I sadly leave the mansion at 99 Main, fly out of Nantucket, wind up in New York, ride the subway, dine, and wind up with Chie and her students at Columbia University

Although I have experienced these feelings countless times in the past and expect to do so again in the future, I still do not understand why. As usually happens when I travel to another place, I felt a sad ache, as though I were leaving a place that I had known for a long time - a place that was home.

I have felt this feeling in villages all across Alaska, various places in the Lower 48 and Canada, Greenland, The UK, Russia, Mexico and India.

All these places cannot be my home, so why do I feel this way when it comes time to depart?

It had been my intent to devote a post entirely to the Quaker modest mansion at 99 Main and to photograph all the art work, stairs, antique furniture and such that adorns, but I never managed to do it.

Just before I left, I did photograph this ceramic cat that sits atop a chest in the bedroom that I occupied.

I should also note that I did succeed in photographing two living, breathing, cats in Nantucket.

I have not yet had a chance to look at those photos - and I took many, more than I did of any other single subject that I shot. In fact, I took just about as many pictures of those two cats as I did of all my other Nantucket subjects combined.

There are three reasons for this: one, the home in which I photographed the cats was very dark and I was shooting at extremely slow shutters speeds and I knew that many of the pictures would be badly blurred and cruddy looking. Two, it was pouring rain outside and so my host and I stayed inside for about 45 minutes or so and I had nothing else to do during that time but to photograph the cats.

Third, the cats were the only subjects in Nantucket that I used my big DSLR camera on. That camera shoots five frames a second, so one tends to hold the shutter down and just bang away, like it was a machine gun.

The pocket camera, however, can sort of manage one frame every 1.5 seconds, but it is really slower than that, because it takes time to focus, to zoom in and out and to do all kinds of things that happen very quickly with the DSLR.

This is a pocket camera defect that I both love and hate. 

Soon, Ben Simons dropped me off at Cape Air and I was on the plane, about to fly to Boston. The lady in front of me was reading a newspaper and I could not help but notice that the local high school athletic teams call themselves the "Whalers" and "Lady Whalers" - just like in Barrow.

The difference is, when they use this name in Barrow, they describe themselves as they are now and always have been.

When they use it in Nantucket, they describe a people of the past who followed a short-lived, furious, money-making enterprise that seems to have been a model for much of what has happened since in the United States: a resource is discovered, that resource is exploited at all costs, making some people very rich while leaving many more disappointed; it drives other industry and development, is then depleted and the communities that are built upon it fall, to be replaced by something else.

Then that short, furious, past is remembered romantically.

I promised that I would make a post, or maybe two or three, in which I would use some of the many photographs that I took in Nantucket to say what I could of that past. I still will. As I flew toward Boston and then New York, I began to read the book, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, given to me by Bill Tramposch, the Executive Director of the Nantucket Historical Association.

With each turn of the page, I learned something new and decided that I would wait until after I get home and finish this book to make that report.

Soon, we were landing in Boston.

This young lady was very worried that she was going to miss her flight. Somehow, she had managed to remain on the Boston Logan Airport Shuttle as it passed the terminal she was supposed to fly out of. Now she  had to go all the way around the airport again and she was already cutting it close.

Not long after that, I was on the ground in New York, riding the subway, headed for Manhattan.

After I got off the subway, I walked to the Alaska House and I was overdressed, wearing both a sweatshirt and jacket in what for me was t-shirt weather. I was hot, sweaty and dehydrated when I got there. I was given the keys to the guest house where I now stay, told that it was about a 15-20 minute walk and it was suggested that, to prevent me from getting even hotter and sweatier, I take a cab.

I was going to do so, but when I got to the cabs, I was traveling faster on foot they were on wheels, so I decided just to walk. When I arrived at the guest house, I could not open the double-deadbolted door. I could hear and feel the deadbolts moving and clicking, but I tried and tried and tried and those doors would not open.

So I called Ellaine at Alaska House, and she sent Andre, originally of Hooper Bay, over to help me. As I waited for him, I saw this man walking this dog. Andre arrived about 15 minutes later and at first experienced the same problem, but then he quickly recalled the feel of it and opened the door. 

He showed me how and ever since then, the door has been easy to open. I can't even imagine why it was hard to begin with.

About 8:PM, I set out in seach of some food to eat. I had not gone far before I came across this scantily clad mannequin. I would soon discover that such mannequins are common in this neighborhood. In Wasilla, we do not see mannequins dressed like this. Wasilla mannequins dress much more modestly, even when left alone all night with their closest male friends and husbands.

They say that sex sells. Now that I have posted this picture, maybe I can finally begin to make some money with this blog.

