The party begins with a buttery shout, progresses to flaming fire, and ends in displays of affection

The party began with a shout,"Pizzles stop licking the butter!" It was Liza who shouted, instantly causing all heads to turn to look at Pizzles as he licked the butter.

Shortly thereafter, Rex fed a piece of buttered bread to Cortney. Nobody shouted, "Cortney stop licking the butter!" 

No, this indignity was saved for Pizzles alone. True, Cortney was eating bread that the butter was spread on, yet, however one consumes the butter, in one way or another, one must still lick the butter.

Afterward, poor Pizzles begged for a piece of the bread spread with butter so that he might lick that butter too, but nobody would give him one. I am proud to say that, a little bit later, when I was eating my salmon, I gave three pieces to Pizzles. They were tiny pieces, yes, but he is a cat. He is a tiny creature. Tiny pieces for a tiny creature - just right and quite generous of me, because I wanted to eat all of the salmon - my piece and everybody else's, too.

I should note that Lisa took a little heat for calling Epizzles, Pizzles, rather than the nickname that has become the moniker of preference for him: "Poof."

This is because awhile back, Pizzles, who had always been an occasionally well-mannered cat, started to pee outside his litter box.

Poor Melanie and Charlie - they tried all the known remedies to convince a cat to restrict his peeing to the litter box, but nothing worked.

Then, they suddenly realized, "Pizzles.... Pizzzz..." Kind of sounds like the whiz of a cat peeing, pisssss. It occurred to them that everytime Epizzles heard them call him "Pizzles," he could be misinterpreting his name as an inducement to pee wherever he wanted.

So Melanie and Charlie quit calling him "Pizzles" and stuck to his other nickname, "Poof."

And sure enough, Poof quit peeing in the house.

I understand that he started to blow lots of stinkers, however. Nobody told me this, but it only makes sense.

Poof was well-mannered on this night, however, and didn't poof often, because he wanted some of my salmon and he innately understood that I do not share my salmon with Poof cats who are poofing all about.

Pretty soon, Charlie appeared with Lisa's surprise birthday cake. Her birthday was actually November 22 and we had all planned to celebrate together as a family down on my wife and children's ancestral White Mountain Apache reservation in Arizona, but then Margie had to go to the hospital for emergency surgery.

I stayed home with her, of course, but given the fact that I was in the hard, early stages of the shingles that still bother me, if to a lesser but still sometimes very aggravating degree, traveling would have been pretty hard on me, anyway.

So we had a late celebration.

It has, of course, become a tradition that no matter whose birthday it is, Kalib, joined now by Jobe, with Lynxton on deck, helps to blow out the candles. But Kalib and Jobe are in Phoenix tonight. Tomorrow, they will board a plane and fly back to Alaska.

So Lisa had to blow her candles out all by herself. Without the benefit of the assistance of little people, this process, which normally takes at least 10 or 15 seconds, happened just like that. So I did not get to snap a bunch of frames, but had to settle for just one.

This was a wild berry cheesecake, by the way, made by Melanie with assistance from Charlie - I am pretty sure it was the best cheesecake I ever tasted.

Afterwards, the glow of young love brightened up the otherwise very dim room: Lisa and Bryce.

Melanie and Charlie.

Rex and Cortney... and a reminder of young love from a different time, which feels like maybe last week to me... the young love that made all of this evening's display of young love possible... Margie.

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I go to town to take Margie to the doctor, pay the printers and look at airplanes

I had to get up very early today and it was hard. No, you would not likely call it early - 8:00 AM, but I have turned the clock upside and have been going to bed somewhere between 4:00 and 5:00 or even 6:00 AM. I don't fall into a good sleep, because of these damn, persistent, shingles, but I seem to get my best rest between 8:00 AM and noon, which is when I usually get up.

But Margie had a follow up doctor appointment in Anchorage scheduled for 9:30, so I had to get up at at 8:00 after going to bed at 4:30.

This is what Pioneer Peak looked like at 8:42 AM as we passed by on the way to Anchorage. To get the picture at all, I had to push my ISO to 3200.

Still, there is a lot more light here this time of year than there is in Barrow.

So I dropped Margie off at the hospital and drove to University Mall, where Jack of Print Solutions Alaska met me. I gave him a huge check, which I would have really liked to have kept because it could have supported us for three months. He gave me some copies of Uiñiq magazine to take home. The rest went into the mail and to the North Slope Borough in Barrow.

