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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Last Friday, a sleepy man flew to Kaktovik

Despite multiple attempts, I was unable to put up a single post during my stay in Kaktovik - thanks to Squarespace.* So now I back up to Friday, the day I left, a day that began miserably. This was because I did not get to bed until 1:00 AM, but set my alarm for 3:55 AM.

It was not necessary for me to set the alarm at all, because when I must wake up at such an hour, I really don't sleep at all. I might drop into a semi-doze for five, ten - and if I am very lucky - 15 minutes at a time and then my eyes open and I check the time.

Still, I set the alarm just in case I should somehow actually fall into a deep sleep.

It didn't happen, though.

At 3:54, I was watching the clock. I could have turned it off, but Margie needed to wake up, too, and it was easier for me to let the alarm wake her than to wake her myself.

Margie has been blessed with the gift of sleep. Her head hits the pillow and she's asleep, usually until its time to get up.

I have been cursed with the curse of insomnia.

Worse yet, the less time I have to sleep, the more insomniak I am.

I often wonder how I function at all.

As for Jim, he sleeps at will and also takes many cat naps.

Soon, I was in the car with Margie, driving to Anchorage, to the airport, to hop on my first Era Aviation flight, the one that would take me from Anchorage to Fairbanks.

I desperatedly wanted to sleep on that flight, but I could not.

In Fairbanks, I switched to the plane that would take me to Kaktovik. I was the only passenger, but the plane was full - full of freight.

For those of you who may wonder why everything is so expensive in Rural Alaskan places like Kaktovik, this is why. Except for a barge load or two in the summer, this is how goods travel - including all fresh food, milk and such.

Even with bypass mail, this is not a cheap way to stock the shelves.

Again, I wanted to sleep but again, I could not. Still, I kept my eyes closed. I figured that would help. Accompanied by the roar of the engine and the props beating the air, I held my eyes closed as images, often bordering on dreams, played in my head.

Images of the living, and images of the dead; pictures of places, from Alaska to Arizona, to India and Canada and Greenland and New York City and San Francisco - all sorts of images of people and places, swirling about in my head as the plane carried me over Northern Alaska.

I wanted to hold my eyes closed forever.

I knew I could not do that. So I decided I would hold them closed until I felt the plane stall and the wheels hit the runway in Kaktovik.

But I couldn't do that, either. At a certain point, I knew we had to be drawing near to Kaktovik. We had to be passing over the Brooks Range.

"Eyes!" I ordered. "I have seen the Brooks Range many times! I do not need to see it now! It is better for you to stay closed, so that I might get what little rest I can."

My eyes did not listen.

They popped open.

And there, beneath the plane, stood the Brooks Range.

Very soon, the plane was descending, the Beaufort Sea below.

Then, it was dropping down over the westerns fringes of Barter Island, the northern-most point of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, upon which sits Kaktovik.

Then came the stall, and the bump of the wheels. Now we were rolling down the runway, past the massive hangar built by the Air Force in the early 1950's, when they force-moved the Iñupiat of Kaktovik out of their homes so that they could build this airport where the old village had stood.

More on this later.

I was hungry by now, so, after Crystallee Kaleak and Annie Tikluk found lodging for me in the Assembly of God Church and I got settled in, I walked to Waldo Arms and ordered an omelette.

As I ate, someone came in and peeked through the telescope that points out the Waldo Arms window toward the sea and shore, to see if perhaps there were polar bears out there.

He spotted none.

And then, I was standing on a beach, camera in hand. People were smiling, and waving. I will explain in a subsequent post.

I was about to state that I would explain in tomorrow's post, however, tomorrow is a very special day in someone's life, someone who had a most important role in the happenings that unfolded in Kaktovik, so maybe I will dedicate tomorrow's post to him, instead, and save my larger explanation for the next day.

*Squarespace has an iPad app, but it is a pretty lousy app. I did not have access to wireless where I stayed, so, when I would get a chance, I would go to the school and usually sit on the steel stairway and log on to North Slope Borough School District public wireless.

I built three different posts in the Squarespace app but at the end of each attempt was rewarded only with a rotating, circular, arrow above the word, "publishing." After the failure of my first attempt, which included three photos, I figured maybe Squarespace just could not deal with that tiny amount of information on a slow connection, so I made a new post with just one photo.

