A loving Father's Day tribute: My Pepsi-drinking Mormon dad, Apache father-in-law, humble whale hunter adoptive dad, loving son dad

For once, I look at a picture and I am at a loss to write. I cannot sum my father up in a photo and a few words - it would take a book - just to sum him up. I hope to write that book, but I am very much aware that the years are closing in on me, just as they closed in on him, and the list of books that I have yet to complete is too long to be written in whatever time I have left and I am not putting much time into book-writing these days, anyway.

For now, let it be enough to say that this is the man who flew into flak in World War II to bomb the Nazis and their Fascist allies, this is the man who, by his gruff exterior, often scared me when I was small, but in whose presence I also found a comfort and strength the likes of which I have felt nowhere else. Even at my age, with him in the grave for three years now, I still miss that comfort and strength and long to feel it. Sometimes, I think I do feel it.

Being devout in her faith to the extreme, my mother taught us truth in terms of absolute black and whites, but Dad taught us to question everything. 

There are so many places I could go in telling you about my dad, but since I landed on this picture of him smuggling a Diet Pepsi into the house, I might as well tell you about my Dad and Pepsi.

Remember now, I grew up Mormon and my mother was devout, more so, I suspect, than even the even the very highest church leaders themselves, President and Prophet included. In the Mormon Church, there is a tenet called the Word of Wisdom, issued by Joseph Smith, that prohibits good Mormons from indulging not only in alcohol and tabacco, but also coffee and tea - but it does not name coffee and tea directly, but rather "hot drinks."

This has been basically defined to mean coffee and tea, but the vagueness of the statement has created arguments inside the Mormon community that I expect never to be resolved. Some Mormons insist that even hot chocolate is banned under the Word of Wisdom.

As do many Mormons, my late Mom believed the restriction covered all caffeinated beverages, Pepsi and Coke included. Dad loved his Pepsi.

When I was small, a soda pop of any kind was a rare and cherished treat, but every now and then he would buy me a pop as a reward for some accomplishment, usually athletic, like when I swam across the pool for the first time, or hit my first triple in a Little League baseball game. In the early days of my life, these rewards were always drinks like Root Beer, cheery or orange soda, maybe Seven-up.

Then one day, we were in a gas station and he bought me a Coke - but only because Pepsi was not available. I was not to tell my mother. Soon, I followed in his footsteps and began to drink Pepsi at every opportunity - much to the consternation of my mother.

She would say, "I don't want Pepsi in this house," but Dad would sneak it in, anyway.

He kept doing this even when they grew old and fell into ill-health. After she died, Rex, the senior of my oldest brothers, the twins, took up where she left off. Not for religious reasons, but because he believed Pepsi was killing my father.

He did all he could to keep Dad from drinking his Pepsi.

Dad drank it, anyway.

And at the very end, after Dad suffered his final stroke and by his living will precluded the kind of medical heroics that would have extended his life at any miserable cost, he could not eat or drink.

All we could do as we watched him slowly die was to wet a sponge with water or other liquid and bring it to his lips, wet them and then let him suck on the sponge.

Yes - it was a sponge dipped in Pepsi that seemed to give him the greatest relief. When brother Rex saw this happening, he could not altogether hide his dismay and made certain to give Dad some sponge-loads of his own health drinks, but, what the hell, Dad was dying anyway.

It was proper that he go out with the good taste of Pepsi on his tongue.

This is my dad, Rex J. Hess, Sr. He loved his Pepsi.

Readers have met my mother-in-law, Rose Roosevelt, and now you can meet my father-in-law, the late Randy Roosevelt. This is he, holding my little sister-in-law, Chy, who in turn caresses a stuffed goat that I had found on a shopping trip to Globe, Arizona and bought for Margie as a Christmas present in the winter that we were engaged.

That Christmas vacation was the first time that she took me home to the reservation to meet her family and she had been very apprehensive about it, in large part because of this man. She greatly feared how he would react to her bringing a white man home to introduce as her husband to be. Plus, Randy was known to have a temper that could become exacerbated when he drank and, to be quite honest, drinking was a problem for him.

But her fears proved to be groundless. Randy took to me immediately. He took me into his pickup truck and drove me here and there on the reservation and introduced me to many people, both drunk and sober. Everyone that he introduced me to expressed great admiration for him; all said that he was a good man and that if he approved of me to be his son-in-law, then I was okay by them and I would have a home here, on the White Mountain Apache reservation. 

