Twelve studies of Jobe on the day that he turned four weeks old (Kalib works his way in, too)

Jobe at four weeks, Study # 1: It had been too long since we had last seen Jobe and so on this, the day that he turned four weeks old, Margie and I shirked our various responsibilities and drove into Anchorage to visit him. Kalib was at daycare. Lavina had been spending all of her time inside the house, caring for baby, so we let her take our car and we stayed alone with Jobe.

Here he is, sleeping in his grandma's arms.

Study # 2: Sleeping in his grandma's arms, another view.

He begins to wake up.

He wakes up and cries out for milk. Margie hands him to me and then goes to the kitchen to warm up a bottle of momma's breast milk that Lavina left in the refrigerator. 

Now he is in my arms.

His little hand.

He brings his little hand to his mouth.

Margie returns with the milk, takes Jobe from me and feeds him. The bottle leaks. His pajamas get wet.

Margie lays him upon the changing table. Blue dolphins swim through the air above him.

After removing his wet clothing, grandma puts dry ones on him.

Having changed him, grandma smooths out his pajama collar.

Grandma holds and pats him as Kalib looks out at me from a picture that I took when he was within a week of the same age.

Jobe at four weeks, Study # 12: Back in his mother's arms. Before returning to the house, she stopped at daycare, picked Kalib up early and brought him home.

Kalib also starred in many shots after this. It is my intent to continue on with this day's take tomorrow, with the emphasis on Kalib.

But who knows what will happen between now and then?

Still, it is my intent. I'm pretty sure I will do it.

Homely man with horses; two through the Window Metro Studies; I rush to Anchorage airport post office, then meet a man who wants whiskey

It is 1:38 AM and I am just now sitting down to do this blog. This is because I have been busy all day preparing the proposal that I mentioned yesterday. There were a few other little things that I had to attend to - emails to answer, pro-bono photo orders to postpone - that kind of thing. But basically, the day was given entirely to the proposal.

As for this image, it is a picture of a holdover from yesterday's take. That's me on the computer screen, in a photo that Ron Mancil took of me with my camera out by the horses. Some of you may have noticed that when I include a picture taken by someone else in this blog, I first take a picture of that picture, whether it be on an iPhone, computer screen, wedding invitation or whatever.

That's because this blog is an impression of how I see the world through my camera, even when I extend that camera out somewhere and point it at something - maybe me - without actually looking through the lens.

One thing that I notice when I see a picture of myself like this is that I am going downhill fast, growing more homely and ugly every day. My mind's eye never sees me this way. When it envisions me, my mind's eye still pictures a dashing young tall guy of about 37, not a short guy headed towards old age.

But look - here's proof. I am going the way of all mankind; womankind, too. Humankind. And catkind, as we have observed in Royce.

Horsekind, too - although none of these horses look old or homely to me.

Through the Window Metro Study, #9723

Well, I did break away from my computer at 4:00, so I could go to Metro and hear at least a little bit of news on my car radio. When I got there, some of the same good-looking kids that I photographed very recently were on the other side of the window, with a newcomer. I got his name but I had forgotten my iPhone so I didn't record it and I forgot it.

So, to make him feel better about it, I just won't name anybody.

Through the Window Metro Study #3

One of Carmen's friends was there - a lady that she used to work with at Northern Air Cargo. Carmen told me her name, too, and I was certain I would remember, but I forgot.

Oddly enough, whenever I have had my iPhone with me and have actually used to it record the names of people I have photographed, I have always remembered those names - even without opening up the iPhone.

If I forget the phone again, I suppose what I should do is cup my hand to my head, speak the names into it as if I were recording and then maybe I won't forget.

The proposal had to be postmarked before midnight and the only Post Office I know of in the state of Alaska that is open until midnight is the one by the airport. I left the house about 10:15. It takes a little over an hour to drive from here to that post office, but I had give myself a little extra time, just in case somebody hit a moose or something somewhere in front of me and caused traffic to slow down.

I arrived at the Post Office just past 11:20, congratulating myself on making it with time to spare. I had planned to put the package in a priority mail envelope and so had made no label at home, as I would just have to do it at the post office again, anyway.

