Charlie shows up for Margie's birthday driving a 1962 Oldsmobile Starfire, clad in the Party-Wear shirt Melanie bought him in India

Charlie had talked about this car before, but I was still very surprised to see it in the driveway. He had first spotted it at the home of a man who lived several blocks from him. It was white, then, just like when it came from the factory. 

Charlie knocked on the door, met the owner and asked him if he wanted to sell. The owner said that he had never thought about selling it, but after giving the matter some contemplation, said he would sell it for $1200. Charlie couldn't go for it.

A couple of weeks later, he made a cheesecake (Charlie makes excellent cheese cakes) and took it to the man. "How about $800?" he asked.

"No," the man said, "but the cheescake sure is good. Thanks!."

A bit more time lapsed and then Charlie got a call. "I'll take the $800."

The engine had not been started in how many years no one knew for certain, so Charlie washed the cylinders out with oil and then got it going without too much difficulty.

He and his dad then rebuilt the engine, he painted it as you see here and today drove Melanie out here.

Royce, the orange cat, was mighty impressed.

So I was I. It reminds me of an incident from my childhood...

Well, I hear knocking on my wall. That mean's its time to go into the house and celebrate Margie's birthday.

Four standing portraits; my health care/Obama comment on New York Times website gets top number of reader recommendations

One week ago today I took portraits of four individuals standing still that I had intended to post that very day. However, I got distracted by Pia and her tomatoes and so did not.

On Saturday, I took many pictures, but I do not want to edit them right now. It is well into Sunday morning and I want to go to bed as soon as I can. So I am going to hold them for tomorrow and post last week's standing portraits instead.

This is Dillon, a reincarnated gangster from the 1920's and he has dropped by Vagabond Blues in Palmer to pick up a little "protection money" to insure that the coffee shop does not fall victim to the local bad elements.

I jokes! I jokes! 

It's just Dillon, a kid in a cool hat, and the money that the barista holds came from our own Charlie. He was buying coffee and pastries for us all.

And here he is, Charlie, one week ago today at Vagabond Blues. As you can see, Charlie is a man of the world. He, Melanie, and his dad should right now be camped out in Charlie's dad's boat, somewhere out in Prince William Sound, not far from Seward.

They wanted me to come and I desperately wanted to, too, but I couldn't. Not because of Margie - she is doing much better and between Jacob, Lavina, and Caleb, she would have been covered. The fisher trio will not be coming home until Monday afternoon, and I just have too much work to do to take that kind of time off right now.

I just hope they bring us back a salmon, a halibut and a rockfish, because they are hoping to catch all three.

We saw this cat standing in a mud splattered car, about four blocks from Vagabond Blues. I hope it heals, soon.

Given what has happened to both Margie and me over the past 14 months, it kind of unnerved me to see Kalib standing like this. But you know what? Little kids are going to climb and stand on many things and they are going to fall, too, and most of the time they won't lose their shoulder, like I lost mine after I fell in Barrow, or break their knee caps and femurs the way Margie did.

They might cry a bit and then they will get up, laugh, and go climb something else. Most of the time. That's what they've got to do.

Still, it makes me a bit nervous.

Speaking of falling, on Friday, I left a comment regarding health care reform on an opinion piece written by New York Times columnist Bob Herbert. Over 400 other readers left their thoughts before the Times closed the comment period down. The Times allows readers to recommend columns and then gives those that get the most recommendations special attention on their own page.

To my amazement, my comment has so far received the most reader's recommendations of any, 369, making it number one on that list.

I know that this sounds like I am boasting and I guess I am, but I am so disgusted with the current state of health care in our country, and the demagoguery, lies and deceit that the opposition, including-you-know-who from right here in Wasilla, has thrown out there to scare people in the hope that they might inflame unjustified fear and thus bring down our President, the good of the country and its people be damned, should that good get in the way of their political ambition, that I must speak out.

You can find my comment, and the Herbert article that it is attached to, right here:

http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2009/08/22/opinion/22herbert.html?sort=recommended

After our Vagabond caffeine party, we happen upon some tomatoes

Melanie, Charlie and I had partied on caffeine and pastries at Vagabond Blues in Palmer and were coming home via Fishhook Road when we saw this sign. Fresh tomatoes sounded good, so I turned the Escape onto a road that led to a long driveway. When we saw what at first looked like a duplex house at the end of the driveway, we began to have some doubts that we had come to the right place.

Then we saw a magnificent garden just beyond the duplex, which is not a duplex at all, but a house. We parked, got out, and then this dog came running to us. It jumped on me, then it jumped on Charlie. As I struggled to regain my balance and before I could ready my camera, it jumped on Melanie.

