An artist finds his place on a newly painted wall; my baby shower post turns into a preview

I simply cannot keep up with myself. I hate to break a baby shower into two pieces, but I started editing the images for this post about an hour-and-a-half ago, I'm not even close to having made my final selection, I have much to do today and I have no more time to spend on it. 

So I decided just to post this one image of Kalib's art, hanging on the wall in the dining room of his family home. Readers will remember this wall as being white. Last week, Jacob and Lavina painted most of the upper-floor walls. After painting this wall blue, they devoted this portion of it to Kalib and his art.

I will come back tomorrow to show the shower in greater detail.

Well, I suppose that if I am going to say anything at all about a baby shower, I should at least present one image of the baby for whom the shower was thrown. This is he, Jobe, with his Auntie Melanie.

Oh, what the heck - one more image, but only because there were a number of little people there, including young David, whose mother hails from Senegal. I can't decide which picture of David I should use in my post tomorrow, so I will put this one up today and that will make the decision easier tomorrow as there will be one less photo to chose from.

David has a very beautiful sister, but I already know which picture I am going to use of her. You can see it tomorrow. She is gorgeous and very cute.

So is little Ashlyn, who you will also meet, and little Anna.

Cooper is mischievous, as you will see.

As for young Ian...

This is he. As I have mentioned the fact that Jacob and Lavina painted their walls, I think that means I had better include this picture today, just to explain the paint job a little better. You might be wondering why there is such a strong cast of green light falling upon Ian, the wall and the rug.

It is because he is standing by the open door to the newly painted bathroom.

This is the bathroom, painted in its new shade of green. When you step into it and the sun is shining, as it was on the day of the shower, it is actually much brighter than it appears here. If I did not tone down the brightness a bit, it would sear your eyes.

Plus, no computer screen that I am aware of is capable of emitting a level of green brightness to match that of this bathroom.

Caleb holds a Navajo/Apache taco - the main entree of the event - which he will soon eat.

It is probably better to think about eating bean-laden tacos when you are in a room other than the bathroom.

Okay - one more - another of baby Jobe, admiring his grandfather as he is fed by his mother's good friend, Natalee. This kid receives love from many sources.

So today I failed to put up the post on the baby shower.

Tomorrow, I hope I will post it and then we can all move on with life.

As seen through my iPhone: we go to see Ira Glass, then hang out with cats and eat pizza

Before the Ira Glass performance began, Margie and I headed to the Kaladi brothers attached to the Anchorage Performing Arts Center. We had not planned to meet anyone else there, but when we arrived, Melanie, Charlie and Lisa were already standing in a long line, so Margie and I gave them our orders and found a place where we could all sit.

Soon, we all did: Melanie and Charlie.

Charlie and Lisa.

Margie and me - although I cannot be seen. Yet, I am here, as you can see, taking pictures with my iPhone.

Following the Ira Glass performance at the PAC, those of this family who attended all gathered together at Melanie and Charlie's place to eat pizza and hang out with cats. Three cats were present to hang out with, but, for some reason, it was Poof who kept putting himself into the middle of things.

"I can tell, Poof cat is getting ready to do something bad," Melanie said at some point. Apparently, the night before, as Charlie had been cooking, Poof had repeatedly tangled himself up in Charlie's feet and disrupted the cooking in a number. Finally, Charlie scolded him.

It is hard to imagine Charlie ever scolding a cat, and I am pretty certain that as cat scoldings go, it was a rather gentle one, but Charlie does insist that he actually scolded Poof. "I did. I scolded him," Charlie said.

Here is Poof, studying Lisa and Bryce. That's Lisa's feet on the table. 

Ira Glass fans are probably wondering why I do not have a picture of him here.

For one, given the situation, me armed with only an iPhone and faced with a difficult exposure situation and no way to exert any control over shutter speed, aperture and the like, it would have been very challenging to have gotten a picture of Glass.

