Lavina's masterpiece: The little boy, the spatula and the befuddled old man with long, white, hair and beard

As you would suspect, given the fact that it took me two days to complete my posts on Kalib's birthday and in that two days I did not sit still, but encountered and photographed waitresses, baristas, ravens, airplanes, the moon and such, I had plenty of material from which to make today's post.

And then Lavina emailed this picture to me, that she took at Jacob's office Christmas party. When I opened her email I laughed. Last night, as I was lying in bed wondering when sleep might finally overtake me, I thought of this picture and laughed again. And then this morning when I awoke for the final time, once again all too soon to get a good night's sleep, I thought of this picture and laughed once more.

Laughing is not what I have been doing these past many weeks, before repeatedly falling briefly into and awakening from short spurts of troubled sleep.

Poor, befuddled, Santa!

But I understand - and you, dear reader, if you have been with this blog lately, and Kalib's various adventures with the spatula, you also understand.

So today, I am going to push all of my pictures aside and run only this, a masterpiece of subtle humor and love, shot not by me but Lavina. Other than this, I won't say anything about the photo, but will let it speak entirely for itself.

Please - this is a picture that needs to be seen at a larger size. So click here or on the photograph itself to see it bigger.

To see all posts that include Kalib and his spatula, click here.

Kalib's birthday, part 2: We party, there is fire in the house, dinosaurs roar, a dragon flies and a train goes round the track; goats take the right of way

Once again, I am running behind. Time to catch up and put Kalib's birthday behind us for another year. Anyway, readers will recall that on Christmas night, Jobe came down with a nasty bug and so the family stayed with us that night. The next morning, December 26, Kalib cooked breakfast for us. It was his third birthday.

His mother had planned to throw him a big sledding party in the afternoon at a park near their house in Anchorage, but, given the circumstances, had to cancel those plans.

Still, except for Caleb, who was not feeling well himself, and Bryce, who had just lost his grandfather, we all gathered at Kalib's house in Anchorage in the evening to throw him a little party.

Kalib was happy to see his new love, Ama and so came with his spatula to visit her and his Uncle Rex.

After a bit, I heard the sound of laughter and commotion out in the kitchen. It was Lisa, playing a YouTube video title, The Dream of the 90s is Alive in Portland. There is a line in it that could only have been written about Charlie - "in Portland, you can put a bird on something and call it art."

Readers from way back then will recall that Charlie and Melanie put birds in his beard Charlie, which won him a big award at the national beard championships in Portland and got his picture spread round the world in a multitude of both print and online publications.

Lisa and Melanie, and Charlie and I believe Bryce as well, have all fallen in love with Portland, the city where young people go to retire, and sleep until 11:00. They think it is a great city and they talk about moving there someday.

Jobe was still under the weather, but improving. When the party ended, I would go home alone so that Margie could stay for two or three days and care for Jobe until he gets well enough to return to day care.

Readers who have been with us for previous birthday parties may have noted that cakes have been brought out for people in the 20's, 30's and even the breach of 60's that have had very few candles on them - even as few as three.

Now one was brought out for a three year-old and it had a bunch of candles. 

Kalib did not object.

Kalib cut the cake himself - with just a wee bit of help from dad. He did not need anybody's help to clean the cake-cutting knife.

Lisa and Martigne. She also entertained us with You-Tube videos of Maru, a Japanese cat with an obsession for boxes - even tiny, tiny, boxes that it cannot fit into, but fits into them anyway.

Then, as Walking With Dinosaurs played on the TV, Kalib set about to open his presents. It was clear from the box that this one from his grandma contained a dragon, but, try as he might, Kalib could not open the box.

He tried so hard to open the box that he stubbed his toe and started to cry. He went to his Uncle Rex for comfort. In the meantime, Jacob went and found some tools and began to try to open the box.

At a certain point, Kalib shifted to his mom, and there received comfort. 

Whoever had designed and constructed the box really did not want anyone to ever open it and to free the dragon. It took Jacob several minutes, but finally the dragon was out.

