Breakfast, a dog and coffee

Short and brief today: as noted yesterday, after Charlie won the beard contest I had to drop Margie off at Jacob and Lavina's to help care for Kalib and Jobe. Kalib was a bit ill.

Naturally, in the morning, with my family absent, I took breakfast at Family Restaurant.

I would have preferred to sleep until after noon, but I had a significant task that had to be completed by lunch time, so I got up early, before daybreak. Not so long ago it was easy to get up before daybreak. One could sleep late and still get up before daybreak.

As the days lengthen, it gets harder and harder.

Soon, it will be impossible, for day will not break. Day will just be there, fading into and out of itself.

In the afternoon I took a little walk. I soon came upon Taiga and Tony.

Taiga. 

We simply are not getting much snow this winter. To the north of us, Fairbanks, a normally very dry city with not much snow, is buried. South of us there is plenty of snow. There is snow to the east and west. Lately, there have been some big blizzards on the Arctic Coast that I am told have buried all kinds of things.

Here, at the end of February, the entire winter accumlation adds up to little more than a dusting.

When I stopped at Metro for coffee, Carmen was very excited. Some new people had moved into the neighborhood from Ketchikan. They were now coming to Metro Cafe every day and loving it.

So Carmen called the Ketchikan people to come over from the table where they were comfortable drinking their afternoon coffee and to pose for a Through the Metro Window study.

So here it is:

Through the Metro Window Study #7,656: Carmen with Ketchikan relocatees

Ketchikan is a rainy city - over 200 inches a year. It never gets very cold in Ketchikan. But once, a long time ago, I went to Ketchikan to cover a Tlingit and Haida meeting for the Tundra Times. The Ketchikan airport sits on an island a bow-and-arrow shot away from the city, but with no famous "Bridge to nowhere" one must cross over by ferry.

And on that day, a long time ago, it was raining and wind was blowing hard and I was sitting on that ferry with little protection from the elements and it felt darn cold.

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Mike and Maggie Williams, plus other people bumped into while dining; missing Jobe; Kivgiq edit progressing

This is Mike Williams and his wife, Maggie, who walked into Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant one day last week just after I had sat down for breakfast. Margie was still in Anchorage, babysitting Jobe and Kalib.

Any Alaskan who pays much attention at all will know who Mike Williams is and I have written a bit about him before. For those who may not have heard of Mike, he is a Yupiaq tribal leader and dog musher from the Kuskokwim village of Akiak and a recovering alcoholic. He was raised with six brothers and a dog team in that time before snowmachines took over the daily work of dogs.

He loved his dogs and he loved his brothers. He would race his dogs and one race he did was the Iditarod. When he would reach Nome, he would take care of his dogs, and then he and a brother would hit the bars and drink up a storm.

But his brothers got killed - all six of them - one after the other and each killing came as the result of alcohol abuse. One brother had served in the thick of the fighting in Vietnam and had come home safely, only to die from alcohol.

So Mike went to war against alcohol abuse. He sobered up. He created a petition and carried it with him as he raced the Iditarod Trail. Each time he would reach a village, he would take that petition around and commit all who would sign it to a year of sobriety.

Did all who sign it succeed?

No, but some did, and I heard testimony from a few of the them in the year 2000, when the Running Dog was still airworthy and I used it to follow Mike and his team along the Iditarod Trail from Wasilla to Nome.

Mike is not racing this year, but his son, Mike. Jr., is. Mike and Maggie had come to Wasilla to make the food drops that Mike Jr. will need to feed his dogs as he races along the trail.

After I took this picture, I put down my camera, pulled out my iPhone and placed a call to Mitt Romney, to see if I could convince him to finance this blog and the electronic magazine I want to add to it.

Mitt thanked me for calling, wished me well, said it was a worthy cause but he just couldn't afford to help. It was disappointing, but at least the three of us sitting at this table all got to make good use of our phones simultaneously.

If the Running Dog was not broken and I had the money for gas, I would love to follow Mike Jr. up the trail to Nome in this year's race, but the Running Dog is broken and gas is really expensive these days, anyway.

At the very least, I will photograph him at the starting line.

On another day last week when Margie was still in town, I did another breakfast at Family. As I was leaving, this fellow, Franz, noticed my camera and asked me about it. He wondered what kind of things I photograph, so, to demonstrate, I sat down at his table for a moment and took a photo of him.

Then we engaged in an arm wrestling match, which I easily won.

I jokes. We did not. And with my weak, fragile, artificial shoulder, I cannot arm wrestle anyone.

But when I was younger and my shoulder was real and I could, I almost always won - even against people much larger than me.