I mean, really jumped, like paws to shoulder - that high. But, by the time I had my camera ready, an elder lady came and collared the dog, took it to a corner of the porch and chained it up. 

"If you are going to jump on people," she scolded it in a voice with a strong north Italy accent, "then you are just going to have to stay on this chain."

We told the lady that we wanted to buy some tomatoes. "I have tomatoes in the house," she said. "Come on in." So we followed her through a door that led into a big shop. Resting by the window was this two year-old male cat, "Mucho."

The lady paid no attention to Mucho, but the three of us did. When she saw that we were interested in the cat, she picked it up and put it on the cement floor and then showed us how she could hold her arms in a circle in front of Mucho and he would jump through, just like her arms were a hoop.

It was too dark to take a picture, so she brought Mucho into the house itself, where it was still pretty dark, too dark, really, for the pocket camera, and did it again. At that moment, I wished that I had my big DSlr's with me instead of just the pocket camera, but, oh well.

You can't take pictures with the camera you don't have with you, so you have to take them with the camera you do have with you.

I believe Donald Rumsfeld said that.

Then Charlie made an arm hoop. Mucho jumped right through it.

Charlie and Mucho. We picked out our tomatoes and bought them. Then we went out to take some pictures in the garden and greenhouse.

So this is Pia, with a box of tomatoes, of which she is very proud. Pia was born in California but raised in North Italy, which is why she has the accent. My dad used to fly over Italy to drop bombs on the Germans. I wondered if she had been there at the time and had ever heard his B-24 pass by?

I didn't ask, though. Why didn't I ask? Someday, I must go buy more tomatoes from her, and then I can ask her if she was there during the war and if she heard the squadrons of B-24's flying by, the sound of German anti-aircraft fire and the explosions of American bombs. 

I miss my Dad. I truly do. I will miss him until the day I die. After that, I don't know.

Pia then invited us into the greenhouse. It was surprisingly warm in there and the aroma was pleasant - a mix of tomato and the scent of birch burning in a woodstove.

I touched the woodstove and it was not hot. There was no fire in it. The scent lingered from the last time that there was.

You see how those leave stems have been clipped? Pia does that so that the nutrients that would go to the leaves go to the tomatoes instead. Of course, the plant needs leaves to survive. It must be an art to know just when and what leaves to cut.

Pia plants the tomatoes in March, in pots in the house, but waits until May to transfer them to the greenhouse. In about one month from now, it will be too cold in the greenhouse, even with the woodstove and that is when her growing season will end.

So, if you want to buy Pia's tomatoes - and if you are in Wasilla or Palmer or even Anchorage, you should want to - you've got about one month.

I'm out of order here, as I actually took this picture before we entered the greenhouse.

Oh well, life often gets out of order. I like the picture better here than where it would be if it was in order and this is my blog and I can do whatever I want with it.

She's telling us about the plant that she touches. I was unfamiliar with that plant, so I memorized the name so that I could include it here.

I have forgotten, though.

There was another plant, inside, that she had us touch. It left our hands smelling like lemon drops.

I haven't had any lemon drops in a long time. I want some.

Pia grows many things besides tomatoes. She asked if we wanted some fresh green beans. We did.

"These will be the best green beans you ever tasted," she told Melanie as she put some in her hand.

Next, Pia took us into the greenhouse where she grows peppers. "These are not hot peppers," she said. "They are banana peppers." She also had two kinds of cherry tomatoes growing in there and she gave us samples of each. One was more tart, the other more sweet. Both were superb.

There was the summer squash. It still had some growing to do. I imagined it boiled, but not too boiled, with a touch of butter, salt and pepper, on a plate beside a moose steak. Damn good, I'm sure.

Speaking of moose, see those wires with the flags on them? They are hot wires and they enclose every section of Pia's garden. I don't know what it is about hot wires, but whenever I see them, I have this terrible desire to touch them, to see just how strong of a shock they give.

"Don't do it, Dad!" Melanie said.

"No!" Charlie agreed, "Don't do it Bill."

I touched the electric fence. The power was off at the moment.

Elsewhere, there were wires that were hot.

"Don't do it, Dad!" Melanie warned.

I didn't.

Celery is a thirsty plant that needs much water. That is why Pia plants it beneath the eve of the greenhouse roof, which has no gutter - so all that extra rainwater will flow down onto it.

I asked Pia why she and her husband, who was feeling camera shy, came to Alaska. "More guts than brains," she answered. "We've been here 53 years."

After that, I drove us back to the house, where Jacob had cooked corn chowder for dinner. I added tomato slices. Melanie cooked her green beans and shared them with everybody.