After that failed, I made a thrid post that contained only words and no image at all.

Just like before, the publishing arrow just rotated and rotated and rotated - for two days it rotated. yet never published the post. Sometime before the end of fall, I must make the time to research some other web-hosting platforms. When I find the right one, I will move this blog and my future electronic publishing efforts to it.

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Transitions: Kaktovik to Wasilla and my grandsons, to Utah where Thos got married before the milk expired, a beautiful reflection of India

I have fallen terribly behind - in large part for the reasons explained in my entry of October 15 and in part simply because life just seems to plunge relentlessly forward at an ever-increasing pace and I simply cannot keep up or ever pause long enough to make sense of it all.

Before I fell into this blog hole, readers will recall that I had been in Kaktovik, where I took this picture nine days ago (really? Nine days already???), where I had gone to cover the Healthy Communities Summit.

I was riding with big Bob Aiken in the truck that he had borrowed from his aunt, The Reverend Mary Warden, and we had gone out to look at the mountains of the Brooks Range, a bit to the south.

Don't let this picture fool you. You cannot drive a car from Kaktovik to the mountains. You can only drive a little ways - in this case, a couple of miles from the village to the land fill. However, the water between Barter Island and the mainland was rapidly freezing over and I am certain that by now, people from Kaktovik are driving their snowmachines to the mountains and some have undoubtedly taken some snow-white, bighorn Dall sheep.

Just before I left Kaktovik, the temperature dropped very close to zero F, if not all the way.

This is not all that cold for this time of year, it's just that recent years have been so warm. In fact, I remember that in our first winter in Wasilla, the snow set in for good on October 2 and within a week of that we had had our first sub-zero temperatures - and Wasilla is a much warmer place than Kaktovik.

That winter was colder than average, but the fact is, Alaska is just not as cold of a place as it was when we first moved here.

A bit later that same afternoon, I saw the snowplow clearing the runway. I left Kaktovik the next afternoon, Saturday, October 9. As I did, I shot a very nice little photo story of riding around beforehand with Big Bob, of airplanes, coming and going, of people deboarding and boarding, of flying to Barrow, where I had less than two hours before I had to board my flight to Anchorage - but that was enough to get a picture of Roy Ahmaogak with some of the slabs of maktak from the whale his Savik crew had landed - and then of the flight home.

But I can find none of those images now. I have this horrid feeling that I accidently erased them.

The Alaska Airlines flight arrived in Anchorage late in the evening and Margie came to pick me up. As we drove back to Wasilla, I sent a text message to Lavina, "I need a Kalib and Jobe fix!"

And my dear daughter-in-law! What did she do? After I had gotten some sleep and rest, she drove them out to Wasilla, just to give me that fix.

Here is Jobe, soothing my soul.

Since I left on these latest rounds of travel, Jobe has entered daycare. Margie no longer must go to town to spend her week days babysitting him. While she is glad to be able to stay home - and I will be glad to have her here, something I have not yet had the chance to experience - she already greatly misses hanging out with him all day.

Kalib went out into the back yard to golf.

Before taking his first shot, he contemplates, seeks to psych himself up.

He zeros in on the ball...

...and drives it hard and far. I would tell you it was a hole-in-one, but there was no hole in which to drop it, so there was no hole in one.

It was a darn good drive, though.

I had barely gotten my fix when the two got strapped into their car seats and their mother drove them back to Anchorage.

Soon, I was on a red-eye flight that left Anchorage at 12:47 AM and arrived in Salt Lake City just after 7:00 AM. I had a "B" seat - a middle seat.

It was not a pleasant flight.

After I exited the plane, I followed these two pilots toward baggage claim.

During my short time in Wasilla, Margie kept after me to get a haircut, but I had too much to do and couldn't take the time.

"I'll get one down there," I said.

She was doubtful.

After I arrived in Salt Lake, I went to the house in Sandy that my brother Rex inherited from my parents and lay down upon his bed to take a short nap.

That damn short nap lasted until about 2:25 PM. This aggravated me, because I did not want to waste my day napping, but I guess I needed it.

