I drop into a banquet for Iñupiat youth and Elders; Etok is elected to be the Arctic Slope's Elder's Rep; Kalib is thrilled by the fire

This is a banquet thrown today by the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation for Iñupiat Eskimo youth and Elders at the Hilton Hotel in Anchorage. I did not drive to town to photograph the banquet or the meeting that followed and I took very few pictures. I went to the banquet to meet a few young people to interview for my project. 

Here's the thing about that project - I am budgeted for 96 pages. My original layout came to 278 pages. I threw all kinds of stuff away that I wanted to keep - including many pictures that are better than others that stayed but did not tell the story as directly - and it now stands at 118 pages.

So it seems foolish for me to add even more material, yet, even if just interviews, for not a single picture that I took today will go into it, but there are still some things that I feel it needs. All these folks were down from Barrow and the other villages of the Arctic Slope to participate in the Alaska Federation of Natives Elders and Youth Conference.

Normally, I would have taken many pictures, but I have so many to deal with already that I just did not want to add too many more. Plus, I doubt that I slept for even two hours last night, so I was tired. I had little energy.

The youth and elders invited me to eat with them and I did. 

There was no Iñupiaq food - no whale, no seal, no caribou, no fish or ducks, no Eskimo donuts. It was all Hilton Hotel catering foods. Roast beef and roast turkey in gravy, red potato wedges, green beans, rolls of various kinds and pastries and coffee.

It was still very good.

There is a football field in Barrow that cost $3 million to build (and the game has proved very popular in Barrow). Luke Tetreau from Kaktovik said that if they could spend that much on the field, they should spend at least one million on school supplies. The statement brought loud applause.

Don't picture a big fancy stadium on the tundra, because there is no such thing. It just costs a lot of money to build anything in the Arctic. I had hoped to return to Barrow late this summer and photograph some games there, but it didn't work for me.

Maybe next year.

And yes, Barrow is cold now, despite the warm weather we are having here (although standing in the wind in Anchorage today, it did not feel warm at all. It felt cold.) Cold, snowy, and icy.

Hopefully, I will get back up there before too long and I will show you.

This is Etok, also known as Charlie Edwardsen, Jr. Etok was one of the original activists that launched the movement to settle Native land claims in Alaska, but he did not celebrate when the Alaska Native Land Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) was passed in 1971.

Today, he was nominated to be the Arctic Slope's Elder representative to the AFN Elders and Youth Conference and this is from his campaign speech. Etok said that he had been absent from AFN for 30 years because he considered the acceptance of ANCSA to be a sellout. He noted that no Arctic Slope Iñupiat had ever agreed to accept the act, no Iñupiat had ever signed a document of surrender, and no Iñupiat had treated or any in way agreed to give up one acre of their aboriginal Arctic Slope homeland - including Prudhoe Bay - to either the United States government or Alaska.

Therefore, he said, it all still belongs to the Iñupiat.

Now, after all these decades, he had decided to get involved again. And he won.

It is very difficult for me to think of Etok as an Elder, but I guess he is. It is amazing how many young, vital, people are Elders now.

I have yet to hear the results of the youth election.

The Reverend Mary Ann Warden delivers the closing prayer.

The AFN Convention will be held Thursday through Saturday. I do not plan to cover the convention per se, but there will be many people there who I want to see, so I will attend at least two days, and possibly all three.

As I drove away, I passed this kid on the Glenn Highway, by Merrill Field.

At home, Kalib was fascinated by the fire.

Very pleased.

Cocoon mode* - day 15: leaf melts frost, commode goes down Church, reaction to Sarah Palin's big China speech, a tooth is pulled; I blow it

This morning, there was a leaf on my windshield. It had melted a patch of frost.

As I drove down Church Road, I saw a commode coming the other way.

On Lucille, I saw this group of children waiting for their school bus.

The big talk all day in Wasilla, all over Alaska and it seems the whole USA and the world has been Sarah Palin and her big speech in China. I've visited the other blogs and online news outlets and everybody is going on about it.

Me, I'd rather show you this car driving by Wasilla Lake, as I drive the other way.

Margie lost a filling and came down with a terrible toothache. Jacob and Lavina took her to Anchorage with them and dropped her off at the emergency room of the Alaska Native Medical Center. When she was done, she called me and I headed in to pick her up. I came upon this gentlemen right here in Wasilla, at the stoplight at the intersection of the Parks and Palmer-Wasilla highways.

I have immortalized him for posterity beyond his mortal days and he does not even know it.

If you know him, perhaps you could tell him.

After she called me, Margie had to wait for an hour for her pain-killer prescrption, so the timing was just about perfect. Her tooth had to be pulled and she was in tremendous pain. She took one of two pills, but it did no good. The other pill had to be taken with food, but her mouth hurt her so bad she could not stick anything in it.

