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.

Dogs; Democrat; original Tea Party supporter with a new alternative monthly paper; cat snot on my lens

As I walked down Seldon, Dodd Shay pulled over to talk. He had a new pup riding with him. Dodd is the fellow who owns that part of the marsh where I most recently photographed two moose, property where certain sorts of snowmachiners and four-wheeler drivers ignore his "no trespassing" signs, charge in and tear up his property.

Dodd wanted to let me know that he plans to start going to Metro Cafe at 10:00 AM Thursdays and would like it if Democrats would come and join him for coffee and conversation.

Cars kept coming, so he pulled off Seldon onto Tamar and he and the pup, Scotty, got out of the car.

As we chatted, this car turned onto Tamar. The occupants were very taken by Scotty.

Scotty. Dodd and his wife Carol raise dogs that assist people with various needs. Dodd hopes that Scotty will become a breeder.

As they say, "lucky dog."

That's Jared on the left and his fiance on the right. She told me her name, too, but I forgot it before I could take it down. Jared showed both Dodd and I where he lives and said if we ever need any help with anything, just come knocking.

Someday, we may get a chance to talk more and maybe he will tell me about the tattoo. 

I was driving toward Metro Cafe at 4:00 o'clock when I spotted this dog ahead. The dog made no attempt to get out of the way of any cars, but just kept running in a straight path. Drivers honked their horns, but the dog just kept coming at them until they pulled to the right.

I slowed way down, because I did not know the dog would do.

Sure enough, just before I reached it, the dog changed lanes and then started running down the road, directly in front of me. It ran and it ran and it ran. I had to drive very slow. I only honked when there was no immediate traffic coming in the opposite direction, but my honks did not phase the dog.

Finally, it left the road and ran off.

I do not know where it was going and I don't think it, did, either.

I hope it reached its destination safely.

Longtime readers have probably observed that I come upon dogs in bad situations all too often. I can't judge, because I do not know the circumstance that resulted in this dog running down a busy road.

Through the Window Metro Study, #1961. That's Josh Fryfogle. He is "Editor and Writer" of a free monthly publication called Make-A- Scene: The People's Paper. He points at the paper's logo on his shirt. I must confess, I had never heard of Make-A- Scene before. He gave me a copy. It is newsprint on an 11 x 11.5 format. Part of what Josh does is to seek out valley stories on restaurants, businesses, and the great political stories of the day.

Inside the pages, I found three articles with Josh's byline: Jalepeno's - his account of dining at Jalepeno's, where I sometimes dine as well. He had praise for Jalepeno's and I would agree with that. The second was titled, Belly Dancing, and it described an adventure he had with his ten-year old son on a Saturday night at Bombay Valley restaurant. Although we haven't since last Father's Day, we sometimes eat at Bombay, but there have never been belly dancers.

Josh says they are going to be there every Saturday now, so I guess I will have to go see them.

He describes it as a pretty wholesome experience - oh well; I'll go check it out, anyway. One of these Saturday's. Maybe not this one. But perhaps.

We will see.

Tea Party Bait and Switch was the third story. I was going to suggest that if you want to read it, you could go the website, but I just went there and it is not yet up, although another of his stories, The Man-Made Religion of Climate Change is, so you can read that, if you want. Summarily stated, with a number of quotes from the University of East Anglia email scandal, Josh counters the contention of what some say is 98 percent of the research climatologists who think that we are in a potentially disastrous period of climate change brought on largely by man-made activities.

In Tea Party, as an early supporter of the movement and a man who waved signs for Ron Paul and waved at Sarah Palin as she drove past, Josh laments that the Tea Party is being co-opted by "the Neo-Conservatives who had previously taken over the Republican Party." He is pretty disgusted with both Democrats and Republicans and, while he once had hopes for Sarah Palin, is disappointed in her, too.