It was Toothless, from the movie, How to Train Your Dragon, piloted by his Viking friend, Hiccup.

Kalib went flying with them.

How they flew! And what magnificent things they saw!

If you might be worried that such a fine gift would cause Kalib to forget about his spatula, put that worry away right now.

Lisa is certain that Toothless was patterned after her black cat, Zed. To prove this, she pulled up a picture that she had taken of Zed with her iPhone and put the two side by side. "See? Toothless looks just like Zed," she said.

Since I first saw Toothless in the movie, I have been convinced that he had been patterned after Jim - not only in looks, but in movement and mannerisms.

He also got a little train.

Kalib, Toothless, Hiccup and Margie.

And this one from India:

The open road is always a wonderful and dangerous place, but, much to my now ever-lasting pain, the Indian highway is an exceptionally dangerous highway. There may be traffic laws, but if they are acknowledged at all, it is only as suggestions meant to be ignored. Lanes mean nothing. Tail-gating is taken to the extreme. It is considered good driving to charge straight at the oncoming driver from an impossibly close distance and then to swerve at the last instant and escape death from headon collision by one inch.

But there is a law on the Indian highway that is absolute. Everyone obeys this law:

Goats have the right of way.

Goats always have the right of way and that right is respected and obeyed.

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Kalib's birthday, part 1: Kalib breaks eggs; Kalib feeds the alligator

As I mentioned yesterday, Jobe had fallen ill on Christmas Day and so his parents had decided to spend the night. Nobody had gotten to sleep until after midnight and then, once calmed, Jobe had slept until 5:00 AM, when he woke up crying. Margie had gotten up then and had gone out to the living/front rooms where the family had camped out to see what she could do to help.

I tried to get a bit more sleep after that, but as has seemingly become the norm, I could not. My ability to sleep for more than a few, oft-interrupted, hours has been detroyed. So, after turning and tossing for about two hours, I got up and headed toward my office. As I passed from the hallway into the front/living room, what you see above is what I saw.

I continued on into the office to open up my computer so that I could see what was happening in various parts of the world and to begin to work on pictures. 

Normally, I would have set the coffee pot to brewing and steel-cut oats to boiling, but when Jacob and Lavina are here, I look forward to what Jacob, our master chef, will concoct for breakfast, so I didn't.

A good four hours would pass before the others started to get up and move around and in all that time, I did not eat or drink anything. I just waited in anticipation for Jacob to start cooking.

Finally, somewhere around noon, Jacob announced that Kalib would be cooking breakfast for everyone on this, the morning of his third birthday.

Kalib? Not just helping out a bit but cooking breakfast? Instead of having our breakfast prepared by our master chef, it was going to be cooked by a three-year old?

Well, okay - after all, he does own his own spatula.

Kalib began by going to the fridge, where he pulled out some eggs.

He broke an egg and put it in the mixing bowl. Then he broke another. It appeared that instead of putting it into the bowl, he was about to inadvertantly spread it across the counter. Jacob's hands shot in to give him a small assist and help him to hold the egg together until he could put it in the bowl.

It can be a frightening to watch Kalib break eggs. He, lifts them up, then thrusts them down hard and fast and it looks he is going splatter them all over the counter, but then suddenly, just before contact, he puts on the brakes and the eggs hit the counter with barely enough force to crack them - or maybe not even enough. Sometimes, he must strike two or even three times before he breaks the egg.

Kalib soon let it be known that he was going to break two eggs at a time.

He broke both the eggs, but just barely.

Into the mix goes an egg.

After Kalib breaks one egg, his dad holds it dripping above the bowl. Kalib reaches out to see what the draining white of the egg feels like. Kalib's mom had put a chef's hat upon his head. It didn't stay there long.

After all the eggs have been broken and dumped into the mixing bowl, Kailb breaks the yolks and mixes them up.

Then he adds some milk...

...followed by some pepper...

...then some chili powder...

...he just kept adding more and more items and spices...

