Vagabond coffee drinker in front of the world; Kalib comes to feed Bobby and the fish, then takes them home

Kalib was asleep in his car seat when he and his parents arrived to pick up the fish and so the lot of us headed over to Palmer to get some coffee at Vagabond Blues. Some of you may recall an earlier stop at Vagabond in August, when I photographed Charlie standing in front of this very map.

I have decided that each time I wind up in Vagabond with Charlie, I will photograph him in front of this map.

It should prove to be an interesting study.

I wish I had thought of it years ago.

The lady behind the cash register at Vagabond Blues in Palmer.

Kelsey, Vagabond Blues barista.

Charlie and his mug. Charlie always comes up with neat mugs.

Kalib was still asleep when we arrived at Vagabond, so Jacob had to stay in the car with him.

By the time we returned home, Kalib was wide awake. The first thing that he asked to do was to come out here to my office to feed "Bobby," to feed "fish." Ever since he has moved into his new home in Anchorage, he has continually brought up the subject of feeding fish. He has been sad that he had no fish to feed. His parents found what appeared to be a good deal on an aquarium complete with fish on Craigslist, but someone else beat them to it.

So I decided to give him one of my four active aquariums - not the one behind him, but the one that is most prominent in my earlier Kalib-fish feeding pictures.

I don't think that he understood yet that he would be going home with an aquarium and fish of his own.

Before they took the fish, Kalib, Jacob and Melanie did a little fish dance.

We also shared a little dinner. Royce took a seat near his buddy.

Kalib points at Bobby, his favorite fish, the one he named, the big pleco. I'm afraid that I did not do too well taking pictures of the fish-moving, because I was too active in the process.

I kept the orange parrot fish pictured in earlier posts. I moved it from the 55 gallon tank that Kalib would take home to the 90 gallon tank where Bobby had lived.

Kalib, about to leave for home with his fish.

I hope they all survive. They are pretty old fish, mostly eight and nine years, but the two smaller ones are four or five; I can't remember exactly.

Had things gone according to my original plan, I would have joined Margie in Arizona today. Tomorrow, assuming that everything goes according to my current plan, I will go to Barrow.

I have much to do in a short time up there. I will try to post every day, at least one or two pictures.

Bad news and good hash browns at breakfast; cruising down Wasilla's snow-blown roads with Steve Heimel; Royce, Melanie and coffee

I just about stayed home to eat oatmeal for breakfast, but then I would have had dishes to wash. Plus, it was a Sunday, I had slept in and it just didn't feel right to stay home. So off I went, not knowing if I was headed to Family or IHOP.

I wound up at Mat-Su Family Restaurant, where diners were reading about the police officer in Anchorage who was ambushed in his patrol car Saturday and shot five times. He survived, perhaps because he was wearing a bullet-proof vest. According to the Anchorage Daily News, he is in pain but is going to be okay.

Troubling thing to have happen in Anchorage.

I was surprised when Jolene showed up at my table to wait on me. It has been many, many, months since I have seen her waiting tables at Family and she was pregnant last time. I meant to ask whether it was a boy or girl and what the name is, but she had many tables to wait on and we spent our limited talking time discussing hash browns. 

She said she would make certain the cooks did my hash browns right. And she did. The hash browns were excellent.

I'm sad to say that Jolene is only working temporarily.

Hungry people, pouring into the Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant.

She stood there for awhile, waiting for someone to join here - and there he is, coming through the door.

It was blustery outside, but something made her smile.

I can't say for certain, but it looks to me like a grampa, carrying a little teddy-bear boy from the restaurant to the car.

After I finished my breakfast, I got into the car and tuned the radio to 90.3, KNBA public radio, the Alaska Native station. I tuned it there because I knew that Steve Heimel would be on the air with "Truckstop," his program of old-time country and folk music, with a bit of Gospel and Blues thrown in.

This was a big mistake on my part, as I had many things I wanted to do back here in my office, but I was trapped. I could not point the car towards home as long as that great music was playing.

So I would waste time I could not afford to waste, burn gas I could not afford to burn, and pump greenhouse gases into the air that I should not have putting there.

