Moon over bare trees; picnic table in the nightwind; Kivgiq fans - please! Don't give up on me! I am plugging away!

By necessity, I must keep this blog exceedingly brief today. Therefore, I present to you the waxing new moon, as it appeared on my walk yesterday evening. I took this picture a bit after 7:00 PM, as lingering daylight slowly faded. 

Yes, although we will not reach the equinox for another 11 days, the season of darkness is over. Until the equinox, our days may still technically be shorter than they are for those of you live in the mid and lower latitudes, but, because of our long, lingering periods of dawn and twilight, they already feel longer.

On Tuesday, in response to the picture of this table that I posted, Fanshaw left this comment:

I'm no stranger to frozen lakes but I am mystified by the power poles. Why? How?

I gave Fanshaw a brief, deceptive, answer, but promised to go back at night and take a picture to illustrate the purpose.

I almost changed my mind, because, once again, the wind was howling and so I did not expect there to be any activity on the lake.

Still, a promise is a promise, so I drove down and parked my car (the headlights that you see glaring off the ice to the left) got out, and struggled off toward the table. This picture proved to be a huge challenge to take, because the wind was so damn strong I could hardly make any forward progress against it. I would push my way forward two or three steps and then it would push me backwards and I would have to start again.

And it was cold in that wind. It was damn cold. I pulled my hood up to give my ears a little more protection but the wind blasted into that hood, caused it to billow up like a big, round sail, practically lifted me off the ice and sent me twice as far backwards as I had already progressed.

I didn't give up, though, and finally I made it to the table.

Now it ought to be clear why there are power poles here. Lots of people like to purhase pizzas from the Pizza Hut just beyond and then sit at this table and eat the pizza while they watch figure skaters slide, twirl and dance across the ice as hockey players smash each other in the face.

The journey back to the car was much swifter than the one from, because that wind treated me just like I was a sail and sent me shooting across the ice at blinding speed.

It was kind of scary, though, because you can see that the ice is not smooth but rippled and I feared I might fall down and damage my titanium shoulder.

I am most grateful to have this titanium shoulder, but I liked my real one a lot better.

Now - for you fans of Kivgiq who are about to give up on me - don't! I am slowly inching forward. Lots to try to figure out, and my time keeps going off in unexpected divergent directions.

Anyway, Kivgiq fans, just to assure you that I am sticking with it, I am posting this picture of some of you, yourselves, the Kivgiq fans, laughing as Vernon Elavgak of the Barrow Dancers becomes a pink-haired lady and does a funny dance during their amazing and beautiful Kalukaq performance.

Next week - I expect it to happen next week. Don't expect to see it all, though. I've got way more than I can ever show, even if I greatly overdo it blog style.

(Although I did this post in the morning, I set it to post in the afternoon in order to give yesterday's post, which went up late, a little more time at the top of the pile.)

View images as slides, please!

I need to take the time to edit Kivgiq right - in the meantime, here are two images of the Tikigaq Traditional Dancers

I am more than a bit overwhelmed. While I have a couple of other deadlines pressing me this week and next, over the past two days I have nonetheless spent approximately ten hours working my way through Day 2 of my Kivgiq take. I am now just a bit more than half-way through day two and I have marked many hundreds of images for a second look.

I still have the remainder of the day to go through, plus days three and four. I have found many images that I want to use, including some that I think are pretty darn good. But I can't stuff anywhere near the number that I'm coming up with into a few blog posts and I am terribly confused about how to proceed.

In retrospect, upon my return from Kivgiq what I should have done was to announce that I was going to retreat with my Kivgiq take for two-three weeks until I could really go through everything, get a pretty good handle on what I have and then make an intelligent series of posts that told the story well.

In fact, at this moment, having written the above sentence, I have just decided that is what I will do - but I will try to do that edit over one week and then come back sometime next week and blog it all.

In the short run, I know this will disappoint some of my readers, especially those who were at Kivgiq and are eager to see the pictures, but in the long run I hope to make up for that disappointment by putting out a comprehensive yet manageable project.

At the moment, in the way that I have been going about it, I am a creating a completely unmanageable project.

For today, I decided that I would run just two pictures - one of a male or male dancers and another of female, from one group. In those two pictures, I would make certain to include someone older and someone younger.