...as he threw in gob upon gob of various herbs, I began to grow worried. I began to wonder if maybe I should have cooked my steel-cut oats after all. I did not know if I wanted to eat this concoction.

Now it is time to cook. His dad will man the flame, but Kalib sprays the pan with Pam. During my senior year in high school and my freshman in college, I fell in love with a red-headed girl named Pam. She lives in Hawaii now with children and grandchildren nearby. Her husband passed on, long ago.

Now, Kalib cooks with Pam.

Remember that spatula that Margie and I looked at when we did our Christmas shopping. We did, in fact, buy it for Kalib so that he would always have a spatula waiting for him at our house.

On his birthday, he put that spatula to use for the first time.

No one but Kalib is to use this spatula.

Understood?

Finally, breakfast is cooked. Kalib doles it out in generous servings.

He takes a seat by his dad, who then feeds him what he has cooked. Look at that alligator! It looks hungry.

Kalib is not the kind to let a hungry alligator starve. He feeds eggs to it.

I overcame my fear and ate a generous serving myself.

You know what?

It was pretty good.

In the evening, there would be party for Kalib at his house.

Yes, we went.

That will be the subject of part 2.

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We get our Christmas shopping done early; Todd - met at Carr's; Melanie gets the blessing of an elephant

We had no milk for oatmeal, so I didn't cook any. Instead, I sat down right here at my computer and started to work on pictures. Then Margie came in and wondered what we should do about Christmas shopping. "Well," I answered, "we're out of milk so we might as well go to breakfast and then see if we can get some shopping done."

She agreed. I remote started the car, let it warm up for about 15 minutes. It was still very chilly inside and the seats were like solid blocks of ice, but we climbed into the car and headed for Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant. As we neared, this raven passed over the car.

"This guy is really annoying," Margie told Connie, our waitress, as I took this picture. Connie did not agree, but she laughed politely so that Margie would think she did.

I believe that I may have ranted about this before, and I probably will again, but this is one of the great ironies of my life as a photographer. It is only in recent years - pretty much since grandkids began to enter our lives - that Margie has tolerated me taking photographs of her at all.

True, I did manage to get a few in here and there, mostly when the children were somehow involved, but fundamentally, I, who am possessed with genuine passion to photograph anything and everything, found myself with this exceptionally gorgeous and beautiful wife and everyday that we were together I would look upon her and I would want to photograph her and everyday she would refuse to be photographed.

Be assured, I still find her beautiful - sometimes so much so that it makes me ache just to look at her. She now has the beauty of an aging woman who has weathered much in life, suffered many hurts and disappointments but has created a family that loves and adores her.

Each one of us loves and adores her.

Back when we were first married, she possessed a different kind of beauty - exquisite physical beauty of the most desirous kind - her hair so deep black, long and wavy against her lovely brown skin, her eyes radiant, dancing with fun and mischief - and I, the artist, who looked upon her every day, was not allowed to document this beauty - except on rare occassions, almost always involving children.

The only exception that I can think of is this one, which I posted on Mother's Day last.

I cannot remember how I persuaded her to pose that day, but, even though she relented, if you click the link and look at the picture, you will see that she was not happy about it.

And now, as the years and decades push those days of youthful beauty ever farther back, I sometimes long to look at the photos of my beautiful, young, wife. I long to show the photos to her children, her grandchildren and say to them, "see how beautiful she was? She had a host of would be suitors and yet she chose, short, awkward, shy, socially inept, me and together we made you."

But those pictures do not exist. I cannot look at them; I cannot show them to anybody.

If all the people who I have photographed over the years would have reacted to my camera the way she did, I would have utterly failed as a photographer. I would probably be selling newspapers on the street somewhere, because there's nothing else I could have done.

Our first stop was at Meta Rose Square, home of All I Saw Cookware. Get it. "All I Saw?" "Wasilla" backwards? Was-i-lla?

We parked right next to this car. I am not quite certain why some guys feel compelled to emblazon their vehicles in this manner. To attract attention, I guess.

In my case, it didn't work. I didn't even notice. I didn't notice at all. I walked away without even giving it a sideways glance.

