During my time of hiatus, I took a short walk with Garrison Keillor, we got stopped by baby feet

No, the snow did not suddenly melt, nor did the sun burst up high, bright and warm into the sky. I have gone back to August 28, a date near the end of the six or seven week hiatus I took during the summer. On that day, Garrison Keillor performed at the Alaska State Fair in Palmer. My daughter Melanie, who is always thinking about her parents, bought tickets and treated us to the performance.

I did not come to photograph the performance. I just came to watch and to share the company of my daughter and wife. Of course, I brought a couple of cameras with me, because I always carry a camera or two.

In what at first seemed to be an unfortunate turn of events, Melanie and I got separated from Margie and the crowd pushed us up almost right to the corner that was highest and farthest from the stage.

Margie did find Charlie's mom, Cyndy, and so she had company even though she was not with us.

As for Garrison Keillor, he was was very, very, far away.

Still, I did bring a 100 - 400 zoom with me. By extending it to the 400 mm setting and then cropping a bit, I was able to get a few shots that showed that Garrison Keillor was actually in front of my camera, but there was no intimacy in the shots. They were distant point shots and nothing more.

I was not concerned, because, as noted, I had come just to watch, and a snap or two that proved that we had been there was good enough.

To the surprise of us all, at a certain point, Keillor left the stage and walked right into the middle of the front portion of the crowd. So he came a little closer than I had expected him to. Still, a fence separated those among whom he walked - those who had actual seats upon which to sit - from the rest of us, who had either to stand or sit upon the ground.

So I knew he would never go beyond that fence and make it to where we stood.

But Keillor did walk beyond the edge of the fence, then turned onto the path that skirted the common section. Melanie and I stood right at the edge of that path. Suddenly, the bard whose stories I have been listening to for 30 years and whose books I have read was walking straight towards us.

In fact, if I didn't move, Garrison Keillor would have no choice but to walk right over the top of me. So I scurried a person or two into the crowd and shot this frame as I fled.

I always knew Keillor was a man who wears elegant shoes.

And then he was right beside me. Back in the early 1980's, when I first heard him on the radio, I developed a mental picture of Garrison Keillor. I pictured him as tall, husky, robust, with a thick, black beard and black hair topped by a brown cowboy hat. I pictured him in Levi's and red plaid shirts.

I got his height right, and the color red, too, just misplaced a bit.

These days, I will often miss a show or two or three, but back then the only way I would miss A Prarie Home Companion was if I were somewhere out in Alaska beyond radio range. Whenver he came on, if I was not driving the car, I would lie upon the bed or couch, close my eyes so that there would be no visuals to compete with the images his words drew in my brain - images of Lefty the Cowboy, getting outflanked and dumped by a buxomy blond, Guy Noir, the private eye, who, for a time got killed on just about every show, but always managed to kill the bad guy who killed him.

Now, they both get to live.

There were the amazing sound effects of the recently deceased Tom Keith and Fred Newman, who came to Alaska with him; there was soul-soothing ketchup, be-bop-a-roo-bop rhubard pie, powder milk bisquits, children who were all above average, preachers, Norwegian bachelor farmers, Lutherans, Catholics and other brethern and sistren that he had grown up with, reworked into new characters and given a life they never expected to have.

I identified with Keillor's stories, because he could have just as easily been talking about the folks in the different Mormon congregations that I grew up in as my restless dad moved us to various places in the west, away from but anchored by my birth state of Utah.

There was always sexual innuendo in Keillor's stories, but as he aged, the innuendo gradually became blatant and the hypocrisy of some of his never-the-less always lovable characters obvious. His stories grew more and more risque, as if he were finally throwing off the shackles that had bound him while growing up. Having grown up Mormon, I could understand this, too.

And here, live at the Alaska State Fair doing a three-hour show that would not be broadcast on the radio, Keillor totally let loose and put in a performance that, linguistically, was downright ribald.

At one point, when he was still onstage and Melanie was standing right behind me, he told the young adults to take a look at that old, bent, gray-haired man standing in front of them, that breaking down old man who was their father.

