Flight 192: Fairbanks to Anchorage, 8:25 PM departure; scheduled arrival: 9:25 PM

I walk through the jet way tunnel to board Alaska Airlines Flight 192 in Fairbanks, headed to Anchorage.

Being a man who always likes to sit by the window, I had requested, and won, Seat 7A. I entered the cabin to find a man already sitting in that seat; he was a big man, burly. His countenance was ornery. Still, by rights, 7A was mine.

"Sir," I spoke politely, "I'm afraid you are sitting in my assigned seat, 7A."

"No, this is 7C," he answered. "My assigned seat!"

"No," I held my ground, "Seven C is the aisle." I showed him the designations, "A" window, "B" middle, "C," aisle.

He muttered and grumbled angrily, but got up and stepped into the aisle. I stepped past him and took my seat by the window. Still muttering, he sat down in 7C. Throughout the entire flight, he would not say one kind word to me. He would glare at me continually, even when he was asleep.

His anger did not thwart the other passengers. They just kept boarding, as you can see above.

The man with the hand-held lights directs the airplane away from the Fairbanks terminal, toward the taxi-way.

I had boarded in a state of great thirst and eagerly looked forward to the beverage service. The flight from Fairbanks to Anchorage is so short that this service is minimal - your choice of orange juice or water, or you can buy booze. 

I wanted water. The cart ladies appeared beside us. They served the people in the one row ahead of us and in the two rows behind us. When they started to push the cart, I thought the lady in the back would stop beside us, and ask us what we wanted to drink.

I craved that water!

But the cart did not stop. It went right past us, and kept going until the cart ladies had positioned themselves just beyond the fourth row behind us. There, they began to serve passengers in the rows immediately in front of and behind them.

All the people in my row, on both sides of the aisle, kept looking back at them with disbelief. We were all parched. I figured that was what had made the guy who I had evicted from my seat so ornery. He was parched.

And now we were all outraged, as well.

Parched and outraged.

We did not let this injustice stand. A steward came by, to pick up empty cups. We made him go get us some full cups so that we could empty them.

As we neared Anchorage, it began to snow. I liked the way the snow looked in the aircraft lights.

In the final stages of our taxi run on the tarmac, even before we reached the gate, a man about four rows back suddenly undid his seat belt, jumped up, retrieved his baggage from the overhead bin and pushed his way to the very front of the aircraft, putting himself ahead of even the first class passengers.

The aircraft then pulled up adjacent to the jet walk way and then stop. Just about everybody stood up then. We all waited together. Some people talked on their cell phones. We waited some more.

After we waited for a spell, we kept waiting.  

Then came the voice of a stewardess over the intercom. She informed us that the worker in charge of pushing the jet walkway up to the plane so that the doors match had been on her way, when suddenly she had stopped, turned around, and went back the way she had come.

Something was wrong with the jet walk way. Now, they were going to roll some steps up to the back door, so instead of deplaning from the front of the aircraft, we would deplane from the back.

As you can see, the announcement caused great levity and amusement throughout the airplane.

So we walked to the back of the plane and exited. As I had been sitting so close to the front, there were very few people behind me - only the passengers from row six, first class, and the man who had so rudely got up and pushed ahead of everybody.

Now, he would be the last one to exit the aircraft.

Many people were pleased by this.

Nobody fell during the perilous walk across the icy tarmac. We then had to enter the terminal through this door and climb these stairs. A passenger ahead of me asked if this meant that we would wind up in a different part of the airport then we would have if we had deboarded through the jet walkway. He was worried that whoever was going to meet him at baggage pickup would go to the wrong baggage pickup.

An Alaska airlines worker assured him that we were in the very same part of the airport that we would have been had we debarked from the front, instead of the rear, of the aircraft.

I only had to stand by the curbside for about five minutes before Melanie drove up to pick me up. 

I was disappointed that she did not bring her kitties with her. It is always fun when the three of them pick me up, but she came alone. It looks like she is talking on her cell phone, but she is not. She is talking to me. We are talking the kitties and why she did not bring them.

Still, I was very glad to see my oldest daughter. I am always glad to see her.

Factoring in the stop for gas and her cautious driving on the icy roads, it took about an hour-and-a-half for Melanie to drive me to Wasilla. Then we stepped into the living room and found it to be strangely devoid of people. There were cats and a St. Bernard roaming about.

From far in the back of the house, I could hear the sound of a baby giggling and a woman laughing. So Melanie and I went back to investigate and this is what we found.

Please note the cat laying behind the pillow. That's Pistol-Yero. As for the sling in front of the pillow, I wore it every damn day for four months, but I don't wear it anymore.

I don't know why it was lying on the bed.

It just was.