When Christmas vacation came to an end, Randy drove Margie and I to Flagstaff, so that we could catch a bus back to Provo, Utah, where we were students at BYU. Rose and Chy came with him. I took this picture in Flagstaff, just before we boarded the bus.

A little less than two months later, he, Rose and several members of the family traveled to Provo for our wedding. They could not attend the wedding ceremony itself, because, as was expected of us, it took place inside the Provo Temple of the LDS Church and while the entire Roosevelt family was Mormon, only Mormons deemed worthy by their bishop or branch president can receive "a temple recommend" and then be allowed to enter the sacred building. 

And you cannot get a temple recommend if you are drinking alcohol, coffee or tea (Pepsi drinkers can get recommends and, along with my mother, my Dad was called on a home-based temple mission in his later years) so Randy, Rose, and family were not allowed to attend the ceremony.

They did come to the reception, held in the gymnasium of our local Mormon chapel, and I will never forget how proud and happy Randy was to stand alongside us to shake the hands of all those who came to wish us well.

After we married, we visited the reservation in the late summer of 1974, when Margie's belly was growing big with Jacob. Again, Randy took me all over and introduced me to many more people, for he seemed to know everyone on the reservation. Now that I had actually become his son-in-law, the feeling of welcome acceptance that his friends gave - many of whom had great distrust of and low regard towards white people in general - was even stronger.

When the visit ended, we again returned to Provo, this time in our little yellow Volkswagen Super Beattle, which the people of Carrizo had named, "Billy Bug." Two weeks later, we drove back again, along with Margie's sister, Janet, who had just enrolled as a freshman at BYU. We came for Randy's funeral. He had died in a head-on collision and so had the woman driving the other pickup truck. Both drivers had been drinking. The accident happened almost right in front of the house of Vincent and Mariddie Craig.

Who crossed the line? I don't know.

Randy died three months before the birth of Jacob, his first grandchild.

Less than a year-and-a-half later, we moved to the reservation and I took over the job of producing the tribal newspaper. Sometimes, in the early days as I wandered about the reservation, I would track down someone who I needed to talk with and/or photograph, a person who would see a white man coming with a camera, pen and notepad and would grow wary to the extreme.

Still, I would introduce myself.

"Say," aren't you Randy Roosevelt's son-in-law?" the person would then invariably ask. "Randy was my friend. He was a good man. You're okay, then."

That's how it would go.

I often think back to our wedding. It was a quiet, beautiful and special experience, yet when I think about it I truly do wish that we had not begun our life together with a temple wedding.

Randy, Rose and the whole Roosevelt family should have been present to witness our ceremony. It is not right that they were told they were not worthy to attend the wedding of their own daughter and sister.

I'm sorry, my good, faithful, Mormon friends and relatives, but it just isn't.

They were denied too many things because of a larger society that deemed them to be less worthy than they. They should not have been denied our wedding. I feel badly that I allowed it to happen this way.

If I write fewer words here than I did for my natural dad and my father-in-law, it is not because the late Ben Ahmaogak, Sr., my Iñupiaq dad, is any less deserving, but only because I did not intend to write so much as I did and I do not have the time to keep going on like this. 

Father's Day is half over here in Alaska, which means it is more than half over in the rest of the world and in some places, it is over altogether. Soon, my children will arrive for dinner.

Plus, I have this idea in my head that in the future will enable to tell the bigger story of how Ben took me into his Wainwright whaling crew, Iceberg 14, and beyond that, into his large, extended family, so I will save my longer writings about him for that time.

Certainly, I have more dramatic pictures of Ben than this one, but I chose it because of all the men that I ever met, he was at once one of the smartest, toughest, most skilled and daring, yet most humble and gentle.

I should say, too, that this is also true of Jonathan Aiken, Sr., Kunuk, who also took me into his crew and let me follow them for four years. They never referred to me as their adopted son, but our relationship was close and they feel like family to me as well, as does Elijah and Dorcas Rock and, to one degree or another, every hunting crew that I have followed. 

In this picture, Ben serves tea to the guests who have come to the Nalukatak, the whale feast, that he hosts with wife Kanaaq and family. As the whaling captain who caught the whale that came to his village and provided the sustenance for this feast and beyond, his status is as high as status can go. He was worked hard and long and no one could hold it against him if he were to just sit back now, relax, enjoy the feast, and let the young girls serve the tea.