I did not intend to bring only my iPhone. Before Margie I drove out of Wasilla, I put a full charge on my pocket camera battery, cleaned the lens and got it all ready to go. I then thought that I put it in my pocket but when we arrived in Anchorage and I got out of the car, I discovered that I had not. The only items in my pocket were my wallet, iPhone and lens cleaning cloth.

Then, just before Ira Glass came out, this fellow appeared on the stage and instructed everyone who wanted a photo to take it right now, of him, or the person seated next to them or whatever, because no photos would be allowed once Ira stepped onto the stage. Please turn off all cameras, cell phones and recording devices.

So, just before Ira stepped out, from the very excellent seats that Melanie and Rex had secured for us, in rows 5 and 6, almost directly in front of the table that had been set up for Glass and his sound equipment, I used my iPhone to snap the guy who was telling us that we could not take pictures.

I got the hand of the lady in front of me, too, as she put her hair in place.

I have been asked to give a full report on the Ira Glass performance, but I am at a loss as to how I might do that. He entered the stage in the dark, set down at his table in the dark, and then spent the first few minutes talking in the dark, to emphasize that radio is an acoustic medium, where the visuals are put into your head through the words of the speakers, not through photos or moving images.

He spoke of the power and direct connection this creates between the story tellers and their audience.

Indeed, sitting there in the dark, I felt very connected to every word that he spoke, and I felt the power of it.

Ira Glass said many things and even though I was exhausted and tired beyond all reason, it seemed to me that each one of his words reached me - even after the lights came on - and that I understood everything that he intended me to.

Although I work with images and written words rather than sound and even though I am reaching an age where some might want to believe my opportunities to truly succeed as a story-teller are in the past, Glass inspired me. In his voice, I heard the potential before me - if only I can but reach out and grab it.

Just before the performance started, someone took the seat immediately to my right. Then the lights went dim and I never really saw who that person was or what he looked like. Through the performance, he laughed boisterously and with approval and then mustered up the courage to ask a question during the Q&A period at the end.

As he asked his question, I looked at him and suddenly realized it was Jack Dalton.

Jack is himself a story teller - an actor, playwright and poet with both Yup'ik and Iñupiat ancestry and his fame both in and out of Alaska is growing.

This is he, Jack Dalton.

Lisa and Rex can be seen behind him.

Afterwards, those of this family who had attended discussed what we should do next. After five or ten minutes of indecision, during which time I swore I would make no recommendations, as, being a reckless and irresponsible eater, my recommendations sometimes get me in trouble with my daughters.

In time, though, I forgot my pledge and absent-mindedly recommended pizza from Milano's, delivered to Melanie's, where we could eat and hang out with cats at the same time.

And that is how we wound up going to Melanie's to hang out with cats and to eat pizza from Milano's. Despite my well-earned paranoia, my suggestion had been warmly received.

We had hardly stepped through the door into Melanie's house when Poof appeared and made his presence known.

Poof Cat.

Poof Cat, again.

I looked around and soon found Bear Meech. I could not see Diamond, so I asked where she was.

Immediately after I asked, she pranced into view.

She leaped up onto a table and looked at me as though she wanted me to pet her. I could not believe this, for usually, if I try to pet her, I am met by a growl as she jerks her head away from my hand.

Cautiously, I reached out to her. Diamond did want a pet!

My day was made.

But, as I have already noted, it was Poof who kept inserting himself into the scene. There were seven humans present, and he kept wandering about among all laps to make certain that his presence was acknowledged and adored by all. Here he is, winning Melanie's adoration.

Now he goes to Charlie, but fails to get his full attention.

Poof puts on his full charm. He gains Charlie's full attention.

Soon, he tucks himself in next to Margie.

Then he moves to my lap.