So I got the priority envelope and then pulled out my packet to get the mailing address off the application materials.

Oh no! Even though I was certain it was, the address was not printed anywhere on the application materials. The logo was, but not the address.

Aha! This time, I had my iPhone with me!

I pulled it out, logged onto the net and quickly found the address.

I then got into the line, which was long and slow, as it always it as this post office just before midnight.

Oh, my goodness! Look at this!

I have grown even more homely and ugly than I was just yesterday, when Ron photographed me with the horses.

Just proves what I said under photo #1.

Joe took the package from me and let me watch as he gave it the March 1 postmark. Joe asked that I not photograph his face, but only his hands.

So that's what I did.

I didn't have enough gas to get home, so I stopped at the Holiday Station by Merrill Field. I noticed this guy sitting by this pile of firewood and I was pretty certain that before I left, he would ask me for money.

Sure enough, just as I was putting the hose back into the pump, he got up, walked over and made his request. He and his brother had just flown in from Hawaii to take in Fur Rendezvous, he said, but they didn't have enough money left to buy whiskey. They needed some whiskey so they could enjoy Fur Rendez. 

They weren't going to start on it tonight, he said, but were going to wait until tomorrow when the events started. Then they would start drinking the whiskey.

"I'm sorry," I told him, "I don't have any cash on me at all and my bank account is down to about $100," all of which was true.

"That's okay," he said. He then went and sat back down.

Then I remembered that when I bought my coffee from Carmen with a credit card, I had seen a quarter and a penny sitting in the slot by the gear shifter.

So I opened the car door, took out the quarter and the penny, walked over and gave it to the man.

"Well, at least you're honest about needing the money for whiskey," I said. "Here's 26 cents. That's all the cash I have."

"Yes," he said. "That's the honest truth. I'm not a panhandler and I'm not homeless. Me and my brother just came all the way from Hawaii to see Fur Rendezvous and we need whiskey."

"You're lucky its warm," I said. 

Regular readers might recall how, a few days ago, I mentioned that there was a mass of cold air sitting to the north of us even as a low pressure system of warm air was spinning toward us from Hawaii.

I had hoped the cold air would win the battle and, for a time, on Saturday, it looked like it might. Then the warm front spun in and took over. The temperature when I took this picture was about 30 degrees (-1 c).

"Yeah, I'm told it gets pretty cold here this time of year," Ilya said.

"It can," I said, "a lot colder than this."

Then we shook hands and parted company.

As I wander through the oppressive heat of what cannot possibly yet be spring, I come upon an old friend; I pick up a hitchhiker by the Little Su

As can easily be seen, our horrifically warm weather continues. It feels like genuine spring. For the past three, maybe even four days, daytime temperatures have risen into the 40's and snow has been melting into slush.

The Iron Dog snowmachine race from here to Nome starts tomorrow. Two years ago, maybe three, I went to Big Lake for start of that race to photograph two competitors who were the nephews of my good friend, Rose Albert.

When I arrived at about 11:00 AM, the temperture was -36.

And now we are having weather in the 40's. Snow is melting. And down in the south, people who don't usually see much snow are getting dumped on and are freezing.

It is not that mid-winter 40's is strikingly unusal. It happens every winter, every now and then, its just that this winter relatively warm air has dominated the entire season. There has been very little cold.

It is El Niño, of course, pulling all that warm air up from the South Pacific, magnified by the Arctic Oscillation which has caused the normal polar low pressure to slip south and thus the Far North, even the Arctic itself, to be much warmer than normal - even than the normal of the past decade, which in itself has been significantly warmer than historical norms.

So - to you folks who jump up and down with glee and point to the snow and cold in Washington, DC and elsewhere as proof that global warming is a made up phenomena and that there is no reason for us to clean up our atmosphere but argue that we should just go on happily polluting so certain people can make big bucks until the Chinese master green technology and become the rulers of the world, I say, broaden your vision.

Look north!

This, by the way, is Ron Mancil.

