On the day that exhaustion finally overwhelms me, I take Jobe to breakfast, see Lynxton with his eyes open and take a publicity photo for National Book of the Year finalist Debby Edwardson

I am not quite certain how I managed to get out of bed today, but I did. Then, the only thing that I wanted to do was to go right back to bed, but I decided to try to stay up and make some kind of day of it. So I took Jobe to breakfast at Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant - just the two of us.

Margie stayed home to have some peace and quiet.

Breakfast was pretty interesting. The table got completely rearranged. Sugar, Splenda and jam packets wound up spread across the table, on the seats and on the floor beneath the table. A packet of half-and-half milk and cream got splattered across the seats, the table, the wall, and the window.

Jobe was content and happy threw-out. He loves to be with his grandpa. His grandpa loves to be with him.

This poor young reflected lady was among those who had to clean up after Jobe. She said she didn't mind. She said this was a kid-friendly place. Lots of mothers work here. I left a big tip... about 45 percent.

On Friday, I mentioned that I had not seen Lynxton with this eyes open since the day he was born, now three-and-a-half weeks ago. I said that I might see him Saturday and maybe his eyes would be open then. That was because I thought that after the Barrow Whalers championship game in Chugiak, I would go ahead and drive the extra 15 miles or so into Anchorage, where I could see him.

But when that game ended, I felt so tired and weary that I could do only one thing - get in the car and drive home. It was not the game that wore me out. It was the way I have been living for how long now? One push on top of another, sleep-shorted night upon sleep shorted night... Once I reached home, I got a blanket, lay down on the couch, three cats came to join me and I fell into a strange sleep, one where I am vaguely conscious of the world about me even as I dance in and out of dreams, for two hours. 

Afterward, I did not want to get up off that couch at all. I just wanted to stay there, staying in that strange and pleasant sleep for the remainder the day, through the night, all the next day, the following week and the month afterward.

But I had things to do so I got up.

This afternoon, Lynxton came to the house.

He was here for several hours, during which his eyes were open for maybe three minutes.

Here they are, open.

The rest of the time, he was sleeping.

Just like I wanted to be.

My schedule and the way that I have been living has finally caught up to me.

Lynxton's beautiful mother, Lavina.

I will tell you how tired I am. When I first tried to name the picture of Jobe and me that appears at the top of this post, I could not remember how to spell his name. Joby? Jobie?

I couldn't remember!

Finally, it came to me, slowly out of the haze that my brain now dwells in.

J-o-b-e.

Jobe.

Jobe!

This is not Jobe - this is Charlie and Jim and they are working for me.

This afternoon, I received an email from Book of the Year finalist Debby Edwardson. She wondered if I was going to go into Anchorage for her booksigning at the museum. She needed a publicity photo of herself to send to New York no later than early in the morning, East Coast time.

She said if I was not going to come in, she could drive out with George and I could shoot one here.

At first I thought, well, maybe I will go in. It will be fun.

But I couldn't. I was just too exhausted. This would be the first full day that I stayed home in how long? Long time. I could not go. I feared I might drive right off the road.

I thought maybe I could pose her by the front window, where I could get a nice, soft, shape-defining light, but then it became clear that she would not be able to get here until that light had dwindled beyond usefulness.

Regular readers know that I am an available light man. I rarely ever pick up a flash or any other kind of light. I will use whatever light is there and make it work. I did this even before digital and its high ISO's. Even on film, I shot pictures in light so low that many of my fellow photographers said it could not be worked with, but I worked with it.

If I were to shoot Debby's photo this way, it would mean lamps and such, and ISO's at 6400 or 3200 maybe.

I could get a good photo this way, yet, I knew that her publicity people would not want that kind of photo.

So I dug up a strobe light that I had not used in years. I felt very uncomfortable with it. I needed to do some test work - bounce it off this and that, at that angle and this, until I got it to shape the light the way I wanted.

Charlie and Melanie appeared at the door. So I set Charlie down with Jim, gave Melanie a large, white, flat, paper box to bounce the already bounced light off as fill and then shot a few test shots.

None of them worked. I did not get the light I wanted - but I did get this image of Jim and Charlie.