Not always.

But almost.

Now I have done my bragging for today.

On Friday evening after Lavina brought Margie and Jobe home, none of us wanted to cook. So I ordered a Pizza from Fat Boys and then went to pick it up.

This fellow, Ron, was dining inside. He noticed my camera, commented on it and asked what kind of pictures I took with it.

So I sat down with him while I waited for the Fat Boy to box up my pizza and gave him a demonstration.

So Margie had Jobe all of last week and I had him Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Now he is gone back to Anchorage and I am missing him. There are reminders of him all about the house.

As to my Kivgiq edit, yesterday I did complete my initial pass through of Day 2. Today, I begin on Day 3.

I mention this just to assure those who love Kivgiq that I am sticking with it and will yet make my big series of Kivgiq posts.

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For seven years, she refused to date him when he would show up at the motel; now they have been married seven years; a temple blessing; contemplating, part 2, on hold

As you can see, I wound up at Family Restaurant again this morning, but for a different reason. Jobe has been vomiting again, so Margie left at about 8:30 this morning to drive into town so that she could babysit him. I figured that it might be my only chance to ride in a car today, so I had her drop me off at Family on her way. I took this image after breakfast, as I was beginning my walk home, maybe a bit less than four miles. It was a bit after 9:00 AM. This may look dark for 9:00 AM to some of you, but for us, it is amazing to see how quickly the light is coming back.

As I walked along Lucille Street a raven would come flying by, always headed south, directly over the road, every few minutes. They all looked pretty intent to reach their destinations. I figured that these were ravens who nest out in the hills near the foot of the Talkeetna Mountains, but make their living in downtown Wasilla, primarily off the food that people discard - the ravens that I see at Taco Bell, Carl's Jr., McDonald's and such.

It was morning, and these ravens were going to work.

It was garbage pick-up day in our neighborhood.

As I did not have a car and had already walked four miles, I figured that I would just skip my Metro coffee break and listen to the news in my office while I edited pictures. But about 3:30, I was overcome by a strong desire to get out of the office, so I took off on foot for Metro Cafe. It was snowing now. 

Here I am, walking down Lucille Street, toward Metro. Look how heavy the traffic is! Yet, it is too early for people to be coming home from work. Why are all these folks driving down Lucille?

I arrived at Metro a little before 4:30, closing time being 5:00. Carmen invited me to look at her wedding album. They got married seven years ago, when she was 38, Scott 48. It was his third, her first. She met him when she was working at the Best Western Motel on Spenard in Anchorage. He would sometimes come and check in for the night on his way to and from the Arctic Slope oil fields and each time he did, he would ask her out. 

Each time, she would say no. He would tell her that one day they would marry, she would be his wife and would have his babies. She would say, "no!" This went on for seven years. Finally, she agreed to go to a movie with him, just to put an end to all the nonsense and get him out of her life. Anyway, she was Catholic and he was not.

That one date led to the marriage. It could not take place in the Catholic church, but "God knew what he was doing when he brought us together," Carmen says.

Scott has completed all of his cancer treatment and has finally gone back to work on the Slope, where temperatures have been running in the -50 range, with -75 and even -95 windchills. Carmen says he is finding the cold a bit hard to take, given the aftereffects of his radiation and chemo treatments.

I hear that it is warming up now - into the -30's and -20's.

This is Ryder, who came to Metro Cafe with his mom, Buffy, and his Aunt Danielle. Ryder drank hot chocolate and, except for me, was the last customer to leave.

I had planned to walk home, but Nola offered me a ride. I decided that seven miles was enough to have walked today. I got into the car. Nola brushed the new snow off the window.

Nola drinks a bottle of water as she drives me home.

 Okay - Part 2 of Contemplating the future of this blog will just have to wait until tomorrow. This post is long enough already.

And this one from India:

Inside one of the temples at Pattadakal - blessings are offered.

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Contemplating the future of this blog, part 1

On a painful day in the recent past, I wrote of how I once heard a teenage girl speak a name and immediately fell in love with the woman named, a woman who I had never yet met but who would become my wife and the mother of my children.

The girl who spoke Margie's name was Martyna White Hawk, Lakota of Manderson, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

One week ago, I received a Facebook message from Martyna in which she told me that on January 25, she was going to hold a memorial walk for the three children of hers who had been killed one year before in a terrible traffic accident. MADD - Mothers Against Drunk Driving - was going to walk with her and she hoped that the Lakota Times might come and cover the event.

As soon as I learned this, I just wanted to drop everything and go. I wanted to be there.