A couple of weeks ago, I got a Facebook invitation from Ron to become one of his friends. We have been friends for decades, so of course I accepted. He then surprised me by telling me that he was working at the Mahoney Ranch, the place where I sometimes photograph horses on my coffee break, across the street from the tiny Mahoney Graveyard in Grotto Iona.

So, as I drove past on my coffee break, I saw the familiar figure of a man who I had probably not seen for at least a few years walking out of the horse pasture toward a barn. I pulled off the road, into the driveway, got out of the car, we shook hands and he introduced to the dog, whose name I have forgotten.

Ron and I first met nearly 30 years ago, when he came to work as an artist and cartoonist for the Tundra Times, where I got my start in Alaska. Ron is an Arctic Slope Iñupiaq and a greatly talented artist and scupltor. The remnants of many dinosaurs have been found on the Arctic Slope, including in the lands where his grandparents used to hunt and roam, and at times as a student of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Ron has worked with scientists to help uncover and identify those bones.

From time to time, though, the bottle has over-powered him and knocked him off course.

This is what brought him to Mahoney Ranch, where, about six months ago, Pat Mahoney, gave him work and a place to stay.

And all that time, I was regularly passing by, sometimes shooting pictures of the horses from my car, or photographing Grotto Iona and I did not even know he was there.

He has been living sober and dry, and takes courage from the fact that in this valley there are many alcoholics who are living sober, who are encouraging each other to do so.

More than once, things have gone wrong, but that doesn't matter now.

There is but one thing that matters and that is today... today... today...

After Ron and I visited, I got back into the car and headed towards home. Just before I got to the bridge that crosses the Little Su, I saw this man hitchhiking.

I don't normally pick up hitchhikers. I did when I was young. I picked them up all the time. Rarely did I ever pass one. Often times, if their destination lay beyond mine, I would just keep going and take them there. But over time, I heard too many reports of bad things happening to people who picked up hitchhikers, including murder.

I knew a fellow, a Vietnam Veteran, dead now, who was himself hitchhiking on the Parks Highway between here and Fairbanks when someone picked him up but then robbed and beat him, stripped him of his clothing and dumped him in temperatures far below zero and left him to freeze to death.

He did not want to freeze and so he ran and ran and ran until someone came along. He lived but lost much of his feet to frostbite.

So I decided it wasn't worth the risk and stopped picking them up.

Once in awhile, I will still pick up a hitchhiker, when something just tells me that it is absolutely okay and that it would be unnecessarily mean of me just to pass by.

Such was the case here. I figured he could only be a local, living in a cabin or hut without a car and that he just needed to get to the store or something.

Sure enough, that was the case. His name was Clay and he had me drop him off at the new gas station and store at the corner of Church and Seldon.

"I'm sure glad they built this place," he told me. "And I don't mind this weather, either. I just don't want it to rain, that's all. I'd rather it stayed just cold enough to snow, but no colder."

I wanted to give him my blog address so that he could see this, but he has no computer, no internet, and is not tech savvy, save for playing a video game that he told me about.

Baby Jobe is doing well. In the morning, before Kalib goes off to daycare, he reportedly gives his baby brother a mooch and a hug. Considering that he wanted nothing to do with him the last time we saw them together, that is a huge improvement.

Margie returns carrying a buckskin cradle board; Melanie's birthday celebration

So here I am, in the car, driving to airport "arrivals" to pick up Margie. See the smiling Yup'ik face on the vertical stabilizer of the Alaska Airlines jet on the other side of the new terminal building? That is Flight 91, just landed, coming in from Seattle where she changed planes after leaving Phoenix at 7:00 AM. Margie is still on board, waiting for them to open the door to the terminal so she can get out and come to me.

Soon, she is sitting beside me in the car, looking at a card that was sent by my niece Khena and husband Vivek. It has several pictures of their baby, Ada Laksmhi, half-a-year old now, highly intelligent, a full head of thick, black hair and, as you can see in Margie's expression, extremely cute.

She lives in Minneapolis. I hope we get to meet her, soon.

As for Uriah, he is home and has some healing to do, but is on the way to recovery.