Then Debby arrived, with husband George and granddaughter Josie. In addition to being descended from a long line of Inupiat whalers, George told me that Josie is also descended from a genuine Norwegian king.

"She is a real princess," he said.

As I had not yet got my light, I conducted a couple of experimental lighting shots on George and Josie while Debby combed her hair.

I didn't quite have the light I wanted yet, but I was getting there. It would be a tight head and shoulders shot, so all that distracting stuff in the background would not be a problem.

Then I did a couple of light experiments on Debby herself, with Josie peering over her shoulder.

I still did not quite have it, but we talked Josie out of the frame and I shot it anyway - and somehow, it worked out just right.

I am not going to post the picture here, but will leave it to the publicists to do with it as they will.

Debby's book, My Name is Not Easy, a finalist for the Young People's Literature Book of the Year Award, was released October 1. As of this afternoon, that first printing of 5000 is completely sold out. Book stores across the country are asking for more.

The second printing is coming soon - I don't know how large it will be, but much more than 5,000, I'm sure.

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Barrow novelist Debby Dahl Edwardson is named as a finalist for the National Book Award - her husband George

I am proud to join in the praise for my friend of nearly 30 years, Barrow novelist Debby Dahl Edwardson, who has just been named as a finalist for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature.

"Wait a minute!" the indignant reader suddenly shouts in protest. "If Debby is the finalist, then she should be the center of attention! Why is she looking at her husband? Why is he the one doing the talking, not her? This is all wrong!"

No, it is not wrong. It is right. Debby is the first to tell you - she is the writer in the family, but husband George Edwardson is a master story-teller and a continual source of inspiration and raw material for the words that she writes.

When their children were small, Debby would read stories to them. George would tell them stories - wonderful stories, Debby says, stories that never repeated themselves but always went somewhere new - stories based on the life that George knew as an Iñupiaq hunter and scholar in the traditional sense.

She always knew that if told they could hear one but not the other, her children would choose the stories George told from his mind and soul over the ones she read.

Over the years, she heard him tell many stories about his days as a student at the Copper Valley School, the now-closed Native boarding school in Glennallen run by the Catholic Church.

Some of the stories were funny. Some of the stories were inspirational. Some sad - many were downright hard and even tragic. Most were a combination of all these things and more.

Then, about a decade ago, Debby accompanied George to a reunion of the Copper Valley alumni. There, she was deeply moved by the familial connections and shared experiences that bound the students together.

She saw it as a story that needed to be told. George agreed. Debby then crafted a screen play and submitted it to the Sundance Institute. She received a hand-written rejection informing her that it had ranked high, but not quite high enough. In 2003, she began reworking it into her Master's Thesis.

And now it is her third book, My Name is Not Easy, behind Whale Snow and Blessings Bead, and a finalist for the National Book Award. Debby stresses that it is not a book about Copper Valley School per se - it is a work of fiction, inspired by the stories of her husband but relevant to the boarding school experience experienced by so many Alaska Native students.

She also stresses that it is not a book about victimization. Like the real-life graduates of boarding schools, her students did experience many hardships and wrongs, but they also formed bonds, learned about the western world and many went on to work together to advance Native rights.

The book was published by Marshall Cavendish and edited by Melanie Kroupa, who long ago saw talent in Debby and, like an editor of old times, stuck with her and nourished her through five years of rewriting and reworking until the book was just right.

When she was about three, Debby would often stand in her father's den and gaze at the many books that filled his shelves. She could not yet read or write, but she understood that there was power and stories between the covers of these inanimate objects. She knew she wanted to be part of those books - as both reader and creator.

When she was in the third grade, her teacher gave her an assignment to make a diary about a family camping trip. She wrote about what it felt like to sit in the front of the boat as it made its own waves while pushing its way through the lake.

After she handed in her paper, she noticed her teacher show her story to another teacher. She could see that her teacher was boasting about her. She knew then that she had the ability to make the power of words her own and with that power could move other people.

Conversely, in high school, she asked her English teacher if she believed she could be a writer. "No," the teacher responded.

"That's the one you want to invite to the awards," George interjects sardonically.

In college, an instructor convinced her that she could write articles for publications.

By the mid-70's, she found herself living in Barrow, where she attended a public hearing on a an environmental impact statement dealing with offshore oil development.