I never did discover the name of this restaurant, but I came upon it after I had walked over 20 blocks, during which time I passed many restaurants and had one pizza guy threaten me when I walked into his restaurant, looked the goods over, found nothing that appealed to me and turned to walk back out.

I just laughed him off.

This restaurant was excellent. I don't remember the name of the dish that I ordered, but it was packed with mushrooms and more hot spice than I should be eating and tasted so very good.

These three diners kept photographing each other, but could not get everybody in one shot. So I offered to take a picture of all three with their camera.

They admire pictures of themselves. "Thank you," they said to me, when they left.

Would you believe it? After dinner, I walked back to the guest house, relaxed for just a little bit, then took a 26 block walk but forgot my camera. I could photograph nothing. I decided that I did not want to walk another 26 blocks back and would ride the subway back instead.

It took me to a different place than where I wanted to go.

When I got off, I discovered that I still had about 15 blocks to walk. I said, "what the hell," and walked it.

I got up early this morning and rode the subway all the way from Lower to Upper Manhattan, where I found Chie Sakakibara looking for me.

Chie is originally from Japan, but has spent a great deal of time in Barrow and has become close to many families there. When she learned that I was coming to New York, she invited me to come and show my slides to students in the "Indigenous Peoples and Environment" course that she teaches under Columbia's "Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race."

With her colleague, anthropologist Aaron Fox, Director of Columbia University’s Center for Ethnomusicology, Chie helped return some lost dances, filmed in 1946, to Barrow. The dances were performed at the last Kivgiq and both she and Fox were called onto the floor to dance.

Before her students arrived, we did a technology check in the classroom. Chie then surprised me and pulled out a container of bowhead meat and offered me a taste of breakfast.

I have eaten some fine food on this trip, but the little bit of bowhead that I ate here is the best thing that I have tasted on these travels.

It is from a whale caught by the crew of Roy and Flossie Nageak of Barrow, who have adopted Chie into their family. I wanted to keep eat more than my fair share, but feared I would deplete too much of Chie's precious stash.

"It's okay," she said. "Roy will get me another one."

Her beautiful attiqluk was sewn for her by Esther Frankson of Point Hope.

When her students arrived, each shared in the bowhead breakfast. I heard nothing but praise for it. I am often asked to describe the taste of bowhead and this always leaves me at a loss. It tastes like bowhead, and nothing else. Furthermore, each part tastes different than the other parts.

"This tastes like a kangaroo of the sea," one of her students said.

So now I finally know how to describe it.

My presentation was well-received. Afterward, I was still hungry, so we went to campus coffee shop where Chie ordered tea and bought me a coffee and an egg, cheese and ham bagel sandwich.

Soon we were joined by artist Les Joynes, who is at Columbia as a Visiting Scholar in Contemporary Art from the University of London. He had planned to come for my presentation, but a 16 year-old cat that he got in Japan, where Joynes has spent much of his life, had some emergency medical problems. Joynes had to attend to the cat - something that I understand fully.

He created the piece in front of him in Singapore as part of a long-term project that depicts how people become separate and alien from their own environments. With the position of his hands and arms, Les is describing some of the positions that some of the people of Pompei died in, as evidenced in the "molds" left behind in the volcanic lava.

He is also launching an art project in the Arctic.

Chie and Les, Columbia University.

Nantucket whaling: preview of what will be a small glimpse

Yesterday I said that today I would post a small account of what I had seen and learned about the Yankee commercial whaling enterprise that began here out of Nantucket, Massachusetts, but when I sat down to do it, I discovered that I was so sleepy I couldn't. So, in a state of stupor, I just flopped down and watched a little TV - a strange mix of MSNBC and Fox News - Keith Olberman, Bill O'Rielly, Rachel Maddow, Sean Hannity.

I decided I had better post at least one picture and settled on this one that I had taken during a short walk on the beach on what had prooved to be a rainy, blustery day. I will still make the big Nantucket whaling post that I had planned. Maybe tomorrow, maybe later.

Then I thought of this picture, that I took inside the home of Bob and Nina Hellman. It depicts the sailing ships that set out into that sea to hunt the whale with the sculpted women that adorned their bow. I figured it wouldn't take that long for me to add it in.

And then I thought I might as well add in just one more. This is a tiny part of the amazing collection of whaling weapons and tools that is part of the amazing collection of whaling weapons, tools, and other artifacts gathered by Bob Hellman over the past half-century. The sperm whale eating the squid is in proportion to a 46 foot whale once found with a 30 foot squid in its digestive tract. 

Sperm whales can be 80 feet long, so it was of modest size.