I think it would be safe to say that Steve is a conscientious, environmentally conscious, green-oriented person. Yet, I can assure you, he causes many people besides me to inject the atmosphere with greenhouse gas.

I circled around and found myself stopped at a stop sign before I could cross Wasilla's famous Main Street, and drive past Wasilla's famous library.

Then, captivated by the music and unable to go home, I returned back to the Wasilla portion of the Parks Highway.

I had thought that I would go to KNBA's website and pull up a playlist of all the songs Heimel played today, and then I would note some of them, link to them, and then tell you where I was at the time and make some other commentary.

But, sadly, there was no playlist and a good many of those songs are obscure enough that I can not remember their titles.

Sure, I remember some of the obvious ones, like "The Battle of New Orleans" by Johnny Horton and "Tom Joad" by Woodie Guthrie, but some of the others just escape me.

It's okay, though. Truth is, its late and I am too tired to go find all those songs, make all those links and write all that narration.

Heimel is a very smart and knowledgeable guy and every now and then he drops in his own narration. Like just before playing a good gospel song that was all about Jesus being on the radio before there was radio, he recalled an experience that happened many decades ago when a man asked him, "are you saved?"

"Saved from what?" he responded.

As to the Battle of New Orleans, he gave an off the top of his head summary of the events that led to it, including the fact that it was fought after the war had ended but the poor Brits who went on the attack did not know it and they got slaughtered - 214 dead to 14 Americans dead.

And all this for a war that had ended.

At the end of Horton's piece - and I wish I could quote Heimel, but, damn, his exact words have slipped my mind, he said something like this: an alligator canon is a mighty effective weapon.

"What's your dog's name?" I shouted as we were stopped at the light.

"Annie," he said.

"I bet lot of people take her picture."

"Oh yeah," he agreed, "you wouldn't believe how many people have cameras."

And then the light changed and the interview ended.

I need to get another beaver hat like that. That looks just like one of my three that have disappeared.

I'm not accusing anybody of anything, because I'm pretty sure Annie keeps the man honest. I wouldn't be surprised if his hat was made by the same guy who made mine. The hat maker lives just up the road in Trapper Creek area - or at least he did at the time.

He would go to Barrow to help count bowhead whales and that was how I met him.

Here I am, stopped at another light - and here is the guy behind me.

I turned off the Parks and drove down the Palmer-Wasilla Highway for a short distance.

And to my amazement, even as Heimel took a break to say, "KNBA, 90.3," there was a KNBA Volkswagen right in front of me, with the call letters, 90.3 emblazoned on the back.

What are the odds?

This kind of thing happens all the time to me.

Finally, I knew I had to go home and so headed in this direction. As I drew near, I saw this stuck vehicle on a side street, with this guy trying to help push it out.

I thought about turning around and going back to help, but the song that was being played was too good.

Plus, with this artificial shoulder of mine, I must be very careful about such things.

As I continued on Seldon, I saw three snowmachines ahead of me, on the same trail that I photographed the kid yesterday as he sped along in careless disregard for the mothers and babies who use that trail. This time, I was going 25 mph and I passed all three snowmachines.

So, you see, not all snowmachiners are wreckless and irresponsible.

The street this snowmachine is crossing is my street. I finally turned down that street and got to my house, about 10 minutes before Truckstop ended.

Melanie showed up not long afterward. She expressed great concern about Royce, who is losing weight at a horrifying pace. She said she was going to run to the store to buy him some soft cat food, because she hadn't seen my blog lately and did not know that I had already done that.

I am pretty convinced, though, that the problem is not that Royce is not getting enough to eat. He eats all that I give him and more, voraciously, but still the weight is melting off him.

He has thrown up a lot the past few days, and not hairballs.

I guess I had better take him into the vet.

He seems energetic and bright, but he grows so frail.

Melanie suggested that maybe I am letting him eat too much, too fast and that I should give him smaller servings, more often.

She may be right. 

I am trying that now.

"He is a special, special, cat," she said.

Then the two of us went out for coffee. She brought her mug and ordered her's black. I ordered mine with cream and two raw sugars.

Mine wasn't very good. Her's was better.

I will not say where we got them, because I don't want to make the poor barista feel bad, but it wasn't Metro Cafe. Metro Cafe is closed on Sunday.