It was a taste of heaven. I must go see Pia again.

Meagre berry picking expedition leads to magic moment between toddler, cat and the clouds

Melanie and Charlie came to visit Sunday and as we took a little ride, we drank coffee, listened to All Things Considered and then This American Life. Afterwards, I returned to my office, sat down and worked for a couple of hours on a project that has been vexing me. 

When I stepped back in the living room, Lavina had prepared dinner, but Melanie, Charlie and Royce were nowhere to be seen. "They went into the swamp to pick berries," Margie said from her position on the couch. So I ate my chicken and salad, grabbed my G10 pocket camera and then went out to see if I could find them.

I did, as you should be able to tell, even without me saying so.

They were about done but they had not done well, so Melanie tried another place, where she spotted a few. She had barely begun to pluck them when she swatted her face. Must have been a mosquito, but the mosquitoes are just about all gone now. 

Just a short time ago, one could barely have tolerated being where she is in this picture, because the mosquitoes would have been maddening. But their season is over, thank goodness.

As you can see, the berry picking was not good at all. Melanie figured it is because the swamp has pretty much dried. "Back when it was wet, there were a lot more berries," she lamented. You cannot even rightfully call it a swamp anymore. She wondered if the house wells were responsible. I don't think so.

Quite some time ago, some developers tore out the wettest end of the swamp and made a gravel pit out of it. The developers said that after they had taken the gravel they would make a nice lake of it for the whole neighborhood to enjoy, but, as developers so often do, they didn't. Now it is just an ugly, abandoned, gravel pit with some ugly pools of water in it. I think that is what dried up the marsh.

I knew that there was another reason Melanie and Charlie had found so few berries. For two days in row now, Jacob and Kalib have been out there picking and eating berries as though they were about to go out of season.

Speaking of those two, we heard some commotion so we looked, and here they came. With Muzzy.

Kalib left his Dad's shoulders so that he could pal around with Muzzy and Royce.

And then it was just Kalib, Royce, and grass going to seed.

 

Royce soon led Kalib to another spot, where they found an even taller blade of grass.

Kalib studies the grass.

And then he lays down upon Royce.

He soon spots an interesting cloud, and points it out. The cat does not care, but he cares about Kalib.

I think, perhaps, this was one of those magic moments of early childhood that, even if it may one day be forgotten, it will be felt for the remainder of Kalib's life, even when he is an old man.

Kalib, his head on the fur of a warm, tolerant, and loving cat, watching clouds drift through a clear, deep blue sky. Yes, this is a fleeting moment that is ever lasting.

And so passed this day, right here in Wasilla, Alaska.

Catch-up #3: Margie's latest injury - how it happened

The day began well. You will recall that I had stated that I wanted to sleep ten, 20, perhaps even 40 years, with Margie at my side. As it turned out, I only slept for about six hours, but it was a pleasant six hours, there, in bed, with my wife snoozing soundly beside me, Jimmy, the black cat, curled atop my shoulder and Pistol-Yero, the tabby, coiled up alongside my ankles.

After I arose, I still felt extremely tired, because one cannot push himself for as long and hard as I have done, sleeping as little as I have slept, even going 40 hard, physical hours with no sleep at all, with no catch up, and then recover with six hours of sleep - no matter how pleasant that six hours might have been.

But I was not worried. I had not taken a day off since June 13 - when  Melanie and I took our little hike up in Hatcher's Pass - but I figured that I would now take two or three days off and I would nap, rest, walk and bike ride at will.

So I got out of bed, looking forward to a pleasant day, and went into the living room where I found the expectant mom, Lavina, looking quite pleasant and cozy herself, cuddled up on the couch with two cats and her iPhone.

Back in Anchorage, Melanie was about to close a purchase on a house with a basement apartment. Margie wanted to go in and help her move. I wanted to do nothing but lay around and be lazy, but she assured me that I could lay around and be lazy at Melanie's new place and watch everyone else do the work.

I did not believe this, but I decided to go in, anyway.

I regret that decision. If I had stayed home, I doubt that Margie would have taken her fall. It is not that anything that I did directly caused her to fall, but by going to town, I created a different dynamic for the day then if I had stayed home. 

Had I stayed put, Margie would have arrived on the scene a few minutes later than she did, for I drive faster then she does. The jackets that she carried down the steps would have already been taken down. They would not have blocked her vision. She would not have missed that extra step just after the turn out of the stairwell. She would not have fallen.

I do not blame myself; I just wish that I had stayed home to be lazy. Then everything would have turned out differently.