It would take too much space for me to try to sum up all that he said in the article, but I suspect it will show up on the website, soon. He does say, "I am ready for real revolution and, if need be, I am ready to invoke the Second Amendment! And I know I'm not the only one... 'Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable' - John F. Kennedy."

So there you have it - in the morning I come upon Dodd Shay who wants to start getting together with Democrats at Metro Cafe and in the afternoon, I meet Josh, Tea Party original, who is ready for revolution.

I wonder how such revolution would unfold here in this valley that Josh, Sarah Palin and I share with a whole bunch of others of many and varied political and religious belief? 

In this valley, most of us do own guns, be we left-wing, right-wing, middle-of-the-road, apathetic. It seems to me that we have all been exercising our second amendment rights all along, but what does it mean that the time might come that we need to "invoke" them? That we get to shoot each other, because we do not all see the world the same?

Is this what John F. Kennedy meant?

Be assured, Carmen is a good person and in running her cafe, she needs to keep her door open to everyone, liberal, conservative, left-wing, right-wing, extreme, moderate, mainstream, fringe.

Maybe some interesting discussions will take place inside. May such discussions always be peaceful and civil, even if some of the minds thus engaged are turbulent.

As I drove home in round-about fashion, I saw this girl running alongside the road.

I don't know if anyone overtly noticed, but each picture in this post has a soft, hazy, area. It's most pronounced when there is some backlight, such as in the picture of Jared and his fiance.

It's because of this guy, Pistol-Yero. I was trying to get a close-up of him when he touched my lens with his nose. I could not find any lens-cleaning cloth for a long time. Now I have found some, but I am not certain that I got it all. The tiny, recessed lens of this s90 pocket camera is very hard to clean.

I will always love Pistol, though, no matter how many cameras he messes up.

There's Royce, walking behind him. Royce is hanging tough.

The Russian Immigrant boy who loved Willow; Royce; the grandmother who prayed for a coffee shop; horses; ravens; musician; a warm Pistol

On December 29, I devoted my entire post to a series of pictures of children of Russian immigrants as they sledded down Tamar. In that post, I recounted a bit of a story from years before when a young, freckle-faced, Russian boy with red/blond hair used to happily come out to greet the dog Willow and I whenever we would come walking by.

I wrote about how he would follow along, but just for a little ways, because he knew that his parents would not want him too.

This is he, on the left, Ruvum. I hardly ever see him now, but today I did, carrying a snowboard on his back, accompanied by two girls. The third girl declined to be photographed, but she happily recalled how she used to see me with Willow.

As it happens, I meant them right in front of the house where they lived back when Willow was alive and walking with me. Today, they live on the other side of the block, although I am reluctant to call it a block because it is much bigger than the typical city block. 

Much bigger. But it is square shaped, as blocks are.

Both he and the girls were very polite and courteous, if reserved, and their faces seemed to tell me that they are decent people, good kids.

I miss those old days, when they would come running out so eager to see Willow, when Ruvum would follow along for just a little bit, and then turn back.

Compared to how he was last weekend, I think Royce is doing quite a bit better. He is still heartbreakingly thin and light. When I pick him up, I feel bones, not meat or fat, beneath his fur, but he is eating well, seems to have energy that belies his appearance, and the prescription food mixed with Metamucil seems to be doing at least part of its job.

He's dropped some healthy looking turds into the litter box lately.

Now, if only it will do the rest of job and put some weight back on him.

Through the Metro Window Study, #Three billion-two-point-five: As I have mentioned before, a dog wash used to sit on the site now occupied by Metro Cafe. Then one day, the dog wash went out of business, the property went up for sale, the property was sold, the dog wash came down and construction began on a new project.

Nearly every day that I spent home and not somewhere else, I would pass by the construction scene, either in my car, on my bike, or sometimes on foot.

I, and the other members of this family were all most curious to see what rise in place of the dog wash.

