Four scenes from rolling coffee break: Michelle with Cali the calico kitty and the stone lion; Mormon graffiti car; fourwheeler, skateboarder

First, let me assure those interested that I still plan to post a few stories from my trip north - in fact, I spent more time working on doing so today than I could afford. I have a huge amount of material to digest and it will take some time. I might post a series from that trip Tuesday, but I might wait until Wednesday.

In the meantime... now that I am home here in Wasilla and Margie has gone back to Anchorage to babysit Jobe, I broke away from my computer at the usual time of 4:00 PM to venture out for my rolling coffee break, as All Things Considered played on NPR.

I saw many interesting things, but the most interesting was a lady painting a rock down on Sunrise Drive. A calico cat stood by to watch her work.

So I stopped, to see what was up. This is the lady, Michelle and the 13 year-old calico cat, Cali. As Michelle explained it to me, a fellow who lives here found this rock, dragged it home, looked at it from this side and saw the face of a lion. He asked Michelle if she would paint the lion's profile onto the stone and she agreed.

If one looks closely at the other side of the rock, currently bare, one can see an eagle.

So, after she finishes the lion, Michelle plans to paint an eagle portrait on the opposite side of the rock.

Michelle puts detail into the lion's eye.

Michelle steps back to take a look.

At the post office, I saw this car, heavy with inspirational graffiti. I wondered if the car belonged to a Mormon, as Gordon B. Hinckley was the President of the Church, considered a prophet by the faithful, from March of 1995 until his death on January 27, 2008.

Plus, many of the statements written on the car, including the Shakespeare quote, were ones I often heard my own mother speak as I grew up.

Mom would never have allowed anyone to graffiti up the car, though - no matter how inspirational the words.

As to the Shakespeare quote, it always sounded pretty righteous and noble, coming from Mom's lips as I grew up, so I was kind of surprised when one day I actually sat down, read Hamlet, and saw that in the story the words were spoken by one Polonius, a devious, self-serving, self-righteous, man of many bad works. Mom would not have approved of Polonius at all, had he appeared in her life as a real character.

Rearview of the inspirational, perhaps Mormon, car.

As I drove down Church Road, I passed this man traveling by four-wheeler.

As I headed up Shrock Road from the bridge that crosses the Little Susistna River, I saw this guy coming down the hill on his skateboard.

I used to travel by this method myself.

In my dreams, I sometimes still do.

PS: as you can see, the weather is incredible. Sunny and warm. - more like one would expect in California than Alaska. It was this way in Fairbanks and even in Nuiqsut, so far above the Arctic Circle.

I wonder how long it will last?

For however long, I should cast aside all responsibility and do nothing but play.

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My God-Loving Mom breaks the law and finds joy in it; other mothers important to me, presented in the order in which they entered my life

This is Mom, Thora Ann Roderick Hess, the descendant of Mormon pioneers who pulled handcarts across the plains to settle in the Rocky Mountains after being persecuted and driven out of the eastern United States for their beliefs  - which, yes, included polygamy. Mom was born into a hard and sparse life, yet she found beauty all around her - in the songs of birds and the brightly colored petals of flowers and the fluttering wings of butterfies - in all the creations of the God to Whom she was determined above all else to bring her family back to.

When I was small, we would sometimes walk together. Butterflies would flutter around us and honey bees would buzz by to land upon the flowers and suck their nectar. Mom would sometimes pick a flower - dandelions, mostly, because we were in a town and could not pick the flowers that grew in gardens, but I also remember roses, daffodils and tulips in her hands.

And to a child, there was no flower more beautiful than the dandelion.

When Jacob graduated from Wasilla High, she came to visit us. Afterwards, on a beautiful, exquisite day when the temperature rose into the mid-70's for the first time that year, we took her on a drive up the valley to the Matanuska Glacier.

She marveled all the way. "I never thought I would live to see anything so beautiful as this," she exclaimed.

There is a visitors area alongside the road in the park that overlooks the glacier. A nature trail runs from the parking lot through the woods and over a steep drop off. At the entrance to that trail a sign warns visitors not to pick flowers. It is illegal.

We became separated as we walked, she taking her time as the rest of us scurried ahead.

