Too damned exhausted to blog

Here I am, earlier this evening, altogether too exhausted to blog. It is getting ridiculous, to be so damned exhausted all the time. I keep wondering, why?

Maybe its my shoulder - as improved and improving as it is, it still wakes me up periodically through each night - as do other minor ailments.

Maybe its because I need more Vitamin B-12. 

Maybe its because of this blog, and Grahamn Kracker's blog.

Not that this blog is that exhausting. It isn't.

This blog is fun.

But, when I put it on top of everything else... when the end of the day comes and instead of flopping down with a book or maybe a DVD, I download pictures, edit pictures, process pictures, upload pictures, then deal with all the absurd, annoying, aggravating, time-wasting proclivities of Squarespace, it pushes me beyond the edge of rest.

But maybe not, I don't know.

Maybe the reckless way that I have lived my life all these years is taking a toll. 

Maybe I just need to go sit on a beach in Mexico and watch pelicans dive for fish.

That's not going to happen anytime, soon.

Maybe instead I will go sit on a beach in Southern India, and see what kind of fishing birds are there, observe what kind of fish they eat.

Maybe that would help.

I could eat a banana, fresh off a tree, if a monkey didn't steal it from me.

On the way home from Anchorage with his dad, Kalib ate some Girl Scout cookies. Mint cookies, with chocolate coating.

This post is for you, Lavina, beloved daughter-in-law, wonderful mother of my grandson

Lavina, I hope that you are enjoying Vancouver and learning much that will help you in your work. I especially hope that your presentation goes well. I know you miss Kalib terribly, so this blog entry is for you. Here is Kalib, this morning, at the back door, when I returned from my walk.

This is from yesterday's walk. Your husband just hurled the sled as hard as he could, to see how far Kalib would slide.

I had to jump out of the way.

Then we all went back into the marsh.

Jacob and Kalib headed home from there. I had not walked far enough, so I continued on. "Bye, bye!" I waved to Kalib.

He raised his hand and waved back.

Then I walked through the snow. For just a little while, it really snowed. Then the sun came out.

So here they are, your dog, your son and your mother-in-law, who you call, "Mom," just like you call me "Dad." This gives us a warm and good feeling, Daughter.

Lisa brought Juniper out. Kalib and Juniper had a good time. Grahamn Kracker has posted more pictures from that visit on his No Cats Allowed blog. If you go there, you will not only see more pictures of Kalib, but the moment when Juniper discovered herself in the mirror.

A wider shot, from my return this morning, of Kalib, in Caleb's arms. Very similar to another I did awhile back, except that I made a point of including my reflection in this one.

I suppose that I ruined it, by including myself in it.

I know that you have heard about the latest eruptions of Mt. Redoubt. Today, the flights going north toward Fairbanks and Barrow were canceled, but the flights going and coming from the south mostly flew.

We sure do hope that the planes all fly on the day of your scheduled return.

A boy with a huge talent was buried in Barrow today

Actually, he was no longer a boy, but a young man - a husband and father - but in my memory he is a boy, out on the snow-blown tundra, making people laugh, because that is how I knew him. The boy that I speak of is Perry Nageak and that is him sitting closest to the camera, with the uncovered head. 

The month was May, the year, 1997, and he was out at spring goose camp with the family of his uncle, Roy Nageak, the man to the right. In between them is Roy's son, Ernest, then nine-years old. Ernest had just shot the two geese - his first ever. I managed to shoot a nice little sequence of pictures that told the story.

As for Perry, what I remember best about him is how quick-witted and funny he was. What a story-teller!

I thought maybe someday, I'd see him on TV, making people laugh the world over.

Here he is, telling a hunting story, late at night in the tent - probably about 1 or 2 AM. Remember, this is the Arctic, and by May the time of the midnight sun has arrived.

You can see how amused he kept all the other young people in camp - his cousins and siblings.

Although you cannot see them clearly in this picture, there are adults in the tent as well. They laugh, too.

Since I learned of his death the other day, I have been trying to recall the specific stories that he told, but after 12 years, they elude me. I only remember how funny they were.

But wait... one comes back, even as I sit here and type.

It takes place on a caribou hunt. A boy shoots a caribou. Maybe the boy was Perry; maybe it was a brother, or a cousin. The bullet does not strike the caribou directly, but instead slams into the base of its antlers. The antlers fall off and then the caribou drops dead onto the tundra.

"Oh no!" Perry explains the story from the point of view of the caribou. "My antlers! My antlers! My beautiful antlers! I just can't live without my antlers!"

To Ben, Bonnie and all those who loved Perry, my deepest condolences. And thank you for sharing your boy with me for that one beautiful, wonderful, experience, back in May of 1997.