To chose the group, I closed my eyes and then scrolled up and down in my Lightroom editor until I had absolutely no idea what dance group was on the screen. I stopped scrolling and opened my eyes. There, on my screen, were the Tikigaq Traditional Dancers. Luke Koonook, the eldest of the Tikigaq men dancers, was performing right at the top of the screen.

So here he is: Luke Koonook of Point Hope's Tikigaq Traditional Dancers.

And here are some of the young women of Tikigaq, performing a kneeling motion dance.

During Kivgiq, many people asked me if I am making another Uiñiq magazine on Kivgiq. The answer is "yes" and "no." I am making another Uiñiq on the Healthy Communities theme and Kivgiq will be a part of it. I already have a large amount of material for that magazine and late next month I intend to go back into the field for a few weeks and get more.

This means I will not have that much space available in Uiñiq for Kivgiq - just enough to include maybe ten to twenty images. I am also working on a Kivgiq book that will cover Kivgiq from the restoration event in 1988 up through the celebration that just took place.

As I will be condensing so many Kivgiqs into one book that will, again, leave only enough space for a very limited number of images from this year's Kivgiq.

That is why I feel I want to put as many pictures from this year's Kivgiq up on this blog as I reasonably can - so that the people who were there, and the people who were not there but wish they had been, can enjoy a broad sampling of them.

It is just going to take a lot more time and work to do this right than I had tried to pretend in my own mind that it would.

It is okay that it will take that much time, though, because when I edit the pictures for this blog, I will also be editing them for Uiñiq and for the Kivgiq book.

So please bear with me.

I will get it done. Just not as quickly and easily as I had hoped.

And if this is a bit exasperating to some, all I can say is that you are seeing two things at work - the artistic process, which for me is always chaotic and confusing - right up to the finished product - and the efforts of a print photojournalist working to figure out how to manage, work and survive in the world of online publishing.

This is big experiment for me. I have no guidelines to follow, no one to teach me and show me the way. I must explore and find it for myself. I see others who also trying to find and pave the way, but none of them are doing quite what I want to do.

As always, I will continue to post something every day as I do this more comprehensive edit of Kivgiq. I will try to keep the posts simple and short, so that I have more to time to complete that edit, plus finish off the other tasks that must soon be done.

View images as slides

Kivgiq, 2011, part 6, day 2a: My Kivgiq work gets interrupted by family and love

Earlier today, I was busily editing day 2 of Kivgiq and I kept seeing the words, "Family" and "love," - just like you see them here, behind the Kaktovik drummers.

There was evidence of "family" and "love" all around - sometimes mixed with a bit of mischief, such as when little Jessie James Bodfish Panik of Wainwright boy went running across the dance stage with a drum stick.

Of course, today when I would look at such pictures, I would think of my own family, especially my own small grandsons, Kalib and Jobe.

I have pretty much been alone all week. On Monday, we got a call from Jacob. Lavina was not feeling well and needed help with the little ones. So Monday afternoon - our anniversary - I drove Margie into town, dropped her off to help with Kalib and Jobe and then turned right around and drove back home to Wasilla.

In the time since, except for momentarily glimpses of Caleb just before he goes to bed after working his night shift, I have been all alone.

It doesn't bother me to be alone, not when I have all these pictures to sort through and edit. I can just go and go and go without interruption and so I do.

Perhaps too much. Without Margie here to rein me in a bit, I tend not to stop, but to keep going when I should give up and go to bed. I posted last night's blog at 2:04 AM, for example, then stayed right here, at this computer and dabbled with other things until about 4:00 AM.

I did not expect to see Margie until this evening, but, right after lunch, I heard a knock upon my office door. Guess who was here?

This guy, Jobe! Lavina was feeling much better and had driven Margie home.

I'm afraid my work fell apart after that. My picture editing slowed down to almost nothing.

I accomplished very little workwise, but accomplished a bit more "family" and "love" wise.

Kalib came, too, but he had fallen asleep in the car and never woke up. Lavina soon left, taking the sleeping Kalib with her. She left Jobe to spend all or part of the weekend with us - depending on how lonely she gets without him.

And I discovered something else late this afternoon. Monday is a holiday. That makes this a three-day weekend. My readership tends to drop off on weekends - especially three day weekends.