This was not because old age had slowed her. Indeed, when we would visit her in the Salt Lake City Suburb of Sandy where she and Dad spent the final decades of their lives, I would accompany her on her daily walks and I would have to break out of my natural pace just to keep up with her. Even in her mid-seventies, she was a swift walker.

Mom took her time this day just to observe the beauty - and to illegally pluck some of it to take back to Wasilla with her. 

She was so thrilled that I could not tell her she had just broken the law.

Park rangers - here is the evidence of Mom's crime spree - but you cannot arrest her, boys, because she lies in the ground now, alongside my dad and my brother, her son, who, despite her faith, could not be healed by all Priesthood blessings administered in good faith to him.

I wish that I could tell you that Mom's life came to a peaceful and happy end, but it didn't. Her final decade was a long, drawn-out episode of misery upon misery, brought on, I believe, not by lack of faith and hope but because of faith and hope, and the failure of life to live up to the promises of faith devoutly adhered to. 

Yet, when the memories of the misery feel as though they are going to overwhelm me, I do have this photo to look back upon, to remember a day when my mother broke the law; when she was overcome with joy in the sheer beauty of the world that rose and fell all around her.

It is one of the absurd ironies of my life, but I have very, very, few pictures from our early days together of the beautiful woman who became my wife and the mother of my children.

In those days, she almost always refused to let me photograph her. It was extremely frustrating, to have such beauty before me all the time and not be able to photograph it, but that was the situation.

Yet, upon this day, after a rain that fell upon the cottage in Provo, Utah, where we began our life together and made our first baby, the light was so soft and beautiful and she looked so lovely standing in it, under her umbrella, that I begged her to let me photograph her.

Reluctantly, she consented.

I did not do my subject justice, but even so, I treasure this photo. Sometimes, I pull it up on my computer screen and just stare at it for long periods of time. To this day, I have yet to look upon greater beauty than that possessed by this gentle, sweet, woman - loving mother and now grandmother. 

Were it not for this woman, there would never have been a Margie to become the mother of my children. This is Rose Pinal Roosevelt, Margie's mom, with our sons at her camp that borders her corn fields in Carrizo Canyon, on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation, home to the White Mountain Apache Nation.

Near here, she gave birth to my wife under the open Apache sky.

And the corn that is grown here is not yellow, but red, orange and black. The seeds have been with the family since time immemorial.

Margie was very worried the first time she brought me home to meet her mom and her dad - just as I had been when I brought her home to meet mine. Concerning the subject of who I should marry, my mom had been adamant on three issues: she must be chaste - a virgin, she must be Mormon and she must be white.

Yet, when my parents met my brown-skinned soul mate, they saw her inner beauty and quickly accepted her. Margie, too, had been raised to believe she must marry an American Indian, if not an Apache, and so feared the reaction of her mom and dad to meeting me.

They, too, accepted me immediately.

It got a little more awkward in some ways after we got married, because in Apache tradition, a man is never supposed to be with or talk to his mother-in-law. When Margie was growing up, she would see her mother's mother make a quick departure whenever her dad would approach.

So, when I would come around, Rose would have this feeling that she could get up and leave, yet it did not seem right to do so, so - most of the time - she would stay. Over the years, she grew more comfortable with the idea.

As for me, I enjoy being around her, especially when she cooks over the open fire. I would hate to think of it being any other way. Yet I still feel a little funny, sometimes, when I think about how I caused her to break out, just a bit, from the tradition that had formed her.

I share not one drop of blood, either by lineage or marriage with either of these two women, Mary Ellen Ahmaogak on the left and her mother, Kanaaq, Florence Ahmaogak, on the right.

Yet, I include her here because in the year 1995, Kanaaq's husband, Bennie, took me into his whaling crew but in doing so, it was more than that. He took me into his family as well. Kanaaq originally wondered about the wisdom of this, but Bennie was the captain and so she accepted it.

As the season drew on, she began to call me, "my baby boy," and would laugh affectionately when I would come up from the ice and enter the house. She kept a bed ready for me, and the coffee pot hot.

There are no papers to prove it, no ceremony was performed, but Bennie and Kanaaq did adopt me in an Iñupiaq way. Their sons and daughters call me brother, their children, uncle - but they say "Ataata Bill."

After that season, whenever I would show up in Wainwright, Kanaaq would say, "Welcome home, son. Your room is waiting for you."