My prayers are with you too, for whatever the prayers of a man of doubtful faith are worth.

Speaking of which... that brings me back to today. I had to drive to town, to drop the Kivgiq prints off at the North Slope Borough's liason office in Anchorage. Afterwards, I drove to Wal-Mart to pick up a couple of things that I needed.

I returned to the car, and as I took my seat, I saw these two young Mormon missionaries talking to this man. Maybe they were trying to convert him. Maybe he was a fellow Mormon, and they were just having a friendly discussion.

I started the car and this brought KSKA, the Anchorage Public Radio station, into my speakers. The first sentence that I heard come was this, "I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints..."

The show was talk of the nation and the topic was a scene from "Big Love," the HBO series about a polygamist family belonging to a sect that had broken away from the Mormon Church. The most recent segment featured a scene that depicted an endowment ceremony in a Mormon temple. 

The caller was hurt and offended - as were all the Mormon callers who phoned in. Mormons are instructed that, once they step outside of the temple, they must never talk about the ordinances that take place within - not even among themselves.

The other point of view was that to tell the story the artist wanted to tell, it was necessary.

I could not only understand both points of view, but could empathize and justify each.

If my mother was still alive, I knew how she would have reacted. With horror. With utter and absolute horror. She would have saw it as a sign that the prophesied future times of the return of the persecution that our Mormon ancestors had borne was coming right back at us, that it was right around the corner.

And just beyond that - Armageddon, the cleansing of the world and the Second Coming of Christ.

I apologize for getting a little carried away here. Except for funerals of loved ones, I have not been inside a Mormon chapel for 25 years, but when one grows up as I did, this kind of thing never leaves you.

I thought about stopping, about getting the missionaries to pose for me, but I did not wish to interrupt their conversation and so just shot this image through the open window as I drove slowly past them.

I picked Melanie up at her place of work and then drove her to Ichiban's for lunch. It was Lisa who chose Ichiban's. She met us there, as did Charlie. Melanie and Charlie are going to ride the ferry to Cordova this weekend, just for fun.

They asked me for suggestions about what to do.

I've hung around Cordova a bit, so I gave them a few.

They can go down to the fishing boat docks, and watch sea otters play; they can go up the hill to the ski run and ski. They can walk all around, and drive here and there; visit with eagles.

Lisa and me. Lisa had asked me for a picture of Juniper, her cat. So I made a print last night and gave it to her today. She was most pleased about the timing, as some of her coworkers had been deriding cats, describing them as worthless, questioning why she would ever have a cat in the first place.

The answer was right there, in the picture, but such coworkers are unlikely to see it, even when they look straight at it.

Some of us ordered sushi.

When I arrived back home in Wasilla, I found Margie and Lavina watching what at first looked like an teen-exploitation flick, as the scene on screen depicted four high school cheerleaders running amok in a sex-toy shop. 

"What's this?" I asked. 

"Texas Cheerleader Massacre," Lavina answered.

I figured they must really be bored. I flopped down on the couch to see when the carnage would begin, determined to stay but minutes and then come out here and work on something.

But Lavina got the title wrong. 

It was, "Texas Cheerleader Scandal."

There was no carnage - just a rather oddly compelling story about a cheerleading coach trying to discipline some wild girls who were messing up the squad and intimidating all the other adults.

I watched it to the very end.

As he always does, Jimmy, who is here with me now even as I type, joined me and stayed right with me.

An evening sunbeam came through the window.

Kalib found it.

About that cup of coffee... plus two dogs, three cats, and an airplane

Last night, I was just too exhausted to post an entry, so now I discover that yesterday has gone. No one knows that I came out of the Wasilla Post Office to see this dog and her lady sitting in a truck.

This is wrong. The world needs to know this. The burden is upon me. Sheba is the dog; the woman is Debbie. Debbie says that Sheba is an exceptionally bright and intelligent dog, sweet and loving.

Of course, I would have liked to have learned more about Sheba, but Debbie needed to get into the Post Office and I needed to get into my car.

The temperature was 10 degrees F and the wind was stiff, as you can see by the flag across the street. I wore only a light jacket and that wind was going right through it, so I could not chat long with Sheba and Debbie.

You can see that Sheba is, indeed, sweet and loving, but I did wonder about the intelligence part. Then, as I got back into my car, I glanced over just in time to see Sheba arrange a Rubic's Cube - only the most intelligent of dogs can do that.

This is one of those images that fails to come across blog size, but that's me, reflected in the left side of the window at the Well's Fargo Bank drive-through. Those two ladies behind the window have just removed a check written to me and are about to put into my account.

They will tube $200 back to me, and then I will drive to Taco Bell, which is only about 100 yards away.

Pretty convenient, huh?

If you click on the picture, you can see it a little bigger.