Poor woman! She has spent so much of this year suffering pain. So much! Damnit!

After I got her home, she managed to swallow some Saltine crackers. Then she took the other pill. The pain eased off a bit after that.

As for me, despite the increased number of pictures in this entry, I am still in cocoon mode. It's just that I burned out tonight. Completely. I could not do another lick. So I decided to watch a movie with Margie, something that we have not done much of together in quite awhile - although she has been watching movie upon movie upon movie, because of her injury. But tonight all she wanted to do was take her Vicodin and go to bed.

When I was recovering from my injury, I hardly watched any TV at all. I read books, and I learned to use the pocket camera, took pictures with just one hand and with that same hand pecked away at my laptop computer. I also slept a lot. It was amazing how much I slept. I miss sleeping like that.

And then one night I went to bed and I could not sleep at all. I threw away my pain killers, but still this condition persisted for a couple of months. It was awful. And now I sleep but I still don't sleep much and I am tired 100 percent of the time.

Oh, how I ramble! This is because I am burned out and don't know what else to do.

I did not want to watch a movie by myself, so I came out here, made this blog entry and since I could not work, put in a couple of more pictures than I should have, being in cocoon mode. I still left some out, though. Some good ones - even better than the ones I put in.

I am tired of working everyday. Every day! The whole damn summer passed and I did not get to take one break and do one damn fun thing (although I do have fun with my work, sometimes, especially when I was on the Arctic Slope) but I have got to get this job done.

It doesn't feel like I ever will, but I have got to.

And then I need to blow out and go to Mexico or Hawaii or Argentina or someplace for a few days. I've just got to! Brazil would be okay. I could dance upon the equator. If some of those women that you always see pictures of, undulating their way through the Mardi Gras, were to dance upon the equator at the same time as me, that would be okay.

Even when you are married and love your wife, who may or may not be with you, depending on whether she wants to go or not, it is good to watch women dance upon the equator.

Oh, hell, who am I kidding? I am not going to Brazil when this project is done. I will be lucky if I can make it to Glennallen. And any woman who tries to dance outside there had better be well-bundled, or she will turn into a popsicle.

I'm not going to proof read this damn thing, either, so if there's any mistakes, that's just too bad. I probably wouldn't catch most of them, anyway. 

Holy cow! My email just pinged. It was an Anchorage Daily News update: Former Anchorage Mayor George Sullivan has died. Oddly enough, the sharpest memory I have of him is of him sitting in a big car in the parking lot of the Sullivan Arena, named for him even before he died.

I must have photographed that moment, but who knows where the image is?

My condolences to the family and all those who loved him.

Well, he just kept rambling.

Not Mayor Sullivan - he's done rambling. Me, I'm the one who kept rambling. But I will stop one day, too.

But not today.

*Cocoon mode: Until I finish up a big project that I am working on, I am keeping this blog at bare-minimum simple. I anticipate about one month.

Cocoon mode* - day 5: Kodiak Bear tears up cross-country race course

The other day, I received an email from Leonard Barger, who coaches the Point Hope cross-country team and basketball, too. He invited me to come and photograph them as they competed in Anchorage, yesterday, or Palmer, today. Since Palmer is only 12 miles from my house and Anchorage 50, I chose Palmer.

Given the fact that I have 96 pages for this big project that I am working on and that I have already laid out about 250 pages and have some more to add before I cut it back to the 96, you might wonder why I would throw even more into the mix.

That's just how I am.

There are no Point Hope athletes in this shot. This was the first race, the girls open, and I did a few test shots to try to figure out where I ought to be when Point Hope ran.

This is not Point Hope, either. This is Kodiak Bear Dylan Anthony, who, in less than a second, will set a new record for the 3.1 mile Palmer cross crountry course: 15:42. 

Don't worry. I got some good pictures of the Point Hope athletes, but I am saving them for my publication, even though I have no idea how to fit them in. Afterwards, of course, I plan to break that publication down into several parts and run them here, so Leonard and his athletes will yet race across this blog.

*Cocoon mode: Until I finish up a big project that I am working on, I am keeping this blog at bare-minimum simple. I anticipate about one month.

Cocoon mode* - day 3: The American Flag unfurls above me; Margie must bear her crutches for two more months

As much as I just wanted to stay home and work, Margie had two doctor appointments in Anchorage and she needed someone to drive her and that someone was me. I figured if we could get back between 2:00 and 4:00 PM, I could still get in a full day's work, but a full day's work is not enough.

I had NPR on the radio and the discussion was all about 9/11. At first, there was talk about all the things that had been taboo after 9/11, but how the taboos are breaking down. After 9/11, for example, those talking claimed, no one dare say anything that could be interpreted in a negative light about firemen, either in discussion or art. Now, they said, you can criticize a fireman and make fun of one in a movie.

