The cats and I watch health care pass; Charlie's parents stop by for a visit

I am too tired to write ANYTHING - but I will try to write a little bit, anyway. The thing is, I got to bed somewhere between 1:30 and 2:00 AM and then, as always, it took some time for me to go to sleep and no sooner had I then I was awakened... oh hell.

I am too tired to tell this story about why I am so tired.

But I am.

I had planned to work very hard today and to get a huge amount done, but I didn't. Mostly because I got distracted by the debate leading up to the House passage of the Health Care Bill. Once I took in one scene, I was so fascinated by the process that I could not pull myself away from the TV.

And as I watched, there was always between one and three cats blanketing me, so I was warm, cozy, comfy and drowzy as I watched the debate.

I did not try to photograph the scene until near the end, when Nancy Pelosi was speaking.

Many Republicans said they could not support this flawed bill and it is flawed, but, it's a start to hopefully fix a far more flawed system.

As many readers know, my health care insurance company took my premiums for 15 years and, despite their promise when I bought my insurance that they would cover an air ambulance out of rural Alaska if I ever needed one, refused to pay any of the $37,000 + when I shattered my shoulder and actually did need one, and then didn't pay tens upon tens of thousands of dollars of my hospital bill and then recently jacked up my "cadillac" priced premiums for clunker service by 20 percent overnight.

This followed a long process of regular increases and then, in December, I could not make my payment and they deactivated my policy immediately.

If I had been able to make two payments in January, they would have reactivated, but I couldn't make even one.

I am very glad that, however flawed it might be, the process has finally begun. 

As I am too tired to say anything intelligent about this myself, I will quote Paul Krugman from the New York Times:

"But it is also a victory for America’s soul. In the end, a vicious, unprincipled fear offensive failed to block reform. This time, fear struck out."

Senator Murkowski, this is why I am so disappointed in you. You have the intelligence and the natural compassion and you said some things a year or so ago that told me that you understood the damage that this current system is wreaking upon people.

I understand that you need to listen to your constituents, but when you hear them spouting nonsense and fear, you also have a responsibility to educate them. Instead, you joined in with the mob in this "vicious, unprincipled, fear offensive."

This is why I am disappointed.

You might find it unfair that I am not equally disappointed in Don Young. But Don Young is Don Young and we all knew from the beginning that on this matter nothing more could be expected of him.

But you, Senator Murkowski, are capable of so much more.

Of course, the day did not begin in front of the TV. It began at Mat-Su Valley Restaurant, where Margie and I got together with Lisa, Melanie and Charlie and Charlie bought breakfast for the lot of us. They were a little late, but soon Charlie's parents joined us as well.

It was the first time that we had all gotten together like this.

Yes, I took pictures of Charlie's parents at breakfast, but I want to get this blog done so that I can go to bed, so I will move straight to the house, where the important stuff happened.

It all involved cats.

Here is Jim, accepting a pet from Jim.

Yes, Charlie's dad is also Jim.

Charlie's dad is the furless Jim.

Here is Jim meeting Royce.

And here is Cyndy meeting Royce. Jim, the furless one, told us how their 16 year old Siamese cat Oscar suffered ill health about a year ago and lost weight just like Royce has. Furless Jim has a super-sensitive nose and it told him there was bad stuff in the store-bought dry cat food Oscar had been eating.

So Jim put Oscar on a raw-meat diet with a quarter can a day of Friskees and now Oscar has made a magnificent recovery.

We must try this with Royce - after I return from the East Coast.

Cyndy and Royce.

Furless Jim also told us how he and Charlie had once come upon some cougars in the mountains of Wyoming, where they had been hunting deer not far from the town of Atlantic City. Yes, Atlantic City, Wyoming.

He had been entranced by the quiet, graceful, beautiful, fluidity of their motions as the lions hustled silently past.

Charlie was pretty young then. His dad was carrying all the guns: a 30.06 rifle and .22 pistol.

Charlie asked if he could carry the .22 after that.

It's funny. I am always happy to be in Alaska, but after I heard that story, I wanted to go roam around somewhere where cougars hang out and see if I could find some.

Cougars don't really hang out in Alaska, although one was spotted on our side of the Canadian boundary not too many years ago.

Charlie and Jim - the furry one.