Of course, I would not want to frighten you.

Back home: Royce, Chicago and Martigny share a sunbeam. The two calicos tend not to want to share anything with each other, save for a hiss and a flying claw, but they shared the sunbeam.

Late  yesterday afternoon, I was out again, headed toward a coffee kiosk but first found myself near Anderson Lake. Anderson Lake is where I kept my airplane before I crashed it. In the winter, I kept it on skis atop the lake; in the summer, alongside the little gravel strip adjacent to the lake.

Out of curiosity, I drove onto the lake to see if anyone had claimed the spot where I used to tie down..

They had. Another Citabria was now tied down where the Running Dog used to sit and wait for me. That was a really good life. I miss it terribly.

Except for the color, this Citabria looks just like mine did, before I broke it. I had a different brand of skis, though.

Mine were better.

Now, about that cup of coffee... the one that I referred to Saturday, at the IHOP breakfast...

I am a little reluctant to tell the story...

Just as I am a little reluctant each time I post a coffee picture, and tell a coffee story.

I am reluctant, because I have informed a number of my relatives down in Utah and Idaho about this blog, plus a few friends from the life that I was born into and lived until about three decades back.

I do not wish to shock, dismay, disappoint, or disillusion any of them. I do not wish to shake or weaken their faith, even though I no longer follow it.

In the culture and religion that I grew up in, to drink coffee was a sin. In their degree of wickedness, sins had an order to them. With one exception too complex to get into here, the gravest and most evil of all sins was to commit murder, to shed innocent bled. For this, God would not forgive.

Then there was sex, conducted outside of marriage. This could be forgiven, but not easily. One would have to first suffer the searing pains of conscience, confession and penance.

Not far below these two in magnitude of evil was the consumption of alcohol, the smoking of cigarettes, and the drinking of "hot beverages" - widely recognized as coffee and tea.

Playing cards was pretty damned evil, too - as was saying "damn!" unless you were a righteous person and were using the word to a righteous end. Then damn was fine. Brigham Young himself was known to use the word a few times.

So, you see, I grew up without learning a good many of the social skills generally required to get one through this life. Unless one settles in Utah or Southern Idaho. My family sure hoped I would, but I could not.

Yet, as reluctant as I am to do so, I said that I would tell the story so yesterday, well after 5:00 PM, I set out for my afternoon coffee break, determined to take a new picture that was a little bit different from some of the other coffee images that I have placed here. I would use that picture to illustrate the story.

I remembered this little kiosk that sits exposed to the mountain vista of the Chugach. I decided that I would get my coffee and take my picture there.

But when I arrived. it was closed.

This kiosk closes at 5:30. I arrived at 5:31.

I thought I would photograph it anyway, but then I saw the young woman who had just closed shop (you can see her in this picture if you click on it) walk out the back. I feared that it might frighten her if I took the picture as she walked from the building, so I put my camera down.

Then the raven flew into the picture. I had to take it.

The raven, Raven himself, is a most important character in traditional Eskimo belief.

It was the Eskimos who taught me how to drink coffee.

The first instance happened on Halloween of 1982. This was not the first time that I had drank a cup of coffee, mind you. I had consumed a few cups after youthful drunks, intent on getting sober before a responsible adult spotted me, but that was different.

On that Halloween, I flew into the St. Lawrence Island village of Gambell with a group of Inuit thespians from Greenland, known as Tukak Teatre.

We came in on a big, fast, two-engined airplane but even then, we would not have been able to land had the wind not been blowing straight down the runway. That wind was strong. Fifty. Maybe MPH. Maybe knots. The pilot just said "the winds doing 50."

The temperature was not that cold - nine degrees, F, but I had not yet learned how to dress for Arctic conditions and in it that wind, it felt frigid - damn frigid.

Worse yet, I turned my hand in such a way that the wind caught the cusp of my right glove, ripped if off my hand and shot it off into the distance to disappear in the blowing snow. Maybe it went off to Russia. On a clear day, you really can see Russia from Gambell. To my knowledge, our governor has never been in Gambell.

A villager pulled up on a three-wheeler and offered me a ride.

I hoped on behind him and pulled my bare hand as far up my coat sleeve as I could.

It was a wild ride, through the wind, and over bumps that he did not even slow down for.

"This is the real bush!" he shouted back at me.

Then he dropped me off at the home of my host.

I went inside, almost frozen.

My host offered me a banana and a cup of coffee.

I took both.

I wrapped my hands around the cup and savored the heat as it radiated into them.

I then lifted the coffee to my lips.

I drank. I felt the heat spread outward from my esophagus and belly throughout my body.

I treasured that heat. It was wonderful.

When I was done, I asked for another.