I am not quite sure why, but, as we walked through Meta Rose, I found myself wondering why I had to grow up Mormon; I was sort of a cowboy, once, briefly, but a Mormon sort of cowboy and it wasn't like this.

Inside the store, we came upon this piggy bank. As piggy banks always do, this one transported my mind back to Pendleton, Oregon, when I was five years old. My mom had taken me downtown to go shopping and when we came to JC Penney's, there was a red, plastic, piggy bank in the window. Or maybe it was the window of a bank. Or perhaps Woolworth's. Whatever window it was, the pig on the other side was wearing a little hat.

I wanted that piggy bank. I wanted it badly.

Mom had grown up very hard in the Depression and was against all spending that was in any way frivolous. And a piggy bank was frivolous. One could make a very fine bank from an empty Morton's salt box, or a band-aid can.

She did not understand that it was not that I wanted a bank - I wanted the little red pig with the hat on its head, but in the name of frugality I was denied this item that maybe cost 25 cents. I never did get a piggy bank. I kept my coins in Morton salt boxes and bandaid cans. And every time I would go into a store and see a piggy bank, I longed to have it.

Then, when I became a young man, a curious thing happened. I would go into a store, see a piggy bank and feel the same longing. So I would buy the piggy bank.

I bought all kinds of piggy banks. It became a waste of money. There was no place to put all these piggy banks. At the Alaska State Fair, I even found a little red plastic one, wearing a hat - made from the very same mold as the one that I had been denied in the first place.

Finally, I had to get rid of most of those piggy banks.

As for the ones I kept - I don't even know where they are now - not even the little red plastic one.

When I saw this one yesterday, I wanted to buy it - not as a gift but for me.

But I didn't. I resisted temptation and moved on.

I am not going to show you what Margie is holding in her hand, because it might be a gift for someone. It might not be, but if it is, I would not want to spoil the surprise.

Out in the hall, a little boy took a ride on giant duckling.

We left the store with two days to go. This is the earliest we have ever done our shopping. Especially me. I am usually in a store at closing time on Christmas Eve, buying ceramic roosters, things like that.

Next we went to Fred Meyer's, where a raven sat upon a pole. You can't tell it in this tiny window, but that raven has its head cocked to one side. It looks very "Chooo 'weet."

Margie checks out some socks as gifts for grandkids. When I was small, it was such a great disappointment to open up a gift only to find socks. I wanted toys!

Now, this looks like a gift that a little boy could like! At least if his name is Kalib Hess. But then Kalib already has a spatula. What would he do with another?

I suppose this must be adorable, but personally, I found it to be just a little bit eery and frightening, somewhat macabre.

Then we happened upon a very cute scene - the two month old puppy, Brisa, held in the warm embrace of her human, Sierra.

Although we had eaten breakfast out, we found ourselves feeling hungry again. So we drove past the little cove at the west end of Wasilla lake, looking for hotdogs.

We found two hotdogs - both at Dairy Queen.

Dairy Queen has good hot dogs - especially the foot-longs. To all those from out of town who wonder whether or not they should come and visit Wasilla - come. If nothing else, for the Dairy Queen hot dogs.

They will taste just the same as the Dairy Queen hot dogs in your town, if you are an American.

So you will feel right at home - even if our little city is a bit more odd than yours. Which, trust me, it will be.

The view from Dairy Queen as I eat my hot dog. How come these guys are still up here in the north?

Late in the evening, Margie and I headed to Carr's, to buy turkeys and other food for Christmas dinner. Just as we reached the turkeys, this fellow stopped me. "Are you the guy who does the Wasilla 300 blog?" he asked.

Indeed, I am.

He told me that we disagree politically, but that he loves the blog - especially some of the stories that I do in Rural Alaska. He said that he has been looking out for me as he moves around town.

"Wasilla is a small town," he said. "I knew we would cross paths some day."

And there she is, my Margie, checking out the turkeys. We bought two 16 pounders.

And this one from India:

Remember the scorpion from yesterday? Photographed at, as Cawitha refreshed my memory with the name that just always flees my brain, Hampi?