Then, in rather graphic detail, which I would be happy to repeat but I know if I do, I will get scolded by my daughters who would laugh if Conan O'Brien uttered words of the same nature, he described that old man as a young man and went into some detail about the blast and how he made the young person's mother pregnant.

It might be hard for the young people to think of their dad like that, Keillor lectured, but they should be grateful to him for it, or else they wouldn't be here.

With Melanie standing just behind me, I felt a little self-conscious - but it also put my mind back to the night she was conceived. Theorectically, it could have been any of a few different nights in the right time period, but I know it was that night. I knew it at the moment - and what a special night it was. And what a wonderful gift came to us as a result.

And there she is, just to the left of Garrison Keillor - the very pretty, black-haired lady, holding a blue jacket, laughing at whatever it was that Keillor was saying at that moment, ribald or not.

Cats. Keillor doesn't talk about them near as much now as he used to, but in the earlier days, hardly a show went by without a cat being inserted into a story.

He even made up a song about Alaska cats.

As it happened, in the early 1990's, a cat moved in with us and then over the next few years I created a number of cat books. Since Garrison Keillor loved cats and I loved listening to Garrison Keillor, I knew that if I sent those cat books to Keillor he would love them so much that he would call up the right publisher and just like that, my cat books would be published.

He would have me on his show and we would talk knowingly and humorously about cats, my books would sell by the millions and thus my cats would fund my work for the rest of my life.

But Garrison Keillor never wrote back.

Years later, a package came in the mail, along with a letter from a Keillor staffer who said she had found my cat books in a box sitting in a back room somewhere. She did not even tell me if Mr. Keillor had ever even laid eyes upon them.

I decided that he must not have. If Garrison Keillor had looked at my cat books, then surely he would have loved them; surely he would have passed them on to the right publisher and we would be old buddies now - thanks to all those times I had appeared on his show to talk about cats. My work would now be financed for the remainder of my life. I could travel the Arctic at will in my restored airplane and I could have a second plane that was faster and could go farther without a refill. Whenver I felt I needed a break, I could fly off to India or Brazil or Tahiti or wherever I wanted and when Margie wanted, she could come, too.

I still have faith in my cat buddies. Right now, it looks we are plunging toward disaster, but I continue to believe that sooner or later, the cats will come to our rescue and everything will be okay.

The stroll was fairly short and soon Keillor walked back to the stage and resumed his performance. I was pleased to have had such an experience. I had not expected to get close to him at all. I knew it would never happen again...

...but it did; real quick. Keillor returned to his crowd walk and this time he brought the beautiful Heather Masse with him. They sang as they walked.

A little bit ahead of them, some baby feet protruded into the air. I knew that Keillor would pause when he reached the baby feet, because no one who had a heart could pass by without wanting to stop and give those baby feet a squeeze. Most people couldn't get away with making a baby feet stop and squeeze - but Keillor could.

So, staying low to the ground, I skedalled over to those feet and positioned myself. Sure enough, when Keillor reached them, he stopped and reached out to give those baby feet a squeeze.

Keillor squeezed the baby feet, first together and then just the left.

And then, accompanied by Heather Masse as well as some in the crowd, he sang to the baby: "Wise men say only fools rush in, but I can't help falling in love with you..."

It kind of looks like Keillor is a holy man, giving the baby a blessing. Or perhaps, he positioned his hand there to feel the spiritual essence of the baby. A logical person might surmise that Keillor is just using his hand to shade the baby from the sun that was beating down upon it when Keillor first spotted it, but, look - Keillor's hand is in the shade of his own body, as is the baby.

I prefer to think that Keillor cupped his hand over the baby because he wanted to feel its spiritual essence. It was a spiritual moment; it truly was. You can hear that spirit in the song.

Up until this moment, I had mostly been keeping crouched pretty low to the ground so as not obstruck anyone's view, but even though I did not come here to take pictures, I'm still a photographer and when I see a picture developing in front of me (as I do in every waking moment) I want to get it.

I needed a higher angle, so I could include the baby's face in the photo. I popped up and got it and as I did, someone shot a little video of the moment and later put it on YouTube. Here it is. You can hear a few measures of the song and then decide for youself about whether or not it was a spiritual song.

