Rex and Ama invite us to dinner, cats attend, hog camera

Rex and Ama invited us to dinner last night. Ama has been staying with Rex in his basement apartment at Melanie's, so they did the cooking upstairs at her place, where the eating would be done, too.

When we arrived, Diamond was waiting in the window, ready to take control of my camera.

Rex and Ama cooking - chip dinner, made with blue corn chips, green enchilada sauce, avocados, black beans, lettuce, tomatoes, a healthy dose of chili powder and oregano and some sort of meat substitute as Ama is basically vegetarian - although she did try some pickled maktak when she visited the house.

Bear Meach wants to eat, too.

Three cats gather around Charlie, knowing that he will feed them. First, they must allow him to give them, "high pets."

Charlie just got a haircut. As for his beard, he plans to take it to an international beard contest in Norway next May. He said that I should take my beard there, too, and enter it.

About the only category that I could qualify for would be "salt and pepper"... more and more salt, less pepper. Maybe by May, my beard will be all pepper - or perhaps snow. I could then enter it in the "snow drift" category - but not yet.

I do not yet qualify for that category.

Bear Meach turns his back upon us, but pays strict attention to what we are doing.

Charlie and Epizzles.

Rex.

Now, I feel kind of bad. I had meant to get some good pictures of Rex and Ama, but somehow I didn't. I think it is because most of the time I was out in the living room and she was in the kitchen and then when she was in the living room and we were all eating I was too busy eating to take pictures.

Afterward, I found myself feeling so fatigued and tired that I failed to follow through.

She got her job in Alaska, but doesn't start until December. In the meantime, she is going back to the Bay Area. 

When she returns, I will make up for this lapse.

BTW: Charlie thinks Rex should take his beard to the Norway competition, too.

Or maybe it was the fault of these cats. Sometimes, cats can be camera hogs. Diamond is a camera hog and has been since the first day that I met her - probably even before that.

I was wondering where Lisa was, because I had not seen her for a long time, what with her work, her studies, her trip to Oregon. I hadn't seen much of Melanie, either, who also went to Oregon, but Melanie was right there in front of me, so I knew she would be there.

Melanie called Lisa to make sure she and Bryce were coming.

Jacob, Lavina, Kalib and Jobe arrived. Kalib was thrilled to see Melanie.

Jobe was thrilled to see his grandpa - as you can clearly tell.

Finally, Lisa and Bryce arrived. Diamond greeted them at the door.

Lisa zapped Jobe with a red beam from her phaser.

Lisa, Lavina and Kalib.

We visited and talked about many important things. 

And then I had to go. I was just too tired to linger. Ama was worried that I should not drive, but Margie has hard time driving at night and I always come back when I am behind the wheel.

So we hugged all and left. 

This is what I mean about cats being camera hogs.

I should have photographed Rex and Ama, but Diamond forced me to photograph her instead.

Damn camera hog!

And you watch!

Next time I get together with people and these three cats, they will hog my camera again.

That's just how they are.

As for me, I still feel tired, fatigued, and exhausted.

I fear fatigue is perpetual now.

Exhaustion a way of life.

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It's all Kalib and Jobe, all the time... A lion roars in Africa, then sleeps through the Alaska night

Yesterday, I drove into Anchorage to visit a friend who had come down from Barrow for medical care. Afterward, in the early evening, I stopped by to visit Kalib and Jobe, who had just returned home with their mother.

Not long after I arrived, their dad pedaled up on his bike, home from work. He stopped at the mailbox, then looked up a Kalib, who was looking at him.

The two greet each other.

Lavina was amusing Jobe.

As he waited for his dad to get situated and come in, Kalib decided to give Jobe a hug.

Kalib can get a little rough, but Jobe didn't seem to mind.

He pushed it to the edge.

Then Kalib needed a hug from his mom.

It turned into a rather nice group hug.

Dad came in and took a seat on the floor. Kalib jumped onto his lap to play. As noted, Kalib can get a little rough.

Dad gets rough right back.

Just a bunch of ruffians!

They invited me out to dinner at Taco Kings, so Kalib and I headed to the car so that he could ride with me. It was growing dark, darker than it looks in the picture. I had to push my ISO to 6400 and shoot slow shutter speeds.

Kalib and his blanket.

Kalib prepares to jump.

Dinner at Taco King. I had a bowl of chicken soup, chips, and water.

Then I brought Kalib and Jobe home with me. Jobe fell asleep right away. I kept thinking that Kalib had fallen asleep, too, but every now and then I would hear his little voice rise through the dark, "bus! bus!" Kalib loves buses.