But he doesn't do that. He walks through the crowd himself, serving tea to all who desire it.

He is a humble man, that's why.

I included Margie in my Mother's Day tribute, and so I guess I must include myself on Father's Day. I feel odd about this, because I am acutely aware of my great failings as a father and husband. I do not say this to be modest. It is just fact. 

Although I always hate to leave my family and home, I am a wanderer and probably spent close to half of the time that my children were growing up wandering away, to other places.

Nor was I much of a teacher. I started out trying to teach my children right and wrong as I had been taught, but the more I thought about things the less it all added up for me until finally I did not know what to teach them. So I basically taught them nothing, but left them to try to figure life out and learn things as their consciences saw fit.

They grew up, however, with an excellent mother and that was what I did right as a dad - I made her their mother. I believe that I did one other thing right as well. I loved my children and they always knew it. No matter what else I did or how often absent I was, they always knew that I loved them.

This is what I will say then about my children - they are all good people, each and every one. They live in various degrees of confusion, as do we all, whether we admit it or not, but they are fundamentally good people.

And if anyone says anything to the contrary about any one of them that person is wrong and speaks falsely.

It took him a long time to get there, and so far not one other child of mine has followed suit, but now my oldest son is a dad twice over.

Sometimes, he might a be tad over-indulgent but I have to say he is a much better dad to Kalib and Jobe than I ever was to him. He showers love and attention upon them and makes certain that they get to experience many things.

To all you dad's out there:

Happy Father's Day!

It's a hard challenge, but it's worth it.

Royce, the cat who was always looking for love: December 31, 1994 - June 15, 2010

There is a certain pain that sometimes strikes me in the prostate when I am sleeping and it is horrible. It usually lasts somewhere between half-an-hour and an hour and then it goes away and I can go back to sleep. I had barely fallen into a strange, colorful and bizarre dream that was taking place simultaneously in three separate frames when that pain woke me at 12:20 AM Tuesday morning.

I did not want to believe it was coming on, because I never want to believe it. I always want to imagine that if I just think it gone it will be gone and I can sleep on. It never works that way. Only the cats and I were home. Margie had gone to spend the week in town babysitting Jobe and Caleb was at work.

I waited for the pain to go away as usual, but it did not. One AM passed, then 2:00, then 3:00. About 3:20, just because I wanted to change my surroundings, I left my bedroom and headed to my office, where I stayed for somewhere between two and three minutes, then turned to go back into the house.

When I opened the garage door into the living room, I smelled something horrid. Then I saw Royce, lying very still on the checkered rug somewhere between two and three feet from the door, eyes open, the left side of his face against the rug, his front paws framing his face. He looked dead. I could see no breath. I could hear no sounds.

His eyes did not blink.

He had not been lying there when I had entered my office, but now he was. I knelt down beside him and placed one hand on his chest. Suddenly, without moving his body, he took a gasp of a breath, then lay still again. Perhaps 30 seconds later, he took another breath.

I could see that nothing could be done for him. He was dying, but why? It looked to me as though he had been struck down. The only thing that I could think of was maybe he had a stroke. I wondered if he was suffering? I ran my hand up to his windpipe and for a moment thought that maybe I would just squeeze and end any pain that he might be experiencing.

But I couldn't. He was going. He was leaving this world and if he had any consciousness at all I did not want his final memory to be of me choking him. Plus, he did not look to be in pain. So I just sat with him, stroking him, saying a few things to him now and then, waiting for him to die. Every now and then, I would grab a paper towel and pick up the poop that kept coming out of him.

I put another tissue under his face to catch the drool.

Fifteen minutes passed and he was still alive. I hated the fact that he was lying on the floor, dying on the dirty rug, so I went back into my office and got the little bed that I had made nine years ago for Jim from a Mac laptop computer box, placed Royce in it then sat on the couch with him on my lap.

Chicago and Jim quickly joined us. Chicago positioned herself at the head end of the box, Jimmy on the arm rest. Pistol-Yero came, but sat on the far arm of the couch.

Remember, Chicago and Royce have always been friends. I wondered what she knew?

Just before Royce died, she climbed up to the back of the couch, crossed behind me, then put her paws on my shoulder, her face next to my face. At the moment Royce died, about 4:05 AM, Chicago was looking into the box, right at him. I took the above picture very shortly afterward.