Furless Jim and Pistol, who warily came to check him out, but quickly warmed up to him and gave him maybe ten seconds of attention.

Look closely at Pistol and you will see that he is very much a little mountain lion himself.

It occurs to me that Furless Jim's face does not really show in the photos with the cats, so I will hop back to the restaurant take real fast, so that you can see his face.

If I am going to show the face of Furless Jim, then it is only fair that I also show the face of Furry Jim.

Three cats enter the season of light; four blurred basketball shots, Point Hope v. Klawock

It is official.

We have entered the season of light.

LIGHT.

Wonderful, wonderful, glorious, light!

Sweet, sweet, northern light.

Charlie and Slick in the light that pours into Melanie's house.

Slick, you should know, is also known as Bear Meech.

Diamond glitters in the light.

Melanie, Charlie, and Poof Cat - all soak in the light at what not so long ago was a very dark hour.

But now it is the Vernal Equinox - the Spring Equinox.

And on this day, everyone in the world had 12 hours of sunlight. 

People at the equator would have seen the sun pop right up in the east and climb high fast until their shadows disappeared beneath their feet at high noon. From there, the sun would have just dropped, fast, straight down toward the west.

People standing on either pole could have watched the sun skim the horizon all day long. At the north pole, at the end of the 12 hours, the sun would have risen low into a day six months long and at the south, slipped away to a long, extended, twilight, thus beginning the six month night.

To you to the south - our days are now longer than your's.

But not as long as Barrow's, where the sun will climb higher and higher each day, and each day will stay up for about 15 minutes longer than the day before until finally, come May 10, it will stay above the horizon all day and will not set again until August 2.

Here in Wasilla, there will never be a night that the sun does not set, but soon the darkest part of the night will still be a light version of twilight and it will be wonderful.

Not so long ago, Slick was a creature of the night.

Now he is a creature of the light.

I went to three basketball games today, the final being the 2A championship game between Point Hope and Klawock.

Just before the game started, I set my cameras to shoot at a shutter speed of 1/400th of a second.

Then the game started and some good action happened in front of me immediately.

But, somehow, a knob on my camera had rubbed against something in such a way as to drop the shutter speed to 1/20th of a second.

Basketball players can move significantly in 1/20 of a second.

I would shoot seven frames before I discovered the error and every one would be blurry.

So here is one of those motioned-blurred frames.

And here is another.

Plus a third.

You can see the action is good and they do work in an artsy-kind of way, but they will not work for what I want them to work.

I was very disappointed that I blurred the shots, but I took a lot more afterwards, so I will be fine.

They are still downloading and I haven't had a chance to look at any of them, other than these blurry ones. These were right at the beginning of the take, so they popped up right away. The rest of the disk is still downloading and when it is done, I have two more disks to download.

But it is 1:09 AM, I am very sleepy and must go to bed.

So I will wait until tomorrow to download the other two disks.

Three of us make a very quick trip to the Iditarod restart in Willow, then hang out with cats; how Charlie fared in the beard contest

If you are looking for lots of good pictures from the Iditarod Restart, this is not the site to come to. I awoke this morning feeling completely exhausted, run down, as though I had not slept at all. I had a terrible headache, a bit of a sore throat and I felt just plain weary - barely enough energy to drag myself into the kitchen and cook some oatmeal.

I figured, though, that if Jacob and Lavina brought Jobe by for Margie to watch and then took off with Kalib to watch the dogs go, I would follow, but I would be very lazy and shoot just a few so-so pictures, just to say we were there.

After all, there would be scores of photographers seriously documenting the event for all sorts of publications, many would go on to follow the race and they would be working extremely hard and putting everything they have into it to get the best shots possible, so, really, what could I add to the mix?

I would just stick with Jacob, Lavina and Kalib, get a few lazy pictures and let it go at that.

A little after noon, Lavina called to say that they would not be coming at all. It would be nearly a 200 mile round trip for them, they were very tired (after all, they do have a newborn) and Kalib seemed to be coming down with something.

OK, then, I decided, I would just stay home.

Then Melanie called. She and Charlie wanted to see Lance Mackey take off. He wore bib 49, and was scheduled to leave the chute at 3:30.

Okay, I decided, I would go with them, but would still be lazy.