Suddenly, there was great clatter, clashing and banging, as dishes and pans and pizza box crashed onto the kitchen floor. Poof shot off like a rocket and immediately disappeared, as it was he who had caused this commotion. Once the humans among us regained our composure, we focused our attention upon a green-haired doll that had been with Melanie ever since she was a tiny girl. None of us can remember exactly when the doll came to Melanie, or just what was that TV series or cartoon character it was connected to, but, for as long as she can remember, this doll has always been with Melanie.

Not even the calamitous results of Poof's own mischief could long subdue him. Soon, he reappeared and took Rex over.

Poof - with Lisa and Bryce. Bryce did not go to the Ira Glass show, but he did come for pizza.

PS: Given the fact that the competition includes one of the most successful blogs in history, one that appears to have millions of followers, I recognize that the odds are against me but smahoney has nominated this blog for a Best Photography Blogger's Choice award and it has actually popped into first place for the moment.

I thank all who have voted for me and here is the link for any who might yet want to.

Also, I have encountered some problems in posting a Pay Pal donation link, but, when I can take 15 minutes to do so, I think I can solve those problems.

Thank you, smahoney!

The cats and I watch health care pass; Charlie's parents stop by for a visit

I am too tired to write ANYTHING - but I will try to write a little bit, anyway. The thing is, I got to bed somewhere between 1:30 and 2:00 AM and then, as always, it took some time for me to go to sleep and no sooner had I then I was awakened... oh hell.

I am too tired to tell this story about why I am so tired.

But I am.

I had planned to work very hard today and to get a huge amount done, but I didn't. Mostly because I got distracted by the debate leading up to the House passage of the Health Care Bill. Once I took in one scene, I was so fascinated by the process that I could not pull myself away from the TV.

And as I watched, there was always between one and three cats blanketing me, so I was warm, cozy, comfy and drowzy as I watched the debate.

I did not try to photograph the scene until near the end, when Nancy Pelosi was speaking.

Many Republicans said they could not support this flawed bill and it is flawed, but, it's a start to hopefully fix a far more flawed system.

As many readers know, my health care insurance company took my premiums for 15 years and, despite their promise when I bought my insurance that they would cover an air ambulance out of rural Alaska if I ever needed one, refused to pay any of the $37,000 + when I shattered my shoulder and actually did need one, and then didn't pay tens upon tens of thousands of dollars of my hospital bill and then recently jacked up my "cadillac" priced premiums for clunker service by 20 percent overnight.

This followed a long process of regular increases and then, in December, I could not make my payment and they deactivated my policy immediately.

If I had been able to make two payments in January, they would have reactivated, but I couldn't make even one.

I am very glad that, however flawed it might be, the process has finally begun. 

As I am too tired to say anything intelligent about this myself, I will quote Paul Krugman from the New York Times:

"But it is also a victory for America’s soul. In the end, a vicious, unprincipled fear offensive failed to block reform. This time, fear struck out."

Senator Murkowski, this is why I am so disappointed in you. You have the intelligence and the natural compassion and you said some things a year or so ago that told me that you understood the damage that this current system is wreaking upon people.

I understand that you need to listen to your constituents, but when you hear them spouting nonsense and fear, you also have a responsibility to educate them. Instead, you joined in with the mob in this "vicious, unprincipled, fear offensive."

This is why I am disappointed.

You might find it unfair that I am not equally disappointed in Don Young. But Don Young is Don Young and we all knew from the beginning that on this matter nothing more could be expected of him.

But you, Senator Murkowski, are capable of so much more.

Of course, the day did not begin in front of the TV. It began at Mat-Su Valley Restaurant, where Margie and I got together with Lisa, Melanie and Charlie and Charlie bought breakfast for the lot of us. They were a little late, but soon Charlie's parents joined us as well.

It was the first time that we had all gotten together like this.

Yes, I took pictures of Charlie's parents at breakfast, but I want to get this blog done so that I can go to bed, so I will move straight to the house, where the important stuff happened.

It all involved cats.

Here is Jim, accepting a pet from Jim.

Yes, Charlie's dad is also Jim.

Charlie's dad is the furless Jim.

Here is Jim meeting Royce.