I had the radio tuned to KSKA, to a program where they play contemporary music from around the world. As we drove through the dark, they played a Ladysmith Black Mambazo rendition of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." It begins with the roar of a lion, and then the soothing voice of Ladysmith speaking as though to children, telling them a story, as the choir softly sings acapella in the background. Then she sings the song... "hush, my baby, the lion sleeps tonight..."

As I drove through the dark Alaska night toward home with my little grandsons in the back seat, one asleep, the other looking for buses, the car filled with sweet sounds, spawned by grave danger, sounds from Africa.

At that moment, it seemed to me to be the most beautiful song that I had ever heard.

It was exquisite. 

After I got home, I googled it and came up with three Ladysmith versions, including the one I had heard, which I link to here. I put my headset on and listened to it maybe five times, mesmerized. It is playing right now, even as I type.

I went to iTunes, hoping to purchase it and put it in my iPhone, but iTunes did not have it.

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If go to the slide show and do not see a picture, but just a box that says, "thumbnail processing," click on it anyway and the first slide will appear. This is just another Squarespace aggravation. Hopefully, within the next few days, Squarespace will finish processing the thumbnails and the pictures will appear. With Squarespace, you never know.

Preview of Nannie Rae's Cross Island birthday party; Kalib and Jobe return to the blog

In about one hour, I must leave for an overnight trip to Nikiski, where I will spend the day tomorrow, so I am just plain out of time to put together the Cross Island post that I had planned to do today. The fact is, while I had hoped to have done a complete initial edit of my entire Cross Island/Nuiqsut take by now, so far I have gone through less than one percent of that take.

Once I do go through it, there are huge sections of it that I will not post at all, but will save exclusively for Uiñiq magazine. As for Nannie's birthday, I plan to put it in both the blog and Uiñiq, but in Uiñiq I will probably have to limit it to one or two pictures, whereas here I can post a few.

Here, at least, is a preview of what I plan to post Monday, when I will return this blog to Cross Island/Nuiqsut for two or three more posts:

It is Nannie Rae Kaigelak, with a few of those who gathered in the Cross Island cabin of successful whaling captain Billy Oyagak to celebrate her 22nd birthday.

So I will dedicate my Monday post to a spread that will focus not only on Nannie's birthday, but on a particular Eskimo drum that happened to play a role in that birthday.

If you love Cross Island and you love Nannie Rae - and a great many people do - or even if you have never met Nannie Rae and all that you know of Cross Island is the tiny bit that you have so far seen on this blog, be sure to come back Monday.

In the meantime, come Sunday, I will let Barrow Whaler fans know how the team fared in Nikiski.

So I finally got to see my grandsons and their mom again, yesterday afternoon, when I drove into Anchorage to pick Margie up from this week's babysitting stint.

Here they are, in their driveway.

Little Jobe ALWAYS has a big smile for his grandpa, everytime I see him. 

Martigny was there, too. She never smiles, but she does purr.

As I Margie and I prepared to drive away, Lavina brought Kalib to the window to wave goodbye to us. He did not want us to go. He wanted us to stay. He cried to see us go.

And now, once again, I must go.

That's how my life is. I seldom have time to ever settle down, except for when I was hurt, or Margie was hurt. I am always going.

Go... go... go...

Always.

One day I will be dead and then I will go no more.

I wonder how much I can get done between now and then?

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Margie and I take Kalib and Jobe for five days, part 3: We bring them home, Kalib phones a kiss to his far-away mom, they grow sleepy

In time, we arrived home. Jobe was happy to be here, but I know he misses his mom. See that bottle on the table? That is her milk. I don't know how she managed to provide a supply for the whole five days that we will have Jobe with us, but she did.

Love, I guess.

As I was working on my computer, Kalib came into my office to feed the fish. Soon, Margie came in with the phone. It was Lavina, eager to talk to her eldest son. Kalib took the phone and looked at it. He heard his mother's voice.

Kalib didn't have much to say, but he gave her a kiss over the phone. Did you feel it, Lavina?

In the evening, Jobe grew very sleepy. Margie put him in the Apache cradle board that his great aunt LeeAnn made for him. He fell asleep.

Jobe, asleep in his cradle board.

Caleb returned home. Kalib was overjoyed to see him.

Caleb and Kalib. As usual, Kalib insisted that we turn the Christmas lights on.

Soon, Kalib grew tired, too. 

We all grew tired. We all went to bed. Margie and I didn't really sleep all that much, though, as Jobe kept waking us up. I remember how hard it was when our children were babies and we had to get them through that time when they would wake us at all hours with needs that had to be met. It was hard and I longed to sleep. It seemed at the time that there would never again come a night that we could sleep all the way through. Yet, such nights did come - and, oh, so rapidly.