She would feed me generously, and it was always the food of the Arctic land and sea, such as the bowhead maktak that she and Mary cut here.

There is a much bigger story to tell here and I plan to, down the road a bit.

And if some of you, knowing that when I am in Barrow I most often stay with Savik and Myrna Ahmaogak and that they also treat me as family - as do so many others on the Slope and elsewhere in Alaska - wonder why I have not included a picture of Myrna here, it is because when I am out with Myrna and Savik, I am introduced as "my brother," not my son.

It feels just as good.

I also feel a very strong bond to every whaling crew that ever took me in - George and Maggie Ahmaogak, Kunuk and Mabel Aiken of Barrow, Elijah and Dorcas Rock of Point Hope, the Aishannas of Kaktovik and Nukapigak and Rexford of Point Lay.

A few years after Jacob was born, Mary Fatt, the woman at right gave birth to Lavina and raised her in the Navajo way. So far, I have spent very little time with Mary, but, just knowing Lavina, I know she is a great mother.

Regular readers know Lavina, mother of my grandsons, Kalib and Jobe. Here she is, Friday night, holding Jobe in the Apache cradleboard that his Aunt LeeAnn made for him. The event is a baby shower. I had planned to post images from the shower as part of this post, but I have run out of time.

I will make Jobe's baby shower the subject of my next post.

To all mothers everywhere: Happy Mother's Day!

After a long, uncomfortable flight with another delay, I am back in Wasilla, with my wife and cats

Twenty-four hours and about $350 after I had been originally scheduled to board the first leg of my Delta Airlines flight home, I followed these guys onto a plane bound for Salt Lake City from New York's JFK airport.

We filed between the rows of those seated among the elite in first class, where serious business was being conducted, and then entered the cabin.

My first choice is always a window seat, then an aisle and I hate the middle, just like most everyone else does. The worst of all is a middle seat in an emergency exit row, because the seats do not recline and instead of a regular armrest that can be lifted up and down, the armrests are solid from the seat up. This creates the effect of being forced to sit in a rigid box.

I had originally successfully booked non-emergency row window seats all the way from New York to Anchorage but now, I had been assigned to a middle seat in an emergency exit row.

Worse yet, when I sat down, I discovered that there was a big, irritating, bump right in the middle of the seat. I would have to sit on that bump for five-and-a-half hours.

The situation worsened even more when I discovered that I been sat between two people, who, whenever they were awake, from the beginning of the flight to the end, continually and intentionally did all they could to try to push my elbows off the armrests altogether. I did not totally begrudge them, because it is just a plane fact that those three seats are just too squished together. There simply is not room for three adults to sit comfortably side by side in them - although I am usually reasonably comfortable in a window seat, because I can lean against the wall and away from the shared armrest. Yet, it was still incredible. I had been stuck in middle seats plenty of times, but I had never before experienced anything like this.

When my adjacent passengers would nap, they would relax into their most comfortable positions, which meant they would lean away from me toward the window or the aisle and their arms would follow them off the rest, no longer to push against me.

Even so, I managed to read most of what was left of the book, Into the Heart of the Sea, before we reached Salt Lake City, but it was the most uncomfortable ride I have ever had in a jet airplane. I am still sore from it.

Yet, compared to the travels of those who were part of the final voyage of the Whaleship Essex, I rode in comfort and luxury and traveled to my destination with amazing speed. I have nothing to complain about.

In Salt Lake, the flight back to Anchorage had already begun to board. I was hungry, so I bought a not-very-good ham sandwich and a bottle of water at a diner right across from the gate, then got in line.

Just as I was about to board, it was announced that the flight had suddenly been put on a weather hold, due to high winds and snow. Out the window, I could see that the snow had turned to rain and it did not look that bad, but apparently it was.

So, as I took note of a bar and grill just a short distance away where I could have got a hot meal, I sat down and ate my sandwich.

Then Lydia Olympic, who had been in the bar and grill watching basketball, sat down beside me. 

I first met Lydia many years ago when I followed her and several other Alaska Native tribal leaders on to a forum in Washington, DC, where they also did some lobbying among House Representatives and Senators.

Lydia is from the Lake Iliamna village of Igiugig in the Bristol Bay Region. Right now, she is living in Anchorage where she relocated in order to fight against the Pebble Mine, because of the harm she fears it could bring to the salmon and other wildlife resources of her home.