And here is Cyndy meeting Royce. Jim, the furless one, told us how their 16 year old Siamese cat Oscar suffered ill health about a year ago and lost weight just like Royce has. Furless Jim has a super-sensitive nose and it told him there was bad stuff in the store-bought dry cat food Oscar had been eating.

So Jim put Oscar on a raw-meat diet with a quarter can a day of Friskees and now Oscar has made a magnificent recovery.

We must try this with Royce - after I return from the East Coast.

Cyndy and Royce.

Furless Jim also told us how he and Charlie had once come upon some cougars in the mountains of Wyoming, where they had been hunting deer not far from the town of Atlantic City. Yes, Atlantic City, Wyoming.

He had been entranced by the quiet, graceful, beautiful, fluidity of their motions as the lions hustled silently past.

Charlie was pretty young then. His dad was carrying all the guns: a 30.06 rifle and .22 pistol.

Charlie asked if he could carry the .22 after that.

It's funny. I am always happy to be in Alaska, but after I heard that story, I wanted to go roam around somewhere where cougars hang out and see if I could find some.

Cougars don't really hang out in Alaska, although one was spotted on our side of the Canadian boundary not too many years ago.

Charlie and Jim - the furry one.

Furless Jim and Pistol, who warily came to check him out, but quickly warmed up to him and gave him maybe ten seconds of attention.

Look closely at Pistol and you will see that he is very much a little mountain lion himself.

It occurs to me that Furless Jim's face does not really show in the photos with the cats, so I will hop back to the restaurant take real fast, so that you can see his face.

If I am going to show the face of Furless Jim, then it is only fair that I also show the face of Furry Jim.

Three cats enter the season of light; four blurred basketball shots, Point Hope v. Klawock

It is official.

We have entered the season of light.

LIGHT.

Wonderful, wonderful, glorious, light!

Sweet, sweet, northern light.

Charlie and Slick in the light that pours into Melanie's house.

Slick, you should know, is also known as Bear Meech.

Diamond glitters in the light.

Melanie, Charlie, and Poof Cat - all soak in the light at what not so long ago was a very dark hour.

But now it is the Vernal Equinox - the Spring Equinox.

And on this day, everyone in the world had 12 hours of sunlight. 

People at the equator would have seen the sun pop right up in the east and climb high fast until their shadows disappeared beneath their feet at high noon. From there, the sun would have just dropped, fast, straight down toward the west.

People standing on either pole could have watched the sun skim the horizon all day long. At the north pole, at the end of the 12 hours, the sun would have risen low into a day six months long and at the south, slipped away to a long, extended, twilight, thus beginning the six month night.

To you to the south - our days are now longer than your's.

But not as long as Barrow's, where the sun will climb higher and higher each day, and each day will stay up for about 15 minutes longer than the day before until finally, come May 10, it will stay above the horizon all day and will not set again until August 2.

Here in Wasilla, there will never be a night that the sun does not set, but soon the darkest part of the night will still be a light version of twilight and it will be wonderful.

Not so long ago, Slick was a creature of the night.

Now he is a creature of the light.

I went to three basketball games today, the final being the 2A championship game between Point Hope and Klawock.

Just before the game started, I set my cameras to shoot at a shutter speed of 1/400th of a second.

Then the game started and some good action happened in front of me immediately.

But, somehow, a knob on my camera had rubbed against something in such a way as to drop the shutter speed to 1/20th of a second.

Basketball players can move significantly in 1/20 of a second.

I would shoot seven frames before I discovered the error and every one would be blurry.

So here is one of those motioned-blurred frames.

And here is another.

Plus a third.

You can see the action is good and they do work in an artsy-kind of way, but they will not work for what I want them to work.

I was very disappointed that I blurred the shots, but I took a lot more afterwards, so I will be fine.

They are still downloading and I haven't had a chance to look at any of them, other than these blurry ones. These were right at the beginning of the take, so they popped up right away. The rest of the disk is still downloading and when it is done, I have two more disks to download.

