Chicago - the blessing of fire

It is snowing outside, lightly.

Inside, Chicago is warm and toasty.

On the day that exhaustion finally overwhelms me, I take Jobe to breakfast, see Lynxton with his eyes open and take a publicity photo for National Book of the Year finalist Debby Edwardson

I am not quite certain how I managed to get out of bed today, but I did. Then, the only thing that I wanted to do was to go right back to bed, but I decided to try to stay up and make some kind of day of it. So I took Jobe to breakfast at Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant - just the two of us.

Margie stayed home to have some peace and quiet.

Breakfast was pretty interesting. The table got completely rearranged. Sugar, Splenda and jam packets wound up spread across the table, on the seats and on the floor beneath the table. A packet of half-and-half milk and cream got splattered across the seats, the table, the wall, and the window.

Jobe was content and happy threw-out. He loves to be with his grandpa. His grandpa loves to be with him.

This poor young reflected lady was among those who had to clean up after Jobe. She said she didn't mind. She said this was a kid-friendly place. Lots of mothers work here. I left a big tip... about 45 percent.

On Friday, I mentioned that I had not seen Lynxton with this eyes open since the day he was born, now three-and-a-half weeks ago. I said that I might see him Saturday and maybe his eyes would be open then. That was because I thought that after the Barrow Whalers championship game in Chugiak, I would go ahead and drive the extra 15 miles or so into Anchorage, where I could see him.

But when that game ended, I felt so tired and weary that I could do only one thing - get in the car and drive home. It was not the game that wore me out. It was the way I have been living for how long now? One push on top of another, sleep-shorted night upon sleep shorted night... Once I reached home, I got a blanket, lay down on the couch, three cats came to join me and I fell into a strange sleep, one where I am vaguely conscious of the world about me even as I dance in and out of dreams, for two hours. 

Afterward, I did not want to get up off that couch at all. I just wanted to stay there, staying in that strange and pleasant sleep for the remainder the day, through the night, all the next day, the following week and the month afterward.

But I had things to do so I got up.

This afternoon, Lynxton came to the house.

He was here for several hours, during which his eyes were open for maybe three minutes.

Here they are, open.

The rest of the time, he was sleeping.

Just like I wanted to be.

My schedule and the way that I have been living has finally caught up to me.

Lynxton's beautiful mother, Lavina.

I will tell you how tired I am. When I first tried to name the picture of Jobe and me that appears at the top of this post, I could not remember how to spell his name. Joby? Jobie?

I couldn't remember!

Finally, it came to me, slowly out of the haze that my brain now dwells in.

J-o-b-e.

Jobe.

Jobe!

This is not Jobe - this is Charlie and Jim and they are working for me.

This afternoon, I received an email from Book of the Year finalist Debby Edwardson. She wondered if I was going to go into Anchorage for her booksigning at the museum. She needed a publicity photo of herself to send to New York no later than early in the morning, East Coast time.

She said if I was not going to come in, she could drive out with George and I could shoot one here.

At first I thought, well, maybe I will go in. It will be fun.

But I couldn't. I was just too exhausted. This would be the first full day that I stayed home in how long? Long time. I could not go. I feared I might drive right off the road.

I thought maybe I could pose her by the front window, where I could get a nice, soft, shape-defining light, but then it became clear that she would not be able to get here until that light had dwindled beyond usefulness.

Regular readers know that I am an available light man. I rarely ever pick up a flash or any other kind of light. I will use whatever light is there and make it work. I did this even before digital and its high ISO's. Even on film, I shot pictures in light so low that many of my fellow photographers said it could not be worked with, but I worked with it.

If I were to shoot Debby's photo this way, it would mean lamps and such, and ISO's at 6400 or 3200 maybe.

I could get a good photo this way, yet, I knew that her publicity people would not want that kind of photo.

So I dug up a strobe light that I had not used in years. I felt very uncomfortable with it. I needed to do some test work - bounce it off this and that, at that angle and this, until I got it to shape the light the way I wanted.

Charlie and Melanie appeared at the door. So I set Charlie down with Jim, gave Melanie a large, white, flat, paper box to bounce the already bounced light off as fill and then shot a few test shots.

None of them worked. I did not get the light I wanted - but I did get this image of Jim and Charlie.

Then Debby arrived, with husband George and granddaughter Josie. In addition to being descended from a long line of Inupiat whalers, George told me that Josie is also descended from a genuine Norwegian king.

"She is a real princess," he said.

As I had not yet got my light, I conducted a couple of experimental lighting shots on George and Josie while Debby combed her hair.

I didn't quite have the light I wanted yet, but I was getting there. It would be a tight head and shoulders shot, so all that distracting stuff in the background would not be a problem.

Then I did a couple of light experiments on Debby herself, with Josie peering over her shoulder.

I still did not quite have it, but we talked Josie out of the frame and I shot it anyway - and somehow, it worked out just right.

I am not going to post the picture here, but will leave it to the publicists to do with it as they will.

Debby's book, My Name is Not Easy, a finalist for the Young People's Literature Book of the Year Award, was released October 1. As of this afternoon, that first printing of 5000 is completely sold out. Book stores across the country are asking for more.

The second printing is coming soon - I don't know how large it will be, but much more than 5,000, I'm sure.

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A ninja, cat, and absent-minded dog, met one week ago today on my way to The Loft

This is one week ago this morning, taken at a train station in Newark, from where I launched myself toward David Alan Harvey's Loft in Brooklyn. 