And Metro Cafe has spoiled me, because their coffee is always good.

Now - I've got one week before I leave to join Margie in Arizona for two weeks. I have about three weeks worth of tasks to do in that week, so I expect the posts between now and when I leave to be brief - although I never know for certain until I do them.

Detoured by death on the highway as I take Margie to the airport; bright, red, fingernails; Kalib rides the escalators

The plan was for me to drop Margie off at the Alaska Native Medical Center so that she could pick up the medications she will need for the nearly four weeks that she will be in Arizona.

I would then drive to Camai Printing where I had a little business to take care of, come back, pick her up, we would get together with the kids for coffee or maybe even dinner, should time allow.

I would then take her to the airport.

But, just before we got to the South Birch Creek exit, traffic came to a halt. There had been an accident ahead.

I knew that if I could get to the exit, we could get off the Glenn Highway, switch to the Old Glenn and go around the accident.

Several other drivers had the same idea, so it was a slow process, but, after close to half an hour, I made it onto the ramp, where traffic was moving maybe one mile-an-hour - but it was moving.

See all those cars still on the highway? They are beyond the exit and they will be stuck there for hours.

Furthermore, if we had been perhaps as little as one mile further back, we would also have been stuck. We would not have been able to make it to the exit.

As we crept along, a bulletin came on the radio. A very serious accident had happened and the highway was closed at this exit.

It is a strange thing when you find yourself in this situation. You are annoyed at the slowdown. You think of the inconvenience and trouble that it is going to cause you - in this case, Margie could potentially miss her flight, or have to go without her medications, which we would then need to get and mail to her.

Yet you know that, up ahead, at the source of the slowdown, someone might be badly injured, in terrible pain, perhaps facing a different kind of life from here on out. Or someone might be dead, or dying, their entire life now behind them. Several people might be.

And yet, you still want to get moving.

As we crept further, a new bulletin said that a helicopter was coming. We knew then that someone had been hurt very badly.

And still I wanted to get Margie to the airport, on time, with her medications, and I wanted to get my business taken care of.

Finally, we got to where traffic was moving and then arrived in town right as the rush hour was beginning. I dropped Margie off at ANMC, then headed to Camai and arrived just before closing. I took care of my business and then returned to get her.

But she had got stuck in another long line - at the ANMC Family Medicine pharmacy. Kalib was there, waiting for her with his parents. Margie had entered an area in which only patients picking up medicine are allowed, so I sat down as Lavina helped Kalib learn how to operate an iPhone.

See how red Lavina's fingernails are?

A friend at work had chosen Saturday to be her wedding day and had asked all her lady co-workers who would be participating to paint their nails bright red. She also wanted them all to wear black dresses.

So Lavina painted her nails red, went out shopping on her one free day and bought a black dress.

Then her coworker changed the wedding date to June.

Kalib watches the movie, Cars.

Lavina had heard an update on the accident - it involved a pedestrian. That seemed pretty strange, since it happened on the freeway.

Later, on the radio, we heard that a man was trapped beneath a vehicle. I hoped he was unconscious. How miserable would that be, to be broken, injured, and have a ton or more of steel sitting atop you, jamming you into the cold pavement?

By the time Margie finally got her medications, there was no time to get together for coffee, let alone dinner. So all of the Anchorage part of the family came to the airport, to see her off.

Kalib and his dad led the entourage toward airport security.

Kalib soon dashed into the area where only ticketed passengers are allowed. Thankfully, he turned right around and dashed back out before he could get arrested and thrown into jail.

Traffic was very light in the security area. Kalib gave his grandma a goodbye hug.

As Rex gives his mom a goodbye hug, Kalib reaches out to hug one of his aunties. Kalib hugged everybody, whether they were traveling or not.

Then he got to ride an escalator going down.

He rode a series of escalators.

At the entrance to the parking garage, we discussed the matter of dinner. Melanie suggested Pho Lena, a Vietnamese - Thai restaurant that was more or less on the way out.

At Pho Lena, the waitress brought a toy over for Kalib's amusement.

But Kalib was more amused by the paper and coloring marker that she also brought him.

