Jesse Sanchez: the Barrow Whaler who showed up at the championship game wearing pink

Jesse Sanchez of Barrow wore pink gloves onto the playing field last Saturday when the Barrow Whalers met the Nikiski Bulldogs in the state championship game.

Sophomore starter Sanchez did it to remind spectators - and anyone who happens to see this photo - that October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month and to encourage them to support both the battle against cancer and the women afflicted by it in any way they can.

His own mother has had two bouts with cervical cancer, so Jesse knows what the fight is all about.

So does his sister, Mariska, a Barrow cheerleader, who got into trouble for wearing a t-shirt in support of breast cancer patients emblazoned with the words, "I love boobs" to school.

As readers know, the Whalers lost that championship game.

Yet, even within that loss, they scored their little wins here and there.

Jesse's pink gloves was among those little wins.

Now, as for me, my time is so full and I have so much that feels so impossible that I must accomplish over the next four or five days that I am putting this blog on "one picture a day" mode. Don't be surprised if I miss a day or two altogether - like I did yesterday.

Once everything is out of the way, I anticipate having a brief period of time when I can go at this like it is really what I do.

Sleeping Lynx update; accident blocked by and seen in rearview mirror; those who root for the opposition

Today I drove into Anchorage to do a little work with some young people who had come down from the North Slope to attend the Elders and Youth Conference, held in conjunction with the Alaska Federations of Natives Convention. At lunch, I dropped by Jake and Lavina's where I got to see baby Lynxton.

As usual when I see him, he was asleep.

He is growing and needs his sleep.

I left early, a bit after 3:00 PM, because I have much production work that needs to be done and will have almost no time for AFN this year. As I entered Wasilla, I saw what appeared to be a pretty bad traffic accident. There were a number of vehicles involved, spread over a wide area on and off the highway, at least three ambulances, several police cars and some fire department vehicles.

A victim was being strapped onto a backboard.

Soon, the accident became a shrinking image in my rearview mirror and I drove off toward home - just like we always do after we come upon an accident.

Still, as I drove away I thought of the oft-quoted John Donne line, the one that inspired the title of one of Hemingway's most famous books: "Ask not for whom the siren wails - it wails for thee."

Or something like that.

And yes, it has wailed for me so many times... for my brother Ron, for Margie's father Randy, her sister Melinda, Anil, husband of my soul friend Soundarya followed so shockingly and rapidly by Soundarya herself... and these are just a few. The list is long... long... long... altogether too long.

As usual, I wondered why The Creator of this earth designed things this way. Many people of varying faith claim to know. Me, I don't know.

Tonight, I searched online for some information about the accident, but could not find anything. If there had been fatalities I am certain I would have found something.

Still, lives were undoubtedly changed... I hope not too badly, and I hope not irreversibly. 

Tonight, among others, I began to edit my pictures of the final two Barrow Whalers football games.

I came upon this image of the cheerleaders for Nikiski, running the track just before the championship game.

I know I will not use it in my publication, because if I do, that would be one less picture of the Barrow kids that I can put in and that publication will be for them and their fans.

So I use it here, and will hope that some of the Nikiski cheerleaders happen upon it.

View images as slides

After the game tears were shed

click to enlarge.

This is not the trophy that the Barrow Whalers football team had hoped to take home to Barrow. This is the State Runner-Up 2011-2012 trophy. They wanted to take home the State Championship trophy. I wanted them to, too. Badly.

Instead, Nikiski, a team that the Whalers had previously beaten, took that trophy home.

Still, the Whalers accomplished something that had never been accomplished before. They are the first Barrow Whaler Football team ever to go to state - and they won their division championship.

That's North Slope Borough Mayor Edward Itta, who presented the trophy to them, standing with them and he told them the same thing. On the left is assistant coach Brian Houston.

I took quite a few pictures at the game, but other than to grab this, I haven't looked at them yet. I suspect my very best picture(s) will not be of the action - although I hope I got a couple of decent ones there - but of the emotion and tears at the end.

