They'rrrrrrre baaaaack.... in the blog: Jobe, Lavina, Kalib, Jacob and Margie - in that order

How long has it been since this face has appeared in my blog? Six weeks? Something like that. And look, in this, the very first frame that I shot of him upon our reunion, he is just standing around. STANDING around. Not wobbling shakily. Standing.

As though it is no big deal at all. As though it is just something that a little kid would be expected to do.

Jobe. 

Standing around.

And he walks around at will, too.

I was worried that after all this time, he might have forgotten his grampa. Remember how he loved me? How he adored me?

Has he now forgotten me?

After a brief period of study and contemplation, he walked right over and sat down on my lap. He had not forgotten.

And then he went out to play with Martigny. Martigny did not not want to play with him. Maybe it was the "woof" on his shirt that scared her away.

I'm afraid Jobe has been sick the past couple of days. Respiratory infection. 

Jobe needed rest.

Still, he gets up and moves happily around. He is getting better.

Then Jacob called, to say that he and Kalib were coming home from their walk and would soon reach the nearby park. I went out to see and this is the first frame I shot, right after they came into view.

Last time I saw them, there was a still a good amount of snow here. Now the leaves have come out.

Kalib went straight for the slide. As he started down, he looked up at his dad to see what his dad would do.

His dad came sliding after...

Kalib threw some pebbles into a slide chute and then watched as they tumbled and slid back down.

Then he ran off and his dad chased after.

Soon, they were in the house, eating popsicles. When offered a variety of colors, Kalib chose the green one. Then he saw his mom pick a red one for herself and decided that the red one would be better instead.

I also had a red one.

The red ones are best.

Although the green is pretty good.

It was about 10:30 PM now. Margie's flight was scheduled to arrive at 1:38 AM. I had come in early just so I could finally see the boys, but Jobe was now asleep and the rest would soon join them.

That meant I had three hours to wait.

The prospect horrified me.

What I could I do with all that time?

I could go sit in a bar and sip root beer, wink my eyes at honkey tonk women and say stupid things as they danced and sauntered across the floor.

Instead, I laid back on the couch. I sank right into it.

I closed my eyes. The lids were so heavy, I did not feel like I could ever open them again.

I fell asleep right there. At 1:09 AM, I forced myself to get up and go. I drove to the airport and picked Margie up. Her plane had come in half-an-hour early and she was standing there waiting when I pulled up, so I stopped, she put the one bag that she had left with in the back plus the other that she had bought and filled in Arizona and jumped in. 

I took off without even taking a picture.

As regular readers know, it is our tradition to go out for breakfast the morning after either one of us returns from a trip.

So this morning we went to Family Restaurant - no, not Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant but Denali Family Restaurant, just a few miles further up the Parks Highway.

I would not have even known about this brand new restaurant had I not gone to Fairbanks to cover Katie John's graduation, but I saw it as I drove home.

If they had named it, "Mckinley Family Restaurant," I would never have tried it. I would not have walked through the door. I try never to patronize a business that bears the name, "Mckinley." I stick to "Denali."

Inside, it was very much like Mat-Su Family Restaurant. The decor was similar, the menu similar, the food similar and the plates exactly the same. Even all the staff that I could see, including the waitresses, were staff I recognized from Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant.

So I thought maybe it was an extension, built by the same owner to compete with him/herself.

No. It wasn't. It was built by a competitor and the staff that I could see had all been hired away.

Breakfast was very good - the hash browns cooked just right and, I hate to say it, better than at Mat-Su. 

I will still continue to patronize Mat-Su. It is a bit closer. And Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant has helped me bear some extremely hard mornings. Very hard mornings. Mornings that followed nights of turmoil and grief, nights without sleep.

So I will keep going to Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant.

But I will patronize Denali, too. Good hash browns are a big draw to me.

Margie enjoyed it, too.

It was the first time she had drank coffee in weeks, she said. 

She stayed with her sister, who remains a pretty active, decent and abiding Mormon. She allows visitors to brew coffee for themselves, but Margie did not feel like brewing coffee for just one so she abstained.

Tomorrow, I will discuss a recent NPR story about the health benefits of coffee - particularly for the prostate - and will thank a generous, almost not-anonymous lady who bought me a coffee at Metro the other day.

Margie is glad to be home, but she says it feels cold here.