We weren't the only ones. See the woman on the left? That is Carol, pictured in this magnificent study with her granddaughter, Serenity. Carol lives in the apartments right next door and she, too, was most curious. She would peek out from her window and sometimes she would sneak through the trees, hoping to get a close look, to see if she could figure out what it was going to be.

"I prayed that it would be a coffee shop," she says. Most of the time, she is on foot and there were no coffee shops in walking distance for a woman whose cane testifies that she is feeling the wear of this life. She wanted a good coffee shop, where she could go and sip a delicious cup as she sat down at a nice table with her granddaughter and enjoyed the company of the proprietor, and of other friendly people seeking the same pleasure that she sought.

So she prayed, and her prayer was answered, affirmatively.

When I paid Carmen today, I offered her the usual dollar tip, but before she could take it, the wind grabbed it and sent it flying down the drive-through. I could see a vehicle coming from behind, so I pulled up away from the window, got out of the car, grabbed the dollar bill and walked it back to Carmen.

As I did, a pickup truck pulled in and parked not far away. I began to walk back to the car.

"Oh, it's those cute girls!" I heard Carmen exclaim.

I turned back and saw several little girls pour out of the pickup and run laughing towards the coffee shop. They all looked to be Native, and all were happy. I could not take a picture, because I had left my pocket camera sitting on the passenger seat.

I got back into the car and thought about driving around and back to the window, so that I could do another study shot of those girls through the Metro window, but that seemed to me to be cheating.

Plus, from the tone of Carmen's exclamation, I knew that they were regulars.

I must trust that one day, before too long, I will pull up to that drive-through window when the cute little girls are in the coffee house. I will then make them the subject of a Through the Metro Window Study.

I wonder what number I will be at by then?

In order to give myself a chance to hear a little news, I took the long way home. Not so long ago, it was pitch night at this time and one could barely make out the forms of these horses against the snow - if one could make it out at all.

Look at it now.

The weather remains unrealistically warm. It feels like spring.

But what do you want to bet that it's not?

As I headed down Schrock, I saw a group of Russian Old Believers walking alongside the road. Before I could reach them, they turned and disappeared down a trail into the woods.

Further along, I saw some ravens, flying off to my right.

The ravens flew on.

Then the ravens crossed over the road, and flew to my left.

Then they drifted off in the direction of the Talkeetna Mountains.

As I neared home, All Things Considered began a story on Gil Scott Heron, the singer/songwriter who, in the 1970's, did a very angry and excellent piece titled, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. Some says he is a father of rap. He has come out with a new album title, I'm New Here. It was mighty bluesy and damn good. I pulled into my driveway about half-way-through the story, but I could not get out of the car until the story ended, until Gil Scott Heron quit singing.

This would be a good album to have. So would The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.

I shut down the car and the radio went off. I stepped into the house and there, by the door, sat Pistol-Yero on a chair, looking at me. He was so thrilled to see me he could hardly contain himself.

I'm not joking, either. I'm serious. I know this cat. He was thrilled to see me.

On my second day with Margie gone, I breakfast at IHOP, find a pleasant diversion involving Jennifer, Heineken and Jazz, then head to iPhone disappointment at the At&t store

It is 9:30 AM and I am on my way to IHOP. Look how light it already is!

Just a short time ago, it was still night at this time; soon it will look like this at midnight. Shortly after that, it will start to get dark again.

This earth just keeps spinning and spinning and plunging through its orbit at a maddening pace.

It does not slow down. It just goes, goes, goes.

That's good, I guess.

We would not want it to stop.

But it spins the years off way too fast, and carries us to old age and death much too rapidly.

It is exhilarates me to see the light coming back.

Now I am going up the hill towards IHOP.

This is Melanie, who used to work at Cafe Darte - the coffee kiosk across the street from the Post Office. She was an excellent barista. Her coffee was always good. Sometime after she left Darte, I happened upon her in Carr's, carrying her new baby.