I ask Margie if she is hungry, and she is. She has eaten only a bagel since flying out of Phoenix more than seven hours earlier. "Where do you want to go?" I ask. We are headed in the general direction of Melanie's work, because it is her birthday and we want to wish her a happy one. Plus, the engineering firm that she works for was recently bought out by a bigger corporation and she just moved into a new office, which we have not yet seen.

Margie thought about the question for about five minutes. "Taco Bell," she said.

So here we are at Taco Bell by Dimond Center. There is an empty parking space close to the door and these ravens have gathered in it. I make like I am going to park there and Margie scolds me, just like I knew she would. "Don't you dare!" she says. "Look at all those people you will disturb!"

So I parked elsewhere and several ravens came to join us. We went inside. I was not very hungry, so I ordered a cheese quesadilla and a small Pepsi.

Margie ordered a chicken soft taco and a small Diet Pepsi.

The ravens took whatever they could get.

We then went shopping, to buy her some gifts. Melanie loves dark chocolate, so her mother had brought her a box of Godiva chocolates that she had bought in Arizona. We went into Pier 1, which actually has some pretty neat stuff. Margie tends to think practical, so she found some nice, orange, couch pillows that seemed to match the decor of Melanie's living room.

I seldom think practical when buying gifts. I found a decorative pair of birds on a stand. They appeared to be dancing with each other.

We bought both the pillow and the birds.

Now we needed to get them wrapped, but to box and gift-wrap them seemed quite impractical, at this time. So we went to another store, where Margie decided to buy some fancy gift bags to put them. She thought she would be very quick, so I dropped her off and circled the parking lot.

As I came back, I noticed this bear, standing under this word, in front of Sportsman's Warehouse.

Margie did not find any gift bags, but she did find some little white bowls shaped like hearts. She thought Bear Meech and Diamond, Melanie's Anchorage cats, would enjoy them, so she bought them.

Next, we stopped at Melanie's new place of work. We wished her a happy birthday and examined the premises. Melanie told us about a nearby coffee shop that had the name, "cats" in it. She said the coffee was good there. We went looking for it, but never found it. We wound up at a nearby Kaladi Brothers instead.

The coffee was superb. 

From there, we did some grocery shopping for Melanie's birthday dinner and then we headed over to Jacob, Lavina and Kalib's. Margie was eager to see Kalib, but he was not there. His dad had picked him up from daycare and they had gone off to do a little shopping themselves.

Lavina was home alone, as she had been all day. She was almost desperate to see people. Margie then gave her the Apache cradle board that her sister, LeeAnn, had made for the new baby-in-waiting. That's white buckskin that you see on the cradle board. The part that Lavina is touching and admiring is made from cholla cactus.

During the time that Margie and LeeAnn had been snowbound and then even afterward, LeeAnn had worked hard and long to finish the cradle board. She completed it the night before Margie left.

She also made the one that Kalib spent his babyhood sleeping in.

All of our own children were packed in such cradles - made by Margie's mom, Rose. If you should ever get a chance to see the February, 1980, issue of National Geographic, I have a three-part story and photo spread on the White Mountain Apache Tribe in there and it includes a picture of Rex in his cradle board, as his grandmother works on others.

A few years back, the Governor of Arizona declared Rose to be an Arizona State Living Treasure for her skill in making cradle boards. 

I think LeeAnn is a treasure, too.

Even though I missed this trip, we are all planning to go down for a Sunrise Dance in June, so you will get to meet them all then.

As for the baby who will occupy this cradle board she... well, could be a he, but I have just been feeling that it is she, but I could be completely wrong... is definitely getting ready to be born.

Lavina is experiencing intense contractions again. Of course, this has been going on now for a couple of weeks - intense contractions, followed by light contractions. She visited her doctor today and our new grandchild is right there at the door, ready to exit.

As soon as Lavina's contractions get to be ten minutes apart, she is supposed to go in.

This is the longest labor I have ever known of.

Jacob and Kalib finally arrive. Margie is thrilled to finally see her grandchild again. Kalib reacted the way I used to react when my grandmother's would hug me.

Yes, I still remember.

Soon, everybody had arrived - except for Caleb, who stayed in Wasilla to sleep before heading out to his all-night work shift.