I then spent about an hour visiting with the ghosts of my parents as they now manifest themselves in their old house and then went to breakfast at the nearby IHOP. I finished breakfast a little after 4:00 PM. Then I headed over to "Great Clips" and got my hair cut.

I got my beard trimmed, too. It is no where near as long now as in this picture.

This is why I dropped everything and flew to Utah: to be present during the time of the wedding of my nephew, Thos Swallow, to Delaina Bales. The wedding had been scheduled for 10:00 AM Friday, and I and all the other family members who could not attend were told to be there by 10:40, when they would emerge as husband and wife from the granite building behind.

The drive took me a few minutes longer than I had anticipated and I arrived about 10:48. The sun shone brightly and reflected off the nearly white granite with an intensity that hurt my eyes. I found the temperature shocking - already into the mid-70's.

I looked all around, and while many people, including other new brides and grooms, milled serenely about, I could not see Thos and Delaina, nor could I spot a single familiar face.

I did not think that I had come so late that they had already taken their post-ceremony pictures and left, but I was just a little bit worried, so I called my sister, Mary Ann, Thos's mom, to see where she might be. 

She had not yet arrived, but was wandering around down below with her husband, the granite building in sight above them, trying to find the road that would take them there.

As I was talking to her on my cell, I saw Thos and bride Delaina emerge from the wedding hall. He, too, was talking on his phone. She had to shield her eyes from the harsh glare that she had just stepped out into.

Here they are, the bride and groom - Thos and Delaina Swallow, outside the Draper Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons) in which they had just married.

That golden fellow blowing his trumpet toward the east, the direction from which it is prophesied that Christ will appear at His Second Coming, is the Angel Moroni. Moroni was a huge character in the intense life that I grew up in and that I can never step fully away from even though my thoughts and beliefs have traveled into new territory.

The Church is very particular about who it will allow to enter its temples and, notwithstanding the fact that my direct ancestors hung out with Joseph Smith, set out across the plains toward Utah with Brigham Young and received multiple wives in wedding ceremonies conducted by him, I no longer am numbered among those allowed to enter.

In some ways, it is kind of a funny feeling to travel over to 2000 miles to be present during a wedding that you know you will not be allowed to attend, but I understood all this before I left. Margie and I did the same thing to her parents and family on the day nearly 37 years ago that we married in the Provo Temple. As I have noted in the past, I feel bad when I think about that now, but I do not want Thos and Delaina to ever feel badly that I found myself subject to the same exclusion at their wedding.

I understand - but as for my father and mother-in-law, they had already been excluded from so much by the larger, mostly white and Mormon society that had taken over so much of their country and had then surrounded them on their reservation. I deeply regret the fact that, at our wedding, Margie and I added to that feeling of exclusion.

In the case of my nephew and his wife, the one thing that matters to me is that he, Thos, be given the assurance that his Uncle Bill loves him and admires him, that he is an important man in my life and that she knows that I honor the commitment that she and he have made together and that I embrace her as a part of this, in many ways shattered and scattered, family.

To give them that assurance, I traveled far to be present for their wedding that I knew the Church would not allow me to attend.

On September 30, Thos wrote this on his Facebook page: 

"By the time the milk in my fridge expires, I will be a married man.

By my standards, I restrained my photography on the day of the wedding. As regular readers know, I am not a wedding photographer and Thos and Delaina had hired a real wedding photographer to shoot the event for them. She worked hard and from what I could tell, did a good job. She was cordial toward me, but I could see that my presence with my camera did annoy her a bit, so I did my best to restrain myself.

Even so, I took a fair number of pictures. I have it had it in mind to do a good photo summation of the day, as I experienced it. Yet, except for the two images at the temple and this one, I have not yet had a chance to even look at my take. I still hope to produce a summation of the wedding day, plus at least one or two other posts dedicated to my trip to Utah, but, as usual, life continues to rush forward. Images rush through my camera in a non-ending blur and Utah is now behind me. The bright, warm, sun has been replaced by the cold and gray of post-fall Wasilla in need of the grace of its white blanket.

I got to bed a bit before 4:00 am this morning, took Margie to breakfast at Family Restaurant at noon and have a non-revenue generating project (most projects seem to be this way, these days. Now that everybody has a digital camera, this concept that photographers have no need to make a living just seems to be growing and growing and I buy into it myself, as this blog proves) that I have committed to my underfunded client that I will finish before I go to bed tomorrow morning.

