Happy birthday, Robert John Gordon!

This is Robert John Gordon and today is his seventh birthday. Happy birthday, Robert John Gordon! We share birthdays, you and I. Robert lives in the Brooks Range village of Anaktuvuk Pass, but I took this picture in Kaktovik, outside the community center, just a little before midnight on July 8, the day that I arrived in Kaktovik.

Here is Robert again, standing amidst loved ones at the graves of Thomas K. and Simon Gordon. The woman wearing the parka and standing behind Robert is Mayuin Gordon, wife of Thomas and adoptive mother of both Simon and Robert. She had been out on a hunting trip with her family on August 1 of 2008 when her husband slipped on a steep bank and fell into a deep pool of cold water that he could not get out of.

Twelve-year old Simon followed him into the inescapable water, and it is my understanding that he did so in an effort to rescue his father.

Kaktovik has a population of just under 300 people and when Mayuin returned driving the boat without her husband and son Simon, the entire village came to her and then went back to the scene to find and recover the bodies.

Thomas had been a leader in the village and I can tell you from my own experience with him that he was an exceptionally warm and kind man. He was beloved in the village and the people also had high hopes for Simon, as they watched him grow.

Their loss left the community in deep and lingering sadness. Thomas had been a guitar player, and loved to perform gospel music. So, last summer, both to honor Thomas and Simon and to bring healing to the community, the village held the first Thomas K. Gordon Memorial Gospel Jamboree. Yes, there was gospel singing, but also community games, played on the beach and at the community center; there was a feast, a bonfire, a talent show, snert tournament and an Arctic char fishing derby.

The healing extended beyond Thomas and Simon to all those who had lost loved ones and families.

People cried, but they also laughed.

Had I have known, I would have been there, but I knew this year and so came for the second jamboree.

It was a wonderful experience. Needless to say, I took lots and lots and lots of pictures and it had been my hope to do a decent summary on this blog. However, deadlines are weighing heavy upon me. In addition to the healthy communities Uiñiq that will include this story, I have another Uiñiq on Kivgiq that is JUST ABOUT press ready.

What I have discovered is that JUST ABOUT - layout all done, most of the photos adjusted, most of the text written - can still mean days, even a couple of weeks, of work ahead and once that is done I must go to Kotzebue to do a job that has nothing to do with Uiñiq. Sometime in August, I plan to visit Atqasuk and maybe Arctic Village and then, somehow, I must have this healthy communities Uiñiq press-ready by the first week of September.

So I think I will wait until after Uiñiq comes out to post this story. By then, I hope to have figured out how to make and present the electronic magazine that I want to create. If so, then I plan to go back and rework some of the Uiñiq stories for that. This way, the stories can be shared with people who will never see Uiñiq magazine. 

As for those who do see Uiñiq, I will be able to share more pictures that space will have prevented me from including in Uiñiq.

So that is my plan. 

There is no way to know what will actually happen until it happens.

That goes for tomorrow and the next day, too. 

The fence beyond the graveyard is a snow fence - built to catch the constant fall, winter and spring drift so as to lessen the amount of deep drifting within the village.

I should note that when I first met Thomas Gordon, in September of 1986, he was living in Mayuin's home village of Anaktuvuk Pass. Each September, the people of Anaktuvuk eagerly await the migration of caribou that pass through and by their village.

Before passing through, the caribou tend to gather in herds just to the north of the Brooks Range. By their own traditional law, no one is to disturb or shoot a caribou until the first group enters their valley and passes by the village. This is because a gunshot or disturbance might frighten the lead caribou and cause them to change routes. Once the leaders have passed through, the rest will follow, no matter how many shots are taken. In that year, the people had observed the caribou gather as normal, but they did not come to the village. They chose another another route to the west.

There had been sport hunters camped down where the caribou had gathered. They did know of local, native, traditional law nor did they care about it. When they saw the caribou, they did not wait for the leaders to pass by and enter the valley.

They shot.

So, without caribou, Thomas and his friend Harry went out to hunt moose, and I followed. We did not find any moose. It was frustrating, but Thomas never grew angry. He did not swear. He did not say anything bad about anybody - not even the sport hunters whose shots may have turned the caribou from the village.

He was sad, but his humor remained good.

