Christmas Day: It's gone now, but I remain stuffed and full, blessed with wealth, even in tight times

The preparations had been going on for quite awhile by now, but I had not been ambitious enough to take a picture. After Margie baked these cookies, Charlie did some artistic decorating. Lisa was amused.

Out in the living room, the good black cat Jim stepped into the shadow to eat tinsel and study the gifts that waited under the tree.

Charlie takes a picture of his cookie artwork as Melanie, Lavina and Margie keep on cooking.

As I take a picture of Charlie's artwork, Jacob reaches in to begin destroying it.

Kalib is impatient and tugs at his mom. No, they did not stay here last night. They drove out in their pajamas.

Many gifts were given. Lavina gave Jacob a new electric razor.

I gave Lisa a framed picture of her buddy, Juniper.

Margie gave me the pig. I gave her the salt and pepper shakers. We were both very pleased.

And here is a camera that Margie and I gave to Rex. He is going to Seattle next week to hang out with his buddy and he will need to take some pictures.

Charlie with a little, cast-iron, bird that I gave him.

Caleb got some tires with snow studs for his bike.

Kalib opens up a gift from his Uncle Caleb. Uncle Caleb was born with a magnificent artistic talent, but he has never come around to harnessing it. A good uncle teaches his nephew, so maybe they can help each other.

Charlie blessed the food. It was an unconventional blessing, but he said he was glad to be part of this family. We are glad, too. I took no more dinner pictures after this, because I was too busy eating.

Kalib feeds turkey to his buddy, Royce.

Later, we came back to the table to eat pie and fruit goup.

As good as it was to be together, to exchange gifts and to eat, the day still came pierced by a huge hole. If it is a little hard to read at this size, the words on Rex's shirt say, "Table for one."

It is still a big and painful mystery to all of us why Stephanie up and walked out, but she did and there is nothing to be done about it. Rex has asked us all to think of her kindly and lovingly.

Rex left first, to go meet his buddy, Eddie, who now lives in Seattle but is also in Wasilla to visit his family.

I never stepped outside today. Just before they all left, I laid down upon the couch and was soon covered by a cat blanket. I normally step out onto the porch to wave goodbye to everybody as they leave, but I was too sleepy and these cats felt too good.

So, one by one, the departers came to the couch to give me a hug, then they all went out the door and drove away. I stayed put on the couch for a very long time.

Guess what? Kalib turns two December 26 - hey! That's today! - so, after we get some sleep, we will all gather together again.

Catchup,* part 5: Margie nearly gets flattened by a rude mother in a truck with her two, beautiful, young daughters

There were several empty handicapped parking spaces near the main entrance to Carr's when we pulled in. Given Margie's condition, we could qualify in some ways, but the fact is we do not have the proper license plate or sticker, so of course we did not park there. No one who does not need those spaces should ever park in a handicapped spot.

Someday, I will post my photo-essay on my late brother, Ron, and you will understand why I am a hawk on this issue. I am learning to control myself, to tell myself that I am not a police officer and that there is nothing I can do about the rude, ignorant, dolts of the world, but I simply get outraged when I see a healthy person with no sticker park in such a spot. In the past, I have unleashed my wrath on more than a few, but now I try just to take a few deep breaths and move on.

Yes, when I post that essay, you will understand.

A big pickup truck was parked in one of the handicapped spaces. I could see no sticker, no license plate - but maybe there was something in the front window that was not visible to me from the back. 

Despite the fact she would be slow, Margie wanted to go into the store and shop for herself and I wanted to sit in the car and listen to All Things Considered on the radio. We were fortunate to find a parking space not far from the door, so I parked and she got out.

As she did, a fairly young woman with two little girls, who appeared to be her daughters, came bounding happily out of Carr's. And I mean bounding. All three were laughing and smiling, the little girls skipped and bounced and the woman moved at a brisk pace to easily keep up with them.

You can imagine my surprise when they climbed into the truck parked in the handicapped space.

That surprise soon turned to helpless terror when the lady backed out at too high a rate of speed - headed straight for my Margie, who was hobbling helplessly on her crutches. I was helpless. I could do nothing.

She missed her by inches.

Then, laughing with the little girls, she drove happily away, oblivious to what she had just about done.

Damn!