Wasilla vs, Barrow; home team vs. home team

So there I was in Fairbanks, trying to photograph six middle school teams from the Arctic Slope as they battled their way through the Challenge Life tournament. It was crazy, because the tournament was organized so that three games were always being played simultaneously and whenever one of the teams that I needed to photograph was playing on one court, at least one more was playing somewhere else.

Sometimes three played at once - in three different games - and I needed to photograph them all!

I would do a quarter here, a quarter there, then run back here...

In one of the quarters, Barrow's Hopson Middle School Lady Wolves battled the Wasilla Warriors.

Three of my children were Warriors. Whenever I go to Barrow, everywhere I go, people say, "welcome home." I know the people of Barrow much better than I do those of Wasilla. I feel a sense of community when I am in Barrow that I do not feel in Wasilla, but I am completely comfortable in my Wasilla house, with my Wasilla family. In fact, in all the world, my Wasilla house is the most comfortable place I can be - but isolated from the community.

So who was I supposed to root for?

Wasilla (red) won the game and moved on to the championship playoffs. Dajonnae Harris is the Wasilla girl. I know her name only because she stayed in the same hotel as me and was standing directly in front of me this morning in the continental breakfast waffle line. By the time I complete my project, I will know the name of the Barrow girl, but right now I do not.

I shot many pictures and have not yet had time to even glance at them, but I wanted to run a frame from the Wasilla vs Barrow game, so I grabbed one from there real quick. 

Maybe I will run a few more pix from the tourney on this blog, maybe I won't. I won't do a thorough edit of them until sometime in December, but maybe I will grab a couple more at random and put them in here tomorrow, or perhaps the next day.

Maybe I won't. Depends on if I can find the time.

Reunion at IHOP as ravens fly outside - sled dog, utlralight and Charlie; Melanie tricks me out of my large Pepsi

It is kind of a Sunday tradition around here for me to take whomever of my children might be about to IHOP for breakfast. Today, that meant Caleb. Our waitress was Kimberly. She was friendly and chipper, and brought coffee and multiple-flavored creamers immediately, then took our order.

Kimberly turned then away from our table, saw some people standing right behind her and shrieked. They shrieked too. Then they all started hugging. Some of her family members had come up from Kodiak, and had surprised her. Above, she hugs her brother.

I am not certain if this is Kimberly's sister, sister-in-law, good friend, or what, because I had to let her work, and let them eat, so I did not ask many questions. I did give Kimberly the address to this blog, though, and she can add any information that see might like in "comments."

I then looked out the IHOP window and saw ravens flying, including this one, mysteriously trailed by flying saucers. Some might challenge me on this, note the uncanny resemblance the saucers bear to the lights in IHOP and argue that there must be a connection.

That's the trouble with this society - even when you have photographic proof, the skeptics stand ready to shoot you down.

Down towards Chugiak, I saw this flying object in the sky. Now, what do you skeptics have to say about this?

And here is a sled dog, a member of the team owned by Diane Benson, Tlingit poet, playwright, actress and former candidate for Alaska's lone seat in Congress, mother of the Iraq war veteran, Latseen Benson, who is making a life for himself despite the fact that he lost his legs in that country. If you are curious, you can find the story on my other blog, the one about cats, beginning right here.

This is Charlie, in the parking lot at Taco Bell. None of us had expected to meet here. In fact, I had been out and about and had planned to go back to my house for a few minutes - just long enough to fix myself a sandwich and then go pick Margie up from work. But when I stepped into the house, my nose was struck by an aroma most foul.

Muzzy had pooped on the floor. Muzzy is not the kind of dog who poops on floors, but when I saw the various piles he had left in an array spread before the back door, it was obvious that his tummy had gotten upset. I was wondering what to do about this when Caleb drove into the driveway, coming from wherever he had been, and then walked into the house.

I decided to let him deal with it, but I had no desire to make a sandwich as he was doing so, so I headed off for Taco Bell. Along the way, Melanie and Charlie pulled up beside me in Melanie's little car, then followed me to the parking lot.

"What are you doing here, Dad?" Melanie chided in her reprimanding tone. 

"I'm going to get lunch," I said, "and then go pick your mother up from work."

"Why are you just getting lunch now? It's too late! And I can't believe your going to Taco Bell!"

"I can't believe you grew up in my house and can't believe I am going to Taco Bell," I countered. "Get in, and you two can come with me and then we will go pick up your Mom and get coffee."

Soon, we were at the drive-through and when it came time to order drinks, Charlie said he didn't want one and Melanie asked for a small Pepsi. "And I'll have..." I began.

"A small Pepsi!" Melanie interrupted me, "order a small Pepsi!"

"...a large Pepsi."

"Dad! A large Pepsi? Why? I can't believe it!"

We got our food and drove to a place in the parking lot where no cars were and stopped there to eat it.

"Dad," Melanie said as I reached for the large Pepsi. "Charlie and I need to share one drink, so you take the small Pepsi and we will share the large."