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Dog carries blue football to grave; boy smiles on fourwheeler; two thought they would employ sexy girls to compete with Metro, but the Metro girl won

I was pedaling my bike through the graveyard when suddenly I saw the dog, Cloe, standing in front of this grave with a football in her mouth. What a predicament! I knew that the moment I stopped, Cloe would become interested in me and would turn away from the grave but I was already alongside the grave and if I did not stop I would roll right past before I could even lift my camera and then if I turned back the dog would move. I squeezed both brakes hard and then, even before I came to a complete stop, let go of the right while still squeezing the left, lifted my camera and shot as I was almost catapulted over the handle bars. 

If I had been, and if I had broken my neck and died on the spot, they wouldn't have had to carry me far. They could have just dug a hole and dropped me in right there. 

Except I want to be cremated and to have my ashes scattered here and there, from the Arctic Slope to Hatcher Pass to Arizona to India. So that wouldn't work, after all.

I got the framing and the moment good, but, damnit! When I pedal my bike I try to keep my shutter speed at 1/400 of a second or so, but sometimes the knob rubs against my clothing and changes the shutter speed without me knowing it.

That's what happened here - the shutter speed had slipped down to 1/40th of a second and at that speed, from the seat of a bike that I am bringing to a stop while almost going over the handle bars, there is no way I am not going to get motion blur.

I capture a once-in-a-lifetime moment and it is blurred.

Oh well. From the vantage point of life, death is kind of a blur, anyway. I guess I just have to live with it. 

Sure enough, when I came to a complete stop, Cloe dropped the ball and came to me.

A bit further on, I saw these two, the little one looking back at another four-wheeler.

This is Sean, in a photo that I took inside Metro Cafe after pedaling my bike here at breakfast time because Margie had taken the car to Anchorage so she could babysit Kalib and Jobe.

Sean lives just a couple of hundred yards or so up Lucille Street from Metro and he and his buddy Justin had been planning to start a coffee shop of their own and then Carmen and Scott built Metro and beat them to the punch. Still, they thought they might do it. They could still build their stand and hire beautiful, sexy, girls to serve as baristas - baristas in bikinis, no less.

So, for awhile, they stayed away from Metro. They did not want to take a chance that they might come in and then find they actually liked the coffee and the people, because then they might be reluctant to build their shop and compete with them.

But finally, they came in to sample the competition's product. There, they beheld the beautiful-always-modestly-and-tastefully-attired-young-writer barista Shoshana and that was it. Justin fell in love.

So did Shoshana. And one coffee shop staffed by bikini-clad baristas who would be popsicles for eight months of the year fell to the wayside without ever opening.

Now Sean comes often in the mornings, often by himself, to sit, eat, drink coffee, shoot the bull and lament with Carmen. He laments because once, not so long ago, he and Justin were together most all the time, hanging out, being best friends, cooking up schemes.

Now, Justin is always with the  beautiful-always-modestly-and-tastefully-attired-young-writer barista Shoshana - who was not working this morning.

That's why I didn't do one of my famous studies on her. Instead, I did the above study:

Inside the Metro Cafe, Study #1976: Sean, who did not get to open a coffee shop staffed by sexy, bikini-clad baristas

Sean is an ex-Mormon, by the way. Now he goes to a different church. He didn't say which one, but apparently, judging from what Carmen said, he takes it pretty seriously.

From my bike, as I pedal down Gail Street, through the rain. Today is sunny. Sunny and warm. An airplane is passing overhead. Jim is walking back and forth across my desk and keyboard, blocking my view of my monitor, meowing impatiently. He wants me to take him outside. I try to take him out for awhile everyday now that summer is here. 

But it is never enough for him. He always wants more.

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How yesterday's fictitious post oddly foreshadowed today's true one; shoe in the wire, death beneath the jet trail, the street sweeper and the King James Bible

Here's the truth - I completely made up that story yesterday about Margie wanting to eat Jim after she grew so hungry that she became somewhat irrational but came out of it after I fed her an orange. Yes - I hate to shock and disillusion my billions of devoted readers who dote upon my every word as absolute gospel truth, but yes, I made the whole story up.  

But, leaving Jim out of it, that story in some ways became true after we went to bed.

Somewhere between 3 and 4 AM, she woke me up with these words, "Bill, what is happening to me?" A story that is a little too long and complicated for me to tell here in its entirety then unfolded over the next 45 minutes or so. To keep it simple, she had been so tired at bedtime that she had slept right through the symptoms of impending diabetic shock that would normally cause her to wake up and treat them before they became a problem.