"I have come back to winter," she said.

This, even though the leaves are sprouting out here and it snowed three inches at her sisters house 6000 feet up in Arizona her final morning there.

Still, it was warmer there than here.

Which it ought to have been.

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(warning - slideshow contains additional photos of Jobe and Kalib not seen in the actual post)

Simultaneous major events - when lone me needed to be three; red pickup truck; Jim

Man! My recent travels and work schedule have left me too exhausted to even make this blog today, but if the pilots above can fly their helicopters when I am exhausted, then I ought to be able to make a post.

As regular readers know, I have spent the past few weeks zipping about the Arctic and Interior by plane and car, shooting from one location to another, bouncing from 0 degrees F to 65 above and doing it all with many nights of little sleep.

Yet, I only accomplished about one-third of what I wanted to, what I needed to. In this time period, three major events that I needed to cover and be present for took place almost simultaneously.

One happened in Arizona, and I had planned to go. I had my airplane ticket. It was the one-year tradtional Apache memorial for my cherished friend, the Navajo artist, poet, song-writer, cartoonist and humorist Vincent Craig, whose bedside I had rushed to on May 14, 2010, only to arrive hours before he died. The memorial would take place on May 14, with preliminary events scheduled for the evening of May 13.

Before I learned of the memorial, I had planned to be on the Arctic Slope at the time, or maybe in the Brooks Range village of Anaktuvuk Pass, but when Vincent's wife Mariddie called to invite me to the memorial, I dropped those plans. I cashed in my miles for an Alaska Airlines ticket to Phoenix, Arizona.

From spring through fall, I do not like to leave Alaska to go anyplace where the night gets truly dark, but if there was going to be a memorial for Vincent, then nothing could keep me away - not darkness, not work, not any other event... well... almost no other event.

One month ago today, I dropped Margie off at the airport so that she could go to Arizona before me and spend some good time with the Apache side of our family. Afterward, I stopped by the Alaska Native Medical Center to visit my friend, Larry Aiken.

There, I happened upon Bruce Cain, director of operations for Ahtna, the Alaska Native Regional Corporation whose territory includes most of the Copper River basin. Bruce informed me that 95 year-old Katie John would be receiving her honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks at ceremonies to be held in Tok on May 13 and Fairbanks May 15. 

What a quandary! My heart told me that I HAD to be in Arizona for Vincent's memorial. My heart also told me that I HAD to be in Tok and Fairbanks for the honoring of Katie John. I had a history with Katie as well, and the way circumstances had played out had made me the only journalist to cover first hand the final, critical events of her story, particularly when she met with Governor Tony Knowles at Batzulnetas on the bank of Tanada Creek and turned his heart away from what all the major non-Native voices of power, money, and influence told him he must do in the best interest of the State of Alaska and instead toward justice for Katie and Alaska Natives.

I had also spent time in her culture camp. It was while I was landing on the road in Mentasta to cover her victory celebration that I had crashed and destroyed my airplane. After I crawled out of the cockpit, I shook that personal disaster off and I covered that celebration.

With this history, how could I miss the honoring of Katie John - a one-time event in the life of one of Alaska's true heros and most important people?

I couldn't miss it. I had to be there.

I snapped the picture above, by the way, as I walked down Seldon Street the morning after I returned from Katie's honoring.

So I set off to Point Hope and then Barrow with plans to return to Wasilla on the evening of May 8. This would give me time to take care of business, prepare an essay on Katie's history, square some things away and rest up a bit before I drove off to Tok.

Yet, on Friday, May 6, I borrowed a snowmachine from the North Slope Borough's Department of Wildlife Management and made my way across the Barrow ice to the camp of the Saggan whaling crew, captained by North Slope Borough Mayor Edward Itta.

I did not intend to stay beyond one evening. I went there intending to get a single picture, one of the Mayor at whale camp that I could put in Uiñiq along with a statement from the Mayor.

After I took a few pictures from which I could select, my plan was to visit other whale camps as well as the "perch," where scientists and whale counters were conducting a bowhead census.

Yet, after I reached Saggan camp, I saw the good spirit and enthusiasm of the crew. I saw how strongly they desired to receive the gift of the whale and to feed their community. I had no way to know if they would succeed, but if they did, I wanted to be there to document it.