Maybe someday I will look at them. It's kind of a funny thing, but after I finish a big job and get the printed product back, I can't look at it for a long time.

I still haven't looked throgh the Kivgiq Uiñiq that I put out a couple of months ago. That was 116 pages. This new one is 120.

Now that it is done, I do not have a single paying job in front of me. For the moment, I do not want one. I want to work on my own projects. But pretty soon I must find some kind of work that will pay me some decent money or Margie and I will be on the street. I think we can make it for another six weeks. Maybe two months with good luck, one month with bad.

I have no idea at all what kind of job might come along. I want to keep working in the Arctic, though. I do. I love the Arctic more than I can express. Sometimes, I wonder why, because it is a tough place and it can be terribly difficult to work in, but I want to, because there is so much that needs to be done and I want to do it.

And the people. For whatever reason, the people of the Arctic tend to be good to me.

So I want to keep working in the Arctic. It is changing so fast. My eyes can sometimes hardly believe the changes I see.

This isn't the Arctic, though - this is Anchorage. Once I paid for Uiñiq and got some magazines to bring home and stick aside and never look at, I knew that I would have an hour or so until Margie was done.

And so I just started to wander and pretty soon, as always happens, I came to a place where there were airplanes. Lake Hood this time. It could have just as easily been Merrill Field.

I remember reading the story in the Anchorage Daily News or the Alaska Dispatch when this old World War II era plane wreck was recovered, but I don't remember the details. I tried to find it online but failed. I do remember they were going to restore it. Maybe someday it will make it back up there, where it can play with the clouds.

I returned to the hospital at 11:00. Margie was waiting for her medications. She asked if I could go to Jake and Lavina's and feed Marty, the calico cat. Lisa usually feeds her but didn't make it over this morning.

So I did, and as I neared their house, I saw this woman cleaning snow off her car.

I think I fed Marty, anyway. I never saw her. I looked in every room, in every nook and cranny that I could find. I called her name. I called out, "kitty, kitty, kitty."

But I never saw her.

Then I went back and picked Margie up. The doctor had removed the tube from her abdomen. He said she was doing pretty good, although they do want to monitor her blood for awhile. We then drove out to the Dimond area where Lisa met us at Red Robin.

Lisa said that in all the days that she has been feeding Marty, she has not seen her once. When she comes back the next morning, the cat food she put out the day before has all been eaten.

The two of them looked very pretty sitting across the table from me and I meant to take a picture, but I forgot. So, as Margie I waited a nearby red light, I photographed this overpass instead.

We continued on. While we were stopped at another light, this little Cessna 150 or 152 flew over us. I don't want a plane like this one. As metal planes go, they are cheap and economical but they are lousy bush planes. They are good for training student pilots and that's about it.

Still, if someone were to offer me one, I would accept. Then I would try to trade up, probably to another Citabria 7GCBC, because I loved my Citabria.

As you can see, Jim makes things hard for me. He has been in the space between my keyboard and my monitor ever since I sat down here about three hours ago. In this capture, he is simply turning around to face the opposite direction from what he had been.

I don't make him move. I just tilt my head this way and that way and work around him.

Tonight I want to get bed early and see if I can force myself back onto a schedule that comes closer to matching that of the world around me.

It is 2:29 AM right now. Maybe I can make it to bed by 2:45 and get up before Sunrise, which probably happens about 10:00 AM. Maybe a few minutes before. If you look at the time this actually posts, then you can figure I got to bed maybe 10 or 15 minutes after that.

I hope I can get some decent sleep. I've got all kinds of medications now to take away the pain and the horrid, horrid, itching and they help a little bit, but not as much as one would hope or think. In fact, the last several nights have been maddening.

I know I am not supposed to scratch, but when I get suspended in a strange state of near sleep and the itch that accompanies the pain is maddening, I can't stop myself. I scratch. I just hope this itching means that it is going away.

It has been just about four weeks now since I first knew that I was getting struck by something bad.

Thank God it was only shingles. At first, before the rash appeared, I truly thought this might be it, the affliction that would take me down. But it was only shingles. No big deal. Just a painful nuisance for awhile.

But I would like to sleep, uninterupted. I would really like to.

Tomorrow, I will post more pictures from my time of hiatus. They will be fun pictues, I promise you. 