After I arrived home in the late evening, I sat down right here, at my computer and found a bulletin from the Anchorage Daily News in my inbox. Robert Marvin, 76, had apparently experienced some kind of car trouble on the Glenn and had pulled over to the side of the road - but not all the way out of traffic. He was standing in front of a Volkswagon van when it was rear-ended and pushed 50 - 60 feet down the road with him under it.

Rescuers managed to get him out without help from the helicopter, but he was pronounced dead shortly afterward. Traffic had been stopped for three hours.

Now, as I write these words, Margie is in Seattle, where she has a seven-and-a-half hour layover before catching her 7:25 AM flight to Phoenix.

How miserable she must be!

I am afraid to call her, though - she might be napping.

Kalib visits us all day; I meet some friends on my walk; Melanie and Lisa come out

I can't remember precisely what time, but I think about 3:00 AM, I was suddenly awakened by what sounded to be a "thump," followed by the sound of Kalib screaming. I leaped out of bed in an instant and dashed for his room - even as Margie, who is still moving ever so slowly and always with a bad limp, did the same.

But all was fine in his room - except for the fact that he was sitting in the middle of the bed that Margie made for him and he was screaming.

It must be kind of frightening, that having been his room for as long as he can remember, to suddenly be in it by himself, with his parents and all their furniture gone.

He quickly settled down and went back to sleep.

Then, at 4:30, I heard him scream again and this time I heard the pounding of his footsteps as he charged through the door and down the hall. I jumped up again, but Margie stayed put. "He's going to Caleb," she said, as I charged for the door.

Caleb, of course, is a night-shift worker and although it was his night off, I could now hear what sounded to be him playing video games."

"You got The Little One, Caleb?" I shouted out.

"I've got him," she shouted back.

So I went back to bed and fell asleep and stayed asleep for too long, even though, totaled up, I feel significantly short of the eight hours they say you need.

When finally I came out, this was the scene that greeted me.

A bit later, I was sitting here, in my office, at this computer, when Margie brought him out to feed the fish. I always clean and rinse my hands real good before I put them into any of my tanks, but Kalib suddenly plunged his hand in and offered a pellet of fish food directly to one of my fish.

I suspect that all the fish will be okay. The fish in this tank are all eight or nine years old, so, if I were to find one floating tomorrow, how would I know if a germ got them or it was just old age?

I'm pretty sure they will be okay.

Not long afterward, I went walking. I soon came upon this car, stuck off to the side of the road. Judging from the deep, burned-in rut of a tire spinning, it would appear that someone tried to pull it out but didn't succeed.

A little further on, I came upon Danny, Becky and their mom. They had come out to go sledding. I am always happy to see them and they are always happy to see me.

So we did a New Year's family portrait.

Afterwards, mom mentioned that she was looking at the picture that I gave them of Becky and Danny with their bicycles, the morning after their grandfather Red - her father - died. It was the first picture that I had ever taken of the two together - although I had once photographed a little tiny Danny with his late grandfather, Red.

She looked at the date on the photograph and was surprised. "I couldn't believe that it has been five years already," she said.

Becky then asked what I saw when I looked down at the white snow and the brown snow. "I see white sugar and brown sugar," she said.

Then she showed me the new phone that she got for Christmas. She was very pleased. Her mother told her not to lose it, because if she did, then she would have to go back to having one of those generic "minute" phones that you can buy at Wal-Mart.

Everybody then set off to walk up the hill, but Becky set the fastest pace, so we walked together as the other two dropped back again.

"I'm the fastest walker," she told me.

She then told me how excited she was about an all-night get-together that her church was hosting for its young people. "We're not going to go to bed all night," she said. She said they would probably go bowling, too.

Once we got to the top of the hill, she climbed to the top of a snowmachine trail off the road - and then zipped past me on her sled.

Back home, Jim, my good black cat, came to see me, to get an affectionate scruff.

Jim and Kalib. A short time before, Kalib had been vacuuming the floor.

Melanie and Lisa came out late in the afternoon. The three of us went to Little Miller's for coffee and brought one home to Margie.

After we came in and sat down, Kalib put some stickers on himself. Here, he shows one to Lisa.

Then Kalib started chasing Melanie around the wall that separates the kitchen from the woodstove and the living room. Or maybe Melanie was chasing Kalib.