When she awoke me, she was deep into that shock - worse than at any previous time in her life. So much so that I feared she may have suffered a stroke. She was completely disoriented, her torso hot and her legs and feet cold and hardly movable.

In the end, I gave her some orange juice. She drank it.

It took a little while for the sugar to kick in, but once it did, everything was okay after that.

As to the shoe in the wire, we saw this astounding sight in Anchorage, where we had stopped at a red light on the corner of "C" Street and Sixth Avenue. The light turned green, just as I took the picture.

On our way to Anchorage, Margie had called Charlie so that he could meet us with a jacket that Melanie had been keeping for Margie to take to Arizona as an 81st birthday present for Margie's mom, Rose Roosevelt.

Having been spoiled by Alaska's Kaladi Bros. coffee and left unable to enjoy the coffee they can get locally, Lavina's family had also requested that Margie bring some down for them. So Charlie picked up two big bags and brought that, too. Our intent was to reimburse Charlie, but he refused to accept the reimbursement.

Those two bags probably cost at least $20.00 bucks each, but Charlie said Jake and Lavina had fed him plenty and there was no way we could force him to take reimbursement.

Here is Margie, waiting to check her bags in at Alaska Airlines. There is another complicated story here that I am not going to take the time to tell - save to say that, when it comes to air travel, I miss the days before paranoia became official policy.

Anyway, thanks to the very helpful lady at the Alaska Airlines baggage check in, everything got worked out, Margie entered security, got through, boarded her plane and, after a layover in Seattle, reached Phoenix a bit before 11:00 PM last night.

Her original ticket would have put her there a little over two weeks ago and she would have come home this weekend. However, Mariddie Craig, the wife of my late friend, Vincent Craig, called me a couple of weeks back to tell me that they were going to hold a one year memorial in the Apache way for Vincent on May 14 and she asked me to come.

So Margie changed her schedule so that she would get down there in time for her mother's birthday and then stay through the memorial. She will return with me on May 19.

A week ago last Sunday, at this very corner in Wasilla, I photographed an impending nightmare that I feared was about to come true. Indeed, yesterday, it did come true. Yesterday, we had to send in our income tax and we owed.

I fear we might wind up living on the street yet.

That fellow dancing at the side of the road while I wait for the red light to turn green is the Liberty Tax mascot. It would be his last day at this job. Unless he already had something else lined up, as of today he is out of work.

Before I reached home, I stopped at the Post Office. I did not find any mail in our box, but I did find this dog in this car, patiently waiting for its human.

That's what dogs tend to spend huge portions of their lives doing - they patiently wait for their humans.

Some dogs do get pretty impatient, though.

Especially little dogs.

After I got home, I parked the car, got my bike and went off on a ten-mile pedal, which included the usual stop at Metro Cafe. As I pedaled up the bike trail on Nelson Avenue, this guy commented about my camera so I stopped and we chatted a bit.

He said he is a commercial fisherman and fishes out of southeast. He speculated that I must have plenty of good things to photograph while pedaling around Wasilla - moose and wildlife, mountains, etc., and said if I had been here just days earlier, a young man had died just beyond from crack cocaine. That would have made some photographs, he said.

I told him the jet flying overhead with him standing just beneath would make a good photograph and he agreed. So here it is.

As to the death, I checked the police reports up to today's April 19 date as reported in the online Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman and found no mention of it. However, the most recent date referenced in the April 19 report was April 10, so maybe the reporting is delayed. I will check future reports, but at the moment I cannot confirm it.

I suppose that I could call the Wasilla police department and see if I could confirm it, but that would be too much like I was trying to be a real news reporter here, instead of just a guy pedaling around on his bike with a camera, taking superficial note of this and that, interested more in impression than hard facts.

Anyway, I am too lazy and I have too many other things to do.

I will leave it to the Frontiersman and see if they come up with anything.

I had my iPhone with me, my headphones plugged in and I was listening to All Things Considered on NPR. There was a story on about the 400th Anniversary of the King James Bible.

In recent decades, other language-dumb-downed versions of the Bible have become more popular, but none carry the beauty of language that can be found in King James. The reporter made that very point and showed how the language of the King James Bible has permeated the culture in everything from popular music to the speeches of Presidents in times of national crisis, from Lincoln to Obama.

