Three cats on a shaded tin roof in Bangalore, India

I feel compelled to let readers know that, in addition to this blog, Grahamn Kracker is running a series of photos of Indian felines that Melanie and I met during our recent trip - most notably the three above. He fell way behind, but now he is getting caught up again.

You can follow that series right here.

Kalib goes away - I wonder how he will have changed when next I see him, six or seven weeks from now? (Part 1)

Very early this morning, Kalib (and his mother Lavina and grandmother Margie, my own dear wife) boarded an Alaska Airlines jet and headed for Phoenix. From there, he and Lavina were going to a workshop in Flagstaff and Margie would meet her sister and head back to her native home, the Fort Apache Indian Reservation, home to the White Mountain Apache Tribe.

Later, Lavina and Kalib will join them. Jacob will go down, too.

Shortly before they boarded the plane, we all met at the home of Kalib's Auntie Melanie in Anchorage.

Kalib found a stool to get under.

Those are Charlie and Melanie's tomato plants behind them. Tomotoes don't work around here if you plant them outside - the growing season is just too short. So they planted them inside.

We were all going to go to Arizona for an Apache Sunrise Dance that Margie's sister was going to be a Godmother for, but a relative of the medicine man died and so it has been put on hold for a year.

Margie had not secured her ticket yet, but I still had mine from last year, when I didn't go because I wound up in the hospital. That ticket had to be used this month or go to waste, so I gave it to Margie.

After giving Kalib a diaper change, his dad tossed him around a bit.

They will be gone for three weeks, but when they come back, I will be on the Arctic Slope until late July. So I will not see them for at least six, maybe seven weeks. I hate to think of all that I am going to miss. He will practically be grown up by then; he will be reciting poetry, and batting a baseball.

I will wonder where the time went and how I missed it all.

Kalib and Diamond.

We all decide to go and check out Lisa's new apartment. Kalib is first to the door.

He walks away from Melanie's Duck Downs apartment toward the car.

He does not get into the car, but onto his dad's shoulders who walks over with Charlie. It is still hard for Margie to walk very far, so we drive. Melanie comes with us because she knows where the new apartment is and we do not.

Immediately after this scene falls behind us, we hear Kalib scream in grief. He did not like to us drive away without him.

Inside Lisa's empty kitchen, Kalib watches Juniper go for the fake mouse. Lisa and Bryce moved because they have not had water in their old apartment for the past month. Their landlord ignored all their pleas to get the problem fixed.

So they moved. Now, the next battle will be to get their $1000 security deposit back.

Before we left, Kalib tipped over a box and out came this cat thermos. Melanie was amazed. The thermos is her's and she has been looking for it for awhile. She was a little chagrined with Lisa. Lisa said that she had planned to return it sometime when Melanie was not home.

Then Melanie would have returned and there it would have been. She would have wondered if she was going crazy.

One year to the day after I drove Murthy and Vasanthi to the Arctic Circle, Melanie and I arrive in Bangalore; Soundarya - the bride-about-to-be with kittens

This is Soundarya Ravichandran and while I have wanted to return to India ever since I first came in August of 2007, she is the reason I came now. Tomorrow, she will become the bride of her soulmate, Anil Kumar, and Melanie and I will be there. 

I first met Sandy at the wedding of my niece, Khena, to her cousin, Vivek and there has been a strong bond between us ever since. I consider her a soul friend and I call her "Muse," because ever since I met her, whenever I am taking pictures, I try to imagine how the images might interpret my world to her.

In fact, there are many, many, many pictures in my portfolio now that I took specifically for her. She has actually seen only a very few of these images, as it would be too great of a task to either post or email, or even process them all, but I have them and she is the reason.

Not long after we met, I promised her that, if it were at all possible, I would come and take pictures at her wedding when it happened.

So here I am.

And here is she, with a kitten born to a feral cat at the house of Vivek's parents, who are hosting Melanie and me.

And here is Melanie and me, reflected off the window of the Seattle airport train that takes passengers from one one course to another.

Melanie, in the Mumbai airport.

A little girl in the Mumbai airport.

Forty-one hours passed from the time I drove away from my house to when we met Murthy and Vasanthi at the Bangalore airport. Murthy then summoned his favorite cab driver, Gulpi, and then brought us to the house, where Vasanthi made us coffee.

She makes it with milk and it is the best coffee that I have ever tasted. 

As we ate lunch, Sandy picked up my camera and turned the tables on me.

In India, it is polite to eat with your right hand, so I am exercising good manners here. Vasanthi is also a great cook. If she were to resettle in Anchorage and open her own restaurant, Wow!

Sadly for me, I love spicy food so much that I spent a few decades overdoing it and now the doctor has forbidden me to eat it, except a little bit every now and then. And when I overdo it it, I know it real soon.

But in India, the food is spicy. And so good.

One year ago, on May 8, I drove Murthy and Vasanthi up the Haul Road to the Arctic Circle and then on to Cold Foot. I had planned to take them on a whale watching cruise in Prince William Sound, but Murthy had read about some folks who had crossed the Arctic Circle on the Haul Road and then received a certificate attesting to the fact that they had done so.

He was convinced that the government had a little station there where they awarded everyone who came across with such a certificate and his highest goal was to go get one.

I knew that there would be no such station, but, along the way, I managed to find a place in Fairbanks that did issue such certificates to tour groups, and so I picked up a couple and at the circle awarded them myself.