The picture above, by the way, is from today. I went back to that same kiosk and got there before 5:30. Before I ordered, I stopped in the Three Bears parking lot across the street, and took this shot of Morgan, serving a customer.

And here is Morgan as she serves coffee to me.

The St. Lawrence Island experience did not make me a coffee drinker. My faith in the religion of my birth had already been terribly shaken by then, never to recover, but still I had no desire to drink coffee. It had brought heat to me when I was cold, and that was that.

I did not drink my next cup until May of 1985. This was the spring that I began to follow Inupiat whalers out on the ice as they went out to hunt the bowhead, upon which their life and culture is built.

At whale camp, I had basically three choices of beverages - coffee, tea and, when someone would drive their snowmachine to the community and come back with a sled-load of fresh supplies, an occassional Pepsi. The coffee and tea were made by melting old ice that the salt had leeched out of, or glacier ice that had floated into the ocean to become lodged in the sea ice.

If I was really quick, I could sometimes snag a cup of that water immediately after the ice had been melted over the Coleman, but mostly, I drank tea, and coffee.

My pee turned dark, and stained the snow in a shade that I had never seen before - just like the hunters who I was with.

Then one day, I was out in the ocean off the village of Wainwright in a tiny, tiny, boat. That boat, along with several others, was attached to a heavy rope the other end of which had been looped around the tail of a bowhead whale, 58 feet in length. On the shore side of us, huge pressure ridges - the tallest reaching up to seventy feet, jutted out of the ice.

On the seaward side, the pack ice drifted. The sun, which hung low over the northern horizon, caused eery and strange mirages to form above it. Castles would appear, and then disappear. A man would show up out there - a really tall man, looking at us, and then shrink away until he became just a shard of ice.

Our forward progress was slow, maybe two miles an hour, if that. The boat ride would be long - nine hours - and cold.

"The way to stay warm out here," one of my boat mates told me, "is to drink lots of coffee, and pee often."

Some survival experts will tell you not to drink coffee at all in cold weather situations, but nobody knows more about staying warm than do Iñupiat whale hunters.

So I drank lots of coffee and I peed often - and always into a rusty Folger's can, which I then emptied over the side of the boat.

I could go on and on. I could tell you about the times spent as a guest in Iñupiat homes, when friends and relatives wander in and out of the house at all hours of the day or night, just to visit, to play cards, to dip their frozen or dried meat into seal oil, and to drink coffee.

I would join in. Then I would go to bed at maybe 1:00 AM, maybe 3:00 AM, maybe 4:00, so full of coffee that I was certain I would lay awake for the rest of the night.

But I would sleep well.

Better than I almost ever do, for I am a chronic insomniac.

Today, after I bought a cup for me and another for Margie, I turned back towards home.

I had not gone far when I saw a car parked at the corner of Bogard and Trunk. On it was a sign that read, "puppy."

I could not let such a newsworthy event pass by unphotographed, so I pulled over and stopped.

So did these two. I thought they might take the puppy. They didn't.

The girl oohed and aahed for a minute or so. The boy seemed to want just to go. They did, before I could find out anything about them.

The lady who was giving the puppy away did not want her face to be in the photograph, but she did not mind if the puppy was. So I left her face out of the picture - although there still might be a clue or two here as to her true identity, should anyone who knows her see the picture.

She said the puppy was the last of eight. The others had all been given away.

The puppy was vexingly cute. When I petted it, it looked at me with eager, pleading eyes and I felt a sore temptation to bring it home - but five cats and one St. Bernard already live here.

I resisted.

But look! On the dash!

It would appear that the puppy is a coffee drinker, too!

Wasilla Creek runs just behind the spot where the woman and the puppy had parked. As I drove away, I saw the woman get out, and carry the puppy toward the creek. In some places, this would be a worrisome sight. But not here. That creek was frozen solid.

The puppy just needed to pee.

Too much coffee, obviously.

The muzzled dog; I prepare to see Obama become President; too much water

In just four hours, Margie and I will climb into the new Escape and drive to Anchorage. There, we will meet Lisa and begin a trip that will put us in Washington, D.C., for the Inaugural of President Barack Obama. We are nowhere near ready to leave. So I will keep it brief.

Despite the lack of time, I had to take a walk today, just to try to be somewhat sane. As I walked, I came upon this muzzled dog. It wanted to bite me, but it couldn't.

I was not really presentable to go see the President. So I went to Envision, and got a haircut. I'm still not presentable. Oh, well. The President will never notice me.

On the way home, I drove through a puddle created by this horrendous warm-up. This is right in front of the place where celebrants huddled around the bonfire in the cold, just this past weekend.

I will be traveling for approximately six weeks. I would like to say that I will post everyday, but I really doubt it. I will post as often as I can.