True, there is a tiny possibility that things would have turned out even worse - say, for example, that Margie might have collided with a big moose in a terrible crash with a much worse outcome, but this is a remote possibility and I do not believe it would have happened that way.

I think she would now be healthy and happy, rather than in misery and pain.

But I did climb into the Escape with her, I did take the wheel and I did drive toward Anchorage. Even before we left Wasilla, a freight train came rolling by, headed towards Fairbanks.

I was thrilled to see it and shot a frame of the engine as it rolled past.

Not long afterward, the caboose rolled past, too. I could not allow such a momentous event to pass by unphotographed.

After we drove into Anchorage, we headed toward the Duck Downs apartment that Melanie would soon vacate, but less than a block before we would have arrived, we came upon Melanie and Charlie driving away in his pickup truck. So we followed them to the house. I was amazed to see it, for it was much bigger and appeared to be nicer than I had expected.

The people that she was buying the house from had not yet moved out of the top floor and so she and Charlie planned to carry the few things that they had loaded into the back of the truck down into the basement apartment. They would then wait until another day to do anymore moving.

I explored the apartment, determined that if I go bankrupt and lose this house (a continual worry of mine for the past 27 years - and always with considerable justification, especially right now) that it would suffice until I could publish a best-seller and put us back in the black.

I then climbed back up to see what I could carry down and, as I approached the truck, saw Margie carrying some jackets. That was all she intended to carry down.

I grabbed a couple of pairs of cross-country skis and then headed back toward the house. As I neared the top of the stairwell, I heard Margie shriek. Then I heard her cry in that desperate, painful, pitiful way that she had when she had fallen in the street in Washington, DC.

"Dad!" Melanie, who was with her, called from the lower doorway. "Come quick! Mom's hurt!"

I found her lying on her tummy, crying, and screaming out in pain.

We talked, she calmed down, rolled onto her back. She then decided that, although it hurt, she was okay and just needed a few minutes to pull herself together. She pulled her right knee up and then tried to do the same with her left.

This caused her to scream once again. She could not bend that knee.

I knew then that we had to get her to the emergency room.

It was a struggle, accompanied by much screaming, but we raised her from the floor. Charlie then picked her up and carried her in his arms up the stairs and to the car.

As we tried to figure out how to get her into the car, Jane, the woman who Melanie is buying the house from, showed up with a wide strap of webbing and announced that she was a physical therapist and has a great deal of experience hoisting hurt people about.

So she put the strap around Margie's waist. I went to the other side to help pull her up from the driver's side as Jane and Charlie hoisted her into the front passenger seat.

Melanie came with us as I drove Margie to the emergency room at the Alaska Native Medical Center. Lisa met us there. Eventually, we got Margie into a wheelchair and then inside, where she was sent to X-ray.

We were relieved to learn that she had not rebroken her kneecap fracture from January. My first thought was that this meant that she would be fine - just sore for awhile - but I was wrong.

Denise, the physicians assistant who examined her, told us that, judging from the extreme pain Margie was suffering, there must be ligament damage. An x-ray cannot look at ligaments. It would take a CAT scan. Before this could happen, she wanted Margie to go home and get some bed rest for about one week to give the inflammation that had caused her knee to swell to watermelon size to subside a bit and her pain to ease.

She expected Margie to be laid up for a total of about six weeks.

Denise examines Margie's leg.

Margie in excruciating pain. To help her deal with it, Denise asked what kind of pain killers Margie had been prescribed for her original knee injury. Our minds went blank, so she started reading off a list of pain meds, until she came to Tylenol-Codeine. 

We both remembered Margie taking those, so that is what she prescribed. What we had forgotten is that this came later - hydro-codeine, a more powerful painkiller, was what had come first.

As it would turn out, Margie would need all the pain-killer power she could get. She was also prescribed Motrin, to help reduce the inflammation.

We picked up the drugs from the pharmacy and then left, Melanie riding with us, Lisa following. Margie could not take her drugs until she ate something, so we stopped at the Taco Bell on Muldoon and placed an order for a bean burrito.

As we progressed through the drive-through toward the bean burrito (and a few things for me, as well), I looked in the mirror and saw this little dog behind us.

As for what lay ahead, well, hell. That's what is has been - hell. 

I must say that the US Indian Health Service and the Alaska Native Medical Center has been of great benefit to this family over the decades. Great benefit. They have my gratitude.

I trust that in this case, they will yet prove to be of great benefit, but as to what was about to come, they failed my Margie. If their job is simply to read what is written down on paper and follow procedure, then they succeeded.

But if their job is to look at a real, injured, human being and then do all that they possibly can to minimize the pain and suffering of that individual, then they failed miserably - and it is Margie who has had to bear the misery.