Happy Father's Day, Son!

Lavina had a health fair to do in conjunction with the Chickaloon and Knik tribes at the Palmer fairgrounds, so Margie and I went and picked her up when it was all done, about 4:00 PM. Jacob and the boys came out about two hours later. The boys were asleep when he arrived and so we left them that way.

We took turns peeking into the car to see when they might wake.

Jobe woke first. He reached for me, right away.

In the past on this day, I have paid tributes to the fathers from whence we come. Today, I pay tribute to the fathers who descend from us and since one of those is my oldest son, I focus that tribute on him.

Here he is, yesterday evening, tossing my middle grandchild Jobe into the air.

Now he shows him the first frog of the season. It used to be that our yard teemed with frogs - one could hardly walk without stepping on one.

Now a frog sighting is an occasion to take note of.

Jobe does take note. 

As for the oldest grandson Kalib, he still sleeps in the car.

In time, Kalib wakes up and comes back, too. The frog is still hanging out nearby, so Jacob shows it to Kalib. He invites Kalib to touch it, but Kalib is wary.

To demonstrate that this frog poses no harm, Jacob gives it a kiss. 

A bit later, Jimmy begins to wander too far away for my comfort, but I am entertaining Jobe and Jobe does not want me to leave, so Jacob goes and hauls him back.

Well, I took a lot of pictures last night and my computer is acting up big time - it is headed to the repair shop tomorrow or Tuesday and if I could afford to I would just replace it because I am spending maybe 30-40 percent of the time that I work with it - and sometimes, all of the time for an hour or two straight - watching the spinning color wheel go round and round and suffering mulitiple freezeups and forced shutdowns, so it is just too exasperating to try to look at the photos I took.

It was possible to navigate my way through the spinning color wheel and crashes to the toss and frog shots, because they were clear in my memory and I knew just where to find them, and the two shots that wrap up this series were at the end of yesterday's take, but it is too much of pain to search through the others.

This one, however, just popped up on my screen as I was swearing and cursing at my computer and it was so damn cute I just grabbed it.

There are some serious people within the photographic community who dismiss cute photos as irrelevant and facile, but, damnit, cute is part of life, too.

Please take note: I am a very serious photographer and this is a very serious photograph of real and true life.

More serious stuff - my son, the dad, with his entire family, his wife and three children. Jobe is taking an ever greater interest in spatulas.

Wait a minute, the astute reader protests... your son Jacob has only two children, Kalib and Jobe... why do you say, "three?"

Remember when Jobe quit breast feeding and I noted that Jacob and Lavina had been using the breast feeding method of birth control and it would soon become apparent how well that worked out?

See that little bulge in the tummy, right behind Jobe?

That is how well that worked out.

Very well, indeed!

So here is my son, the dad, with his wife, his two children that the light now falls upon and the one that is scheduled to make a first appearance in the light of the delivery room in October.

Happy Father's Day, son!

I don't know how you ever got to be such a good dad. You didn't have the greatest example to follow and you were kind of wild there, for awhile. Yet, an excellent dad is what you have become. A little overindulgent at times, perhaps, but overindulgence is love, and infinitely superior to neglect. These kids of yours are pretty damn good kids and that didn't just happen.

I love them.

You make me proud.

And so does Lavina. Even though this is Father's Day, not Mother's Day, it has to be said.

Happy Father's Day!

To all you good dad's out there!

Young dads, old dads, dead dads like my good dad - all dads.

Happy Father's Day to you all!

View images as slides

Hit with the ball, the big wheelbarrow race, the sign lies, Mahoney horse, looking back at Barrow through the water glass

Kalib and I played catch. His objective was to dash in close enough and throw the ball hard enough so that instead of me catching it, it would bounce off my head.

Quite often, it did bounce off my head. Today, my artificial shoulder is very sore from throwing and catching the ball. I suppose that is not correct. The artificial shoulder has no nerves. There is no feeling in it. It cannot possibly be sore. It is the muscles and connections around it that are very sore.

Twice, Kalib knocked the lens shade off my lens when he struck it instead of my head.

Jobe and his grandma engaged in a series of wheelbarrow races. Jobe won every time. "Damnit!" Margie exclaimed after the last one. "I can't understand it. I run as hard and fast as I can and the damn little kid doesn't even run, he doesn't even walk he just cutes away in the wheelbarrow and yet, every time, he crosses the finish line before I do!