There, a young man stood up and took apart the environmental impact statement piece-by-piece. "When he was done, he had totally destroyed that environmental impact statement," Debby remembers. She wrote the event up and it became her first article published in the mainstream press: We Alaskans, the then Sunday magazine of the Anchorage Daily News.

That young man was George Edwardson, who continues that fight to this day. The two had no idea that they would one day wed and make a family together.

Next, she went to work for KBRW, the Barrow public radio station, reporting, writing, and reading news articles.

One day, Jean Craighead George, the famed Children's author and mother of Craig George, renowned bowhead biologist, came to Barrow and agreed to an interview. Afterward, Debby told George that she had always wanted to write stories for young people.

"She looked at me and said, 'well, do it."

Struck by the simplicity of the answer, Debby did, indeed, do it.

As for George, he says that "of course" he is proud of his wife. "I have always been." He adds that he was not surprised when she was named a finalist, because he has known for decades that such honors would come to his wife. Even Debby's mother, who did the painting on the wall behind him, had always known, George, who puts great stock in the knowledge of mothers, added.

Debby is retired from Ilisagvik College, but still serves as an adjunct professor. She was also just reelected to the board of the North Slope Borough School District. As part of her campaign, she ran an ad on the Eskimo channel that stated that education is the passing of the soul of a culture from one generation to the next.

"That's what your writing is, too," George told her.

The announcemnt of the winner of the National Book Award will be made at a fancy dinner next month in New York City. Naturally, George has been invited to attend alongside his wife. He has consented to go to New York, but not to the dinner. "It's black tie," he explains. "They're not going to put a tie on me!"

Last night, when I visited them, George was busy making ulu knives - some very large, some very small. He will convert a pair of tiny ulus into a set of ear rings for his wife to wear to the dinner where the announcement will be made.

Believe me, I stand by George on the whole black tie thing. I understand perfectly. Even so, I hope that when Debby enters the fancy place that George walks in alongside her, dressed in his classiest Iñupiaq clothing. If so, no man there will be more elegantly dressed than will be George Edwardson of Barrow, Alaska.

Well, there's lots more I could write about my friends, Debby and George Edwardson, but I've got to get up early to catch a plane to Atqasuk. And anyway, in no time at all, there's going to be lots of writers, even from outfits like the New York Times, writing about Debby and George and they will surely cover all the gound that I have skipped over or just didn't think to write about.

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Flying home, part 1: I see my Shadow in Barrow; Ethel Patkotak - Master of Indian and Indigenous Law; Little Alan; familiar faces on a jet airplane

Here I am in my town parka, still in Barrow, but leaving soon, walking under a street lamp that stands not over a street but a snowmachine trail. In one hand, I hold my laptop computer, in the other, my pocket camera, the very one that I took this picture with.

I took my big, pro, DSLR cameras to Barrow just in case something came up that I needed to photograph for professional reasons, but nothing did. I never removed those cameras from the bag. They were dead weight the whole trip.

I shot only the pocket camera.

I have already made it clear that I am not a wedding photographer and I do not shoot weddings for hire. Yet, a couple of years back, I did shoot the wedding of Quuniq Donavan to Ruby Aiken. Before I left Barrow, I stopped by for a short visit. 

Quuniq said the dog could be mean so he held him back as I went to the door.

Shortly before it was time for me to leave to catch the jet south, I was sitting at a desk that I hi-jacked in the North Slope Borough Mayor's office, doing a little work on my computer, when I heard a female voice. "I have your book. I paid an arm and a leg for it and I would like you to sign it." It was Ethel Patkotak, originally of Wainwright. It was after working hours, and everybody else had left.

I wondered how this could be. "How much did you pay for it?" I asked.

"$500," she answered.

No, I protested, this could not be, that is impossible!

So she explained. What she had done was to make a membership contribution at the $500 level to Barrow's public radio station, KBRW. Mayor Itta had contributed copies of the book to be given to those who donated at the $500 level.

I was blown away.

See the sash hanging on the wall behind her?

That is what Ethel wore with her cap and gown when she graduated with an advanced Law Degree from the University of Tulsa college of Law in December of 2008. She was an honor student and graduated with as a Master of Laws in American Indian and Indigenous Law. She is also an alumni of Northern Illinois University College of Law and Stanford University in California.