The song ended. Keillor and Masse left the baby, passed by the concession and beer tent and then moved on through the crowd. I took a few more pictures, but you get the idea.

Near the stage, the duo of Keillor and Masse brought their walking performance to a close.

By following them, I had figured out how to work myself through at least the outer edges of the crowd, so I was able to take this picture when they brought the show to a close soon after. This, and many of the other pictures, don't really work at this tiny size, but you can click on them or view the slide show to see larger versions.

Now, it was my intent to run back up, find the blessed baby and see what the family had to say about what they had just experienced.

This plan failed. The show had lasted well over three hours and so the urgent crowd moved in mass toward the "rent-a-cans." I got swept along.

By the time I escaped and pushed my way through the anxious mob, baby and parents had disappeared.

I was hungry. I rejoined Melanie, found Margie and Cyndy and then we all set out in search of food - which is found in abundance and at high prices at the Alaska State Fair.

I had been thinking that I might get a turkey leg, but changed my mind and went for a blue corn tamale.

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Mormon missionaries ride bicycles

Two Mormon missionaries with their bicycles, spotted as I crossed through the intersection of the Palmer-Wasilla and Glenn Highways in Palmer. Other than what you see in the picture, I know nothing of them, yet I know them very well - better even than they do.

A former Mormon missionary shadow biking down Seldon Street in Wasilla. I know all about him, yet he is an enigma to me. I may never understand him at all.

Now... I must apologize. I have spent the past five or six hours dealing with one of those things that a man who is not a businessman yet is in business for himself must sometimes deal with, just like a real businessmen must - one of those things that he thinks he can do in half-an-hour and if he was a real business man could probably do in three sentences to his secretary, who would then take care of it in 15 minutes. The businessman who is is not a business man then winds up spending half a day and nearly $2000 to get done, an expense which will liklely yield him nothing and the particulars of which he does not understand at all but if he wants to stay in business he has to take the time and he has to spend the money.

So I am left with time to begin my long delayed Arctic series and it will have to start tomorrow.

Actually, the best thing to do would be to hold it for the online magazine I plan to start and not even worry about it all for now, but I promised that I would do it and there are people who have let me know they want to see it, so I will do it.

Hopefully, beginning tomorrow.

Now I must get back to work.

Except the sun is shining. It is wonderfully warm and I do not want to be inside at all.

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Speak, Poet!

One week from today I leave here to go north and I have a HUGE amount of work to do between now and then and so, when I finally settled back into my office late Monday after driving Margie to the airport, taking a bike ride, etc., I had determined that I was going to keep other distractions to a minimum. 

Even this blog. It is my real work, yet it can be a distraction. I planned to keep this blog extremely simple for the remainder of that time - perhaps one, no more than three, photos a day with simple, brief, narrative - perhaps nonsensical, so that I would not have to spend time thinking at all. I would not go off and do anything new. If anybody contacted me with a request that I do this or that, which they surely would and already have, I would just have to say "no, not now... too busy!"

Maybe I would skip two or three days blogging altogether. I just was not going to let myself be distracted from this work I must do.

So I came home from my bike ride and immediately opened up Facebook and the first thing that I saw was a picture posted by Allison Akootchook Warden, Iñupiaq poet, playwright and actress. Five poets were pictured, included her and Leah Frankson, another Iñupiaq poet who is also a hair stylist and who now cuts my hair - which these days is beyond styling.

The caption read simply:

Epic gathering of Alaskan Poets in Palmer...

This gathering was going on at that moment.

As it happened, Allison plays a part in the project on which I have a huge amount of work to do, so I thought, "I will go see what this epic gathering of poets is all about and maybe I can work something of Allison there into my huge, huge, impossible, project."

So, not knowing what it was about, I rushed to Palmer, expecting to find maybe a couple of dozen of Alaska's most venerated and accomplished poets walking around, speaking in verse, uttering wise and clever utterances.

What I found was in some ways even better than that. It was an epic gathering of high school student poets from Palmer and Wasilla, gathered together to participate in a Brave New Voices, a poetry slam. Allison, Leah and the other noted adult poets that had been in the posted picture had spent the day in the schools of Palmer and Wasilla working with the young poets, preparing them for the slam.

