this crazy place.

Even Anchorage.

Which is too big and crowded for me.

I knew that I was getting low on gas, and yet I forgot. As I approached the South Birch Creek exit, I suddenly noticed the message that I had five miles to go to empty. I thought I might turn off there and head back to Eagle River, just a couple of miles away, but there is a gas station at Peters Creek which I knew to be just under five miles ahead.

So I continued on. I was a little worried, of course, but when the gas station came into sight, the message said I had one mile to go until empty. I was in good shape.

Still, to get to the station, one must drive past the station a fair distance, take the exit, turn left, pass under the freeway, turn left again, and then drive over about a quarter of a mile to the station.

So that is what I did. But when I made the second left turn I was thinking about something else and not paying enough attention.

Then I realized, all too late, that I had turned left not onto the frontage road to the station, but into the Anchorage-bound lanes of the freeway.

Just as I got back onto the freeway, the fuel message switched to "O miles to empty."

OH NO!

The North Birch Creek Exit was less than a mile away. So I turned off there, then doubled back.

So I drove about two miles on O miles to empty, but made it back to the pump okay.

When I hit the Parks Highway, I found myself behind this wide load. There was no way around it. It was a slow drive. But in time, I made it home.

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