Did she think I would fall for this?

"No," I said. "I want the large Pepsi." I reached for it, but suddenly felt bad for Charlie. He had insisted that I let him pay for it all and it would not be right for him to now only have half of a small Pepsi - even if it was his own fault for not ordering a drink to begin with.

So I drank the small Pepsi - which was not enough to wash down a quesadilla and a burrito - as they shared my large Pepsi. Then we went straight to Wal-Mart, picked Margie up and headed to the nearest coffee shop. Charlie tried to pay again, but I wouldn't let him. You could say that I put my foot down, and when I did, the car moved forward and we drove away, because the gas pedal was beneath my foot.

And this event happened, right here, in Wasilla, Alaska.

Some readers might get confused, and think that it happened in Amarillo, Texas, but it didn't. It happened here. In Wasilla.

We don't go to Texas to get coffee. Everything is too small down there. We feel enclosed, trapped; we scream for elbow room, whenever we are down in Texas.

That's the trouble with living in Alaska. Afterwards, no other place can stack up. Outside, it all falls short.

Wasilla: Halloween drive to Anchorage to send Kalib south; New York City: On the way to the Met I walk by a bus

I barely get home from New York City and all of a sudden I find we must send baby Kalib to Arizona. This means a drive to Anchorage, where we will pass him off to his mom and dad at a Halloween chili feast. Margie dresses him in his St. Bernard outfit, buckles him into his car seat and then gives him his little fish book, meant to be read upside down.

As we pass through downtown Wasilla, three blocks from the wisdom of Main Street, we pass by a fender bender. Perhaps it would not have happened had the drivers been cruising Main Street instead of Lucille. Unlike Main Street, even Governor Palin knows that a great deal of foolishness takes place on Lucille Street.

As we approach Wasilla Lake, we happen upon a hitchhiker. I do not pick him up. To see a larger copy of the image, just click on it. This is a good example of the modern day beautification of Wasilla.

Before we can reach "Mocha Me Crazy," we are passed by a white dog in a red 4x4. To better see the dog, click on the picture. 

Needing a bit of a caffeine kick to continue, we pull up behind the pick-up parked at the drive-through window of "Mocha Me Crazy." I witness money being exchanged for coffee.

Then we pull up to the window. As we wait, a truck appears on the highway in front of us.

Next a school bus comes by. I see no students in it, only the driver.

As we sip our coffee, we pass by Pioneer Peak. 

We approach Anchorage, where hot steam rises through the cold, still, air.

As we drive toward the Native hospital, Providence hospital looms in front of us. I think about my two stays there in June. It is a great hospital. I owe Providence so much - in more ways than one. Damned insurance company. Their rep lied when he sold me the coverage so long back - said that if anything happened to me in out in the roadless areas, the insurance would cover my air ambulance bill. That air-ambulance bill came to about $40,000. Insurance says they do not have to pay it. 

That's not all they're not paying. Damned insurance company.

When people speak of the deplorable state of health care in the US, they always talk about the huge, growing number of uninsured. They need to talk more about the problems of being insured.

But I love Providence hospital. Thank you, Providence, for what you did for me.

We stop at the day-clinic at the Native hospital, because Lisa works there and wants to see Kalib before he goes to Arizona. I wait in the car, by the words that honor our convicted Senator, Ted Stevens. The Native hospital has always cared for my family, myself excluded, and by and large it has done a good job. I believe it is the best Native hospital in the country - because of Senator Ted Stevens.

So much in this state that is good is there because of Senator Stevens.

Whether he was rightly convicted or wrongly convicted, this has been a sad, sad, sad week for Alaska. 

We arrive at the Halloween chili eating party at Duane Miller & Associates, an engineering firm. Melanie works there and invited us so that we could sample her pumpkin chili. "20,000 moose can't be wrong," her little sign, the one that promoted her chili over the many other vats made by other employees, beckoned. Here is the pumpkin chili cooker (and it was tasty - spicy - hot - the hottest of the four chilies that I tried - and the best) holding Kalib before he leaves for Arizona.

Melanie had been very worried that her brother, Jake, my oldest son, would not show. She wanted to show her engineer brother off to her engineering firm coworkers. But he did show, and then he and Lavina took Kalib from us and headed off for Arizona. 

Charlie, Melanie's boyfriend, got into the picture. It is a good thing he is standing behind everybody, because he came dressed as a 70's man, in big 7o's style, baby-blue bell bottoms and a shirt with ruffles - not to mention an absurd sports jacket. He looks ridiculous.

That's the same kind of clothes I wore to my wedding reception. At least Margie looked beautiful, her lovely dark skin and long, jet-black hair set off against her white dress.

And now I back up to Wednesday of last week, in New York City:

I had intended to make tonight's New York entry a series of subway pictures. But it is too late and I am too tired. So I put in this bus instead. I took it as I walked to the Met. It looks like this guy Dexter must be a killer or something. 