During my time of hiatus, I took a short walk with Garrison Keillor, we got stopped by baby feet

No, the snow did not suddenly melt, nor did the sun burst up high, bright and warm into the sky. I have gone back to August 28, a date near the end of the six or seven week hiatus I took during the summer. On that day, Garrison Keillor performed at the Alaska State Fair in Palmer. My daughter Melanie, who is always thinking about her parents, bought tickets and treated us to the performance.

I did not come to photograph the performance. I just came to watch and to share the company of my daughter and wife. Of course, I brought a couple of cameras with me, because I always carry a camera or two.

In what at first seemed to be an unfortunate turn of events, Melanie and I got separated from Margie and the crowd pushed us up almost right to the corner that was highest and farthest from the stage.

Margie did find Charlie's mom, Cyndy, and so she had company even though she was not with us.

As for Garrison Keillor, he was was very, very, far away.

Still, I did bring a 100 - 400 zoom with me. By extending it to the 400 mm setting and then cropping a bit, I was able to get a few shots that showed that Garrison Keillor was actually in front of my camera, but there was no intimacy in the shots. They were distant point shots and nothing more.

I was not concerned, because, as noted, I had come just to watch, and a snap or two that proved that we had been there was good enough.

To the surprise of us all, at a certain point, Keillor left the stage and walked right into the middle of the front portion of the crowd. So he came a little closer than I had expected him to. Still, a fence separated those among whom he walked - those who had actual seats upon which to sit - from the rest of us, who had either to stand or sit upon the ground.

So I knew he would never go beyond that fence and make it to where we stood.

But Keillor did walk beyond the edge of the fence, then turned onto the path that skirted the common section. Melanie and I stood right at the edge of that path. Suddenly, the bard whose stories I have been listening to for 30 years and whose books I have read was walking straight towards us.

In fact, if I didn't move, Garrison Keillor would have no choice but to walk right over the top of me. So I scurried a person or two into the crowd and shot this frame as I fled.

I always knew Keillor was a man who wears elegant shoes.

And then he was right beside me. Back in the early 1980's, when I first heard him on the radio, I developed a mental picture of Garrison Keillor. I pictured him as tall, husky, robust, with a thick, black beard and black hair topped by a brown cowboy hat. I pictured him in Levi's and red plaid shirts.

I got his height right, and the color red, too, just misplaced a bit.

These days, I will often miss a show or two or three, but back then the only way I would miss A Prarie Home Companion was if I were somewhere out in Alaska beyond radio range. Whenver he came on, if I was not driving the car, I would lie upon the bed or couch, close my eyes so that there would be no visuals to compete with the images his words drew in my brain - images of Lefty the Cowboy, getting outflanked and dumped by a buxomy blond, Guy Noir, the private eye, who, for a time got killed on just about every show, but always managed to kill the bad guy who killed him.

Now, they both get to live.

There were the amazing sound effects of the recently deceased Tom Keith and Fred Newman, who came to Alaska with him; there was soul-soothing ketchup, be-bop-a-roo-bop rhubard pie, powder milk bisquits, children who were all above average, preachers, Norwegian bachelor farmers, Lutherans, Catholics and other brethern and sistren that he had grown up with, reworked into new characters and given a life they never expected to have.

I identified with Keillor's stories, because he could have just as easily been talking about the folks in the different Mormon congregations that I grew up in as my restless dad moved us to various places in the west, away from but anchored by my birth state of Utah.

There was always sexual innuendo in Keillor's stories, but as he aged, the innuendo gradually became blatant and the hypocrisy of some of his never-the-less always lovable characters obvious. His stories grew more and more risque, as if he were finally throwing off the shackles that had bound him while growing up. Having grown up Mormon, I could understand this, too.

And here, live at the Alaska State Fair doing a three-hour show that would not be broadcast on the radio, Keillor totally let loose and put in a performance that, linguistically, was downright ribald.

At one point, when he was still onstage and Melanie was standing right behind me, he told the young adults to take a look at that old, bent, gray-haired man standing in front of them, that breaking down old man who was their father.

Then, in rather graphic detail, which I would be happy to repeat but I know if I do, I will get scolded by my daughters who would laugh if Conan O'Brien uttered words of the same nature, he described that old man as a young man and went into some detail about the blast and how he made the young person's mother pregnant.