"Damnit! Damnit! Damnit!"

I was shocked.

Margie doesn't usually swear like that.

And it got worse after he beat her in the next race - the race that followed the final race.

I would quote her, but I don't use that kind of language in this blog.

The road ahead is not really closed at all. There is merely a detour around a construction area. Here we are, paying taxes to our Borough government and they use that money to lie to us.

The weather, by the way, is about 20 degrees cooler than it was on that glorious Memorial Day weekend just one week ago. It is good, though. As much as I enjoyed feeling those temps in the upper 70's, I feared the country would soon catch on fire and burn up.

So the cooler weather and the moisture is good.

And there is a Mahoney horse, not caring whether the road is open, closed, or detoured. 

Yesterday, I stated that I was going to use the day to completely work my way through my recent Arctic take. I only partially succeeded. As you can see in the above pictures, I allowed myself to be distracted often and frequently. I did very loosely edit all of my Point Hope pictures and I got into the Barrow pictures, but not very far.

At one point as I edited the Barrow pictures, I drank a glass of water. Just before I put the glass down, I noticed the screen looked kind of neat through the glass, so I took this picture through the water glass.

Here is an assignment for astute readers:

Once I get to Barrow in this blog, try to remember this picture and then see if you can match it up to the scene from which it comes. I might use this very picture or I might use a different frame of the same scene.

Anyway, see if you can match the two up.

View images as slide show

Standoff with skinny moose; buried truck, the train rumbles past Subway, etc. and so forth

I photographed this truck in early May in Point Hope. I include it in today's post just to assure interested readers that, although the rest of today's post will be devoted to Wasilla, I am continuing on with my series from my recent Arctic travels.

I spent two weeks on that trip and by the time I put yesterday's post up, I had made my way through just a little bit more than a day-and-half of that two weeks. I have been moving very slowly on that edit, because I have a different project that I must have proof ready by June 15, so I would do a little bit of editing on the Arctic trip, then put it aside and get back to work on my project.

But I want to get this blog series done, so I decided that today, Saturday, I will put my project aside and see if I can make my way through the entire take, then hopefully do a bit better job planning for the remainder of the Arctic Spring 2011 posts and get them ready so that they can appear through next week while I do nothing but concentrate on my project - and maybe drop in a picture or two from Wasilla here now and then, just to make it clear where I really am.

Despite appearances, it does not really snow that much in Arctic Alaska, where annual precipitation is about the same as Phoenix, Arizona. But once the snow falls, it does not melt for a long time and the wind blows it all about, so, whenever it finds anything to drift up and pile against, or even bury, it does.

And so it buried this truck. Looks like someone decided it was time to start digging it out.

Now, here I am, solidly back in Wasilla, driving home the long way after stopping at Metro Cafe. I see a kid on a bike out the window, so I quickly lift the camera and take a blind snap to my side through the dirty glass as I look straight ahead at the road. A moose could walk onto the road.

Yesterday morning, Margie and I decided to have breakfast at Subway, where it is pretty cheap but still good. As we were eating, I was thrilled to hear the whistle and rumble of the train, coming down the tracks. So I got my camera ready and.... sure enough, the train rolled into view! And, employing all my skill, talent, and experience as a hard working photojournalist, I caught the exact moment that the train rolled into view.

The exact moment! People will now marvel at this photo from now until the end of the world. Hmmm... according to some, folks won't get to marvel all that long, so look at it now and enjoy it while you can.

I love the train and yet, you know what? I have never ridden on the Alaska Railroad - not one time. I have never even been on a passenger car or in an engine, either. Nor has Margie.

Someday, this must change.

As it turned out, the Alaska Railroad engine was towing passenger cars, operated by Princess Tours. I could only wonder what these people were talking and thinking about as they rolled through my now famous/infamous home town.

I suspect some were basking in perceived glory and glowing in adoration. Others were probably discussing US history, Paul Revere in particular, and wondering if our schools could really be that bad.

They're not. It's an individual thing.

On my walk, I came upon this adolescent moose. As I approached, I was searching for its mom. One never wants to step between a mom moose and her calf. I saw no mom. Maybe the adolescent had been turned out on its own.

Maybe the mom had died.

Who knows?