And the truth is, I am very tired. "Exhausted" would be a better word. I pushed myself hard day and night during Kivgiq and I have done the same since my return.

So I decided to take it a little easy this weekend - to get some visiting done with Jobe. I will keep editing my Kivgiq pictures, but I will hold my further Kivgiq posts until the weekend has passed. By then, maybe I will have a better handle on the material that I have.

I will still make little posts through the weekend - maybe on Jobe, or whatever. 

Then, on Tuesday, I will resume my Kivgiq posts. I am not covering a news story anymore anyway. I am now putting out a record of a historical event - but one that I want to share the pictures from, particularly with my friends on the Arctic Slope but also with anyone else who is interested. It's going to take more time than I originally anticiapated, but that's okay.

Maybe I will find some time this weekend to hang out with moose. I found this mom and her two nearly grown calves as I was driving home from my coffee break.

View images as slide show

We take Jobe home, where he is eagerly greeted by his lonely family; Misty and Kennedy give me a Kivgiq video

It was time to take Jobe back to Anchorage and to his parents, but he was fast asleep in his cradleboard. Margie began to untie him, so that she could take him out, but she did not want to wake him.

Very gently, she picked him up to transfer him to his car seat. He snoozed on.

And then she buckled him in. He slept through it all. He did not stir.

And when his mother came dashing out the door to meet us at the car to retrieve the baby whose first night of absence from her had left her so miserable, she found him just as he had been when Margie had buckled him in one hour earlier: fast asleep, but with a smile upon his face.

Mother and baby, in the house, reunited.

Father and baby, reunited. It had been a long night and day for everybody there.

Even Kalib wanted to hold his baby brother, who had been gone for so long.

Misty Nayakik of Wainwright performs Iñupiaq motion dances in a style of great beauty and grace. She is one of those performers who always draws my lens straight toward her. Until last year she had not missed a Kivgiq in 20 years, but last year she could not go.

Recently, she got a copy of the video made of the 2009 Kivgiq. When she and Kennedy Ahmaogak watched it, they came to the part where Isaac Killigvuk gave me a gift and then brought me out of my shyness and onto the floor without my cameras, to dance with him.

When they saw me dancing, she and Kennedy wanted me to have a copy. Last week, she sent me a message to tell me that they were coming to Anchorage and she was going to bring a copy of the DVD to me.

After we left Jobe with his parents and brother, Margie and I headed over to Residence in where they are staying. As we walked from the car to the door we saw Kennedy, Misty and one-year old daughter Adina waiting for us.

Thank you, Misty, Adina and Kennedy. I will treasure this video always.

Saturday evening, I received a text message from my youngest son Rex, who had joined in a 200 km bike ride on the Kenai Peninsula: "132 miles on my bicycle completed in about ten hours and 45 minutes!"

Melanie drove along to provide support.

On tax day, I take prints and visit Warren Matumeak and daughters; I return to Wasilla and find a Tea Party; my coverage is interupted

It had been very chilly in our bedroom when we went in to seek sleep the night before. After I tucked Margie into the single bed where, as a result her injuries, she still must sleep, I jumped into our bed and the cold sting of the sheets against my flesh almost shot me back out again.

But I held my spot, because I knew that the blankets would hold my body heat and soon I would be warm and toasty.

Sure enough, it happened just that way. Sooner or later, insomniac me went to sleep. And then, somewhere around 3:00 AM, I dreamed that I was out in the country somewhere but was inadequately dressed and so was getting cold. Then I woke up and discovered that I was inadequately blanketed and truly was getting cold.

I keep a special quilt on the bed just for such moments, but the quilt was gone, folded and put away somewhere. Oh well, I figured, I could just reposition myself a bit to create a better layer of air insulation between the blankets and me and I would warm up and be fine.

I did not want to get up and go search for a blanket.

And so the rest of the night went, me always thinking that I had found just the right spot, dozing temporarily off, then waking, chilled, again.

In the morning, when I finally got up, it was to a clear, blue, sky and a beautiful world. Barefooted, I stepped onto the back porch to shoot this image. The porch was frozen and I felt the cold, sting of ice against my feet, but it was only for a few a seconds and I did not mind at all.