Readers will see more of Bob and his collection, along with others, when finally I am able to find the time and energy to cobble this together.

Nantucket coffee, Bach brings back a memory of my brother, more coffee and boats on the water

This is Danny, at Nantucket Book Works, where she works. She said she likes the coffee not only because it tastes good, but because she can wrap her hands around the hot mug and it warms them up.

I stopped in a local drug store, where I saw a flier that said they would be celebrating the 325th birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach at Nantucket's Congregational Church Vestry, a week later than the actual birthdate of March 21, so I decided to go.

The concert began with a performance of the Chello Prelude from Suite 1 in G Major, performed by Jacob Butler. I used to play this piece on my guitar, way back when I still thought I could be a photographer, writer, publications producer and a classical guitarist.

I was wrong about that and, as I have noted before, it was the guitar I let go, rather than the camera or the keyboard.

I enjoyed Butler's rendition and hope he keeps at it.

Barbara Elder conducted the chorus.

James Sulzer performed the prelude from Suite III in C Major, another piece that was once part of my repertoire. I enjoyed every note.

The women's side of the chorus. They sang works both by Bach and by other's, including Peter, Paul and Mary, done in the style of Bach.

Mary died recently and when she did, I felt that I had died in part myself, because I could remember so well when she was young and beautiful and passionate.

Mollie Glazer performed Courante and Sarabande from Suite II in D Minor. By my reckoning, she did a pretty damned good job.

The final Bach choral piece was Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring and it was a bit of a hard experience for me. I had once set out to learn it on my guitar and for all its smooth, flowing, motion it falls difficult on the guitar and I never quite got a handle on it. If anybody present noticed how I had to fight the tears as it was being sung, here is why:

My brother, Ron, loved that piece and after he broke his neck and wound up in his wheelchair, he wanted me to play it for him, but I couldn't, because I didn't have it down well enough. I promised him that I would get it together and that one day I would show up at his house in Riverside, California and play it for him.

Given the distance between Wasilla and Riverside and the expense, those visits were sometimes years apart, and each time he would ask me to play it, but I couldn't.

Then early on a summer solstice morning, right after I returned from a midnight flight over the edge of the lead in the ice off Barrow, where scores of white beluga whales had rolled out of cystral clear, green waters directly beneath my wings, my mother called to tell me that Ron had died.

Shortly thereafter, I stepped alone into a room in a Mormon chapel in Riverside, where my brother lay. I walked up to his coffin and looked and it was just he and I in that room.

At that moment, in the chapel, unseen but so close that the sound carried clearly into the viewing room, the organist began to play Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring.

After the final note of Jesu, the page was turned. No more actual Bach was played. The concert continued, but the beam of sunlight coming through the window fell away.

The sunbeam fell this way on the choir only for Jesu and once that piece ended, it was gone. 

It is my intent and desire to yet tell the story of my brother as I witnessed it in greater depth, for it is not as simple as it sounds. No one should draw any conclusions from the fact that I found him lying inside a Mormon chapel.

Mormons don't drink coffee, and once I didn't but now I do. So here I am, at the Bean, an excellent coffee house right here in Nantucket. 

If I lived here, this is probably where I would wind up every day, just like I now wind up at Metro Cafe every afternoon that I spend in Wasilla. That's Zac on the left, Spencer on the right.

On this day, I sat down alone in The Bean, but soon a family came in and a chess game began. That's nine-year-old Addie, about to make a move against his seven year old sister, Gabrielle. Two-year old Alexander studies the man with the little pocket camera.

Now Gabrielle makes her move. "Do you play chess often?" I asked.

"Yes," they both answered.

"Who usually wins?" I asked.

"I do," they both answered.

"Do you know why the football coach went into the bank?" six-year old Sally asked me. 

I tried to think of an illogical, yet obvious, answer, but my mind went completely blank.

"No," I said. "I don't. Please tell me."

"Because he wanted to get his quarterback," Sally said.

I am in Nantucket because it is the place where the American commercial whaling industry was born and now they have a whaling museum where my pictures have been hung.

I haven't said much in this blog about the now defunct Yankee whaling industry that built this place and moved the Wampanoag out, but people who have studied that history in depth and who have collected its implements and art works have been showing me things, and teaching me about it.

This will be the subject of my next post.

In need of a cup of Fog Island coffee

A curious thing happened to me last night. I sat down on the couch in the little study adjacent to my room in the mansion at 99 Main, where I have yet to turn on the TV and probably won't, opened up my laptop, downloaded my photos from the day and then started to make a quick pass through them to get a feel for what I got. 