Yet, the total sum of my business and home checking accounts, plus the one cent still left in my savings account, did not add up to the required airfare from Anchorage to Rapid City, or the rental car that I would need from there.

I checked my frequent flier miles and came up 10,000 miles short.

I sent an email to an important person in the photographic world who works at a national blog that has plans to soon feature some of my work to see if by any almost impossible chance he might be able to help me get there.

He responded that he was moved by the story but did not have any resources available to help me do it.

So I had no choice but to resign myself to the fact that I could not go and to hope only that the Lakota Times would show up and they would do a good story and that I could read about it there and post a link here.

The night before the walk was scheduled to take place, Margie had gone to town to babysit Kalib and Jobe and so I had stayed up almost all night, pittering away at my computer. When she is gone, it is very difficult for me to make myself stop what I am doing and go to bed. Even so, as has so often been the case these past couple of months, once I did go to bed, I was only able to sleep briefly before I awoke, exhausted, yet unable to sleep further.

So I got up, thinking maybe I would walk to Family Restaurant - but that would be close to an eight-mile walk, roundtrip, and while I could use an eight-mile walk, I didn't have time for it.

Just as I was about to cook oatmeal, Caleb pulled into the driveway, home from his all-night shift at Wal-Mart. "You can take my truck," he said.

So I did. And here I am - at Family Restaurant, once again, eating breakfast and photographing reflections in the window.

The day must come - IT MUST COME - when this blog and its evolution gains enough resource that if I suddenly find I have the need to drop everything, hop on a jet and go to South Dakota, I can go. 

In one month, Sujitha and Manoj will experience a formal Hindu wedding in Bangalore. Those who have been with me since the day that I mentioned how Martyna spoke Margie's name know why it would be important for me to be there.

Last winter, my dear and best friend down in Arizona, Vincent Craig, lay in a hospital bed, battling cancer, and I wanted to drop everything and go see him, but I couldn't, until late May, and then I got there and stepped into his hospital room just hours before he died.

While I was glad that I made it, I should have been there in time to sit down with him, talk with him, joke with him, laugh with him, cry with him, but I didn't make it and I will regret that for the remainder of my days.

And then all that happened in India in November - I want to say that I should have been able to hop on a jet at the first notification to scoot right down and then maybe that could have changed at least the final, tragic, outcome but, you know what?

After someone dies in India, things happen so fast that even if I had left on the next scheduled flight, it would have all been over by the time the plane touched down in Bangalore.

Yet, still I should have been able to jump on that plane and if I had possessed the resource, I surely would have and maybe... maybe... I can't be sure... but maybe just the knowledge that someone was coming from Alaska could have forestalled and then prevented the outcome which has now become destiny - but it did not need to be destiny.

Destiny only becomes firm once it has happened and then it seems as if it was always going to be destiny and that it was just beyond anyone's ability to change it. But before any one destiny becomes set and firm, other destinies abound in endless possibility and this could have come to a different destiny.

Anyway, I am rambling, going off track. I did not mean to go here. I only meant to state that this blog must find a measure of self-sustaining independence so that when the need arises, I can get up and go to wherever it is that I need to go at the time.

Or, if I just need to stay home for awhile, I can stay home. I can't always do that, either, you know. Sometimes, I want to stay home, but I must go.

The kids in this bus, btw, might have wanted to stay home on this, the morning of Martyna's memorial walk, but they had to get up, get dressed and go.

Not a single one of them were thinking of Martyna, or of her children, but I was.

I fear that I have rambled too much, and have missed the opportunity to delve into today's headline, "contemplating the future of this blog."

I spend a fair amount of time thinking about different options that I might pursue to find the means to fund this blog and to build it in to what I want it to be, but I think it is time for me to stop just thinking about it, to write it down, and start coming up with a plan to achieve it.

It can be done - I am certain of it - but not if I just keep going as I am going.

So, I was going to begin that effort, right here, today. I was going to write down some of what I hope to do and to contemplate the possibilities of getting me there. While I do not expect any readers out there to have the answer for me, if any had any input or ideas after reading what I thought would write about today, then I would have been very glad to read those ideas.

But I have used up all my blogging time and then some, and have already written more words than most readers are likely to read.

This is a cat, by the way - a black cat that has just crossed the road in front of me. So maybe some good fortune will come my way.

One thing that bothers me about this blog is how small the horizontal pictures appear.

So small that the cat barely appears at all.

This is the same frame, cropped. Now you can see the cat better, but I prefer the full-frame, horizontal image. It just does not work so well on this blog. It works a little better in slide show view.