Then the moose came walking toward me, looking at me. I looked at its bristles and they were up, but not dramatically so. I was not quite sure what to think. My first thought was that maybe somebody had fed this calf and now it was hungry and coming to me in the hope that I might give it an apple or something.

Or maybe it saw me as threat and was warning me to back away or it would stomp on me. Or maybe it was saying I am one mean moose and I am coming to get you and I will jump on you and there is not a damn thing you can do about it.

It can be very hard to know with a moose.

And, despite all our bear stories, in Alaska, moose afflict more damage upon human flesh than do bears.

"It is okay, moose," I calmly told it. "I mean you no harm. You have nothing to fear from me." I started to walk slowly to the side. I did not back up or retreat in the opposite direction, because I did not want it to think that I was afraid of it, either. I just moved away to the side.

Finally, the moose turned away. See how skinny it is? I felt badly for it. I did not feel optimistic for its future. I doubt that it will make it to hunting season, but I could be wrong. Maybe it will eat, thrive, and grow strong.

In the afternoon, Margie drove to town and brought Jobe and Kalib home with her. Once again, they are spending the weekend with us in order to allow their parents to work on their house.

Jobe wants to be friends with Jim.

Jim is still trying to decide if this is a good idea.

And for all my readers who have become fond of Charlie - who has not been in this blog since before I went traveling - his family dog, Rowdy, who was a genuine smiler, died this past week.

Condolences, Charlie, Jim and Cyndy.

Kalib bounced on the bed.

That plastic is up to give better insulation against the cold of winter.

I suppose we could take it down now.

Margie did open it up at the bottom, to let fresh air in.

View images as slides

I bike to Church, go on to Sunrise, see a four-wheeler through a pipe and am told a search is under way; Fat Boy's is gone, Sicily's is here

My modem went on the blink and ceased to blink, so, if I wanted to keep blogging, I had to take it back to GCI and trade it in for a new one. As I pulled out of the driveway to go and do so, I saw Kalib in the back of Caleb's truck. Caleb was nearby, keeping an eye on him.

After I swapped out the modem, I returned toward home along the edge of Wasilla Lake and shot a few blind frames. By "blind frames" I mean that I pointed my camera through the window and without looking in that direction myself, fired off a few frames, letting fate and serendipity choose the subjects and the composition.

Just a few weeks ago, Wasilla Lake was still coated in ice.

Now look at it. It has once again become:

"Wasilla Malibu."

I should do a series of studies of Wasilla Malibu throughout the summer - even though I don't expect to be here that much this summer. Still, I will shoot what studies I can, beginning with this one, which I shall title:

Wasilla Malibu Study #204: The red fire hydrant and the sunburnt boy.

Next I went to the Post Office. After I came out, I got into the car and started to drive away, but I saw the broader-faced of these two dogs. I braked to a stop, backed up, parked poorly, jumped out, scurried over and told the lady and the man kept by the canines that I would like to photograph the dog and then the other dog appeared and so I amended that to, "I would like to photograph your dogs."

So I did. I didn't learn much about the dogs, because, as I have already stated, I was parked poorly and needed to move my car before the wrong person came along, took offense, and shot me. I did learn that both dogs had just been groomed. They had been wearing heavy winter coats but now they were ready for summer.

I also learned their names, one was Sammy and the other was... the other was... the dog's name was...

Oh, good grief! I have forgotten!

This is terrible.

Not only that, I can't even remember which dog is Sammy and which is the other dog. 

But one of them is Sammy and whichever one he is, he is a mighty beautiful and fine looking dog and his temperament is pleasant.

Next I took a bike ride, my longest one so far this season. Here I am, headed down Church Road.

Here I am, about three or four miles further along, on Sunrise. A man and a boy pass by me on a fourwheeler and wave. I want to wave back, but worry that I might crash if I do because I am already pedaling and photographing and talking on my iPhone while surfing the web and to add one more element might just be too much.

So instead I nod my head and shout "hi!" hoping they can hear over the engine and wind noise.

Actually, I was not talking on my cell phone - or surfing the web. My iPhone was in my pocket. I just made that up to add a little bit of drama to the moment.

Our paths intersected again a little further down Sunrise, by the Mahoney Ranch, where the road has been torn up so that some new drainage pipes can be dropped in beneath it.