Then I planned to do a quick edit, pick out a number of images and make a post.

When I was a little more than half-way through the take, I blinked. To my surprise, the final image of the day was now on the screen.

I realized that I had not blinked at all, but had briefly fallen asleep with my finger resting upon the forward arrow key.

So I backed up to where I had been when I had dozed off, then returned my finger to the advance arrow key and started clicking my way through again. Then I blinked again and, yes, the same thing happened.

The problem is, I think, that not only did I leave home after a night of almost no sleep, but since I arrived, I have been going to bed on Alaska time and waking up on East Coast time.

I decided my body was trying to tell me something, so I called Margie and then went to bed. It was just a bit after 11:30 East Coast time. Of course, it still took me some time to go to sleep and then I woke up wide awake at 2:30 AM.

I knew I needed more sleep than that, so I forced my eyes closed and kept them that way until I dozed off again. I woke up periodically throughout the night until 7:30 AM, when I awoke from a dream that I was on the ice off Wainwright with Jason Ahmaogak and Iceberg 14.

I got up and went to Fog Island for breakfast, where Sashana poured me a cup of coffee.

So I am way behind on my pictures and in just minutes, Tony is going to pick me up and give me a tour of the island and show me the Yankee whaler scrimshaw.

A big rain is forecast. Maybe tonight, I can somewhat catch up on my blog.

This is Kim of Vermont, a graduate student in education who works at the museum and lives elsewhere in this mansion at 99 Main where I am staying. Please don't picture a huge, gigantic mansion such as one you might find in an Alfred Hitchcock movie. As mansions go, it is modest, but is a mansion none the less.

Kim's parents lived in Fairbanks and Delta Junction for brief time during the pipeline construction days and liked it well enough to consider settling, but Vermont was too much in their blood, so they returned and that is where they raised Kim.

Kim joined me for the first part of my Fog Island breakfast, but I must leave this computer now and go touring with Tony, so that's it for now.

The Nantucket Whaling Museum: the show looks good, my presentation goes well, but I do get asked about another Wasillan - you know who

After consuming an excellent ham, cheddar and mushroom omelette at the Fog Island cafe, I walked over to the whaling museum to meet with Eric, so that we could do a technology check in advance of my slide show, which was scheduled for 2:00 PM.

As I approached the museum, I saw this dog, gazing longingly at the door.

To get to Eric, I had to go around to a side door, which was locked. A gentleman named Peter showed up and was going to unlock the door for me, but before he could, Eric opened the door from the inside and let us.

This is Peter. He said he would be taking my picture during my presentation.

For some reason, I took no pictures of the bright, young, Eric as he worked to solve the inevitable technology problems that we experienced as we crossed over from Mac to PC, but I had photographed him the day before. When I get a chance to catch up somewhat with what I have seen and done so far in Nantucket, I will introduce Eric to my readers.

After the technology check, I headed back to the 18th century mansion called 99 Main, owned by the Nantucket Historical Society. It serves as a guest house and is quite comfy. I took a shower, put on slacks, a decent shirt and my ivory, balleen, and ugruk-tooth bolo tie, made by Simeon Patoktak, and then walked back to the museum.

As I approached, I saw my dad ahead of me, sitting in a wheelchair. No, no, it wasn't my dad, because we buried him almost two years ago. It was another veteran of World War II and when I saw him, I loved him immediately. I knew nothing more about him than what I could see - I did not know his politics, where he was born, raised, if he had been married once, twice, not all, how many children, grandchildren, great-grandchilden and such he had, if he was of pleasant or ill disposition, how he had made his living, but it didn't matter.

I loved him because he had fought alongside my dad, even though Dad fought over North Africa and Europe from inside a B-24 bomber and this gentleman fought from Navy ships in the South Pacific.

Still, they had fought alongside each other and ultimately they did it for me, even though I had not yet been born, and so I loved him.

I asked his name, but in the flurry of activity that was about to follow, I forgot it.

So he is just "Dad" - every dad who fought in World War II, on land, sea or in the air.

None of them had it easy, and those who did not die all risked their lives. They rapidly leave us.

So love all those who remain, while they are here.

This is actually from the day before, when I went into the gallery where they have hung my pictures and met with the museum's interpretive staff, the one's who will be on hand to answer questions from those who wonder through the gallery between now and June 15, when my show will come down.

Before my presentation began, I saw these ladies looking at my photographs.

I have to say the presentation went very well. I showed slides and spoke off the top of my head for over an hour, answered questions for a good half hour and then just visited people for a good spell after that.

I had been worried that my presentation was too long, but many people told me that they did not want me to stop, but to keep going, to keep showing slides and telling stories.