A few months back, Darlene Matumeak-Kagak got in touch with me to request a print of a photo that I took at Kivgiq 2003 of she and her sister, Mae Ahgeak, dancing with their father Warren Matumeak. Warren is pictured in my April 14 post, drumming and singing.

Providing prints to people who want them is a very difficult thing for me because, literally, I have received requests for THOUSANDS of prints, dating back to my film days and it is just impossible. Furthermore, the big majority of people who want these prints are Alaska Native who have befriended and helped me and without whom none of this work that I have done would have been possible, so it has always been my policy not to sell prints to such folk, but to give them and, despite my huge backlog of undelivered orders, I have given THOUSANDS away.

So I always tell people that if they want a picture, don't be afraid to keep sending me little reminders. In time, a reminder may well hit me when I am in a circumstance that makes it possible for me to make a print. The digital age has made it easier for me to get pictures to people in .jpg form, but even then, there are so many that it remains a challenge -plus a .jpg is not a print.

Darlene and her husband Jake have been very good to me over the years. Warren, her father, is one of the great men of the Arctic, a man who I greatly respect, love and admire. So, when I learned that he was coming to Anchorage to get chemo for cancer, I decided that I needed to make those prints right now and deliver them personally.

So here I am, in my car, looking at the Talkeetna Mountains from the stop sign at the intersection of Seldon and Lucille as I drive to Anchorage. Sitting alongside me in the passenger seat is three, 13 x 19 Velvet Fine Art prints that I had made late the night before.

The road was slick, but the temperature was rising and would hit 40 come late afternoon. I don't know what the low had been. About 10, I would guess.

Pioneer Peak and the Chugach Mountains, as I cross the Knik River bridge.

Someone in the opposing, north-bound lanes of traffic had been pulled over. Police officers were positioned at both the passenger and driver doors and, if I recall correctly, three patrol vehicles had stopped.

I don't know what happened. For all I know, in the end, the driver got off with a warning. I could do some investigative reporting and find out, but I don't think I will bother.

After I got to town, the very first thing that I did was drive out to the Dimond area to pick Melanie up so we could have lunch together. Along the way, while stopped at a red light, I saw this scene. I thought about how thin is the line that separates me from being part of it and wondered if and when I might yet cross that line.

I did not recognize the man, but maybe I know some of his family, somewhere out in Rural Alaska. Maybe some of his relatives have brought me into their home, be it a house or a camp, and have fed me.

For some reason, I failed to take any pictures during my lunch with Melanie. We got to talking and I just forgot. I can tell you this, she is a big help to me and her mom right now and to her youngest brother, too. I need to be more of a help to her.

She has also helped many cats, and that is just one of the many trillion reasons why I love her so.

As I do all my children, and those with whom they have united to bring even more family into our lives.

After I dropped Melanie off back at her work, I drove straight to the airport to meet Warren and his three daughters, who were already headed back to Barrow. Given what I had heard about his cancer, he looked surprisingly strong and good, and his spirits seemed high. He told me, though, that how he looked on the outside hid what he felt inside.

His doctors here in Anchorage had started him on some intense chemo and he would stay on it back home in Barrow for about two more weeks and then he would return. If it was having the desired effect, he would stay on it. If it wasn't... well, he said, he had experienced 82 wonderful years in this life and was ready to go to his home on the other side.

Those of us who know him here, I answered, are not ready for that. We need and want him here. This, he said, was what he also wants and is hoping for, but, if not, he is ready. He has already experienced many miracles in his life that have kept him here when it seemed, perhaps, that his time was already over.

He told me about one, in the days before snowmachines, when he had been out on the ice with his dogs and had to cross a wide section of very thin ice, one inch thick at most. His dogs did not want to go on, but he had no choice and so urged them forward. He leaned into the sled, which was buoyant. The dogs pushed forward and as they did, their paws punched repeatedly through the ice, but sea ice is flexible in a way that freshwater ice is not and the dogs managed to keep moving forward without going all the way through. A couple of times, Warren gave a push with his foot and his boot also broke through.

Finally, they reached stronger ice about two inches thick and soon were on safe ice. Warren stopped his dogs, and offered a prayer of thanks.