So maybe I will get a chance to post those other Utah stories and maybe I won't. I hope I do. I want to.

We will see.

But, in case I don't, after I pulled out the two pictures of Thos and Delaina coming out of the temple, I zipped way down through the take, very near to end of that day, and quickly grabbed this picture.

This is Ada Lakshmi Iyer, 17 months old, the most recent member born into this family. Ada is the daughter of my niece, Khena and her husband, Vivek Iyer, who grew up in India. The fabric for her beautiful little dress was selected by her grandmother, Vasanthi, a devout Hindu, and sewn by a tailor in Bangalore.

Ada was born in Minneapolis, but recently paid a visit to India, where she was reportedly loved and adored by all.

As for Vivek, who married into my once devout Mormon family, he says he is now pretty much an atheist, but that does not mean he is no longer Hindu, because one can be Hindu and still be atheist. As Vivek's dad, Murthy, also devout Hindu, once explained it to me, one can be just about about anything, Mormon included, and still be Hindu, because in the end, however many journeys it might require before one undergoes all the hardships, purification and education necessary, one will find his or her way back to God and the truth, whatever God be, whatever truth be.

Me, I still don't know and don't ever expect to. I'm just shooting through life, amazed at the hard and beautiful wonder of it all, trying to capture a few images and hazy meaning along the way.

Little Ada Lakshmi! So beautiful, so adorable, so full of life and excitement! I just wanted to pick her up and hug her, but she is not the kind of person to sit still long enough for that. Just before I left, she did let me give her a hug as her mother held her. 

When I did, she smiled.

It is good to be alive.

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The Kaktovik Healthy Communities Eskimo Dance - and the young artist who envisioned the mural

I have a big task directly in front of me that must be done in a short time and then I have to hop on another airplane, so I will very quickly go through the pictures from the Eskimo dance held on the final night of the Healthy Communities Summit in Kaktovik.

Anyway, after the meetings had ended and supper had been eaten, participants gathered in the community center, along with the Kaktovik drummers, singers and dancers.

When it comes time to dance, some people are not at all frightened and shy.

Always, there is grace and beauty in the dance.

Always.

Much to be seen.

There she is again - in the middle of everything.

Motion dance.

Sometimes, ravens will appear on the floor.

Not all the fun happens in the dance.

Couples dance.

There is something about dancing...

...that makes people smile.

Final dance.

Afterward, there was more gospel singing. Just before it began, someone told me that the mural on the wall behind her had been created by Flora Rexford. I asked Flora about it and she said it was the work of many people in the community. She sketched everything out but then was joined by many other villagers, young and older, in the painting. 

She would instruct them on where to place such colors until the mural was done.

So when she stepped up to the mic to sing, I knew that I had to get a photo of Flora with the whole mural behind her and the musicians.

It was a difficult picture to take, because when I found the angle that seemed to best show the mural, Flora's face was obscured by the mic. Other angles created other problems.

So I shot a bunch, and in the end was not happy with any of them. But here is this one, anyway.

Maybe I should have used this one instead. There are many things about it that I like better than the one I chose, but I don't like the placement of the mic. 

But there's the mural, and here's the artist whose mind it came out of.

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The Healthy Communities Summit - where the people gathered to find a way to a better future

Through this blog, I have told readers that I spent last week at the Healthy Communities Summit in Kaktovik. Many know what a Healthy Communities Summit is, but many don't. In short, about five years ago, some teenagers in Barrow who were high on meth murdered a taxi driver for a very small amount of money, because they wanted to buy more meth.

This greatly upset not only the community of Barrow, but the Iñupiat community of the entire Arctic Slope, and those non-Iñupiat who share in the life.

Traditionally, the Iñupiat community was exceptionally healthy and fit, because it had to be, just to survive in such a physically demanding environment as the Arctic. Along with horrible diseases that devastated the community, the early Yankee commercial whalers brought alcohol and that, too, brought hardship to the community, but mostly in bits and spurts because most of the time, there was not that much alcohol to be had and people were out in the country and on the sea, working hard to survive.

I lack the space and time to delve into everything here, but in more modern times, particularly after the military increased its presence in World War II and especially during the cold war, and even more so after big oil came, alcohol problems grew and the new scourge of dangerous drugs was introduced.