It might be hard for the young people to think of their dad like that, Keillor lectured, but they should be grateful to him for it, or else they wouldn't be here.

With Melanie standing just behind me, I felt a little self-conscious - but it also put my mind back to the night she was conceived. Theorectically, it could have been any of a few different nights in the right time period, but I know it was that night. I knew it at the moment - and what a special night it was. And what a wonderful gift came to us as a result.

And there she is, just to the left of Garrison Keillor - the very pretty, black-haired lady, holding a blue jacket, laughing at whatever it was that Keillor was saying at that moment, ribald or not.

Cats. Keillor doesn't talk about them near as much now as he used to, but in the earlier days, hardly a show went by without a cat being inserted into a story.

He even made up a song about Alaska cats.

As it happened, in the early 1990's, a cat moved in with us and then over the next few years I created a number of cat books. Since Garrison Keillor loved cats and I loved listening to Garrison Keillor, I knew that if I sent those cat books to Keillor he would love them so much that he would call up the right publisher and just like that, my cat books would be published.

He would have me on his show and we would talk knowingly and humorously about cats, my books would sell by the millions and thus my cats would fund my work for the rest of my life.

But Garrison Keillor never wrote back.

Years later, a package came in the mail, along with a letter from a Keillor staffer who said she had found my cat books in a box sitting in a back room somewhere. She did not even tell me if Mr. Keillor had ever even laid eyes upon them.

I decided that he must not have. If Garrison Keillor had looked at my cat books, then surely he would have loved them; surely he would have passed them on to the right publisher and we would be old buddies now - thanks to all those times I had appeared on his show to talk about cats. My work would now be financed for the remainder of my life. I could travel the Arctic at will in my restored airplane and I could have a second plane that was faster and could go farther without a refill. Whenver I felt I needed a break, I could fly off to India or Brazil or Tahiti or wherever I wanted and when Margie wanted, she could come, too.

I still have faith in my cat buddies. Right now, it looks we are plunging toward disaster, but I continue to believe that sooner or later, the cats will come to our rescue and everything will be okay.

The stroll was fairly short and soon Keillor walked back to the stage and resumed his performance. I was pleased to have had such an experience. I had not expected to get close to him at all. I knew it would never happen again...

...but it did; real quick. Keillor returned to his crowd walk and this time he brought the beautiful Heather Masse with him. They sang as they walked.

A little bit ahead of them, some baby feet protruded into the air. I knew that Keillor would pause when he reached the baby feet, because no one who had a heart could pass by without wanting to stop and give those baby feet a squeeze. Most people couldn't get away with making a baby feet stop and squeeze - but Keillor could.

So, staying low to the ground, I skedalled over to those feet and positioned myself. Sure enough, when Keillor reached them, he stopped and reached out to give those baby feet a squeeze.

Keillor squeezed the baby feet, first together and then just the left.

And then, accompanied by Heather Masse as well as some in the crowd, he sang to the baby: "Wise men say only fools rush in, but I can't help falling in love with you..."

It kind of looks like Keillor is a holy man, giving the baby a blessing. Or perhaps, he positioned his hand there to feel the spiritual essence of the baby. A logical person might surmise that Keillor is just using his hand to shade the baby from the sun that was beating down upon it when Keillor first spotted it, but, look - Keillor's hand is in the shade of his own body, as is the baby.

I prefer to think that Keillor cupped his hand over the baby because he wanted to feel its spiritual essence. It was a spiritual moment; it truly was. You can hear that spirit in the song.

Up until this moment, I had mostly been keeping crouched pretty low to the ground so as not obstruck anyone's view, but even though I did not come here to take pictures, I'm still a photographer and when I see a picture developing in front of me (as I do in every waking moment) I want to get it.

I needed a higher angle, so I could include the baby's face in the photo. I popped up and got it and as I did, someone shot a little video of the moment and later put it on YouTube. Here it is. You can hear a few measures of the song and then decide for youself about whether or not it was a spiritual song.

The song ended. Keillor and Masse left the baby, passed by the concession and beer tent and then moved on through the crowd. I took a few more pictures, but you get the idea.

Near the stage, the duo of Keillor and Masse brought their walking performance to a close.

By following them, I had figured out how to work myself through at least the outer edges of the crowd, so I was able to take this picture when they brought the show to a close soon after. This, and many of the other pictures, don't really work at this tiny size, but you can click on them or view the slide show to see larger versions.

