Martigny and Baby Kalib march in lockstep

For today, this is it. Just this picture of baby Kalib and Martigny, marching side-by-side past Muzzy.

I am feeling very lazy, that's why. Plus, I'm sick. Got a bug. Maybe I got it from Kalib.

So this is it - a tiny glimpse at a tiny moment in a tiny slice of life, right here, in Wasilla, Alaska.

Baby suddenly starts to dart about house, goes wild, wreaks havoc

All of a sudden, Kalib is able to scoot, crawl, and while he can't yet walk outright, he can shuffle about on his feet by grabbing hold of things like the edges of couches and coffee tables to support himself. Hands against the wall are a pretty good source of support as well.

And all of a sudden, today, he scurried all about the living room and the kitchen, raising hell.

He gets into a little pantry.

I leave grandma to deal with his mischief and retreat to my office. I step back in about ten minutes later and find that he has crawled onto the lower run of this end table. He has a Pepsi bottle and is shaking it vigorously. Margie is dumfounded. "Thirty seconds ago, he was on the other side of the room," she insists.

Again, I retreat to my office.

When next I step back into the house, he is getting into the cupboard beneath the microwave - far from the last position that I saw him in.

Everything that is in the cupboard, he pulls out. 

Kalib closes the cupboard door and goes for the broom.

He pulls the broom down.

He tests the bristles for texture.

Then he gives it a good shake up and down.

Grandma snatches him from the floor. While I spend all but a few minutes of the day in my office, he keeps her on the run continually. But I must tell you - she does not begrudge him. Margie delights in his company.

In the evening, we celebrate Jacob's birthday. He is much older than four, but four candles is what we have, so four candles he gets. As his dad prepares to blow out the flames, Kalib reaches out to grab one. Dad acts fast, and blows it out just before Kalib's fingers close down on it.

He put in a pretty darn good day.

Thanksgiving Day, 2008 - Part 1: We are thankful that Muzzy is not lost, that good people shovel snow, and that Boxcar Bean is a cat

Before we headed to Anchorage to eat Thanksgiving dinner at the home of my youngest son and his wife, my oldest son and I took a walk with his St. Bernard, Muzzy. We soon came upon this sign. It gave me two feelings - one of sadness for the dog and its people, and one of thankfulness, on this Thanksgiving Day, that Muzzy is in good health and plain sight.

My heart and best wishes go out to Caramel and her people.

We walked up to the top of the hill behind the marsh, where a new, small, subdivision was recently built. There we found Bob and Samuel shoveling snow from their driveway.

Later, in the afternoon, we drove into Anchorage and entered into the home of Rex and Stephanie. There we found Boxcar Bean resting on a chair.

You can find the story of how Boxcar Bean joined this family on my other blog.

Boxcar Bean.

Boxcar Bean, Melanie and Kalib on Thanksgiving Day, 2008. It is now 2:05 AM on the day after Thanksgiving. I plan to put some images up from the feast that we all shared, but first I must get some sleep and do a few other things once I get up. I will then post the pictures as quickly as I can.

ISO 800, 100 percent clip.

All of these images were shot with my new pocket camera, the Canon Powershot G10, successor to the G9 that I started shooting after my injury and that I have built most of this blog with. I often visit photo forums such as DPreview and the official word there and other places seems to be that the high ISO's on the Canon G10 are worthless - "unusable" is a word that keeps popping; that one should not even shoot a G10 above 1S0 200. 

They said (and say) the same thing about the G9, but I often used it at high ISO's. So I have extended an invitation to some of those who don't believe you can shoot above 200 to come here and take a look and that is why I have pulled these two 100 percent clips from two of the above Boxcar Bean images.

Certainly, there is noise, just as there was grain in so many of the old films that I used to love, like black and white Tri-X and T-Max 3200, and certainly the high ISO images do not match the ones from the high end DSLR's, such as the Canon 1Ds III that I was shooting when I fell, but I find the high ISO's very usable. They allow G10 shooters to get images that they could never get if they stopped at ISO 200.

You can catch the mood, the feeling, the emotion, the action... it might not be so plastic smooth, but what the hell...

ISO 1600, 100 percent clip.

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.

Sarah Palin keeps popping up on the TV, dogs, cat, fourwheeler, boy, house, library at sunset

Everytime I came within sight of a TV today, Governor Palin was on it. One thing that I find a little odd is that since I came to Alaska nearly three decades okay, I have met every governor, except one; I have photographed every governor for publication, except one; I have interviewed the majority of the governors.

Of course you figured it out. The one governor that I have not met, photographed or interviewed is Sarah Palin, the one who lives in the same town as me, the one whose father was a substitute teacher to my own children.

When I got the idea for this blog, I did not even think about Governor Sarah Palin, only about documenting life in Wasilla, getting to know my community a little better while still getting away from it from time to time, and of experimenting to see if I could create a new kind of platform for my work, which has always been print based.

So, I thought that one day, when the time was right and I had the time, I would start the blog. Then Governor Palin became VP candidate Palin, and even though the time was still not right and I had very little time to spare, I decided I had to launch.

I suppose it is inevitable that I will photograph her one day. Perhaps I will interview her, too. True, I voted for Barack Obama and there was much about Governor Palin's campaign that greatly disturbed me, but the Anchorage Daily News endorsed Obama-Biden and she still gave them an interview, just the other day, when she let them into her house as she prepared dinner.

Here are some other Wasilla scenes that I saw today, when I was out and about without a TV in front of me:

Man riding a four-wheeler.

Charlie, the frisky pup who I first met yesterday.

Charlie again.

Varmit, the tiny cat who hangs with Dan, a camera-shy but friendly disabled veteran who I often talk to when I go walking.

Another dog.

An under-construction house in upper Serendipity. This just makes me sad. For over 20 years, these woods were mine, and I was not in the field, I was in them daily, walking, skiing, mountain biking. Then this damn Serendipity development comes along and now I must stay out of the woods, walk on roads, with houses all about. There is no place to pee. Back then, a person could pee anyplace he felt like.

A boy in the post office. His mother has dropped something on the floor. They looked good together and I wanted to photograph them together, but by the time she picked whatever it was she dropped up, I was being waited on, and had to give my full attention to the clerk.

The Wasilla Library, as I found it when I came out of the post office at 4:30. I heard this library mentioned by Governor Palin a number of times on the TV over the past couple of days. She cited it as an example of the absurdity of all the untruths circulated about her during the campaign. One of the rumors that she cited was the falsehood that she had banned books - even Harry Potter - from this library.

As I recall, she never did ban a book, but she was reported to have asked the librarian if she would be willing to ban books. The librarian said, 'no.' Sarah Palin fired her. This resulted in a community uproar and Sarah Palin hired the librarian back. No books were ever banned.