Melanie had to drop her car off at Mr. Lube here is Wasilla to get an oil change, so they would ride with me. Mr. Lube closes at 5:00, so she had to be back before then to get her car.

We left Wasilla for Willow at 2:20, twenty minutes after the race had already begun, reasoning that we had better head back home no later than 4:15 in order to get back in time.

We managed to find a parking place not far from the action, but wound up trudging through deep snow the long way around, so it took us awhile to reach the raceway. We got there just about the time that the 40th musher was charging down the chute behind his dogs.

This is musher 41. Dallas Seavey. In 2007, the day after this former state wrestling champion turned 18, he became the youngest musher ever to run the Iditarod.

These are the famous white dogs of number 43, Jim Lanier of Chugiak.

This is number 49, Iditarod Hall of Famer Lance Mackey, who Melanie wanted to watch depart. Mackey may be the toughest long-distance musher ever, having come back from a deadly battle with cancer to take multiple victories in the Yukon Quest and the Iditarod and winning both in 2008 and 2009.

You can find a bit more of his story here.

Pretty soon, we had to go. Traffic was sometimes very slow, but we got Melanie back to Mr. Lube with 13 minutes to spare.

Then Melanie and Charlie came to the house for dinner, and to hang out with our cats. Here is Charlie with Royce and Jim.

Charlie, Royce and Jim.

Charlie and Jim.

Melanie and Royce. Before they left, Melanie was trying to write a check out for me to cover Royce's upcoming vet care but I was being elusive. So she wrote it out and gave it to her mom.

Charlie and Royce.

Chicago and me.

Now, as to that beard contest...

I am too tired to tell the whole story, but, to make it short, there was some confusion about which category Charlie was to enter. He wound up competing against men who had at least some gray and white in their beards and they beat him.

That's because it was the category for men with gray and white in their beards, although it was described as being for men with multiple colors in their beard. Charlie has brown, red and blond in his beard, so he thought that meant him.

Afterwards, he learned that he should have been in the "Honey Bear" category. Two judges told him that they really liked his beard - if only he had been a Honey Bear.

He is thinking about going to the nationals in Bend, Oregon, in June, where the categories are more clearly delineated.

I will probably be blogging light for the next few days - maybe all week. I've got a lot of work to do and I feel like... heck.

(I was going to say, "hell," but once again I remembered that ten-year old girl who I am told reads my blog everyday.)

We follow Mr. Horsey to the end of the beginning of the Iditarod; he gets eaten by a big fish; Balto comes to the rescue

We did not arrive at Fourth Avenue in downtown Anchorage for the ceremonial start of the Iditarod until near the end, when just a few teams were left to go. We were not concerned about this, because the real start is on Sunday, at Willow, in the afternoon and we are pretty sure we will be there.

Still, Jacob and Lavina wanted to take Kalib downtown so that he could experience some of the flavor of it all and I wanted to go, to. Margie wanted to hang out with Jobe and he needed a babysitter. So I dropped her off at the house, then accompanied Jacob, Lavina and Kalib to Fourth Avenue.

But what is that little Mr. Horsey doing tucked into Jacob's coat as he and Kalib walk down Fourth Avenue?

Here. Read the story for yourself. The above letter came to Jacob and Lavina in a box along with a disposable camera. So, before Mr. Horsey makes his next journey, before hopefully one day in the near future returning to his first grade class in Killan, Jacob, Lavina, and Kalib thought they would give him a chance to experience the Iditarod.

Jacob is photographing Mr. Horsey with the banner that marks the Iditarod starting line in the background.

I believe this is the third to the last team to go. Jacob takes a disposable camera picture with the sled dogs in the background.

Shortly after the last team had left, this man, wearing a wolverine hat, and this woman, wearing a wolf hat, posed with Mr. Horsey.

I am not sure how such a scene will play in a first grade classroom in Southern California, but it does represent life in Alaska.

Shortly after that, Mr. Horsey sat in on a dog team line himself.

Melanie and Charlie joined us, under a real, live, snarling, angry, grizzly bear. I was terrified, but, as you can see, these three were very brave. The bear did not frighten them at all.

Across the street from the bear and a few steps down the sidewalk, Mr. Horsey took a short nap on the wing of an airplane flown by a rather odd pilot and his oddball passengers.

I don't think this airplane would pass annual and I am certain there are some aviation safety violations going on here.