Now, it was my intent to run back up, find the blessed baby and see what the family had to say about what they had just experienced.

This plan failed. The show had lasted well over three hours and so the urgent crowd moved in mass toward the "rent-a-cans." I got swept along.

By the time I escaped and pushed my way through the anxious mob, baby and parents had disappeared.

I was hungry. I rejoined Melanie, found Margie and Cyndy and then we all set out in search of food - which is found in abundance and at high prices at the Alaska State Fair.

I had been thinking that I might get a turkey leg, but changed my mind and went for a blue corn tamale.

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I pick Margie up at the hospital and then drive her through insane traffic and panicked moose safely to our home

I slept with my iPhone right by my ear and so was awakened a bit before 11:00 AM by Margie's call to tell me that she would soon be released and so I could come in and get her.

11:00 AM - sounds very lazy. But I had not been able to go to sleep until 5:00 and I ran out of Vicodin two days okay and while it is possible that I could call the doctor and get the prescription refilled I have decided that I don't want to take it anymore and will just tough it out. I did not sleep that good. I bet my shingles woke me up AT LEAST 30 times. Maybe I should rethink that decision. We'll see. So, even at 11:00, it was very difficult to get up, but I did not want to leave my wife in the hospital, so I got up.

When I reached her, I was a little dismayed to learn that she has a plastic tube going into the place were her gall bladder used to be. Fluids drain out of that place into a little bag that she keeps safety pinned to the inside of her shirt. She must bear this burden until November 30, when I bring her back to see the doctor again.

Still, you can see that she was happy to be getting out of the hospital and headed toward home.

Anyone who read yesterday's post has probably already figured out that the building seen through the window is the hospital - the Alaska Native Medical Center.

Soon, we were on the Glenn Highway, headed toward the Parks Highway and home. As you can see, the traffic was absolutely insane. For some reason, when I look at this picture, I hear that old TV jingle that used to accompany Chevy commericials on TV: 

"See the USA in your Chevrolet..."

Back then, our family car was a Ford.

And today, I was driving a Ford.

Ford Escape.

"See the USA, in your Ford Escape..."

There were school buses roaming about, packed with studious kids who would have preferred to remain at school, but now had to go home.

About this time, a text came to our phones simultaneously. Margie was free to look at hers. It was from Lisa. It was an iPhone shot of her and Melanie, in Carrizo, Arizona, White Mountain Apache Tribe, standing with their Grandma Rose, Margie's mom.

Finally, we were in Wasilla, headed up Lucille Street. Just before we reached Metro Cafe, this moose crossed the road in front of us. When you see moose crossing the roads right in front of traffic and often dying in the process, they seem like pretty stupid animals. But I think in the woods they are pretty smart. Not as smart as bears and wolves, but pretty smart just the same.

If they weren't, they wouldn't still be here. The bears and wolves would have got them all and then the poor ravens would have had to make do without their moose carrion. It's just that living in the woods for how many tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or milliions of years, moose had no need to learn about roads so they didn't. They didn't even bother to develop the capacity to learn about roads.

Now they are undergoing a crash course and maybe sooner or later the survivors will ultimately evolve to the point where they figure it out.

They might even start driving cars themselves; they might run over us, sometimes.

I asked Marige if she wanted me to pull into the Metro drive through but she just wanted to go home.

The moment we got home, Margie asked if I would take a picture of her with her iPhone so she could send it in return to Lisa and Lisa could show it to Rose and all present so they would know that their mother and daughter had made it home safely.

So I did.

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The first surgery went well, but...

Margie's first surgery went well, but she did not get to come home. For all of yesterday and into this morning, we thought she would likely be released early today, the second surgery could be scheduled for later and we could still make our planned trip to Arizona.

But it was not to be.

Five gall stones were removed from her, but they left a blood infection behind and it must be treated or it could become very serious. So she is still in the hospital, she will have her second surgery tomorrow and, for now, our trip is off.

Lynxton is still going, though. Tomorrow, he will head out with his parents and his big bros. They will fly to Phoenix, overnight there, then drive up to the White Mountain Apache reservation. The introduction of Lynxton to his Apache and Navajo family will begin.

Melanie, Charlie and Lisa are also scheduled to go.

It will be a different kind of Thanksgiving here.