Jacob and Lavina go through this on a daily basis now, yet still get up and go to work.

It was tough last night, too. I just wanted to sleep. Yet, what I now know is what an honor and privilege it is to be woken up at night by a little person fully dependent upon your care.

Soon, some of us will go see some dinosaurs. Margie does not think she will go. She plans to stay here with Jobe.

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The brothers two: Kalib and Jobe - what do they think of each other? I stop briefly at All Saints Episcopal to pay my respects to Senator Ted Stevens; a man walks alongside a fence

I made a quick trip to Anchorage late this afternoon and visited Kalib and Jobe. Jobe had been on his mother's lap, but Kalib pulled him from her and held him - for a few brief seconds.

This could be deceptive. Kalib is not trying to slug Jobe. Kalib is merely bounding across the couch with his usual energy. Lavina knows how rough Kalib can play and so she is ready, just in case he bounds too far.

Jobe studies his big brother. I wonder what he thinks of him? I wonder how he will think of him in the future? I had three older brothers and when I was small I looked at them with a combination of terror, adoration and, of course, love.

Well, the terror part didn't really apply too often to Ron, the youngest of three, four-and-half years older than me. He had his terror moments, but mostly he was very good to me, bought me treats, let me read his comic books, Mad Magazine and often took me out to fly the wonderful model airplanes that he spent so much time building. When I graduated from high school and followed him to Brigham Young University, where he had returned after serving a two-year Mormon mission in Germany, he let me look at his Playboy Magazines.

We hung the centerfolds on the wall in such a way that when the inspectors that BYU sent out to inspect student rooms, even in off-campus housing, the images would be hidden the moment our bedroom door opened. It was always amusing, to sit there  in our room as those serious, righteous-looking men in suits came through the door, stood there with the Playboy centerfolds hidden right behind them, observed the fish swimming in my tank, our study areas, various books - including the Bible and the Book of Mormon and proclaimed our room to be clean, appropriate and up to good BYU-LDS standards.

Damn! Ron died altogether too soon!

The older two, Mac the tall twin and Rex the short twin, kept me in a state of near constant terror, but still I held them in adulation and it was they who the bullies who came after me soon learned to fear and respect. 

So I wonder what it will be like for these two as they grow?

And what does Kalib think of Jobe right now? I know he is a little jealous, as Jobe gets attention that not so long ago went to Kalib alone, but I do believe he loves him as well.

Kalib rolls about in the midst of his dad and Muzzy.

Before I left them, I saw Jobe, Jacob and Lavina together on the couch and thought it would be nice if Kalib were there, too, so that I could get a picture of all four. Jacob and Lavina motioned to him, but he would not come over. Instead, he stood by the TV, where, in local news coverage of his life and death, Senator Ted Stevens, killed last week in a plane crash near Dillingham, appeared in an old news clip with President Jimmy Carter. 

It was okay that he did not come. It made a better picture this way.

I gave some thought to doing some serious coverage of the memorial for Senator Stevens on this, the day that he lay in repose in a closed casket in All Saints Episcopal Church in Anchorage, but decided against it. Many serious news organizations, including the Anchorage Daily News and The Alaska Dispatch and Alaska Newspapers, Incorporated, would be doing serious photo documentaries of everything that would happen, both today and tomorrow, the day of his funeral.

What could I add to it? Not much, I decided. Plus, I had no desire to go in and compete with my fellow photographers today. Still, Alaska history, American history, was being made today. Plus, I had several contacts with the man in life, had photographed him more times than I can remember and on this day I felt that I must go in and pay my respects.

So I did. I walked to the closed casket, stood solemnly in front of it for just the right amount of time, shook hands with his family members seated nearby, walked to the back, signed the guest register and then sat down for just a few minutes next to my friend, Al Grillo, the freelance photographer who for so long covered this state for the Associated Press. I shot a handful of frames and then I got up and quietly exited...

...but before I did, I noticed this trio and so photographed them, too. I have no idea who they are. I could have asked for their names, I suppose, and their feelings, but I was not being a journalist today. I was just being a citizen, there to briefly pay my respects and then go.

As I left, I saw Channel 11, preparing to broadcast. I'm not really too familiar with these folks, as I tend to watch Channel 2 News the most. Actually, I tend to get most of my news off the internet these days and locally that tends to mostly mean the Daily News and the Dispatch and a number of blogs, most of which don't really cover the news but get angry about it instead.

As I drove out of Anchorage, I saw a man, walking by a fence. This is frame 6...

...Frame 5...

...Frame 4...

...Frame 3...

...frame 2...

Frame 1.

And so walked this man on the evening that Senator Ted Stevens lay in repose.

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