Anyway, since I blew it today, I will change the title of this post to "Contemplating the future of this blog, part 1." I will continue this discussion tomorrow in "part 2".

I have run out of time to even jump into my India folder to randomly grab an image. Even so, I have been posting the India images to accomplish a specific purpose, and in this post that purpose has already been accomplished.

This image, by the way, is from the drop-in to Metro Cafe that I made with Margie the other day.

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Two months later: the slow emergence from darkness; the moment she became Muse

Once again, after having slept for just a few broken hours, I found myself awake and unable to sleep further. I quietly got up, punched the remote to start the car so that it could warm up, dressed, quietly slipped out of the bedroom without disturbing Margie, came to this computer, checked emails and then drove to Family Restaurant to eat an early morning breakfast in solitude.

It is now two months to the day since Muse and soul friend Soundarya chose to follow her husband Anil into the "thereafter," whatever the "thereafter" might be.

I put "thereafter" in quotation marks because Anil once used this word in an email to me to describe how long the journey that he would take with Soundarya as her husband would last - "life and thereafter."

Today is also the first day since November 18 that the sun will completely rise above the horizon in Barrow. A few days ago, I began to read reports from Facebook friends there that the top arch of the sun had been spotted peeking over the drifted tundra, but today is the first day that it will arise in its entirety.

I wish that I could be there to witness it.

Early in this process, I resigned myself to also living with an inner darkness for all the time that the Barrow sun would remain below the horizon. I most certainly have.

Now the sun is coming back.

What I always remember about the winters that I spent completely or mostly in Barrow is how, after the sun would come back, that was when the really deep, bitter, brutal, cold would set in.

I don't know. In my mind, I had imagined myself writing many things about all this in this post, but now that I am sitting here, I don't feel like it. I find that once again my eyes are moist and I feel a trickle on my cheek and I don't want to say or write anything.

I don't know why I am. To write in all circumstance is just who I am, I guess.

I feel so tired. So very, very, tired.

And I am not getting anything done. Except this blog. It is the only thing that I am getting done.

In many ways, this blog has helped me to get through, but I have found myself incapable of doing my work. I open it up and I try, but I just stare at the computer and get nothing done. For some reason, I can always blog, but I can't work.

I have accomplished almost nothing since I last returned from Barrow.

No, that's not true. Besides this blog, I also have a novel that I am working on. I started it quite awhile back, made some progress, stuck it aside, picked it up later, made a little more progress, stuck it aside again.

In the fall, I picked it up again and resolved that this time, I would stay with it, if even for as few as 15 minutes a day, until it is done. I figured that might take ten years - if I live and have a mind for ten more years.

Then, when Anil and then Sandy died, I quit working on it altogether.

But I picked it back up again a couple of weeks ago and I have worked on it every day since.

I set out to do 15 or 30 minutes but often wind up going anywhere from one to three hours. So I am making progress there.

But of course, that puts no money in my bank account.

Amazingly, thanks to the donate button that I have put up on the side bar, this blog does put a little money into my bank account. Nowhere near enough to live on or to allow me to become a full-time blogger, but enough to give me hope that such a thing might actually be possible.

If I could increase my regular readership 100 fold and have support come in at the same level percentage wise that it has been coming in, I could do this blog full time. Then, I could really create something here. Right now, it is just a whisper of what I envision it to become.

Surely, for every individual who does come here on a regular basis there must be 100 more who would if they could somehow be brought into it?

See, all I want to do now for the rest of my life is to work on my books, this blog and the electronic magazine that I plan to add to it.

I suppose that I have rambled like this before and this all sounds redundant. But its true. And that is how the rest of my life should be spent.

This picture, by the way, is me driving back home after breakfast - although I suspect most of you have probably surmised that already.

There are two other things that have helped me get through the darkness so far. One, my family. I don't talk about it much to them, but just to have kids and grandkids swing by now and then, to come around, to go out and get coffee, to carry a spatula everywhere, to look with adoring baby eyes into my eyes and to feel the often sad but sweet spirit of my wife who has endured through this insane, risky, always insecure, forever teetering on financial destruction, life-stye that living with me these past 37 years has subjected her to.

And there is Soundarya's family, which is also my family. Her brother, Ganesh, my nephew - he credits me for introducing him to the fact that he is a photographer. He is a natural and has the potential to be great. In our communications, although she is always there, we do not talk about Sandy much, but rather about pictures, and about what we are going to do in her memory, namely to take a long hike in the Brooks Range.