I took this picture approximately 100 yards away from the place where I took that one.

It is Melanie, about to be blessed by an elephant. A "chooo 'weet" elephant.

For those who did not read the comments left on yesterday's post, one was left by Cawitha, Soundarya's cousin.

Yesterday, I speculated how Sandy might have reacted if I could have showed her the photo of the scorpion, and that was with the word, "Chooo'weet! I added that there was one element in the photo that would likely have disturbed her - namely, that the string had been tied to the scorpion's stinger.

Cawitha agreed, and took it one step further. She imagined Sandy not looking at the picture but being there at Hampi with us:

"Am sure Soundarya (Sandy) would have said "Chooo 'weet" and if she were to see this she would have ensured the arthropod was set free. She was the most compassionate person."

Thank you, Cawitha. I am certain that is exactly what Sandy would have done. And no matter how tough a guy the individual walking the scorpion might have imagined himself to be, he would have had to back down to her, just as did the vet who at first refused to treat the raven that she saved with Anil's help.

Cawitha, btw, has been my friend since the day that Sandy wed Anil. Like Margie, Cawitha does not like to be photographed and so that day asked me to please not take her picture. I didn't, unless maybe as part of the crowd, so I cannot show you what she looks likes. 

However, we are committed to one day going "trekking" together, perhaps in the Himalayas, perhaps in Alaska, maybe both. I expect that then, I will get her picture.

I can't be postive, but I think so.

Now, contrast this picture to yesterday's. Everything is turned around. It is the animal who is huge and powerful, the person who is small and relatively weak - especially because this person does not have the protection of a poisonous stinger.

But the elephant is gentle. The elephant blesses my daughter with its strength. The elephant does not harm her. And when the elephant laid the end of its heavy and powerful trunk upon my daughter's head, so powerful that it could easily have wrapped it around her neck and broken it, it felt like a blessing to her. 

As it did to me, when the elephant blessed me.

This was the second elephant in India to bless me.

No, I do not worship elephants. But this does not mean that I cannot appreciate being blessed by one.

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Flying in the general direction of the sun

When my scheduled time to depart Barrow approached, I did not want to go. I wanted to stay put. There were two reasons for this - one, because in the midst of all this darkness, cold and sorrow, I had felt the warmth, the light and the love that Barrow is capable of producing. Never misunderstand me - Barrow bears more than its fair share of turmoil and hurt - as do all Native American communities that I have ever spent time in - but at its core, its base, wrapped in the heart and soul of the people who have lived here for so long and borne so much there is something strong, loving, giving and spiritual. This warmth and strength can truly manifest itself in the time of no sun, in a time when beloved ones have been lost and people have come together to nurture and support each other.

And so it was on this trip.

Two, in the darkness itself I found a degree of solace that I could not have had I been in a place where the sun rises each day. The darkness of the day itself was like a blanket of warmth and comfort draped upon me.

I am a person who likes to walk, regardless the weather or the presence of polar bears, of which daily sightings were reported in town. If I walk on the roads, people always stop to give me a ride, so, as much as I could, I stayed off the roads and walked across the lagoon - two, three, maybe even four times a day. I would walk, under that dark or dim sky, all alone and it felt good to me. Depending on the direction that I walked, the wind might bite into my face with the sting and threat of frostbite but even so it felt good to me.

And there, alone, walking under a sky free from sunlight, I would talk aloud to Soundarya. It wasn't always a pleasant conversation. When someone that you love so dearly dies at their own hand, even though you know she was suffering such bitter, painful, grief herself, it leaves you with many questions and additional hurts.

But it was always a good conversation, a loving conversation, one that I needed to have. Even though the rational side of my brain knew she was not really there, somehow, it always felt to me that in some way, she was present and that she wanted to communicate with me as badly as I wanted to communicate with her.

So I spoke out loud and then in silent pauses listened for words I could not hear, but could only feel, or imagine that I felt.