Unfortunately for me, all the students participating in the slam had recited their poems - except for one, Collette Bailey, pictured right here, who was just stepping onto the stage.

She raised her hand into the air.

"Speak, poet!" the crowd shouted.

And so Collette Bailey, Poet, began to speak. To be quite honest, I knew I would have very little time to try to figure out a picture and so I did not catch the full meaning of her words. I did catch the cadence and atmosphere, though, and it felt surprisingly deep to me - as if the words that had been written and were now being spoken had come from the mind of someone who had lived long, had experienced much, had felt deep pain and had wandered long through both the darkness and light of life.

So that is all that I can tell you about the poem written and recited by Collette Bailey and hers was the only poem of the slam competition that I heard at all.

The judges, who paid strict attention to every word that she spoke and who, of course, are all brilliant people who understand all the nuance of poetry and who have read and wept over all the master works ever written since God struck verse onto stone tablets and even before that when God chastised Cain for spilling the bloods of his innocent brother Able to vanish into the dirt, never to spawn future generations, were mighty impressed.

When I saw these numbers, I thought perhaps the last would be first.

We wouldn't know for awhile. Even though they had cast their numbers, the judges had some things to figure out before the winners could be announced.

So, for a spell, poets milled about and posed for pictures.

Then there was a short period of open mic, where poets could recite for pleasure and not competition. One of those who did was Kat Chudnofsky. For some reason, when she took the stage and gestured with her hands, my mind went back to India, to Soundarya's wedding.

Kat took her bows.

Allison, Leah and Leah's daughter Kavi Pearl listen to the open mic recitations.

The judges still needed a little more time. So the crowd began to sing, "There's lots to do at the Y-M-C-A..."

And then the winners were called onto the stage. Kat had taken first, Allie Harrington, left, second and Collette third.

The winning students poets then posed with the adult accomplished poets who had worked with them, they include, from left to right: Trey Josey, Leah, Allison, Kima Hamilton, B. Hutton and the current Alaska State Writer Laureate, Peggy Shumaker.

A post such as this should just be dripping with verse, but I figured that if I could get a small sample from each of the three winners, that would have to do it. So I tried to pull them together, but Collette had disappeared immediately after adjournment. Allie took down my email address which she was then to share with Kat and hopefully they might get it to Bailey as well, so that all three could send me a sample of verse.

As it worked out, I heard back only from Allie, who sent me three lines from her poem, Feeling Unreal.

Three lines, from all that verse. Yet, somehow, as a dreamer, these three lines strike me as just perfect, the very lines to close with:

"I want you to feel unreal.

I want you to be excited to wake because

dreaming is beginning to seem boring."

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I take a blurry iPhone photo of Melanie and Charlie and see the impression of Mom; Little Miss Vaidehi: Eight studies

In midafternoon, I received a call from Charlie's cell phone, but after I answered, "Hello Charlie," I got this response:

"It's me, Melanie."

And indeed, it was. The two were just driving out of Anchorage with Charlie at the wheel, headed for Vagabond Blues in Palmer. Melanie asked if Margie and I wanted to come to Palmer and join them for coffee.

I said, "sure," but I could not get Margie to leave the house so I would have to go by myself.

I took a shower first, and then suddenly discovered that I was going to leave later than I intended.

I rushed out of the house and when I got to Vagabond, was shocked to discover that I had forgotten my camera.

This left me with only my iPhone, the lens of which is hopelessly smudged.

That was okay. I would go for the impressionistic effect.

Boy. When I look at Melanie in this blurred picture, the impression that I get is of my mom. Physically speaking, Mom really seeped through me into Melanie.

But Mom would have never joined any of us for coffee. The thought that we were even drinking coffee would have broken her heart.

As it happened, in the end, although she never saw me take a sip of coffee, her dedicated Mormon heart was thoroughly broken anyway and that broken heart took both her life and Dad's thereafter.

Afterward, Melanie rode with me back to Wasilla and Charlie joined us here. We ate Spam chunks for dinner, mixed with rice and veggies. It was pretty good.

Then Jim and Charlie hung out for awhile.