This was from one of those days when I got up late and groggy and had to go eat at Family Restaurant. It is nearly noon and that is why the sun is so high. If I had been there at a typical breakfast time, it would have been dark.

Family Restaurant.

When Kalib was a brand new baby, this waitress was delighted to see him. She oohed and aahed and cooed and all that kind of stuff. I can't wait until we can bring the next baby in and see how she reacts to him/her.

Old, wrecked, cars passing through Wasilla. Were they part of the Clunkers program? Or just old, wrecked, cars?

Did anybody ever make love in any of them?

How many hamburgers and hot dogs were eaten within?

Did anybody ever die in one?

Or break their neck and never walk again?

Or hit a man on a motorcycle and break his neck, so that he never walked again?

I find myself stopped behind a school bus.

On one side of me, this dog, Tequilla, barked furiously...

..simultaneously, on the other side, this dog barked, observed by two cows. Barking dogs, in stereo.

A typical scene from Schrock Road during a coffee break.

Jacob and Royce.

*Although I have scheduled this to appear Thursday, November 12, I actually made this post on Thursday, November 5. There are two reasons for this: 1: whatever bug it is that has got me down has left me unable to concentrate to the degree that I must to do my work. 2: The project that I have been working on is very nearly done, but I have never brought such a project to a close without going full-bore, night and day, on it at the end, distracted by no other tasks, including this blog.

So, before I go to bed, I am going to put up several days worth of posts from photos that I have recently taken but have not used. Then, for the next several days, I will not blog, I will stay away from the internet as much as possible and just bear down on getting this job done - but my posts will keep coming.

I think Kalib with get three of those posts, two at the very least.

Addendum - one image from today:

A shadow self-portrait. This is not early morning, it is not late afternoon - it is high noon. This is the season of long shadows.

Sometimes, if you want to catch a shadow, you must become a shadow

A couple of days ago, I was about to go walking, but was most distressed to discover that I had forgot to charge the battery to my G10 pocket camera. So, instead, I grabbed my big, heavy, 1Ds 3 and set out to walk and to carry the damn thing.

Here I am, headed down Brockton, in the direction toward where Dan lives. Dan is a veteran who has suffered some bad injuries to his back and neck. At least half the time when I walk this way, I find him outside his apartment, smoking a cigarette and exercising his cats.

So I stop and we talk, about many things.

There have been times that the light has fallen on him in a most beautiful way and I have wanted to photograph him, but he is perhaps the most painfully camera shy man that I have ever met, so I haven't.

I contemplated the problem as I walked, wondering how I might finally photograph him - if he was out. I had not seen him since before I left for the Slope in June and I was a little worried.

He had suffered a heart attack last spring, so there was just no telling.

But on this day, he was out, smoking his cigarette. His cats were hanging out in the nearby shadows. He said he had not seen me for so long that he had grown worried. "There's just no telling, you know," he emphasized.

So I told him about the latest accident, how Margie had fallen and injured her knee, broken her femur.

That reminded him of an experience he had in the Army. He described it as having taken place in a pit, where he had to wrestle a big man. He called him a "mullet," or something like that. He was a lot bigger then Dan, and heavier too, but Dan had to wrestle him anyway.

"Look," the mullet told him. "I don't want to hurt you, so why don't you just go down easy and the match will be over."

But Dan wasn't going to do that. He was in it to win and if he couldn't then he was going to go down wrestling.

So the mullet wrapped his arms around him and bent him in half and tore the ligaments in one knee. "It hurt like hell," he said, "so I can sympathize with your wife." 

He was out of commission for awhile and the Army tried to discharge him on the grounds that he was no longer physically fit, but he fought the discharge and won.

"Is your shadow as camera shy as you are?" I asked, after he finished the story.

"No," he answered. "My shadow is not camera shy at all."

So I photographed our shadows doing what we do - mine, gripping a shadow camera, his, smoking a shadow cigarette.

And then I photographed the cat, Varmit. I was surprised that Varmit let me get so close. He didn't use to be like that. Varmit used to spook easily.

"I got him neutered," Dan explained. "He's not so shy anymore."

One day before I left for the Slope, I had come by and had found Dan feeling pretty bad. Varmit had peed on his couch. The cat had never done such a thing before.

And now he was neutered.

Varmit.

Today, I did not walk but rode my bike. I had intended to ride it every day that I stayed home following my last trip, but when I got home the tire was flat and I was too lazy and distracted to patch it and so I just kept walking.