I took a picture of the two of them and put it in this blog.

Today, as she led me to my table, she told me that her step-father had googled Sarah Palin to see what he might find. That search eventually led him to this blog and when he got into it, he found the picture of his step-daughter and grandbaby.

Melanie says he now visits this blog frequently. 

Melanie says, "hi, Dad."

As regular readers know, there is another Melanie that says those same words to me.

I really wanted good hash browns today. And IHOP came through. Cooked just right, each shred firm and flavorful, not reduced to mush. Someone had made cat ears out of the ham. Nice touch.

But don't worry, Family Restaurant, I will be back.

I must spread my great wealth throughout the community.

After breakfast, I came home and found Pistol-Yero, looking at me.

I went into the bedroom and this sight made me very sad. Margie has experienced a great deal of pain in this bed. When I looked at it, empty like this, the image of Margie lying there, hurting and in agony, superimposed itself upon the quilt.

It made me feel bad.

This bed is at the foot of our big, king-sized bed, which I sat on as I took the picture.

Many of you already know this story, but for those who don't, Margie and I both used to sleep on this big bed, together. Then, on June 12, 2008, I took my fall in Barrow and found out how rotten my insurance policy really is and how deceptive the saleswoman was. I wound up in Providence Hospital in Anchorage and after two surgeries came home with an artificial shoulder.

I was too fragile and in too much pain to share a bed with anyone. So Margie had this bed placed at the foot of our bed and in it she slept.

It took me more than half-a-year to heal to the point where I could dare try to share th bed.

And just when I was ready to, Margie took her first fall and then she could share a bed with no one.

Many months passed and then, on July 25, we crawled into our bed together for the first time in over 13 months. On the next day, July 26, she took her second fall.

And as improved as she is, she still cannot share a bed.

So that also made me feel very sad when I looked at this bed.

Now she is far away, asleep in her sister's house in the high country of the White Mountain Apache Tribe.

How good it used to feel when she would cuddle up next to me, lie her head and my shoulder and there fall asleep. How I long to have her head resting upon my shoulder, once again.

It made me feel very sad to look at this empty bed.

Caleb was playing war games with his cyber-friends. He communicates with both those on his side and the enemy through a headset as their avatars fight their way through a common battlefield. I can't remember the name of the game, but it pits good Americans against bad Russians and some Russians have complained that it unfairly stereotypes them, but Russians play it, anyway.

"You should play with some Russians," I suggested.

"Oh, I've played Russians," he answered. "I've played people from all over the world."

A bit after that, he built a fire and then got in his car and headed for Anchorage. That was 12 hours ago. I have not seen him since but that doesn't worry me. He's a man, with his own life to live and it is the weekend.

Royce, Chicago Kitty and some of Kalib's toys. It was just me and the cats now.

I took a walk. It wasn't long before I came upon a neighbor from down the street, Jennifer, playing with her two dogs, Heineken and Jazz - a pleasant diversion for my eyes.

Further along, I came upon this dog. When he was a pup, he once tried to follow me home. A high school classmate and baseball teammate of Jacob's built this house and lived in it for awhile. Then he sold it and moved on to something bigger and better.

I could hardly wait for the 24 hours to end so that the money would go back into the gift cards and I could pick up my new iPhone. At 4:00 PM, I headed out, NPR's All Things Considered Weekend Edition on the radio.

Just after I turned onto Seldon Street, this kid shot past me like I was sitting still. Curious to see how fast he was going, I accelerated to 45 mph in a 35 zone, but he just kept getting farther ahead of me, so I dropped back.

He was not riding on the road - he was on the trail shared by snowmachiners, fourwheelers, pedestrians, bikers, old men, children and mothers pushing babies in strollers. In fact, Lavina has often been one of those mothers, pushing Kalib, right here, where this kid speeds by.