Turns out it was Dustin and his son. Dustin grew up just up the road. We talked a bit and he spoke about how wonderful it was to grow up here and I commented that he must have seen a lot of change and development and it must frustrate him a bit and he said, oh yeah, he had witnessed incredible growth and change and it was frustrating.

I was nodding away in awe at all the change he must have witnessed growing up here his whole life, especially considering all the change I had seen even though I grew up elsewhere and have only lived here a short time when suddenly it struck me that my short time living in Wasilla is getting close to 30 years and Dustin looks pretty young so I have probably been here longer than he has and have seen even more change.

As we were talking, a car stopped and a young Mahoney got out and then prepared to ride away on a bike. He said the people who had just dropped him off had told him that a two year-old child had wandered off and got lost at the s-curve, maybe a bit over a mile up the road. A search was underway and he was going to go help.

One never wants to hear or believe such news, but these things happen. It puzzled me a bit, though, because I had already pedaled through the s-curve and had seen no one. I knew that if a search had been going on there, there would have been people and emergency vehicles at that curve.

Maybe I had pedaled through before the search began. I did not think so, though. I thought perhaps he had received some inaccurate information. I hoped so.

The young man pedaled away.

I then took a picture of Dustin and his son through the new culvert pipe.

Then they turned around and headed off. I resituated myself on my bike and pedaled off in the same direction. I soon realized that they were going pretty slow and it would be an easy thing to catch them and then shoot a few frames as I pedaled alongside them.

So that is what I did. The Mahoney horses were in the field on the other side and I had planned to shoot a few pictures of them on the way back, but by the time I had shot my final frame of Dustin and son, I had passed the horses.

At that point, all I could think about was the story about the two-year old. I did not want it to be true. I did not think it was true. But I had to find out. If it was true, then I would have to do my part to help.

I could not leave with a two-year old child wandering in the woods, or being downstream in the frigid waters of the Little Su.

I pedaled on, toward the s-curve. Soon the Mahoney kid came into view, returning home. He said there was no one at the s-curve, no sign of any kind of search at all. The information he received must have been bad, he said.

Relieved, I pedaled on. As I reached the s-curve, an airplane passed overhead.

In time, I reached Seldon, which not so long ago became the Mat-Su Veterans Highway. It is hard to think of Seldon Street being considered a highway, but if it is a highway, then it is appropriate to name it for the veterans.

I took this picture right by Fat Boy's pizza. Unfortunately, Fat Boy's has gone out of business. It was said that he would reopen in a busier part of town in May, but he did not. I hope he yet does.

Now, there was a sign in the window that said, "Abby's Home Cooking, opening soon."

I wonder if Abby will serve breakfast? What will her hash browns be like?

Will she steal me away from the Family Restuarants? It would be an easy and good thing to leave the car behind and get on my bike in the morning and peddle the mile-and-a-half to Cora's.

When I got home, the house was chaotic. Jobe and Kalib were having a blast. It was after 7:00 PM. All the dishes were dirty, no one wanted to cook and dirty more dishes and anyway I now had pizza locked into my brain. So I ordered pizza from Sicily's, the place on the Parks Highway just past Church Road that I only discovered while driving home from Fairbanks May 15, following the honoring of Katie John.

They deliver, but the lady on the phone said it would take 45 to 55 minutes but the pizza would be ready in 15, if I were to pick it up.

So I picked it up. On the way home, I saw this dog.

I am very sad to have lost Fat Boy's, but glad to have discovered Sicily's.

It was very good pizza.

I ate too much, though, and then, to compensate, I had watermelon and cantaloupe afterwards.

After the gorge, I found Kalib and Caleb playing in the guest room. "Uncle!" Kalib would say. "Nephew!" Caleb would answer. Then they would reach out their hands and touch.

Jobe finished the day with some milk and then went to bed. Just as he is no longer sleeping in his cradle board, he no longer dines on mother's milk. 

Lavina had two goals in mind when she breast fed Jobe for over a year - the first was to provide him the healthiest diet possible, the second to give Jake and her a natural form of birth control.

It will soon be evident just how successful that part of the plan proved to be.

View images as slides

Fall of the ice cream cone; rise of the rainbow; some slept through the night and some didn't

There was one bag of corn chips. Both of them wanted it.

So Margie cooked some broccoli. I was a little skeptical, but Jobe loved it.

So did Kalib. I was just amazed. I hated all such vegetables when I was small. I liked peas, though. And green beans.