From there, we walked down the hill to the train station.

"Take my picture, quick!" Mr. Horsey shouted at me. "Before we get run over!"

Then we met this fellow, whose name I forget. I wasn't worried about that, because he directed us to a table womanned by his wife to get a brochure and he said his name was there. So I got the brochure and I just now took a look at it for the first time and it has no names in it at all.

Anyway, he had some puppies for sale. These are a mix of great dane and something else - I forget what, because I thought that was going to be on the brochure, too, but it's not. His web address is, however, and maybe the information is there. I haven't looked yet and it is late and I am tired and want to get to bed, so I will leave that to you, if you are interested.

He said he also had some small breed pups and that Bristol Palin had bought one from him in the morning.

He and his wife also cater pony-parties for kids. All that information should be on the website, I would think.

Next, we moved on to the snow sculptures, where a giant halibut took an interest in Mr. Horsey.

Oh no! A leaping salmon got him!

How are we ever going to explain this to that first grade class in Killan?

Assuming that he and Melanie would be able to get tickets to the Miners and Trappers Ball, Charlie planned to enter the beard contest at 8:00 PM. I would have liked to have gone to take pictures of him competing, but, I didn't have a ticket and I was pretty sure that Margie and I would be back in Wasilla by eight.

We tried a couple of other places, but there were no seats available. Melanie called ahead to Snow City and by the time we reached there, walking, there was a table for us.

I ordered a portabello mushroom sandwich and Charlie picked up the tab.

I had never thought of Snow City as a place to eat any meal other than breakfast, but, that sandwich...

superb!

Kalib ordered some hot chocolate topped with whipped cream. He found it superb as well.

After lunch, Melanie and Charlie parted company with us and went their own way.

As we walked the mile or so back to the car, Jacob said he wanted to stop by the Balto statue to pay his respects to this great lead dog who saved so many people in Nome during the 1925 diphtheria serum run.

When we got to the statue, I could not believe my eyes. Balto had saved Mr. Horsey. I have no idea how Balto did it, but, as anyone can plainly see, he did.

Jacob, Kalib and Mr. Horsey, under the banner that marks the ceremonial starting line for the Iditarod.

We walked on, past the Fur Rendez carnival. Kalib had grown very sleepy.

He fell asleep in the car immediately.

I guess everybody was pretty tired.

In fact, I'm tired. Too tired to describe what is going on here.

These two had enjoyed a lovely time together while the rest of us followed Mr. Horsey about.

Skating on Wasilla Lake; a wayward puppy goes beneath my car; Kalib; full story of the dog that almost killed the rabbit at the corner where the chicken crossed the road and the rooster got shot

I was driving by Wasilla Lake when I noticed some little kids skating, and two bigger ones practicing hockey. So I decided to stop for a few minutes and take some pictures.

This is Shane, one of the older two. He is in the seventh grade and played on a hockey team for four years - in Kansas. After his family moved to Wasilla a few years back, he stopped playing organized hockey, but still enjoys getting out, skating, and knocking a puck around.

This is Shane's older sister, Amy, a freshman at Wasilla High. She plays for the Mat-Su Ravens, a high school team that combines girls from schools throughout the valley, as no single school has enough interested girls to put together a team of it's own.

She is doing a face-off with her brother to see who will get the puck.

And off they go - brother and sister, fighting for the puck. My camera battery was dying and I needed to get back home, so off I went, too.

I should note that they both like Wasilla way better than Kansas. No offense to any Kansans who might read this.

Their mother Lisa watched as they skated. "Oh, yes," she agreed. "We love it here."

This was the first picture that I took when I stepped onto the ice, just before I met Shane and Amy. The man is Gregory and he is photographing his daughter, Korynn - the one who is still on her feet. The one who has fallen to her knees is Korynn's friend, Roslyn, and this is her first time on skates.

It's Korynn's second.

Roslyn climbs back up, takes hold of the walker and skates just a few inches. "I think I can do it without the walker," she says.

Roslynn leaves the walker behind.

She soon falls, but she smiles about it and then gets right back up. Had I stayed longer, I feel confident I would have seen her skating with confidence.

As I neared home, I saw Becky, Danny, their mom and their little dog, Toby. I stopped the car and tried to take a picture through the window, but my camera battery was dead. So I pulled it out of the camera and warmed it up in my hands, to see if I might coax one more shot out of it.