Several quotes were aired and all were beautiful. At the very moment I pedaled by this street sweeper, the 2003 quote of President George W. Bush speaking to the nation after the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster came into my ears:

'In the words of the prophet Isaiah, 'Lift your eyes and look to the heavens. Who created all these? He who brings out the starry hosts one by one and calls them each by name. Because of His great power, and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.'

I do not like much about George W. Bush. I do not generally like the sound and intonations of his voice.

But I have to tell you, in this instance, speaking these words from the King James Bible, I heard nothing but beauty.

Pure beauty.

After I got home, I gave in to temptation and opened up Facebook - an amazing tool but also the greatest time-waster and destroyer of productivity ever invented.

On the page of my friend, Allison Akootchook Warden, I saw a picture of her in the midst of other poets, including Leah Frankson, Iñupiat poet of Point Hope who now cuts my hair in Anchorage.

Under the picture was this title:

Epic gathering of Alaskan Poets in Palmer...

Whatever the gathering was about, it was happening at that very moment.

I was hot and sweaty from pedaling my bike and hardly presentable, but, without knowing what the gathering was about, I hopped into the car and dashed off to Palmer.

I missed most of it, but got there before it ended.

Check back tomorrow if you want to know what it was all about.

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I drive into the night, teeming with rage against the rage

"I am ready for real revolution and, if need be, I am ready to invoke the Second Amendment! And I know I'm not the only one..." - Josh Fryfogle, "Editor and Writer" of Make-A-Scene: The people's Paper, published monthly right here in this valley.

"Well, it's time to defend ourselves. And you know, I'm hoping that we're not getting to Second Amendment Remedies. I hope the vote will be the cure for the Harry Reid problems." Sharron Angle, whose campaign for US Senator in Nevada failed to "cure... the Harry Reid problem".

"I was willing to fight, kill or die for this country and for the ideals that it represents and that has not changed. I took an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States, it had no expiration on it. I remember taking that oath as a young soldier and it said that I would swear to defend the Constitution from all enemies, both foreign and domestic and I didn’t understand that domestic thing. Never in a million years did I realize that the domestic enemies would be our greatest threat and they would come from the highest levels of government in this country, from the highest positions. Today, for me, I have no eligible President in office, I have no qualified Commander-in Chief; that’s my personal opinion." - Rick, speaking at Wasilla Tea Party Rally.

"Don't retreat. Reload!" - Sarah Palin, after placing Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in the crosshairs along with 19 other members of Congress she wanted to see voted out of office.

This list could go on and on... couple it also in your mind with images that I will not bother to link to of self-righteous, angry, people showing up at political rallies packing pistols and brandishing assault rifles.

Last night, I found myself driving through the darkness, the inside of my chest burning with rage - rage against the killings and woundings that had taken place in Arizona, rage against all the rage that has sunk America's political discourse to the lowest of levels these past few years, rage against the mentality that justifies the use of language such as I have quoted above and makes it seem not only acceptable to many but laudable, even patriotic, for them to make statements that in any way seem to legitimize violence against Americans who have disagreed with them at the ballot box.

Before I continue, I must stress that I am not among those who place the blame for yesterday's shooting upon Sarah Palin. The blame is on the shooter, and anyone else who may have been involved with him. I do not know the motives or politics of the shooter. For all I know, he could be out there on the left-wing fringe as easily as on the right. Yet, when the kind of mentality voiced above sinks deep enough into the public psyche, shots will be fired and they can come from any direction: left, right, straight ahead or from behind.

What I do know is that the shooter acted in the spirit of the above quotes.

Jerard Laughner readied himself for real revolution and took the kind of action implied by the statements, "I am ready to invoke the second amendment" and "Second Amendment remedies."

He killed and stood ready to be killed in an attempt to remove from office a politician that he did not see as legitimate despite the fact that other Americans had voted her in. Among those who he killed was a nine year old girl. By his action, in one moment, he erased all of her hopes, dreams and future; he took away all that she had ever been or ever would be.

A nine-year old girl.

He did not retreat. He reloaded.

Now, does this mean that I believe that any of the people that I have quoted above actually wanted what happened yesterday to happen? That I believe they approve of it?

No.