Now Murthy has the certificates hanging on the wall for all who enter to see, along with the picture that I took of him and Vasanthi at the sign that marks the Arctic Circle.

The beautiful little girl is their granddaughter, Vaidehi, who lives with her parents in Chennai, on the coast.

Sandy and the two kittens. I will post more of the cat series on Grahamn Kracker's No Cats Allowed Kracker Cat Blog when I get the chance.

Vasanthi, Soundarya and Natarajan, their father and grandfather. 

Easter Sunday, part C: We eat and hang out

Remember those strawberries that I photographed in Carr's yesterday? Here they are again - desert, on Easter Sunday, 2009 at the Hess home in Wasilla, Alaska.

The main course was ham, mashed potatoes, potato salad and green beans. Even before dinner, we could not stop ourselves from eating eggs. When it came time for the strawberry shortcake, Kalib wandered about, mooching off of whomever he saw eating in front of him - in this case, Mom.

Charlie borrowed my guitar for awhile and filled the house with wild music. As for the guitar, it is a martin and I first saw it in the display window of a music store in Globe, Arizona, in 1976. I went inside, the salesman got it down for me, I took a seat, and played a bit of Bach on it.

Never had a guitar sounded so good in my hands. I had to have it. It cost $1800 and my annual income was $10,000. I didn't care. I put some money down on lay-away and kept paying until that day came when I could finally pick it up and bring it home.

I did love that guitar and I even played it in a master class with Christopher Parkening. Many people used to think that I was really good, but that was only because they did not know better. I knew better.

There is only one way to be really good on the classic guitar, and that is to play and play and play and play. Practice, practice, practice. I'm a photographer, I'm a writer. I hardly have time for both. How could I be a classical guitarist, too?

So I put the guitar aside, because the only thing that I could do with it was to play works that other people had composed, that other guitarists could interpret much better than I could - but I can create originals with a camera, and keyboard.

Once, during one of those times that I have mentioned when I was broke and in dire need of money, I took this guitar to a pawnshop right here in Wasilla. The fool behind the counter asked me how much it was worth. I told him.

He laughed loud and scornful, asked me what kind of fool I thought he was. At most, he said, it was worth about $150 - he had seen a lot of guitars and he knew - so he would loan me maybe $50 for it.

So I walked out of his store with no money but my guitar in its case, leaving the fool to think that he was very clever, with no idea of the profit he could have made had he given me a loan that reflected its true value, if I had then defaulted.

I often imagine that the day will come when I am able to do nothing but sit at home and write my books, and that I might then find myself with a little time to play the damn thing again.

But really, I don't think so.

As Lisa looks on in bemusement, Melanie reads a few lines from the Anchorage Daily News, concerning Wasilla's most famous resident. These are the words that she read, ""April 6, 2009, Juneau, Alaska -- Responding to the missile test by North Korea, Governor Sarah Palin today reaffirmed Alaska's commitment to protecting America from rogue nation missile attacks." 

Both of my daughters were most amused. 

Juniper came out with Lisa. We were all happy to see her, but she was unhappy the entire time that she was here.

As for the blue golf-ball, Kalib got to hunt Easter eggs twice this year. The first time in Shonto, Arizona, down in his ancestral Navajo home. There, he found an egg that designated him as a prize winner - he won a toy golf set, with a minature plastic golf cart and minature clubs, but large, blue, plastic golf balls, including this one.

Uncle "Tiger" Caleb was greatly pleased.

Melanie and Lisa continue to engage in little verbal battles, which they smile and chuckle through. Many such duels arose today, and I was at the center of at least one.

Melanie asked, "Dad, is there any way to play music in the house?"

"Dad's not anti-music!" Lisa retorted.

"I didn't say he was!" Melanie shot back.

Then everybody chuckled.

Later, their bellies full, Melanie and Charlie walked out to Melanie's car so that they could drive to Eagle River and eat a second Easter dinner with Charlie's parents.

Remember what I said when Melanie left after her last visit? It always comes to this. Every time she visits, she leaves. Every single time.

Lisa stayed longer, but, then, just before 10:00 PM, she carried Juniper to the car, came back in, passed hugs around and then she, too, drove away.

Yes, it always comes to this.

Easter Sunday, part B: Kalib and Muzzy compete to see who can scarf up the most Easter eggs (C still to come)

Not so long ago, I was hiding eggs so that this guy could toddle out to search for them. Now it is he who hides eggs for a toddler to find. 

Jacob hides an egg in plain sight atop an upturned 5 gallon bucket. As he searches for a place to put the next egg, Muzzy grabs the one that he has just hidden and eats it.

The eggs are all hidden now. The toddler comes out to find them.

Kalib finds his first egg, right on the porch. He will grab it and then, just as though he had been doing this all his life, will put it in the Easter basket his Mom made for him.

Kalib grabs another egg.

And still another. Muzzy has already stolen a couple more.

Kalib spots a blue egg and goes for it. He does not seem to see the pink one - yet.

Kalib grabs a plastic shark egg. It has candy inside it.

Kalib snatches an egg off a septic vent. Don't worry, with Jacob's help, we replaced that septic system a decade ago - much farther back in the yard.

Kalib drops another egg into his Easter basket

Muzzy eats another egg.

There is still some ice atop this water. Kalib plunges his hand in.

Kalib battles Muzzy for the last egg. With Dad's help, Kalib will win. Muzzy has already eaten at least half-a-dozen. He doesn't need anymore.