I did. One more shot and then it died again. I had to bring it home and recharge it.

Melanie and Charlie arrived in the early evening and they had Kalib with them. They were baby-sitting him so that Jacob and Lavina could go out with some friends who had returned from Outside for a short visit. Charlie stepped out of the house to get some firewood. As he was loading up his arms he thought he heard someone crunching about beside him. It was a moose.

After Charlie returned with the armload of wood and the moose report, Melanie went to the window and quickly spotted the moose. She called Kalib over to the window to see.

"Moose," she said.

Kalib peered out the window.

"Puppy!" he said, excitedly. It seemed that the poor little kid was confused.

We then had a debate about what to do for dinner. There was really nothing in the house to cook, so we decided to go out and grab something, somewhere. I auto-started the car so it could warm up. After a bit, Charlie went out and strapped Kalib into his car seat.

Then I climbed into the car and waited for everyone to get seated. "Dad!" Lisa suddenly warned. "Don't back up! There's a puppy under the car!"

Sure enough, there was. This little fur ball. And I might have squished it, had not Charlie spotted it and then pointed it out to Lisa.

Now we faced a quandary. What to do? I decided that the puppy should go into the garage until we got back from dinner. So we put the puppy in the garage, but then the cats freaked out. Their main litter boxes are in the garage and I did not want the puppy to scare them away.

Charlie had temporarily traded his car for Jacob and Lavina's Tahoe, as it has a car seat for Kalib. Muzzy rides in that car all the time, so it is already rich in dog odor. Lisa went into the house and came back with a flattened carbboard box. She put it in the back of the Tahoe and then puppy was put in on top of it.

And then we all went off to eat, Melanie's treat, at Señor Taco. Of course, I took pictures and got some good images, but this blog has had many eating pictures lately and so I will not post them.

We probably would have lingered longer at Señor Taco and visited more, but we had to get back to that puppy. I feared that the night was going to be long and miserable - disrupted by the combination of puppy whines and cat paranoia.

After we returned home, I sent Charlie walking one way down Sarah's Way and I walked the other. I knocked upon door after door and then showed whoever answered the picture of the puppy on the LCD of my pocket camera. Nobody knew where this puppy belonged.

I returned down the other side of the street and then walked up Brockton just a short ways and then turned back. Now, there was just one nearby house left to check: the corner house - the one where the chicken crossed the road, the rooster got shot; the one where lives the dog that nearly killed the rabbit.

I did not really want to knock on the door of that house. Shortly after the family that lives there moved in several years ago - long after the drunken ice cream lady had crashed her good humor vehicle on that corner - I walked by to find the woman of the house outside with a beautiful orange cat.

I stopped introduced myself, told her I was a photographer and loved to photograph cats. She was happy to have me photograph her's. I then told her that I photographed not only cats, but all kinds of things, from life in Rural Alaska to what I saw in Wasilla and the neighborhood, children playing, whatever.

She reacted with paranoia. "You can photograph my cat," she said, "but don't you dare photograph my children. That's just weird, that you would photograph children."

After that, if I walked by that house and the children were out playing and they spotted me, they would shout a warning to each other: "It's the camerman! The weirdo!" Then they would flee.

If they had friends over and saw me coming, they would shout to their playmates, "That's the cameraman! Watch out! He's a weirdo! Run!" And then, just like when they were playing alone by themselves, they would flee. When the husband would be out in the yard and I would walk, he would glance at me with cold, hard, eyes. He would not return my nod, nor my smile, but would turn away.

When you are a photographer whose pictures of children have been published and enjoyed far and wide, in newspaper, book, and magazine form, including National Geographic, it is quite a thing to be labeled a weirdo because you like to take photographs of children.

Then they got some chickens, including the one that crossed the road, and a rooster. In the summertime, when it never gets dark, that damn rooster would crow all night long. There was no getting a good night's sleep. It just couldn't happen.

I began to get desperate for sleep. I knew I had to talk to them about the rooster - but my experience so far with them did not leave me feeling optimistic about how that conversation would go.

Then, one day, before I could find out, I answered an angry knock upon the door.

It was the woman. "Someone complained about our rooster," she said angrily, "was that you?" It did not prove to be a moment of calm and reasoning.