If I should publish one or more pictures of these tears on the printed page, and I suspect I will, do not be embarassed, Whalers. The tears you shed today did not come from weakness. If you had been weak, you would not have fought on this field in the first place. If you had been weak, you would not have cared enough to have shed tears. These were tears brought on by strong desire, passion, hard effort, hard work and struggle.

As painful as they were, it is good that you could shed such tears.

And one day, those who follow you in future seasons will take that championship trophy home to Barrow.

I hope I am there to photograph it.

Those with whom I did not crash; I glimpse Lynx asleep; sharing breakfast apart

I am not a person who fears flying at all. Whenever I board a plane, I am solidly confident it will carry me to my destination safely. When we are in the air and suddenly find ourselves getting smacked around by turbulence that gives some passengers a big scare, to me it is just like being on a bumpy road - a bit uncomfortable but no big deal.

Yet, after I boarded the completely full Alaska Airlines flight that would carry me from Barrow to Anchorage and the jet took off, I suddenly found myself thinking that if by chance this proved to be one of those extremely rare flights that didn't make it and it crashed with 100 percent fatalities, all the people riding in this plane and I would die together.

It struck that we would then all share a very intimate experience. What would it be like? Would we be aware of it? Do we have spirits that would float about the site for awhile, those of us who are strangers to each other introducing ourselves for the first time, those of us who already know each other visiting and musing about what just happened? Would we be in mourning for those living that we had left behind? Rejoicing to meet those dead who had left us before?

I don't know. But it was kind of fun to think about, so I raised my camera over my head, pointed it behind me in such a way that I knew it would catch me too and took this picture of myself with my fellow passengers, so that, if we all died together, this moment could be remembered.

But we didn't die. We landed safely. Margie picked me up at the airport and then drove us to Jacob and Lavina's. Lynxton was now just over three weeks old and this was only the third day that I had seen him. Just like when I returned from New York, he was asleep.

The day of his birth is the only day that I have so far seen him awake.

I expect to see him Saturday.

Maybe he will be awake then.

Margie had been staying with Jacob and Lavina to help out, but now she came home with me and we brought Jobe with us. As usual, on my first morning home, we went out to breakfast, at Abby's Home Cooking.

Abby had the radio on, tuned to a local country station. She had the volume turned very low, so that one barely noticed the music as it played in the background. Basically, one song blended into the next, each almost indistinguishable from the other.

Then, I heard the opening notes to a familiar guitar riff - it was Johnny Cash, going into "I walk the Line." The volume remained low, but suddenly the song filled the restaurant. It grabbed me and held me. I was locked into every note, every word.

When Johnny, who I once spent an afternoon with, quit singing, the music once again fell into the background, hardly noticeable, one song indistinguishable from the next.

That's because Johnny Cash was genius - great - the other performers merely good.

When Margie and I have any of the boys with us, we iPhone pictures back and forth with Lavina and Jake, so they will know how whatever child is staying with us is doing at that moment.

So I took this iPhone pic of Jobe to send to them. 

"Cuteness!" Lavina texted back. Then she followed with a text informing me that Kalib was missing his grandma and wanted to see her.

So I had her wave at him and then sent this picture.

"He smiled," Lavina texted back.

Then she took a picture of baby Lynx with her own phone and texted it to us.

We looked at it.

We smiled.

We then finished eating breakfast, 50 miles apart together.

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I fly home to Baby Lynx

As usual, I documented my trip home, all the way from New York to Wasilla. But I am way too tired to edit, post, and write about that trip and those pictures and it was all pretty routine, anyway, so I am just going to share this one image with you - the one that mattered most to me.

Baby Lynxton, who I had not seen since the day of his birth, almost two weeks ago.

Baby Lynx, asleep in Anchorage, on the couch of his parents.

Baby Lynx, who will be two weeks old tomorrow.

Now I've got to go to bed.

Just too tired.