Can you guess whose feet these are?

We gather in the kitchen to get our avocado cucumber sandwiches and our baked potatoes and corn chips.

See the fact at the far right? The one that is just barely into the picture frame? That face is Lisa's face, just as the feet in the previous frame are Lisa's feet.

The arm at the right belongs to Bryce, Lisa's boyfriend.

The others, of course, are Margie, Melanie and Rex.

Kalib rips his sandwich apart and devours it. I suppose one day soon, he will have to start learning some table manners. I don't think the lessons will please him.

As he always does at anybody's birthday party, Kalib came dashing over to help blow out the candles. He puffed so hard that he nearly blew Melanie away.

She quickly recovered to blow out the remaining candles.

Next, she opened her gifts. I will not list them all, but I will note that this one is from Charlie and he did the raven painting himself. You can see how he docorated the package.

Afterward, Kalib rolled a big ball down the stairs several times. 

Is my beautiful, sweet, baby girl, who I love so dearly, so sweetly, who I cherish more than I cherish the sun that shines each day, the earth that spins, my own life, the little girl who, when she was small, would automatically appear in my lap whenever I sat down, really 29 now?

She really is.

How beautiful she is, from the first moment onward.

I wrote up an extensive journal entry about her birth, which started in excitement, turned frightening, and ended wonderfully. I was going to transcribe it into this post and I actually began to, but then, just as happens every time I read it, I began to weep. Twenty-nine years has passed, but I sat here at my computer and I cried, as they say, "like a baby."

I had to pull back.

People just keep feeding me; another dog charges into traffic; Green Terror swims into the house; Kalib returns to play golf, study properties of light

It used to be that Caleb and I would go to IHOP together just about every Sunday - at least those Sunday's when I was home. Then it just stopped happening. Sometimes I would ask, but he would decline - usually because there was a game he wanted to watch. For awhile, he had a girl friend and tended to prefer her company to mine. I didn't mind. Last night, he asked me if I wanted to go to IHOP with him this morning.

When I got up, after spending a long, hellacious, night battling with Squarespace,* Kalib was once again battling opponents from all over on his video game - but he broke away and off we went. Melanie greeted us happily and sat us down. She was not our waitress, but just the same, she brought our food to us.

For reasons that I do not fully understand, we both ordered off "The All You Can Eat Pancakes" menu. "I love IHOP pancakes," Caleb said. "IHOP just has the best pancakes."

Later, he added this, "I'm beginning to hate that video game. It's just addicting, especially when you play online with other people."

I told him that, based on some comments left on this blog, he just might open the door one morning to find one or more girls ready to snatch him away from the video game.

He claimed not to be interested. All he wants now, he says, is for the snow to melt so he can get back out to the golf course. That won't happen for awhile.

He made it sound like it had to be golf or girls, but not both together.

This made me think of Tiger Woods, but I did not utter these thoughts.

Caleb bought my breakfast. That was nice.

Later, I headed out on my walk. I had barely stepped out the door when I saw the dog that nearly killed the rabbit at the corner where the chicken crossed the road, the rooster got shot and the drunken ice cream lady crashed her good-humor vehicle.

"Dog! Dog!" I once again found myself shouting as I saw this hapless, unsupervised, character charge straight into the path of this car, on Seldon. The dog turned away from death at the last possible instant. I don't know if my call had anything to do with it or not.

Maybe.

The driver of the car did not slow down - not by one mph.

The sky was laced so beautifully with high cirrus clouds. An airplane flew through it. (Sorry, Norman Maclean.)**

You will recall that yesterday, as I dealt with a loose dog, Margie called to tell me about Uriah getting caught in the explosion at the White Mountain Apache Sunrise Ski resort.

Well, my phone rang as this dog, Tequilla, was barking at me. It was Margie, with good news about Uriah. He was on his way home from the hospital in Phoenix. He is going to be okay. He will need to lotion his second-degree facial burns and try to keep the direct sun off of them for awhile, but the scarring should not be bad at all.

As Margie updated me, Tequilla followed along. She barked at me throughout the entire conversation.