Does it mean that I feel that all those other many Americans of prominence and politics who have made similar statements or who have simply failed to take a stand against these kind of statements out of cowardly fear of alienating a base of one sort or another, actually wanted what happened yesterday to happen? That they approve of it?

No. I don't. In fact, I am quite certain that they did not. I believe those who now say that they are horrified and appalled by what happened yesterday mean it. I trust that their condolences to the bereaved are sincere.

Yet, what they did do, for their own cynical and self-serving reasons, was to foment and stir up the kind of feelings that ultimately make such actions almost inevitable. They wrapped themselves in the American Flag - MY FLAG - even as they undermined and demeaned the highest values of that flag. They sought to gain an immediate political or financial goal at the cost of the future of our nation.

I had more that I was going to write, but the anger in me still boils. I cannot trust my own words. I do not wish to add to the rage, yet perhaps that is what I am doing.

Tavra.

This is all I have to say.

"The way that she has it depicted has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district, when people do that, they have got to realize there are consequences to that." - Arizona Congresswoman  Gabrielle Giffords

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Goodbye, Warren Matumeak - part 5: Singspiration slide show; when Tommy saved his aapa's life

I am going to do things a little differently with this, my final post in this series. Anyone who has followed this blog for the past month or so will probably understand when I state that, at the moment, I am drained. I am exhausted.

So, instead of presenting my 14 image singerspiration post in the usual way - with images that alternate with narrative, I am inserting this one photo into the post and I present the rest entirely as a slide show. This means there will not be captions or any kind of explanation, but I think you will get the idea.

I do want to say a little more about two images, however. Very near to the end of slide show, you will see an image of Warren's daughters Alice Akpik and Darlene Matumeak standing just behind the pulpit. As they were bringing the singspiration for the their father to an end, they were suddenly struck with such emotion that they had to step back from the pulpit to fight off the tears.

As they stood there, the congregation spontaneously began to sing - softly, tenderly and lovingly, "Praying for You." So in that photo, Alice and Darlene are wrapped in that song of prayer offered by those gathered with them in the Utqiagvik Presbyterian Chapel.

While all the people of Barrow and just about anywhere on the Arctic Slope will recognize the gentleman standing with his guitar in the final two shots as Peter Matumeak, Warren's son, I want to be certain that readers who do not know him understand this as well.

Click here for full, 14-image Singspiration for Warren Matumeak slide show.

Before I went to Barrow, I mentioned that I had rounded up a number of pictures that I had taken of Warren in life, but that there were many more that I could not find - including my very favorite. I have found that photo, of Warren with his grandson, Tommy Akpik, which I present below, along with the story. I believe that I took it in the fall of 1986, not long after I had begun Uiñiq magazine:

Beneath a full, October moon that hung in a pale blue sky, Warren Matumeak and his nine-year old grandson Tommy came upon three caribou. Warren shot the first, and Tommy the other two. As they dragged the dead caribou onto the sled, Warren felt a pain in his chest. He began to sweat. His muscles grew weak, his breath short.

He realized he was suffering a heart attack. “Tommy,” he said, “I am going to go to heaven now. You take me to your grandmother. Now, drive toward the moon. Going that direction, you will see your aaka."  Warren did not expect to be alive to see her himself. Tommy was frightened, but he helped situate his grandfather on the sled. Then he started up the snowmachine, turned it toward the moon and began to drive.

He cried as he pulled the sled upon which he expected to deliver the body of his aapa to his aaka.

Aapa Warren had taught Tommy how to shoot, to hunt and how to live on the land and sea. Tommy would not let Aapa down in the moment of his death. Tommy drove slowly over the bumpy tundra, until the snowmachine became stuck in a drifted-over ravine. Tommy tried with all of his strength, but could not push it out.

“Let’s pray" Warren suggested. They did. Warren then found the strength to help Tommy push the snowmachine out.  An hour later, Tommy pulled up to the tent. He and his grandmother lay Warren down upon some caribou skins, then snowmachined to a nearby camp with a radio which they used to call Search and Rescue.

When the helicopter arrived, Martha joined her husband on board, but there was no room for Tommy. He went to the camp of his aapa's sister and brother-in-law, Thomas and Myrtle Akootchook, but lingered outside. Finally, Myrtle went looking and found him sitting outside, crying. Myrtle brought Tommy in, and gave him a can of soda pop.

That seemed to cheer Tommy up a bit.