But it is 1:09 AM, I am very sleepy and must go to bed.

So I will wait until tomorrow to download the other two disks.

Three of us make a very quick trip to the Iditarod restart in Willow, then hang out with cats; how Charlie fared in the beard contest

If you are looking for lots of good pictures from the Iditarod Restart, this is not the site to come to. I awoke this morning feeling completely exhausted, run down, as though I had not slept at all. I had a terrible headache, a bit of a sore throat and I felt just plain weary - barely enough energy to drag myself into the kitchen and cook some oatmeal.

I figured, though, that if Jacob and Lavina brought Jobe by for Margie to watch and then took off with Kalib to watch the dogs go, I would follow, but I would be very lazy and shoot just a few so-so pictures, just to say we were there.

After all, there would be scores of photographers seriously documenting the event for all sorts of publications, many would go on to follow the race and they would be working extremely hard and putting everything they have into it to get the best shots possible, so, really, what could I add to the mix?

I would just stick with Jacob, Lavina and Kalib, get a few lazy pictures and let it go at that.

A little after noon, Lavina called to say that they would not be coming at all. It would be nearly a 200 mile round trip for them, they were very tired (after all, they do have a newborn) and Kalib seemed to be coming down with something.

OK, then, I decided, I would just stay home.

Then Melanie called. She and Charlie wanted to see Lance Mackey take off. He wore bib 49, and was scheduled to leave the chute at 3:30.

Okay, I decided, I would go with them, but would still be lazy.

Melanie had to drop her car off at Mr. Lube here is Wasilla to get an oil change, so they would ride with me. Mr. Lube closes at 5:00, so she had to be back before then to get her car.

We left Wasilla for Willow at 2:20, twenty minutes after the race had already begun, reasoning that we had better head back home no later than 4:15 in order to get back in time.

We managed to find a parking place not far from the action, but wound up trudging through deep snow the long way around, so it took us awhile to reach the raceway. We got there just about the time that the 40th musher was charging down the chute behind his dogs.

This is musher 41. Dallas Seavey. In 2007, the day after this former state wrestling champion turned 18, he became the youngest musher ever to run the Iditarod.

These are the famous white dogs of number 43, Jim Lanier of Chugiak.

This is number 49, Iditarod Hall of Famer Lance Mackey, who Melanie wanted to watch depart. Mackey may be the toughest long-distance musher ever, having come back from a deadly battle with cancer to take multiple victories in the Yukon Quest and the Iditarod and winning both in 2008 and 2009.

You can find a bit more of his story here.

Pretty soon, we had to go. Traffic was sometimes very slow, but we got Melanie back to Mr. Lube with 13 minutes to spare.

Then Melanie and Charlie came to the house for dinner, and to hang out with our cats. Here is Charlie with Royce and Jim.

Charlie, Royce and Jim.

Charlie and Jim.

Melanie and Royce. Before they left, Melanie was trying to write a check out for me to cover Royce's upcoming vet care but I was being elusive. So she wrote it out and gave it to her mom.

Charlie and Royce.

Chicago and me.

Now, as to that beard contest...

I am too tired to tell the whole story, but, to make it short, there was some confusion about which category Charlie was to enter. He wound up competing against men who had at least some gray and white in their beards and they beat him.

That's because it was the category for men with gray and white in their beards, although it was described as being for men with multiple colors in their beard. Charlie has brown, red and blond in his beard, so he thought that meant him.

Afterwards, he learned that he should have been in the "Honey Bear" category. Two judges told him that they really liked his beard - if only he had been a Honey Bear.

He is thinking about going to the nationals in Bend, Oregon, in June, where the categories are more clearly delineated.

I will probably be blogging light for the next few days - maybe all week. I've got a lot of work to do and I feel like... heck.

(I was going to say, "hell," but once again I remembered that ten-year old girl who I am told reads my blog everyday.)