I did not wish to leave this environment, where I could walk upon the lagoon in the dim and dark and converse with Soundarya and then go sit amidst the warmth of friends who would feed me caribou, whale and fish -people not related by blood to me but who are my family, none-the-less.

Perhaps this sounds crazy and perhaps it would be best if I were to just keep all this to myself, but this is how it was and I did not want to leave Barrow.

I knew my loving family awaited me at home but still I did not want to go. 

I took this picture as I walked off the lagoon, about 8:30 or 9:00 AM, enroute to Pepe's for breakfast.

And here I am at Pepe's - taking a portrait of Joe The Water Man, son of Fran Tate, owner of Pepe's. Joe became famous in Barrow in the days when no one had running water piped into their homes and he drove a water truck, to fill their tanks and barrels.

He never wore a parka or even a jacket or sweat shirt, but always just a t-shirt, no matter what the weather. Twenty below, 30 below, - 40, - 50... there was one day that the official weather bureau thermometer is said to have broken after the mercury plunged right through the bottom of it, but a number of thermometers around town, including one that I myself laid eyes upon, registered - 63.

And there was Joe The Water Man, delivering water in his t-shirt.

On days with wind chills of - 90, - 100: there was Joe, in his t-shirt, delivering water.

Joe does not drive the water truck anymore. He keeps my coffee hot and makes certain that I get two packets of raspberry jam with my wheat toast - unless there is no wheat bread to be had, and no raspberry jam either.

This happens sometimes. 

He does not really wear this hat to work. A fellow from Anchorage who calls himself The Mad Hatter and who likes to frolic in Cuba and Thailand had come to Barrow to sell hats and had let Joe try this one on.

I thought he looked pretty good in it.

Up the street from Pepe's is a water tank, with a Nativity scene in front of it and the guiding star of the east above.

Now here I am, at just a bit after 11:00 AM, sitting in the Alaska Airlines flight that will fly me to Anchorage. What you see beyond blowing a mini-blizzard into the air is a snowplow, clearing the runway. I had checked to see if I could postpone my departure and leave on another day, but every single seat out of Barrow had been booked into January.

I did not want to miss Christmas with my family, so I decided that I had better leave as scheduled.

And here we are, lifting off, departing Barrow.

We wing our way south, toward the sun, toward the glow of dawn/twilight. I was raised to believe that the sun always rises in the east and sets in the west.

In Alaska, this is not always true. The sun can rise in the south and set in the south. It can rise in the north and set in the north.

It can rise and set not at all.

See that little stream down below? Before I crashed it, I would sometimes fly my airplane, the Running Dog, right over that stream, between those low mountains.

It looked very different down there than it does from up here, but even so, I recognize it.

You can see that although we are still a couple of hundred miles from the sight of the sun, the amount of light is on the increase.

Now we pass over the northern flanks of the Brooks Range...

...now the southern.

We reach a point where the sun still fails to shine directly upon the ground, but it does shine on a couple of clouds below us at an altitude that I can only guess at. I won't even try.

As we near the Yukon River, very near to the place where the Tanana flows into it, the sun manages to strike the ridge tops, but not the valleys.

The White Mountains.

At one point I turned around and saw that there was a sunbeam, traveling with me, right there in the plane. It was the little son of Olemaun and Thelma Rexford, owners of Aarigaa Java and Aarigaa Tours, in the arms of his dad.

Oh, I have forgotten the name of this little one!

But someone can remind me, I'm certain.

And in front of me - another sunbeam, fast asleep.

By the time we reached the Alaska Range, the sun was up, but it was overcast and we could not see it. Soon, we were descending, and then were flying low over Cook Inlet - on final to landing in Anchorage.

Margie picked me up at the airport and then we drove to Taco King for lunch. Except for Rex, who had just driven from California to Anchorage with Ama and had then caught an airplane to New York or Newark and from there on to New England, all of the Anchorage family met us there.

Kalib came with his spatula and blanket.

Next, we were driving home to Wasilla.

I am now days behind. I will try to catch up tomorrow, when I will bring you back to Wasilla with me.

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