I can't personally think of any who I would want to criticize or make fun of, but I hate for any subject to be taboo.

They said it was considered terribly wrong to show anyone falling through the air, in light of all the people who chose to jump to their death rather than burn in the fire.

After I dropped Margie off at the Alaska Native Medical Center, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen came on Talk of the Nation to speak of how he still felt the need to have revenge taken against Osama bin Laden and all those responsible.

He was not a vengeful person he said, he did not believe in the death penalty, but that's what he felt. He wanted revenge then and still does now. Maybe, he said, in taking some of the actions that we took afterwards as a nation, we had acted like the bull charging the matador's red cape.

I pulled into the Dimond Mall parking lot, and saw this flag above me, unfurling in the breeze. I shot a series of pictures, each different, as it continually changed its shape. I could easily run a dozen shots or more, if I were not in cocoon mode.

I want to, too, but I guess I won't.

Poor Margie. When she first went to the hospital on July 26, they told her it would take about six weeks before she could begin to walk around normally. Of course, without being able to take a catscan right then, they misdiagnosed the severity of her injury. 

Today, the doctor told her that she must continue to use crutches and keep weight off that leg for two more months. She was not happy and neither was I. What can you do, though, but bear it?

*Cocoon mode: Until I finish up a big project that I am working on, I am keeping this blog at bare-minimum simple. I anticipate about one month.

Kalib at the Fair, Part 3: He charms two hot church-group chics, who then battle for his affections

Yes, Kalib saw many, many wondrous and strange sights at the fair, but the very most wondrous and strange of them all...

...was a bunch of people twirling hoola hoops about their hips. And standing out above all the rest were these two sisters, Sandy, left, and Steffers, chaperones with a church group that had driven out from Anchorage.

Kalib took note of them, all right, but, even more importantly, they took note of Kalib.

The moment the hoop fell from her hips and hit the ground, Steffers dashed out of the hoola ring and snatched Kalib off the ground, hoping to kiss him.

Kalib fought off her advance and in panic reached out for his dad.

Sandy observed this and determined that although Steffers had struck swifter, she would strike smarter. Before Steffers could even know that she was gone, Sandy dashed off, bought a new black "Big Dipper Mining Company" t-shirt and put it on over her red one.

She was certain that little Kalib would be entranced by that black "Big Dipper Mining Company" t-shirt. What little kid could possibly resist a kiss from a beauty wearing such a t-shirt?

Thus attired, Sandy advances quickly, going for the kiss. Kalib fends her off.

Oh, my goodness! Steffers, too, has run off and purchased such a shirt. She taps Kalib, who is still hiding from the first kiss attempt.

"Hey, good looking," she coos, "pucker up. I've got something special for you."

Steffers goes for the kiss and plants one right on Kalib's cheek before he can resist. Kalib likes it!

"Not fair!" Sandy squeals. "I'm the one for you, Kalib - not my sister. Let me try again."

Kalib is not quite so resistant now. The idea of a kiss from Sandy even causes him to smile bashfully.

Sandy plants her kiss. Oh, my goodness! Kalib likes it!

Kalib had been a bit leery about the idea of taking a ride on the ferris wheel, but the attentions of the two sisters so overwhelmed him that he fled, grabbed his parents hands and led them straight to the wheel. They boarded and I hopped on with them.

Here, in his mother's arms, looking down upon the world as he had never before seen it, Kalib felt safe and secure. No hot church group chicks would smother him with kisses here.

Kalib switches from his mother to his father and then looks out upon the world below with great excitement. And then... he sees something... something that he did not expect to see...

"Grandpa...?" his eyes look at me in disbelief, saying the words that his mouth cannot yet form, "could it be true? Did I just see who I think I saw?"

Yes, he did. It's them! Way down below on the ground! Steffers and Sandy, and their cousin, Jessie, who, judging by the way she is dressed, must also want to get in on this toddler cheek-kissing action.

Kalib waves at the two sisters and their cousin. "Can't catch me!" his little hand seems to say.

But then he is on the ground and it seems that Steffers can catch him. "Come to me, my little sweetheart," she coos. "You're all mine."

Sandy objects, so the sisters decide to stage a contest. They will line up, with their cousin, all dressed in their black t-shirts and see who Kalib chooses.

What they don't know is that Lavina has run to the Big Dipper booth and now wears such a t-shirt herself. Lavina will put herself in that line and then see who Kalib chooses.

Kalib places his hands on the beauty of his choice - Mom!

And it is Mom who tucks him into his car seat and takes him home for the night. "No church girl chaperones for you, Shiyazhi!" she soothes. "You're all mine, Shiyazhi!" Shiyazhi is the Navajo word a mom uses for her baby.

Kalib isn't a baby any more, but still, he is her baby. And he always will be.