So that was kind of nice.

This is the left-hand side of the audience, at the beginning of the question and answer session. Of course, from their perspective, it is the right hand side.

And this is the middle.

And here we have the right side.

In my slide presenation, I had one image taken from a boat that showed some people standing on the edge of the ice, shouting out their joyous welcomes as the boats that I had been traveling with returned with a whale. That image was followed by another that I took from the ice, behind people who where waving at the people in boats returning with a whale and those people were waving back.

He wondered how I had been able to do that - to take a photo from inside the boat and on the ice at the same time.

But I had actually taken the two images at different times, the first in Wainwright from the boat of Ben Ahmaogak, Sr., and the second in Barrow, as Simeon Patkotak, the man who made my bolo tie, returned to the ice with a bowhead.

The fellow addressing me here is Jeff Allen, a Nantucket-based photographer. In fact, it is he who printed the 60 or so images that were hung on his new, large format Epson printer, from digital files that I had sent down.

I had been a bit worried about this, but he did an excellent job.

Thank you, Jeff.

Although I hoped it might prove otherwise, these days, I have found that I can not go anywhere Outside as a person from Wasilla, Alaska, and not be asked something about Sarah Palin.

This is what I was asked: how did the Native people feel about her and, in conjunction with that question, I was asked whether the whalers saw global warning as fact or myth.

As to the first part, I answered that Alaska Natives are a diverse group of people with different thoughts and opinions and so one could undoubtedly find some who like Sarah Palin. But, notwithstanding her marital tie to a man who is one-quarter Yup'ik, as Governor, Palin took the position that Natives should have no hunting and fishing rights beyond those of all Alaskans. She has not changed this position.

She does not recognize the fundamental, basic, aboriginal right to survive upon their own ancestral lands in their own way, a right precedes by many thousands of years the forming of the State of Alaska, the foundation of the United States and the birth of Columbus - a right that is essential to the nutritional, spiritual and pyschological need to survive as the people they are.

When a politician takes such against the very foundation of a people's way of life and identity, it tends not to endear her among them.

As to the second question, when a people sees that the solid ice that has also sustained and built their culture melt earlier each year, retreat further, come back later, making their lives more difficult, and when they see new plants advancing from the south into their homeland, when fish that are indigenous to waters warmer than Arctic seas have traditionally been, then they pretty much know that the world is warming.

Although Gift of the Whale is now out of print, the museum has a decent stock in their bookstore and a number of people bought copies and had me sign them.

I signed this one for Marjan, the beautiful lady sitting beside me. Marjan was born in Tehran, Iran and moved to New York City as a child. When she grew up, she went off to Antartica to work and live for awhile. She has yet to make her first trip to Alaska, but she wants to and I am certain that she will.

That's Tony in front. 

Ben Simons took the picture with my camera. Regular readers know that it is my policy that if I put a picture in here taken by someone else, I must first put in on a computer or iPhone screen and then take a picture of that before I post it.

But I am way behind and want to get this post up and in ten or fifteen minutes I must leave here to go meet some folks, so I am violating my own rule and post this straight as Ben shot it.

I also signed a book for these kids and their mom. I had met them the day before at the Bean, a very excellent coffee shop that reminds me a little bit of Vagabond Blues in Palmer. I took some pictures of them in the coffee shop and will post them when I get a chance.

They greeted me as though I were a familiar uncle and not a strange man from Alaska who they had briefly met just the day before.

Everyone that I have met in Nantucket, whether by introduction or chance, whether they are aware of what brought me here or have no idea, has been very friendly.

I have to say, Nantucket, Massachusetts, is a friendly town.

I'm certain there must be a few mean people here, because there always is, but I have yet to meet one.

Here's Tony again. He and Ben took me to a nearby bar afterward. Tony is telling me about a baleen scrimshaw collection that he looks after for the museum. It is Yankee Whaler scrimshaw and he says it is excellent. Before I leave, Tony is going to take me on a tour of the whole Island and he is going to show me the collection.

Our beautiful waitress takes our order, including a heaping plate of nachos covered with beans, peppers, onions and lots and lots of jalepenos - just the kind of thing that I love, the kind of thing that has given me a horrendous reflux condition and I now face the choice to fight it off or indulge, suffer and even die early.

I did partake, but I did not indulge, as badly as I wanted to.

And here is Ben, who has coordinated the show and this entire experience for me. He wants me to come back and I want to come back. The best time for the museum is in the summer, when there are many people visiting Nantucket.

The worst time for me is in the summer, when I simply do not want to venture very far south of 60 degrees, north latitude.