All too soon, it was time for them to head for security and then on to the Alaska Airlines gate where they would board their flight back to Barrow.

One of his daughters offered to get a wheelchair to make the journey a little easier for him, but Warren said, no, he needed the exercise and he would walk.

This reminded me of another of his survival miracles, one that happened about 24 years ago and that I wrote up in an early issue of Uiñiq. In that instance, Warren suffered a heart attack out on the tundra while hunting caribou with his young grandson Tommy, who, if I remember right, was eight years old at the time. Warren knew that he was going to die and so had his young grandson bundle him onto the sled and then told him to drive the snowmachine toward the moon, because in that direction he would find his grandmother at camp and could return his body to her.

It was a tough and long ride, but young Tommy saved his aapa's life. 

Afterward, I would often see Warren in the evenings on the indoor track built above the Barrow High gymnasium - walking and walking and walking, building up the strength in his heart.

Behind him here are his daughters Darlene, Alice and Mae.

This is the photo that I had printed in triplicate for them, with Darlene dancing at the left and Mae at the right. Suurimmaanitchuat.

I should note that in his work days, Warren served as Planning Director for the North Slope Borough and later as director of the North Slope Borough Wildlife Management Department. He is a choir director at the Utqeaqvik Presbyterian Church and is well known for his oratory from behind the pulpit.

Do any of you regular readers ever pick up on the conflict that tears always within me, between the pull of my communal home on the Arctic Slope and my physical and blood-family home in Wasilla?

Now, at Ted Stevens International Airport in Anchorage, I had once again taken a mental trip back to the communal home, but it was time to return to Wasilla. As stated in the sidebar at right, one of the primary reasons that I started this blog was to better get to know Wasilla, where I have lived now for nearly 30 years. Yet, outside my house and family, Wasilla is a town in which I have mostly been a stranger, because my work, heart, and soul has always been out in the rural areas where I have done my work.

Yet, I love Wasilla and I want to know what this place, where I have for so long kept a physical presence, is all about. I want to find its soul, but, even since I started this blog, a lack of time and financial resource has severely limited my search. I am not even close to meeting this goal.

Perhaps I am little bit frightened by this goal, too. I don't know.

As I drove back to Wasilla, I passed this Volkswagen.

The first car that Margie and I ever owned was a lemon-yellow Super Beetle. We loved that car like we have loved no car since - but I do love the Ford Escape. Among the many cars that we have now ground down, I love the Escape second only to the Super Beetle.

Back in Wasilla, it was Tax Day, and the Liberty Tax mascot was out, seeking to draw in those who had procrastinated almost beyond hope.

It would prove to be a very hard tax day for us, as we came up owing, with no funds to pay the difference. It won't be fun, but we will get through this. It happened before, in 1997, about ten times worse than now. We got through it. I never wanted it to happen again, but it did, and we will get through it again.

Not far down the road, I saw a man riding his four-wheeler like he was part of the US Calvary, leading a caravan of three, charging to the rescue of his beleaguered nation on Tax Day, charging to Wasilla's Tea Party rally.

All of a sudden, my coverage of Tax Day and the Tea Party is interrupted. This is because, as I sat here, diligently working on my report, my office door flew open and Kalib came charging in.

His mother had brought him and Jobe out to visit us while she goes to Metro Cafe to go online and do some homework.

I thought he had come rushing in to hug me, so I extended my arms, but he was not interested in giving his grandpa a hug. He just wanted to feed his grandpa's fish, and he didn't want to waste any time getting at it.

After he fed the fish, he disappeared, but I soon followed him into the living room and this is what I found: Kalib, Caleb, and Jobe.

In time, I came back to the blog, but I had stated that I would have it up no later than noon and here it is, nearly 2:00 PM, and I cannot spend another minute of this day working on this blog.

So I will save the tea party part for tomorrow. Or, perhaps, by then, life will have moved on and so will I have and my tea party coverage will just languish, perhaps to one day be seen, perhaps never.

We will see.

PS: My niece, Shaela Ann Cook, has a new blog. I have given her a link and invite all to visit her site. You will see that her outlook towards food is very different than mine, but it doesn't matter. We love each other and she supports Iñupiat whaling. She wants to make a movie on my book, Gift of the Whale, if only she could find the means.