"Do you get back to Igiugig much?" I asked her.

"Yes," she said. "Every summer I go back to cut fish."

Finally, they let us board the plane where, once again, I was seated in an emergency exit row. This time, at least, I had an aisle seat and the middle was empty. I did not have to contend with battling elbows. We seated in the emergency rows all paid strict and rapt attention as the stewardess told us about our duties should the need arise to evacuate the airplane.

After the lecture, we sat on the tarmac for about two more hours as we waited for the plane to get de-iced.

It was strange to let my mind wander outside the plane and into the surrounding community. I let it wander to my sister Mary Ann's house, downtown. I had tried to call her right after we landed, but she did not pick up. It was a bit after 9, but some people go to bed early.

I let it wander to the house up in the Salt Lake suburb of Sandy, where Margie and I used to so dearly love to drop into during our early days of marriage. We visit my parents, eat and watch TV with them and sometimes at night, being as quiet as we could possibly be, make love as the old folks slept. Sometimes, we would drop baby Jacob off so we could go out and do things like go to movies or climb a nearby mountain.

I pictured that house now, with only my older brother Rex in it, he living in a state of declining health.

I pictured the place upon a hill at the foot of the Wasatch Mountains, where lay my Mom and Dad and my brother Ron. Ron never wanted to be buried but cremated but in the end, his wish was overwhelmed by the force of the Mormon faith that he had journeyed away from long before and he got buried, anyway.

I thought of the later years when I would visit my Mom and Dad, and how hard those years became. I thought about Mom and Dad and Mary Ann and Rex had always hoped that, at some point, I would come to my senses, say my Alaska adventure had been good but was now over and that I might settle down nearby in that same valley to one day be buried on that hill with them.

I love Utah, but, damn, I couldn't live there. I just couldn't.

I lived in Utah for one year when I was a baby and for the five years total that I attended BYU.

That was enough. I can't live there anymore.

Sometimes, though, I awake from a dream. In it, I am in the basement of my parents' house where I am at last writing my books.

I am alone in that house. Nobody else lives there. Just me.

I really don't like that dream.

Then the flight was off - five more hours to sit in a box seat with a stiff, non-reclining back, having already sat in it for two on the ground - plus, of course, the New York to Salt Lake ordeal.

After about four of those hours had passed, I headed back to the restroom.

When I came out, I heard a female voice speak out of the near darkness of the cabin, in which all the main lights had been turned out: "Bill? Is that you?"

It was me, and Courtney was the young woman who asked. I first met Courtney when she showed up at the hospital emergency room after a Saturday Wasilla High football game, probably in 1992.

Caleb had been injured in that game and his memory temporarily knocked out of his head.

Courtney, a cheerleader, was right there at his side, hovering adoringly over him, smiling warmly upon him, caressing his hands in hers'.

They were an item for a long time after that, hanging out, going to the prom and such, but in time she went her own way. Now she was on the plane with her daughter, Abby, and a son who was sleeping in such a dark spot that I could not make him out. They had been living in Texas with her husband, who had just becoming qualified to fly a C-130.

Now she was going back to Wasilla. "I can't believe how much I have missed being home," she told me. "You don't realize how good it is until you go away."

"How old is Abby?" I asked Courtney. Abby answered for herself.

Margie picked me up at the airport and we arrived home in Wasilla about 4:15 AM - 25 hours after I had gotten up at the Comfort Inn that I had stayed in by JFK.

It was nearly five by the time we got to bed and I had hoped to sleep until 11:00 AM, ten at the earliest. But I began to wake up at 7:30, perhaps in part because Jim kept going back and forth from beneath the blankets to resting on top of me.

Everyone tells me that Jim has a hard time when I gone. He gets lonely and anxious and a bit desperate. When I come home, he will come to me with the most anxious expression. Then he will dash this way and that way out of sheer joy. Finally, he will settle down wherever I am at and will stick as close to me as possible.

As I have been working on this blog, he has alternated between resting upon my chest and shoulder to my lap.

Anyway, I gave up on sleep shortly after I took this picture at, as the clock says, 8:44 AM.

Pistol-Yero was sleeping there, too, but when I got up, it woke him up. I do not think he was ready to wake up.