Physically fit and mentally alert, Gwich'in Matriarch Hannah Solomon Celebrates her 100th birthday

 The men do an honor dance for Hannah Solomon: 

See the mural on the wall above Hannah, seen here in the center of a men's honor dance to honor her on her 100th birthday? It is more than a just beautiful painting to Hannah. It is a depiction of the life that she actually knew in her early days. The mural is why Daisy Solomon, Hannah's daughter, chose this place, the Chena River Convention, for the party. "It is the life she lived," Daisy said.

Many of us know something of the robust life that is lived even now in Alaska. The same foods that were important back then are important now, but these days the activities involved are accompanied by the roar and whine of snowmachines, of boat propellers churning their way through water, fourwheelers bouncing over rough trails, and the drone of that airplanes that make the long distances that separate us short.

Back then, it was much quieter and a journey to even a nearby place could take days.

Hannah was born in the Old Rampart on the Porcupine River, not far from the Canadian border, on October 10, 1908 into just that kind of life.

Two hours before the honor dance:

The party began with a great feast, Athabascan style - salmon, both roasted and smoked; moose, caribou, probably a beaver or two, plus salads and such. Unfortunately for me, I was still on the highway, slowed by the storm, driving from south and I did not enter the hall until the final bites of dinner were being swallowed.

I did get there in time to see a woman give Hannah a gift - a story knife. When several people gather, whoever holds the knife is the one who speaks.

Hannah Solomon on her 100th birthday - doesn't she look good!

Thinking that she needed help and being eager to give it, a great-great grandson blew out the flames on the two "0" candles. Hannah wanted to blow out the "1" candle herself. She took a deep breath...

...and Hannah blew the candle out. I wonder what she wished for? Whatever, I hope it comes true.

Hannah had two more birthday cakes. One featured a frosting picture of her when she was young. 

The other a more recent frosting picture of Hannah. Click on the cakes to see them larger.

After blowing out her candles, Hannah received a warm round of applause.

As her longtime friend and fellow Native leader, Poldine Carlo, sings an Athabascan song for her, Hannah Solomon raises her hands and, moving them up and down, dances in the traditional way, even as she remains sitting.

 Blessed not only with a strong, healthy, sound body but a clear and sharp mind, centenarian Hannah Solomon addresses her well-wishers. She expressed her joy at seeing the gathered crowd, as they represented what she had worked and fought so hard for - especially the six generations of her family. "My family have been the most important thing to me. I met my goal and my birthday would be nothing if my family wasn't here."

Numbered among those who came to honor Hannah was U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski. Murkowski praised Hannah not only for being a leader and inspiration to the Native people of Alaska, but to all Alaskans.

Many came to honor Hannah and to present her with plaques and awards, from organizations such as Tanana Chiefs Conference and Doyon Ltd (above) to State legislators Reggie Joule and Woody Salmon (far left).

Scott Fisher, Hannah's pastor from the St. Matthews Episcopal Diocese, honored her with a plaque, and then a kiss.

  

Mary Beth Solomon, daughter of Hannah's late son, Jonathon Solomon, gives her grandmother a kiss.

As his sons stand behind his mother, Peter Solomon, Hannah's youngest, tells how his mother and father raised the family on the land and taught them to love and protect it. Anywhere one walks in America, Peter said, that is Indian Country. He also put in a plug for Barack Obama, as did other speakers.

As they thank God for Hannah's good life and ask Him to bless her future, Hannah grips the hands of those who pray for her.

  Hannah Solomon with her daughter, Hannah Solomon. Hannah gave birth to 17 children and is also matriarch to 68 grandchildren, 138 great-grandchildren, 122 great-great grandchildren and 30 great-great-great grandchildren. 

When her son, Paul, named after her late husband, spoke of what a good mother she had been, Hannah radiated love. Paul had to leave early to return to the nursing home where he lives. "Someone help me up, so that I can kiss my son before he leaves," Hannah asked.

Hannah stood, and kissed the hand of her son. Behind her, dressed in red, is her daughter, Daisy, who led the effort to organize the birthday party. "My mother has been an excellent teacher," Daisy told those gathered. "She's guided all of her children and their children on how to treat each other. She's always been a very gentle woman, even when my brothers were in trouble as kids."

Soon it was time to jig. Backed up by a group of talented musicians, Bill Stevens, master of the Athabascan fiddle, made the music.

The jigging began with the men's honor dance.

Then the women honored her. There are three Hannah Solomon's in this picture, by the way. At the car left is Hannah Solomon's daughter-in-law, Hannah Solomon, wife of her late son, Jonathon, her daughter, Hannah Solomon, and of course, Hannah Solomon, the Gwich'in Matriarch herself.