I am not quite certain.

Now, I am very sorry to say, there are three images left that I had planned to include in this post. I am unable to load them. The picture upload feature of Squarespace, my blog host, has frozen up. I cannot upload any more pictures. Over the past two hours, I have tried all kinds of things. I have cleared the cache, I have refreshed the page, I have closed down my browzer and opened it back up again. I have restarted my computer.

Nothing does the trick.

Nearly two hours ago, I sent a message to Squarespace support, where they promise to "respond to service related incidents immediately," hoping that they might help and solve this problem. So far, nothing.

So I am unable to finish this blog post.

Update: I just got a response. I have been informed that I am at 99.9 percent of my storage space and that is why the upload is stalling.

So I have to buy some more storage space.

I don't have time right now. This will have to do it.

2009 in review - May: Melanie and I go to India for Soundarya's wedding; I ride a bike in the cool Wasilla air; Kalib gets tossed

What a transition, huh? From the ice pack of the Arctic Ocean to a sweltering, sweltering, hot day in Bangalore, Karnataka, India. And it all happened because of this beautiful woman, Soundarya Ravichandran - about to become Soundarya Anil Kumar. I first met her 21 months earlier when my niece, Khena Swallow, married her cousin, Vivik Iyer, in Bangalore.

Yet, it did not feel like I had just met her, but rather that I had always known her. Tables had been set up in long rows for the wedding feast. Guests sat on only one side of the tables so that the servers could file past in front of them, spooning food onto their banana leaves, which served as plates.

She sat at the table directly opposite mine, facing me. So I raised my camera and focused it on her. "I don't take good pictures," she protested, embarrassed.

"That's okay," I said, "I do." 

After dinner, she invited me to walk with her, and we soon came upon a woman standing in a tiny yard behind a tall fence, along with an orange and white kitten and a little white dog. Sandy asked the woman if she could hold the kitten, so she passed it over the fence to her. She went nuts for that kitten, cuddling and petting it, smiling and laughing in true joy. I took some pictures and we have been the fastest of friends ever since.

Thanks to the internet, it is easy to keep in touch.

I call her "Muse," because even from so far away she has caused me to take pictures that I would never have taken. She has asked me to write stories that I might never otherwise have written.

I promised her that when she got married, I would come back to India to photograph her wedding.

And now she was getting married, so here I was.

And this man would be her groom - Anil Kumar. It would not be an arranged marriage, but a love marriage and would cross the caste lines of old.

There were musicians at the wedding, creating music of a type that we do not normally hear, here in Alaska.

And there were cooks, and cooks helpers, creating food as delicious as any that you can imagine. Oh, my goodness... was it good.

Now let me back up a bit, to very early in the day. A pre-wedding, pre-sunrise, ceremony was to be held at the home of the bride. Melanie had come to India with me and Vivek's parents had put us up at their house. We had spent the previous day with Vivek's mom, Vasanthi, shopping for saree material for Melanie and we had visited a tailor, who measured her and then went to work, cutting and stitching.

So, although we were still exhausted from the 40 hour trip, we got up at 4:00 AM so that we could get to Sandy's house in time for the ceremony.

Murthy, Vivek's dad, had arranged for a taxi-cab to pick us up, but the taxi did not show. I was a little distressed, as I wanted to photograph the day's events from beginning to end.

So Murthy put me on the back of his motor-bike and off we went. Bangalore is a huge, sprawling, city - twice the size of New York and, even in the light traffic of early morning, it took us nearly 45 minutes to get there.

We made it in time. Here, Soundarya receives a blessing from her mother, Bhanumati, or "Bhanu."

Soundarya enters the wedding hall with her entourage. Compared to a Indian wedding, a typical American wedding is a brief and simple affair. Many, many, many things happen at an Indian wedding and as I covered a good portion of it to some depth over several earlier posts, I am not going to do too much with it now.

Instead, I will jump to this scene, many hours later, when everybody broke out into applause, because Anil and Soundarya were now husband and wife.

This doesn't mean the ceremony was over. Many things would yet happen.

Finally, they got to eat. They fed each other little cakes, kind of like what happens at an American wedding.