Chennai, India: Eight studies of Little Miss Vaidehi

Little Miss Vaidehi, Study # 1: With my lens cap

Little Miss Vaidehi, Study # 2: With her mom, Vidya

Little Miss Vaidehi, Study # 3: With her keyboard

Little Miss Vaidehi, Study # 4: She reaches for the ball

Little Miss Vaidehi, Study # 5: From the arms of her father, Vijay, she marvels at the girl in the mirror

Little Miss Vaidehi, Study # 6: With her Auntie Mel from Alaska

Little Miss Vaidehi, Study # 7: With her grandmother, Vasanthi

Little Miss Vaidehi, Study # 1: With her dad, Vijay

To anyone who would like to see a more contemporary version of Vaidehi on YouTube, as recorded by Vijay, here you can find her laughing or singing.

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At the weekends important Alaska book signing: Jobe greets progressive Phil Munger in the gleam of Sarah Palin's smile; Jobe spills the coffee; Jobe rolls on the floor / Amazing Grace

Here is Jobe and Melanie speaking with classical music composer and Progressive Alaska blogger Phil Munger at the important Alaska book signing that took place this weekend. Phil's wife, Judy Youngquist, was one of Melanie's teachers during her days at Tanaina Elementary School, and sometimes Phil filled in and taught her, too.

Another substitute teacher that Melanie had at Tanaina was Chuck Heath. Undoubtedly by now, the reader has noticed the face of Chuck Heath's famous daughter, Sarah Palin, beaming out from the three books on the lower part of the shelf between Jobe, Melanie and Phil. Probably, cynical readers are imagining that I set this picture up just this way - but no, I didn't.

It's just how it happened. I didn't even realize Sarah Palin's face was in the picture until after I took it. I was rather pleased when I discovered this, because it gave me some opportunities to play with today's title a bit and thereby draw in those legions of potential readers who only stop by if there is a hint that Sarah Palin might somehow be on this blog.

While I have generally tried to stay away from Palin on this blog, Phil has not been so reticent. He has written a great deal about Palin, whom he has known for decades.

But I have begun with a distraction. I had come to this place, Fireside Books in Palmer, because a signing for a very important book about Alaska was taking place here.

The important book that was being signed was "Purely Alaska - Authentic Voices from the Far North," a collection of stories written by 23 authors, most of them Native, spread across the roadless regions of Rural Alaska. The writings were inspired, encouraged, compiled, and edited by John Creed and wife Susan Andrews.

The two both began their careers as journalists, but then became teachers of journalism and writing at Chukchi College in Kotzebue - an extension of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. They eventually set up a statewide, long-distance learning program conducted via the internet. The stories in the book come from their students.

They are the real thing, written for love, not money and driven by the human desire to communicate one individual to another, one culture to another.

So I would suggest that readers consider buying this book, just as did Heather McCausland, for whom John is seen adding his autograph to Susan's. It will be worth it.

John, Susan and family.

John photographs Jobe.

I met first met John in September of 1981, when I flew into Kotzebue for the first time. He took me to a fish camp in Noorvik and helped me in many ways. I came back again after freeze-up and it was a wonderful, glorious, thing, because Kotzebue Sound had frozen solid and thick but there was not a snowflake upon it - just miles and endless miles of clear, smooth, slick ice.

We walked out onto that ice and then could not stop ourselves from running and sliding, running and sliding, running and sliding, until we had ventured well beyond the limits of common sense and safety. We had no gun and had a hungry polar bear come along, we would have been defenseless.

But it was such great fun that we didn't care and we knew that the odds were in our favor.

Yes, there was another book signing this weekend, at Costco in Anchorage, and it drew a whole lot more attention than did this one.

Trust me, though - this book will be the better, most informative and enjoyable read. The power and strength of the stories in it will live on when those in the other book have fallen into their place as a political curiousity and trivia, lacking depth and substance; hyperbole - a memento of a strange fad that rose out of my own little town at a troubled time in America to place an absurd and perplexing grip upon my homeland for a limited number of years.

But if you want substance, not fad, then read "Purely Alaska." Read the other one, too, if you like and if you are up to the task.