The rooster crowed on for about three, maybe four weeks after that. Then, one morning, about three or four AM, as I lay awake and aggravated in bed, that rooster was crowing away shrilly as usual. Suddenly, I heard a gunshot.

The rooster never crowed again. No ruckus was ever raised about that gunshot. I do not know, but I had a feeling that it was not taken by a neighbor, but by an occupant of the house who choose a gun and not an axe or a wring of the neck in order to make a statement to the neighborhood, to whoever had complained about the rooster.

I could be wrong. But that was what I suspected. Maybe it was an aggravated neighbor who shot the rooster, but I don't think so. Had it been, I suspect all hell would have broken loose.

Instead, immediately after the gunshot, the neighborhood fell into peace and quiet.

Then, a couple of weeks after I fell, shattered my shoulder, lost it, and got a titantium one instead, I had just turned the corner by that house when I saw the dog that appears in yesterday's post, happily running around a rabbit pen with a single rabbit inside.

I could also see the children at the side of the house, laughing and bouncing off of a trampoline. They were completely unaware of me and of the dog, running around the rabbit pen. Then, somehow, that dog found its way into the pen.

Looking as happy and ecstatic as a dog can look, it grabbed that rabbit, carried it out of the pen, took it across the street and then began to maul it to death.

My shoulder was extremely fragile and I was helpless to intervene. I could not pick up a rock, I could not run and chase the dog off the rabbit.

I shouted at the kids, as loud as I dared. "Your dog is killing your rabbit!" Even the effort of shouting brought added pain to my already hurting shoulder. The kids continued to bounce and laugh. They did not hear me. In sheer delight, the dog continued to maul the rabbit. 

I walked as fast as I could, but that was not fast. "Your dog is killing your rabbit!" I shouted again. The kids bounced on, laughing.

I walked a little closer, shouted again, same result. A little closer... finally the kids heard me, but they did not understand.

They quit bouncing and looked at me. "What?" one of them shouted back at the man who their parents had taught them was a dangerous weirdo. 

"Your dog is killing your rabbit!" Finally, they understood. The girls and younger boy started to scream. The oldest boy, who had been truly vile towards me in the past, charged over, and drove the dog from the rabbit. 

The rabbit was limp and still. It looked dead. The girls and the smaller children were weeping. The mother came out, saw the rabbit and looked at me suspiciously. I told her what had happened. She told the children to gather up the rabbit and they would take it to the vet.

Then, an amazing thing happened. One of the girls walked up to me, looked up into my eyes and said, "thank you, Cameraman." Then, one by one, each child - including the oldest boy who had been so vile toward me, walked up to me and said the same, "Thank you, Cameraman." 

The mother watched, but said nothing. She did not smile. The suspicious look never left her face.

And from that day to this, those children have continued to avoid me. And although the First Amendment to the United States Constitution gives me the right to photograph anyone and anything that I can see in public, I have taken no pictures of those children - even though I have seen wonderful ones, ones that I knew that parents would have treasured.

But it just wasn't worth it.

Yet, the kids and I - we did have that one moment, right after the dog almost killed the rabbit.

I decided to knock on the door, anyway - just in case they had gotten a new puppy.

They hadn't, but when they learned my mission and I showed them the picture of the puppy on my camera, they reacted in a friendly way. The husband told me that he had seen it, running with a big dog that lived on a corner three blocks away, where a tire swing hung from a tree.

So I walked back to the house, got the puppy, Melanie joined us and I drove to that house.

And that's where I took this picture, right after I reunited the puppy, Kuna, with this man, who had been very worried about it. "You little turd!" he said, affectionately, as he tousled Kuna's fur.

If you look closely at Royce's chin, you will see that there is a bit of drool smeared into it. Even so, he has been a little better today than he was last night. Melanie, who had not seen him for two weeks, was pleased with what she saw. "He's definitely gained some weight, Dad," she said.

So maybe the situation is not as grim as it seemed last night. Still, he is light and frail, but Melanie is certain that he is doing better than when she last saw him, before I started giving him his medication, before I began to feed soft food to him.

The two buddies, Kalib and Royce.

Kalib, Royce, and Melanie.

Lisa and Royce. See the drop of drool on his chin?

Still, this was a good moment for him. You could call it "a good quality of life" moment.