Next I went out into the garage, where Royce and Chicago had already begun to dine on food put out the night before.

I then went outside to get the paper. 

According to our tradition, I next took Margie out to breakfast at Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant, just as I always do when I return home from a trip, whether I can afford to or not.

I ordered my hash browns to be cooked "very light." They came back cooked dark, hard and crispy on the outside, mush on the inside.

Oh, well. The ham and eggs were very tasty, the coffee just right, the multi-grain toast and jam quite excellent.

Overall, breakfast was a good and pleasant experience - as long as I did not think to much about what we now face.

Although I am back in Wasilla, I will return to New York and then Nantucket very shortly - at least in this blog. I will begin by showing readers how my search for a New York City pretzel turned out, and most definitely I will bring you along on the tour of Cloisters and the very northern tip of Manhattan that Chie Sakakibara took me on. I will tell you a bit about the unlikely story of how she, a girl in Japan who originally believed Native Americans to be Caucasian because that's how she saw them in the movies and Aaron Fox became bonded to the Iñupiat of the Arctic Slope and brought a treasure that had been lost back to them.

As to Nantucket, I am now completely fascinated with the place and want to learn all I can about it.

Dinner with Diane just before PBS broadcast of For the Rights of All; Lullaby and Goodnight to Kalib; help Ann Strongheart help fight hunger

Last July, while fishing out of Homer with her Iraq war veteran and Wounded Warrior Olympic athlete son, Latseen, and grandson, Gage, Diane Benson caught a 300 pound-plus halibut. After giving us a chance to let the turkey settle down in our systems, Diane invited Margie and I over to eat part of that halibut with her and Tony Vita. Tony has been there for her and Latseen through the bitter, yet triumphant, journey through pain, recovery and politics that they have been on since Latseen lost his legs to a roadside bomb.

As to the halibut... ohhhh... it was delicious! Deep-fried and dipped in Diane's homemade tartar sauce, which just may be the best tartar sauce that I have ever tasted. We also had dried fish dipped in houligan oil, dried seawood, boiled potates and carrots, plus a mix of raw vegetables.

Afterwards, we spent a great deal of time talking about books and the writing of books and about the classes Diane has been teaching at the University of Alaska, Anchorage - in particular the class focusing on the fact that Native women face the highest incidence of rape and sexual abuse of any group in the nation and of ways to defend against it, both at an individual and societal level.

Tonight at 8:00 PM, KAKM public television will broadcast For the Rights of All: Ending Jim Crow in Alaska, the documentary filmed by Jeff Silverman in which Diane reprises her role as Alaska Native civil rights heroine Elizabeth Peratrovich that she originally created for her one-woman play, When My Spirit Raised it's Hands.

Those living in other parts of the US can check their local PBS stations to find out when the documentary will be playing in your town.

I saw it at the Alaska Federation of Natives Convention. It is the most powerful work of its kind that I have yet to see. I would recommend it to all.

Scooter, the character in Diane's arms, was in rough shape when she rescued him a few months back, but now he is doing good.

Last night, I stepped into Jacob, Lavina and Kalib's temporary bedroom to give my little grandson a hug goodnight.

As he moved slowly towards sleep, the tune of Lullaby and Goodnight, played on a harp and woodwind recorder, softly played from the CD player.

It took me back to when I was about his age, in a darkened room lit by a dim light with my own late mother, as she held me and sang that same song to me. My memories of the time are dim, but of that moment strong in the sense of feeling safe, warm, and loved.

And then I remembered when Margie and I first brought Jacob home from the hospital. Mom came to the house, she took him in his arms and began to sing that same song.

I could not keep the tears out of my eyes - then or last night.

I say temporary bedroom because, yesterday, Jacob and Lavina closed on their new house in Anchorage. Very soon they will move into it.

What will Margie, Uncle Caleb and I do then?

Speaking of Native issues, the Southwest Alaska village of Nunam Iqua and other villages are facing tough times this winter, due to shortages of food and fuel. I had hoped that Ann Strongheart, who is coordinating efforts to bring aid to the village, would come to Anchorage between now and Christmas so that I might photograph and interview her, but she does not expect to come.

Anyone wishing to help can find out how to do so on her website, Anonymous Bloggers.