After we left the book signing, Melanie, Jobe and I walked less than one block to Vagabond Blues to get some coffee.

I know - some are wondering how I could be so fickle as to go get my coffee here and not at Metro Cafe, but Metro is closed on Sundays and we were in Palmer, anyway.

You know what the lyrics to the famous rock-and-roll song say:

"When you can't drink the coffee you love, love the coffee you can drink."

Such is my philosophy on the subject.

We ordered our coffee, got it, sat down and then Jobe grabbed Melanie's and spilled it all over the floor. It was okay. She just got another and we proceeded on, unperturbed.

Jobe did not get a coffee. Jobe drank from a bottle of his own mother's milk. Then he and Melanie played with the bottle cap.

Jobe is a very bright fellow, by the way; observant. He takes in everything around him. He enjoys the magic of learning and each conscious moment is magic for him. He brings magic back into my own life, even now, at this time.

And to Sujitha, sister of Soundarya - he brings magic back to her as well.

Jobe found that the lid to a bottle of mother's milk can also make a nice hat. He was very pleased with his new hat.

I should note that when Phil Munger first came to Alaska, he piloted a fishing boat by the name of Jo-be, pronounced just the same as Jobe, from Ketchikan to Cordova.

The three of us lingered at Vagabond for probably close to an hour, every minute of it pleasant and wonderful.

Finally, we had to leave. I had driven to Palmer alone with Jobe. Melanie had driven out from Anchorage to meet us. We wanted to drive back to the house together, so we left Melanie's car in Palmer and I drove us home to Wasilla.

I didn't time it, but it usually takes close to half-an-hour, so I suspect that it did this time, as well.

When we pulled into the driveway, Jobe was fast asleep in his car seat.

The light was exceedingly dim, so, even though I was shooting at 6400 ISO, I had to drop down to a quarter or half-second exposure, - very difficult to do shooting free hand - so I took my time and took several shots.

I knew that from inside the house, all Lavina could see would be our headlights. She had not seen her baby Jobe since the day before. She did not discover that I had shanghaied him off to Palmer until she and Jake arrived at the house to find us gone. I knew that she was wondering why I was taking so long to bring him in. 

When finally we did go in, we found people baking, icing, sprinkling and eating Christmas cookies. I would have taken Kalib to Palmer with me as well, but he was asleep when I left.

Melanie observes Jobe as he rolls across the floor.

And this one from India:

This is just a few frames short of being the final picture that I took during the trip that Melanie and I made to India to attend the wedding of Soundarya and Anil. I took the picture as our cab driver approached the Bangalore Airport. As I have earlier noted, other than the wedding pictures, I have never had the time to sift through my take to see what I have.

It has now become very important to me that I do, even though the task seems immense and impossible, given my other responsibilities. I have put the entire, India, Part 2, take into my Lightroom editor and so I set out to skim quickly through to see if I could get some kind of idea of what I have - particularly when it comes to images of Soundarya, and of Soundarya and Anil, as well as the man who walked a scorpion, the monkey who jumped the gap and the dinner of bananas that Vijay fed to us.

I scrolled rapidly through the entire take over the course of maybe three hours, possibly four, bypassing hundreds of images at a time but stopping every now and then, especially when I would spot an image of Sandy.

As I did this, I had the radio tuned to KSKA. In the final hour, as part of whatever program was on the air, a female folksinger was being interviewed. Every few minutes, the interviewer would pause to let her perform a song. I was absorbed in the pictures and did not pay much attention, but she had a nice voice and it made pleasant backgroud music.

Then, to my dread, I came to the final series of frames that I will ever shoot of Soundarya. At the very moment - THE VERY MOMENT - that my final image of Soundarya appeared full-screen in my editor, the folksinger began to sing...

Amazing Grace...

...and she sang it beautifully...

.. she sang it for Soundarya, my cherished Hindu soul friend - she sang it for me, the rebellious, strayed Mormon who has chosen to walk an indeterminate path...

Here is Judy Collins, singing the same song, for any who might care to listen.

I have probably listened to it 20 times since coming upon that final picture. I am listening to it right now. My eyes are not dry.

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