After dinner, the ceremonies moved to the house of the groom's mother. You see the hand that gestures? That hand belongs to a photographer that the groom's family hired and he, along with his videographer, was a nightmare to me.

The videographer had a powerful, harsh, flat, spotlight, the likes of which I have never seen in the US. See the beautiful light from the candle? In about two seconds, maybe one, that videographer will blast that light away with the searing, brutal, glare of his spotlight.

The photographer will shoot his stills with flash, straight on, giving it the most washed-out effect possible. He will interrupt things and order people around.

And the photographer was very aggressive - he used his shoulders and elbows whenever he got near me.

But I was in his country, and this seems to be how wedding photographers go about things here, so there wasn't much I could do about it. I had to accept it and work around these two guys the best I could.

Ah, if only I could meet them on the ice-pack one day!

But you know what I would do if I did? I would help them out as best I could.

The bride and groom enter, kicking over a container of rice. More things happened as well.

Then there was a break. We all gathered around this laptop with Anil's brother, Ashok, and his wife, Thruptha, to look at pictures of their wedding, which had happened a short time before. That's Thruptha on the screen and sitting at right.

In the middle is Melanie, so beautiful in her new saree.

Melanie receives a blessing.

When it comes to my picture in this blog, my policy has been mostly to photograph shadows, sometimes mirror images and once in awhile a self-portrait.

But I want to include this one to promote my nephew, Ganesh, "Gane," Sandy's brother. He is a natural born photographer, wants to become pro and he ought to. He likes to roam around in the forest to photograph elephants, especially the big "tuskers," and other wildlife that he finds there. He does a good job with people. He did not have a camera, so he picked up mine and shot me drinking from a coconut, with these two characters nearby.

It was now about 1:00 AM. We moved back to the home of Sandy's mom and dad, where the day had begun.

Thankfully, the photographer and his videographer did not come. I had this to myself.

I should note that I did not manage to get any of the evening home pictures in my earlier series, either here or at the house of Anil's mom, so this is the first time anyone has seen them - even me.

Bhanu blesses the new couple before they enter the house.

Inside, there will be more blessings, for both the bride...

...and the groom.

This is Sandy's sister, Sujitha, "Barbie," and her man, Manu. It is kind of complicated to explain, so I won't, but they are hoping to have a wedding ceremony before long and they want me to come.

I want to be there but I am so broke now, I don't know how I can pull it off. But things always change so we will see.

Melanie and I did some touring after that, with Murthy and Vasanthi as our hosts. Being a host in India means something different than it does in the US. They would not let us pay for anything. We traveled by hired cab, and they paid for the cab and driver. They paid for hotels, they bought our meals.

If we started to look at souveniers, they would buy those, too.

I am pretty certain that if the richest family in the US were to be the hosts of a dirt-poor family in India, that family would not let the rich people spend hardly a rupee, but would sacrifice all that they had to make them comfortable.

Sandy and Anil came on the first trip, Vasanthi on every trip, usually with Buddy, who you can meet in the original series. Murthy had to work and so came only on the final trip.

To date, I have not found the time to even look at but the smallest portion of my take.

Sometime, I hope to sit down and do so. When I do, I will share the results with you. I am certain there is some good stuff in there.

As you can see, the momma monkey loves her baby. She told the daddy monkey to go to the store and buy a soda pop for the baby. As you can see, he did.

But then the daddy monkey drank all the pop himself. He refused to share. He was that kind of monkey.

We saw many wondrous things, including this ancient temple at Hampi. I had pulled this image at random out of my take for the original post.

Fishermen, at sunrise in the Sea of Bengal, offshore from Chennai.

And then, one day, I was back home in Wasilla. It was raining. Compared to India, it was a cold rain. I got on my bike and pedaled and pedaled. The cool, clean, air was so good to breathe, the cold rain felt wonderful.

But don't misunderstand. There is something about India that I love deeply. I wish that I had found the place when I was younger and that I had the money to go back again and again.

Even now, I want to go back again and again.

Yet, I hate to leave Alaska for very long.

That is the conundrum. 

Kalib, of course, must be included in this post. I actually took this shortly before Melanie and I left for India. Kalib had come down with pneumonia, but was getting better.

His dad made certain he got some air into his lungs.