Then this guy came along, running with this dog. Lucky and Dale. Lucky is the dog, Dale the man. Dale is Lucky, too. He wound up in my blog, just because he ran with his dog.

Then this boy came by, on a four-wheeler. I believe he is a child of Russian immigrants.

Further along, I found the headless stuffed turtle that the black lab had been carrying when it almost got run over yesterday.

I stopped at Pet Zoo today and bought this little Green Terror to put in the 90 gallon tank with my old parrot fish and the baby yellow peacock that I bought a couple of days ago.

I have had two green terrors in the past. One was so mean that I eventually had to clear out all of his tank mates and let him have a 55 gallon tank all to himself. The other was docile, and never went after another fish.

I will never let this guy beat up my parrot. The parrot is too big for the Green Terror to bother now and I hope that as he grows, he will just accept the parrot.

If he doesn't, then I will have a problem to solve.

Green Terrors are very beautiful fish and they are smart, too.

My mean one really liked Lisa. Whenever she would come into my office, he would get excited and swim to the glass to greet her. She liked him, too.

Right now, this little baby is about two inches long. It should grow to eight to ten inches.

About 4:30 in the afternoon, Lavina called to tell me that she, Jacob and Kalib were on their way out to see me and they wanted to take me to dinner. I was surprised, because she is still experiencing contractions, although much lighter, and I did not think that she would want to leave Anchorage.

All week, she has done nothing but stay at home and get bed rest. "I just had to get out and go somewhere," she said.

On the way out, Kalib fell asleep in the car, so they took the long route through Palmer to give him time to snooze. 

Here he is, just waking up. He is not happy about it.

They took both Caleb and I to Jalepeno's. Another free meal for me. The little girl in the background is named Raeligh.

Jerry, the manager and a member of the owner family came along, to admire Kalib and to speak Spanish to him. Once, a couple of year's back, I came here by myself and ordered a meal that cost $14.00 plus and paid for it with my debit card. The next day when I checked my bank account online, $1400 plus had been removed from my account.

It was an honest mistake. Jerry quickly had the money transferred back into my account.

When we returned to the house, Kalib and Caleb resumed their ongoing golf game.

Lavina gave Royce some love. I'm afraid Royce had a hard day today. His progress seemed not only to stop, but to reverse itself. He almost fell off the couch twice. He shook and shivered for awhile, even though the fire was warm. He did some drooling. He walked stiffly. Although he begged to get it and dug right in, he left much of his soft food uneaten in his bowl.

Early in the week, Lavina had been convinced that new baby would come before the week ended. Now, she feels it could be a few days yet. If its not here by the eighth, the doctor plans to induce it, for medical reasons.

That is our little grandchild who she holds.

Kalib manipulates a "This American Life" ap on Caleb's iPhone.

I'm not quite certain what Jacob was up to, but he was in the back, rummaging through this and that. Then he came out with this - a wedding invitation. The couple pictured is Margie and me. The invitation is to our wedding - 36 years ago. Jacob said he was going to keep it.

To see Margie standing there, beside me, in that picture... see how beautiful she is? She chose to go with me. How did it happen? How could it not have happened? Someday, perhaps I will tell you more of our story, how we came together. But not right now.  

I don't know why the decades pass so fast, but they do. Not so long ago, it was she and I who were making babies and it was our parents who so eagerly waited to meet their new grandchildren.

Now, save for Margie's mother, our parents are in the grave and it is us, Margie and I, waiting to meet our new grandchild.

And here is the first one. He is experimenting with a flashlight. The world remains a new and exciting place to him. He wants to learn about everything.

Kalib helps Caleb put his clubs back in the bag. Then he leaves with his parents.

There was certain desperation evident in Royce tonight, the intensity of which I had never before witnessed. He seemed desperate to communicate something to me. He kept looking into my eyes like this and when he was close enough, he would reach out with a paw and touch me, and look at me this way. His motor control was not good. His claws would dig painfully into my skin.

He was trying to tell me something. What? It made my eyes water, just a little bit.

*That battle continued tonight. Problem not solved. Hours wasted. Eaten up by Squarespace - the nightmare blogging program from hell.

** Author of A River Runs Through It.