Then there is her sister, Sujitha - Suji - my niece, who has appeared in this blog, who loves Jobe and Kalib and who leaves a comment or two here now and then. In so many ways it is she, who has been hurt so very, very deeply, more deeply than I can even hint at here, who has helped me to the deepest degree, just in the communications that we share back in forth.

While it may be difficult for some to understand this deep, platonic, relationship that I share with her sister, still, now, even in her death as I did in her life, Sujitha does understand and she lends comfort that could only be lent by one who understands and is hurt and grieving to the maximum degree herself.

The maximum degree. Yet, she helps me. I am happy that little Jobe, in particular, helps her. And from 9000 miles away.

It looks like Suji and Manu's wedding will happen late next month. I wish that I could be there, but I see no way.

There is also Kavitha, or Cawitha, Soundarya's cousin. I met her only one time and that was at Sandy and Anil's wedding. We do not exchange emails all the time, but every now and then and, except for those that came with announcements of death, I always enjoy receiving them. Kavitha is a trekker. She treks in the Himalayas, she treks about southern India, she treks into dark caves.

She plans to come on the Brooks Range hike.

I hope the rest of us can keep up with her.

One thing worries me a little bit about this hike. My Indian relatives are all vegetarians. We can carry a certain amount of dried food, maybe even enough to get us through with some fairlly significant weight loss, which will be good for me, but I would kind of like to supplement our diet with at least a few fish and maybe some ptarmigan. If there are enough of us to eat it all, maybe even a caribou. But I can't feed fish, ptarmigan and caribou to vegetarians!

We will have to carry a gun or two, both for protection and as a survival mechanism, should it come to that.

I think we will figure it all out, though.

Last night, I dreamed that we had just left on this hike. We were very unprepared. Margie had packed my pack and I did not even know what was in it.

When I opened it up, I found a suit, white shirt, tie and a pair of shiny, black, shoes.

The above image, by the way, is Metro Cafe as I drive by on my way home from breakfast.

There is a folder within my pictures folder labeled, "Ravens for Sandy." It has many photos in it, many that I sent her and others that I did not, but that I placed in the folder to hold until the day that I would.

And all these ravens that continually appear here, I still photograph them for Sandy. I no longer put them in that folder, but only here, in my daily blog folders, but still I photograph them for her.

I photographed this one yesterday, as I walked to Metro to get my afternoon coffee. Both Kalib and Jobe had fallen ill, could not go to daycare and so Margie had gone to town to babysit them. I was left without a car and so I walked.

I am a little surprised to realize that I took no pictures while I was at Metro.

I don't know how that happened. I had my camera. It just never occurred to me to take a picture while I was there. 

And this was one of those rare times when I was on the inside, at a table, slowly devouring a hot cinnamon roll as I sipped and savored the coffee - not on the outside, looking in through the drive-through window. Maybe I am beginning to lose it.

Hey - just a couple of weeks ago, it would have been completely dark at the time that I took this picture.

So the light is coming back. It feels kind of strange - as it always does when the light first manifests itself in the new year. We have had plenty of cool weather in the sub-zeros here in Wasilla, but we have yet to experience any true, deep, cold this year like we can get in this neighborhood this time of year.

I guess we had better brace ourselves. It ought to be coming any time now.

The moment she became Muse

Although I have been running this little series of India pictures in memory of her, I have not been including pictures of Sandy herself.

Today, I make what I believe will be my one exception, because I did not explain this muse thing quite well enough. I did explain how, after my first trip to India, I began to photograph the world that I live and work in here in Alaska with the goal of producing images that could explain it to a young woman in India and thus she was my muse.

But this is the moment - the very moment - she became Muse.

In the early 1990's, at the request of Melanie and Lisa, whenever I would travel, I began to photograph cats wherever I could find them. If I went to a new community, village, city, state or country, I would always seek out a cat and photograph it for my daughters.

So, when my sister's daughter Khena and Vivek planned their wedding and it became clear that I was going to go to India, I immediately began to imagine the cats that I might find to photograph there.

But Khena told me that in all her travels with Vivek in India, she had not seen a single cat. She did not believe that it was common there for people to keep cats the way they do here. Vivek could think of no cats, either. When I got off the plane and met his parents, they did not know about any cats.

And then, after the wedding feast where two soul friends from who knows how far back recognized each other, Sandy invited me to walk and so we walked.

We talked of other things and did not speak of cats.

Then all of a sudden she squealed with delight. She had spotted a cat - this one. She hurried over to the fence. She did not know the lady but asked her to hand her the kitten and let her hold it for awhile. The lady picked up the kitten and lifted it over the top of the fence. I raised my camera.

Hence, Soundarya! Muse!

May her memory live forever.

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