Come Sunday, May 8, the ice conditions made it apparent to me that they would not be able to get their whale before my flight was scheduled to leave. I decided that I could still get everything done that I needed to do if I waited until the night of Tuesday, May 10, to go home.

Come that night, I pushed my departure back one more day, to the night of Wednesday, May 11. This would be pushing it, but would still enable me to get back to Wasilla in time to accomplish the bare minimum of what I needed to do before making the six hour drive to Tok.

Shortly before I left, the lead closed. Saggan crew pulled off the ice.

Sometime after I boarded my plane, Saggan returned to the lead, which had reopened. Twelve hours after I left Barrow, their bowhead came to them and they landed it.

I was thrilled for Saggan, but devastated for me. Utterly, utterly, devastated. I had missed the moment by so little.

Yet, there was nothing to do but my laundry, take a short night's rest and then drive to Tok and Fairbanks to cover the honoring of Katie John.

What does one person do, when three major events that he longs to be at happen simultaneously?

As frustrating as it is, I do believe that I made the right decision.

This honor will come to Katie John but once in a most significant lifetime.

I needed to be there. I was there.

And tonight, Margie will come home. Tonight, I will see my grandsons - who left for New Mexico and Arizona even before she did - in what feels to me like about ten years ago.

So I plan to put them on this blog tomorrow. This also means that I will push my promised posts from my Arctic travels back until next week.

In the meantime, here is Jim yesterday in the backyard, where the buds now sprout into leaves.

Brief stop at home - Jimmy goes crazy, won't leave me alone for a moment

I stepped into the house at about 1:30 this morning, looked down the hall and saw Jimmy step out of our bedroom. He saw me, and came bounding straight to me. Since then, he has refused to leave me alone, whether I be sleeping, eating, feeding fish, computering or whatever.

He is simply all over me - climbing on my lap, my shoulders, stepping onto my keyboard.

And now I must leave him again.

It is off to Tok I go, where Ahtna Matriarch Katie John, also known as Alaska's Rosa Parks for her long fight to take back her traditional fishing rights after the state tried to take them away, will be honored. On Sunday, she will receive her honorary PhD from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

And congratulations to Saggan crew in Barrow for landing a whale this morning.

I wish it had come while I was still there with you on the ice, but the important thing is that it came and the people of Barrow now have that much more to sustain them.

I know - the picture is a blur. I don't care. Seems appropriate to me. Life's a blur.

Cats, sticks, ducks, geese, fish, Time Immemorial and oatmeal, with nuts, berries, peaches and milk

I've just got to move along, get this blog out of the way and get on to other things. Yesterday, after I posted the series that ended with beautiful Molly, I took a decent walk, and then a fifteen-mile bike ride.

On the walk I saw Jessie James, peering at me through the sticks.

I saw that the ice had melted off the tiny pond the kids named "Little Lake" when they were little. Geese and ducks had stopped by to visit, perhaps to make goslings and ducklings.

Melanie and Charlie invited those of us who were not in Arizona over for an Easter dinner of salmon, halibut, salad and potato salad.

Oh, my goodness... was it good!

Poor Bear Meech. He wanted it but he couldn't have it.

Then we went to the play, Time Immemorial, written, directed and acted by Allison Warden and Jack Dalton. 

Here is Allison and Jack, after the play.

I wish I had time to write more and to edit and post a few pics from the play, but I don't.

This morning, just before I woke up, I got a call from Niece Sujitha in Bangalore. She asked me what I was going to have for breakfast. Oatmeal, I told her. She wanted to see proof, just in case I changed my mind and went out to breakfast again.

So here it is: my oatmeal, with black berries, peaches, walnuts and milk.

Jim joined me, but didn't eat any.

Or maybe he just used my knee as a stepping stone, on his way to another place.

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Margie, the fork, and Jim

As you can see, I caught Margie with a fork in her hand, ready to eat Jim.

"No!" I shouted. "Don't! You can't! Jim is my buddy! And he'll give you indigestion!" Actually, Jim is very healthy and he would not give anyone indigestion. I just wanted her to think that, to discourage her from doing it.

"Oh, my!" she answered in shocked voice. "What did I just about do? It's because I'm so hungry I can't think straight. Jim is my buddy, too! Oh, poor Jim! What did I just about do?"

I gave her an orange. She ate it. 

Everything was okay after that.

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