After they did such good job at eating their broccoli and potatoes, I figured the boys deserved a treat. So I loaded them and Margie into the car and off we went to Dairy Queen. I ordered small cones dipped in chocolate for Margie and I.

"Baby cone, baby cone," Kalib said as I did.

So I ordered baby cones for Kalib and Jobe.

They were greatly enjoying them but then, as we drove up Church Road towards home, Jobe began to shriek. Yep, he had dropped his cone. We could not see it anywhere. When we got home, I found it lying beneath my seat. Amazingly enough, it was in pretty good shape. Only about a teaspoon of ice cream had leaked onto the floor and there were just a few flecks of dirt and grime on the ice cream and cone.

I gave it to Caleb, he cleaned off the flecks and ate what was left of it.

Jobe, standing at the door.

A bit later, I found them all in the back of Caleb's truck. Kalib and Caleb were grabbing at mosquitoes. Jobe was feeding them. 

Yep. The mosquitoes are back.

Kalib, Jobe, and the pickup truck. Mosquitoes are flying.

I left Caleb and Kalib to fend for themselves and brought Jobe into the house to get away from the mosquitoes. His grandma snatched him right up.

The news was on, and at the very moment that I took this picture, a story came on about a four-year old boy who had been run over by a car in Anchorage. A reporter was at the hospital and right after the story began, she reported that she had just gotten word that the boy had died.

In this way, it was a very hard day for Anchorage. A man crashed his Cessna 180 on the railroad tracks and it exploded and incinerated. He died, his mother died, and three of his children died. His wife and one child had been left behind to mourn. 

He was reputed to be a skilled and safe pilot and a good Christian. He had gone to Russia many times to preach the gospel as he believed it and, according to the news, everybody who knew him and his family thought highly of him and all of them.

Also, in recent days, five climbers have been killed on Denali and two more on a smaller mountain that stands near it.

It is a frightening world that we bring our children into, yet we always keep doing it and they always go forth into the risk and danger - which is exactly what we want them to do.

To climb Denali was once a goal of mine, but May is the month to do that and May always had other conflicts and then a time came when I decided that window was behind me and that I would set my sights on lower mountains, mountains to hike in, and be content with that.

Oddly enough, hearing about these people dying on Denali has rekindled my desire to climb the mountain. If I do, I've got to do it soon, like next May, before I get much older.

I'm not saying I will, but the urge just seems to be growing stronger and stronger.

Uncle Caleb and Nephew Caleb were rewarded for their battle by a magnificent rainbow. I discovered this later when I found them in the house and Caleb showed me a pic he had taken of Kalib on his iPhone. I immediately rushed them back outside, but the rainbow had greatly faded now, and because he knew that I wanted him to be, Kalib pretended to have no further interest in the rainbow at all.

For those who are Facebook friends with Caleb, you will be able to find his much more magical and magnificent iPhone picture of the rainbow and his nephew there.

The last time Jobe overnighted with us, he was still sleeping in his Apache cradleboard. Now that he has outgrown it, we were not quite sure where he should sleep. Margie decided that she would sleep with him in the guest bedroom. She propped a mattress against the wall, pushed the bed against it and there the two slept - he protected on one side by her body and on the other by the mattress.

This is how I found them this morning.

One single "click" from my camera and Jobe woke up. He instantly rose up and extended his arms over his grandma outward toward me. I had no choice but to let my camera down and to pick him up and hold him.

I carried him into the living room, we took a seat on the couch and with my left hand I activated my camera. This is just how it is between Jobe and I.

It has been this way since he became conscious of the world about him.

I use the lens cap on a Canon lens, but I lose lens caps all over Alaska and elsewhere, so I often must make do with whatever brand of cap I can find.

Kalib slept quite a bit longer yet. This is where he spent the night - next to me on the master bed in the master bedroom. Jimmy and Pistol-Yero also slept with us. Chicago usually sleeps here on this bed, too, but she has an irrational fear of little people and so would not come him with Kalib on the bed.

She stood in the hallway, complaining, for maybe two or three hours right during that part of the night when a person lying in bed really wants to be bothered by nothing, when he wants to sleep soundly.

Kalib slept right through all the cat-er-wailing, but not me.

Margie says Chicago woke her up, too, but Jobe slept peacefully through the night.

View images as slide show