She is now working for the Borough as a Special Assitant to the Mayor, under the Direction of his Chief Administrative Officer, Harold Curran, an attorney. Her focus is largely on environmental and wildlife issues.

She also loves airplanes, just like I do.

Next I went back to Roy's place, to pick up my stuff, but before I left I dropped in next door to say goodbye to Savik, Myrna and all present. That included Little Alan, who you met two posts ago, playing a computer game as he sits with his mother, Shareen.

When I got on the plane, I did not know where to sit. The seat assignment was listed on my boarding pass, all right, but was hardly legible. It looked like it read, "1c," but I knew that couldn't be right, as that was in first class and I did not have a first class ticket.

So I showed it to the Stewardess. "It looks like 1c to me," she said. So I got to ride in First Class at coach rate. All I can figure is that it must have been a weight and balance issue, that they needed more people in first class than just those who paid for the luxory.

The blonde sitting by the window reading is author Debby Edwardson, who has lived in Barrow all of her adult life. Her most recent book is the novel Blessing's Bead, published by Farrar Straus and Gireoux, 2009. I am embarrassed to say that I have not yet read it, but I will, not only because Debby wrote it, but because it is a Barrow book and it has been well-reviewed.

She also authored the illustrated children's book, Whale Snow. She is married to George Edwardson, an Iñupiaq man who has taken on the oil companies in a fight to keep them out of the home of the bowhead whale.

Sitting behind her to the right is Rachel Riley, of Anaktuvuk Pass. Rachel was in the Barrow High Gymnasium on June 12, 2008, when I took my foolish fall and shattered my shoulder. So she was a witness to that event. When I first met her over a quarter a century ago, her house had caught fire. It had burned enough to be a total loss, but not to fall down.

Tom Opie was then the Chief of the North Slope Borough Fire Department, so he flew down to Anaktuvuk Pass to train local volunteer fire fighters. Several times, they set Rachel's house back on fire, and then went in and put the flames out all over again.

I got to put on a firefighter's outfit and oxygen mask and crawl into the burning house on my belly under the smoke with them. It was only a drill, but it was tough. It increased my respect for firefighters.

The lady sitting by the window behind her is Mary Sage, who is an excellent Eskimo dancer and a good photographer. She has had several photos published in the Anchorage Daily News. Sometimes, when I have had a photo I have needed to get identified I have contacted her on Facebook and she has helped me out.

I am embarrassed that the name of the lady sitting next to slips my mind. This is happening to me more and more.

As to the idenity of the man scratching his head, I haven't the slightest idea who he is.

This is how it is in Alaska when you board a jet plane. There will be strangers on board, but there are always many familiar faces.

Alaska is the biggest small town in the USA - perhaps the world.

And the Stewardesses are friendly - especially when you unexpectedly wind up in First Class. 

Shortly after this, I got what I believe to be a pretty neat series of pictures that I took while sitting in First Class, but it is late and I need to go to bed.

I will try to make a second post after I get up, before I drive into Anchorage to pay a visit to Little Kalib, his fish, his dad and mom - who, I am happy to say, has not yet had to go to the delivery room although she continues to experience low-level contractions.

Lisa and I are thinking about taking in a movie and Melanie has invited me to eat at a new Indian Restaurant, which actually serves South India food as well as North, and I believe Rex and Charlie will be there, too. So we will dine, and as we do, we will think of Southern India, of Soundarya and Anil, Sujitha, Ganesh, Buddy, Murthy, Vasanthi, Vivek, Khena, Vijay, Vidya and all the other members of our Indian family. I hear that the food is excellent and I do not doubt it. Yet, I do not think it will be quite so good as that prepared by Vasanthi, for Melanie and me.

I do not know what Caleb will do.

As for Margie, she remains in Arizona, completely snowed under by a series of huge storms that have dumped over four feet upon her sister's house in the White Mountains. They lost all power and for a full day I could not contact her by phone, because their cell service was gone, too.

Every time I tell someone that Margie is in Arizona, they say something like, "Oh! I'll bet she's really enjoying the sun and warm weather."