Right now, it is 11:15 PM and I have settled down into the home of my westside Uptown hosts, Tom and Susan Nicholson, former Alaskans and parents of the filmmaker Zac Nicholson who loves to come to Alaska and especially to Barrow.

I am exhausted. Too exhausted to do any kind of picture editing or blogging.

The only reason that I am not in bed right now is because after sweating profusely throughout this past week while walking mile upon mile, sitting, riding the baking subway and trying sleep in the sultry heat, my supply of clothing had gone bad and so I am now doing laundry.

I shared an apartment with three other workshop students. When I arrived, I found this cat just outside the door. Seemed to me like a good beginning.

Then, a bit before 5:00 PM, I joined my temporary roommates in a cab ride to The Loft. Something was wrong with the elevator, so we trudged up the stairs to the sixth floor. This dog followed.

I didn't think much about the dog until it suddenly said, "say, can you tell me if this is the stairway to The Loft?"

"Yes," I answered, "but why would a dog want to know that?"

The dog looked at me like I was stupid. "I ran here all the way from Texas just to take part in The Loft workshop and I would hate to find out that on the final stretch I had gone up the wrong stairway," he answered in irritated disgust.

"It's the right stairway," I said, "but where's your camera?"

"My camera!" the dog suddenly screamed. "I forgot my camera! I left it at home in Texas! I better run back and get it!"

With that, the dog turned, leaped and bounded down the stairs and charged out the door on his way to Texas.

I don't know what happened to him, because the workshop is over now and he never made it back.

Too bad. I would have liked to have seen his portfolio.

The train rolls again

All my regular readers know that I love trains - big trains and little trains, too. When I was boy, my family had an electric Lionel steam locomotive with a coal car, several freight cars and a caboose. Most of the time, it stayed in boxes, but every now and then my dad would let me get it out, splice the tracks together and then I would run that train late into the night, headlight shining, little puffs of smoke belching from the smokestack, until my parents forced me to shut it down and go to bed.

To make it more interesting, I would sometimes put marbles and toy soldiers, tanks, planes, jets, horses, knights in armor and such on the track. That heavy chunk of steel locomotive would blast its way through it all - and if it did sometimes derail, it was a tough thing and the crash would cause it no harm.

For Christmas of 2000, I bought myself a little HO train. I set it up briefly on my office floor and let it run in circles as my original good black cat, Little Guy, watched, chased, and sometimes batted at it.

Less than two months later, Little Guy vanished and I was left devastated. I do not exaggerate. Devastated. Truly, truly, devastated. No less so than if he had been one of the closest humans to me. Among the things I did to cope was to build a railroad in my office, about eight feet up on the wall above the floor.

Either when Kalib was a baby or before he was born, my locamotive derailed and fell into one of my fish tanks and got ruined. Since that time, my railroad has sat inactive.

But I wanted the boys to see the train go, so a few weeks ago I bought a new locamotive, broke it in a crash before they could see it, got it repaired and now the train is running again.

This weekend, the boys saw it roll for the first time.

They were fascinated. Especially Kalib. "Choo! Choo!" he shouted. "Chugga, chugga, chugga, Chugginton!" 

As you can see, especially in a larger view, the tabby cat, Pistol-Yero, was fascinated, too.

I also have pictures of Jim and Jobe being fascinated, but I will let this one do it by itself.

Come mid-afternoon, I found myself hungry for a hot dog, but there were none. So I got into the car to go get one. Along the way, I passed these firemen and this firetruck.

Can anyone tell me what year this Chevy pickup truck is?

If Scot of Metro Cafe sees this, he will know.

Later, I took a long bike ride, down past the shot-up sign alongside the Little Su, and then way beyond that. It started to rain right after I left the house, and then rained on me until I got home. It was a cold rain and it was windy and I had no jacket but only a t-shirt, but I didn't care.

If I had cared, I would have turned around and went home.

If you view this in large view, you can see actual raindrops that have fallen from the sky and are about to strike the ground.

I returned home the long way, so that I could pedal a little further. These two passed me up, but just barely. Not so long ago, I announced that I was taking this blog into retreat mode for the remainder of the summer, as the work burden on me is too great to spend more than a minimal amount of time per day on this blog.

Due to events like the Fourth of July, my birthday, visits of the boys and such, I have somewhat retreated from that retreat, but the time gun is really pointed at my head now, so I am going back into retreat. Again, I will still try to post every day, but not much.

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Warm sunshine, two boys, a cat, an uncle and a gramma

This is from almost right now - just shot these and then came in to put up a lazy blog entry. Lazy, because I slept in very late this morning and although I have had breakfast and coffee, I still feel groggy, plus the sun is shining, it is warm and the grandsons are here to spend the weekend with us.

I have much work to do - a magazine to be made press ready by Wednesday, thousands of pictures to edit and place for the next magazine after - and had been planning to work hard all through the weekend. Right now, I don't feel like it. I feel like all I want to do is to hang out with the grandkids and the cats and be lazy.

This picture really needs to be bigger to be grasped. That's why I make the slideshow, so readers can see bigger copies of the pictures, but the Squarespace slideshow setup is pretty tedious for the viewer, so, as I am only posting two pictures today, I also set these up in the "click and view" method, which, in Squarespace, is a very tedious process for the blogger, but as I only have two pictures today the tedium will not be that terrible. 

Click on the image and you will see a larger copy.

The grandkids and the good black cat, Jimmy.

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