After the meth-murder, a grass-roots movement rose up all across the Slope and eventually took on the title, "Healthy Communities." A leadership group was formed, bringing together people from the government, corporate and social worlds. Youth organizations became involved, churches, too.

North Slope Borough Mayor Edward Itta made the improvement of the health of Arctic Slope communities his number one priority.

This year's Healthy Communities Summit in Kaktovik was the fourth to be held. The theme: "Together We Have, Together We Will."

In the above picture, people have divided up into groups, both to hash out what the major obstacles to success are and to hammer together potential solutions.

See that big guy at the back wearing black, his arms folded? That's Big Bob Aiken. At this summit, Big Bob added a brand new perspective to the movement, when he broke the words, "Healthy Community" down to "Heal Thy Community."

Each group wrote down the problems, ideas and potential solutions on huge sheets of paper.

Each group took got to stand before the summit to present their ideas.

And these are the two individuals who headed up not only the organizing and planning of the summit, but who work with many groups in all the communities to find ways to plan and fund healthy activities: Colleen Akpik Leman, Special Assistant to Mayor Itta and Inauraq Edwardsen, who works with the Mayor's Youth Advisory Council - MYAC.

Every now and then, the serious stuff was interrupted for some fun and games. This is a game called Ninja, where each contestant gets a turn to try to slap one of the hands of the person standing on either side, but then must freeze and hold the position until someone tries to slap her hands.

Once a contestant's hand is slapped, that contestant is out of the game.

And this is Price Brower, whose skills as an airplane and helicopter pilot have saved many lives. No one succeeded in slapping his hand. He was left as the last one standing. He celebrated his victory.

As they are the people to whom so many turn for guidance and help, preachers from across the Slope were invited, both to give their input and to listen to what people had to say. Toward the end of the summit, they posed with Mayor Itta (left).

One who is not in the picture because she had to leave early, is the Reverend Mary Ann Warden, herself originally from Kaktovik, born into the Akootchook family.

Popsi Tingook of Point Hope told a story about how, towards the end of his life, Billy Graham flew to North Carolina where a limousine was sent to pick him up at the airport.

Graham told the driver that he loved to drive and had driven many kinds of vehicles, but never a limo, so the driver let him take the wheel.

Graham's foot got a little heavy and so a cop pulled him over. When he saw who was at the wheel, he excused himself and returned to his squad car to radio his chief. He told the chief that he had stopped someone very important and wondered whether or not he should write a ticket.

"Who? The Mayor?" his chief asked.

"No, more important than that."

"The Governor?"

"No. Way more important."

By the chief's reckoning, that left only possibility - the President of the United States.

No, the officer told him - someone even way more important than the president.

Who could that possibly be, the chief asked him?

"It must be Jesus," Tingook quoted the cop. "Billy Graham is his chauffeur."

Many, such as Fred Miller of Ilisagvik College, came to acknowledge their own histories of battling and overcoming substance abuse and to assure those present that it can all be overcome.

Far too many people - including young people - have been lost to suicide, not only on the Arctic Slope, but all across Alaska. On their own, the MYAC youth put together a skit in which not one word was spoken but a powerful message delivered. In the skit, a young woman living a good life, started dancing with the gentleman in the clergy robe. Then one by one, others come to tear her away from her spiritual foundation - they offer her glamour, physical pleasure, alcohol, drugs... until finally a dark spirit puts a gun in her hand and tries to get her to shoot herself.

She almost does, but then fights it off. Several times she struggles to get back to her spiritual foundation. Again and again, those who brought her down throw her back, but she keeps struggling until finally she breaks through.

Just before the summit ended, several members from the host community of Kaktovik stood before the crowd to sing the song, "Praying for you... your heart may be broken, your friends may be few, but someone is praying for you."

Fenton Rexford then offered a closing prayer. Inside them, all present could feel both the pain that no one has escaped, yet also the hope and belief that things will get better.

Now I have a great deal of work ahead of me - to thoroughly go through all of my pictures and all that was said and see how I can bring it all together with everything else that I am doing for my next issue of Uiñiq. I have barely touched it here.

Next up: The Kaktovik Eskimo Dance

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