It is after 4:30 PM. Look how much light is still left! Not so long ago, this time of day was pitch black night. Or as pitch black as night gets around here. It never gets dark dark, the way it does down south in places without snow.

Kendall Ford, a bit after 4:30 PM.

After this, I returned to the At&t store where I would not pick up my iPhone. You can find the story in the previous post, if you have not read it already.

Anonymous coward retracts the insult; on a stultifying, hot, winter day in Alaska, I remember a more agreeable one

To be quite honest, it was not a very good picture-taking day for me. In fact, I think it may have been the worst picture-taking day that I have experienced in months. That is because I spent basically the entire day sitting right here, at my computer, furiously working to finish that little proposal project that I told you about.

As usual, Pistol-Yero interrupted me now and then, as did Jim.

It always annoys me when they do this, but I don't know what I would do if they didn't. Their interruptions are the only thing that keeps me partly sane.

I am happy to say that I just finished that project, at 1:19 AM, pretty early for me when it comes to finishing something, and it is printing to pdf right now.

When I did go out, briefly, I hardly saw anything and if I did and tried to photograph it, I messed up.

This is not from today, but I figure that it is a good lead-in to the next picture, which is from today and is essential to this post, even though it is boring. As this project neared completion, I realized that I was missing a certain image that I wanted to include and so I went looking for it. I found it. This is not it, but this image was in the same folder and, as I say, it makes a good lead-in to today's essential, but boring, image.

This is the essential, but boring image. This is where I first found the car three days ago, sometime after it slid off the road and got stuck. Yes, the very same car that some cowardly, anonymous, person had used to insult and slander me by scrawling "dumbass" into the mud caked on the doors.

I am happy to say that the car has been pulled out and is now gone. The insult has been removed.

Undoubtedly, the anonymous person who scrawled it read yesterday's post. Undoubtedly, that person felt shame and humiliation for ever having slandered me in such a way and so went and removed the epithet.

I thank you, anonymous person, for coming to your senses - and yes, I accept your apology, abstract though it may be.

So my walk was very short and I saw no one. But I did see this Cessna flying overhead. One day... one day... it has to happen... it has to!

It was still stultifyingly hot today. At one point, I saw the thermometer reach 34 degrees. But in the same folder referenced above, I found this image, from three years ago, taken on a much better weather day than today.

For you Celsius people, that is - 32 degrees. The thing to remember is that when a cold snap settles in here, it tends to be 10 to 15 degrees colder out here where we live than in downtown Wasilla. 

I always knew it was colder out here and there was one time when Melanie put a Pepsi thermometer in the yard and it went down to something like -46, but in town the temperatue was in the lower -20's. I was not certain that we could fully trust that Pepsi thermometer, but, since we bought this Ford Escape, the built in thermometer has confirmed these kind of temperature spreads between here and downtown Wasilla.

Oddly enough, on a day like today, when it is warm, I have discovered that it is actually a few degrees warmer out here than downtown.

From the same folder. That whole mall in the background, Cottonwood Creek, is gone now. Target is there instead.

From the same folder.

From the same folder - shoppers leaving Wal-Mart.

From the same folder - raven and stoplight in blowing snow.

And to you who are suffering down in the Lower 48 because of this recent cold snap that has frozen you and warmed Alaska, I am not making this stuff up. In winter, I truly prefer the cold weather to what we are having now.

If I didn't, I would live down there instead of up here.

It makes me feel good when it's cold - as long as I don't freeze, as long as the cold does not overcome me. Once it does, there is hardly anything more miserable. When the cold overcomes you and you become cold, life becomes hell. Yet, I love the cold.

It's not this warm everywhere in Alaska right now. I see that Fort Yukon was -20 today, Barrow -9, but what you have to understand is that, in those places, in January, those are warm temperatures.

Well, I am very tired. I have been playing with pictures and words all day long. I am growing incoherent.

So that's all I have to say.

Tavra!*

*Iñupiaq for "that's all I have to say."