Saturday, to my big surprise, Caleb patched it for me. Sunday, I headed out to take a ride, but my bike was gone. Jacob had taken it to go buy some pickles for Lavina.

But today I rode it.

And later, I felt better than I had felt in a long time, but right now I feel pretty exhausted again. Yet, for a few hours in the middle of the afternoon, I felt bright and alert in a way that I hadn't felt in a mighty long time and I know it was because I had ridden the bike. 

It was a short ride, five, maybe six miles, but it did me good.

Later, I took a coffee break and came home the long way. I had to stop behind this school bus, which was okay with me because I needed to get a picture that shows that the poor kids of Wasilla are back in school now. I was especially pleased that the dog showed up to meet the boy.

The lady whose face is hidden by the stop sign stood there and talked to the bus driver for a very long time, long after all the kids had crossed the road.

But all the while, the red lights kept flashing and the stop sign protruded outward, so I had to just sit there until their conversation ended.

I didn't mind too much, because it gave me something to write about in this blog. Were it not for the fact that I keep this blog, I suspect that I would have been pretty irritated.

I'll bet there were some irritated kids inside that school bus.

India, Wasilla, work - I have hit that proverbial wall

To the 3.578 billion people out there who read my blog daily, you who hardly sleep at night because you are so excited to get up to see what I have posted that you can't even shut your eyes, let me say that I am perplexed. I am confused. I do not know how to proceed.

I just don't.

I am a perplexed, confused, man.

Anyway, here is a picture from India - a Hindu temple at a place called Hampi, which was a thriving city until Muslim invaders destroyed and ruined it in the 1600's, then left it to fall into the earth.

The temple did not fall, however. Much of Hampi did, and is now rising once again from the earth, but the temple stood tall through all the centuries that have since passed.

When I returned home, it was my plan to spend two weeks posting pictures and a narrative from my India trip. In that time, I planned to cover the entire experience. But here it is, two-and-a-half weeks later and I have not even finished my account of the first three days, including Sandy's wedding.

I have nearly two weeks of work beyond that wedding to cover, work that I shot over a fairly large swath of southern India and risked not only my own life but that of my beloved daughter to get.

You will see what I mean, if and when I get to the images that make the point.

I skimmed through the entire take the other day and was rather amazed at some of the images I spotted. For two weeks plus a day, I did pretty good, I think.

I have hardly even posted a hint of it, so far.

What is to become of all this India work? Will it just be buried, unseen, in my computer, as was my last trip to India? As is so much of what I shoot? Where do I find the time to edit, process and post it? Before it becomes ancient history?

Meanwhile, life is moving on in Wasilla. People need to know that the antics of our most famous citizen are not indicative of us all. Other than the short time I spend each day riding my bike and snapping pictures as I go, I am so overwhelmed that I cannot document this town, as I planned when I started the blog, as I promised to do. And in nine or ten days, I head north, to the Arctic Slope, where I plan to stay until late July.

So, what do I do?

I don't know.

My black cat knows what I should do.

He has a perfect understanding of everything.

I wish I were as wise as he.

Yet he can be very silly.

I think maybe I will eat some enchiladas.

I really love enchiladas.

Easter Sunday, Part A: Our early morning reunion with Kalib and his parents

A few minutes before 1:00 AM, it suddenly occurred to me that I had better get a camera ready. I found a memory card, inserted it into the camera and then walked into the kitchen, where Margie continued to suffer through tax preparation.

"What are you up to?" she accused, suspiciously, when she became aware that I was standing directly behind her, fiddling with my camera. It was as if she suspected that I was about to take a surreptitious picture of her preparing taxes - this is something that I would never, ever, ever, do - no, not ever!

"It should be just about time, I answered. "I want to be ready."

 Just then, I heard a car pull into the driveway. Suddenly, Margie understood. "Is it them?" she asked.

It was. After more than a full week without him, we were about to see our little grandson again. And his parents. As you can see, Kalib was so thrilled to see me, he didn't know what to do.

Then it was grandma's turn.

Oh, the joyous reunion with Royce!

And then, back in the bedroom where Kalib and his parents sleep, Muzzy joined in.

Here they are, the travelers, home from the southwest. After everybody got some sleep, there would be an Easter egg hunt. Please come back, and witness the action. It will be up, soon.