I remained where I was with Royce on my lap and one hand stroking him for another hour. I called Melanie but got no answer. I sent text messages out to everybody. Rex called back within minutes. Then Melanie called.

Finally, I put Royce on a high shelf in the garage and then went back to bed. It was nearing 5:30 AM now. As usual when I go to bed, Jim and Pistol-Yero joined me. A few minutes later, I heard a mournful, mournful, sorrowful cry out in the hallway. It was Chicago, who never sleeps with us.

I got back up, opened the door and saw the wailing Chicago down the hall. She stopped her cry, came running to me. She followed me to the bed, jumped up and crawled under the covers with me.  It had never happened this way before. There she stayed until 8:00 AM, when the phone rang and I had to get up.

I hung up the phone and went back to bed, but it rang again about two minutes later. It was all business stuff. I decided just to stay up and go get breakfast at Family Restaurant. I got a good seat in the corner with my back to the wall and a window to look out of.

Soon, I heard a distant whistle, then a low rumble. The train came along.

My order came not long afterward. As I was eating it, I was surprised to hear another whistle, and then to feel another rumble in the earth.

It was a two-train breakfast.

That doesn't often happen.

In the afternoon, after I had gone out to deal with a bizarre happening that I will one day write about but not yet, I was in the car and came to a stoplight, right alongside and just beneath this car.

In the evening, beginning with Lisa, the family began to trickle in from Anchorage for the funeral. She had left work early this day to go home and be with her two cats. I still had Royce in the box in the garage. She went to see him and wept.

Melanie arrived later. She spent some time playing with Kalib, who was a bit sick, then came out to see the kitten that she had loved from the day it left the womb, the kitten that I had told her we could not keep, but when I saw the love I had tied a blue ribbon around his neck and then presented him to her on her birthday.

Now, she petted him and then began to work the knots out of his fur.

Then she got a cat brush and smoothed him out real good. I was amazed at how good he looked when she was done.

The boys set about to dig the grave as Lisa gathered rocks to place atop it.

According to the Navajo belief she lives by, at this stage in her motherhood Lavina could not look upon Royce, nor could Kalib or Jobe. She could fix dinner. She did. Corn chowder.

We brought Royce outside for the final viewing. Everybody shared a memory or two or three or more of him. 

When Jacob remembered how Royce had once saved him from getting a speeding ticket, everybody laughed. Tomorrow, I will put up series of pictures of Royce in life and will include that story as well as others.

Margie chose this blanket to be his burial shroud, as she had often observed Kalib and Royce together on or near this blanket. Kalib would point to the different squares as Royce watched attentively. Now she wraps him in it.

Muzzy and Royce were friends.

Royce was Melanie's cat. She carries him to his grave.

Before Royce goes into the earth, Lisa holds him and weeps. Then I take him and lower him into the hole, which is deeper than my arm is long.

Melanie scoops up dirt to gently place directly atop him before the rest is shoveled in.

Once Royce was in the earth and could not be seen, Kalib was allowed to come to the grave. He picked a wild rose and brought it to his good friend. Long time readers know of this amazing relationship shared between the baby and the cat, but, for those who don't, I will address it in tomorrow's post.

Kalib placed several flowers and several rocks upon the grave. Lisa put the golf ball there.

There is so much more that I wanted to write in this post, as I placed the above pictures, but it is now 2:07 AM the next day, I have not even taken a nap and I need to drive into Anchorage early in the morning. I need to get some rest, sometime, so I will go to bed now, sleep a bit, take a quick look at this before I leave for Anchorage and then hit, "published."

So this is it. Never again will I pet this cat or hear him purr.

If I had known that, I would have picked him up repeatedly on Monday. He would have purred and purred and purred.

I just didn't know. I thought he was getting better.

Cibecue Creek, part 4: We frolic at the magical falls; Jacob does a back-flop, Rex gets dizzy; we hike out in a race against darkness

As an old man watching from an audience of stone faces observes with a wry smile, Caleb takes a big leap and plummets into the pool below Cibecue Falls.

How could a place where spirit faces peer out from ancient stone be anything but magical?

You can be certain that when Jacob - who was actually the first to jump and jumped the most - hit the water on this plunge, he felt it. It stung; it felt for a moment like he had fallen into concrete. Later, when I asked him what in the world ever got into him to try it this way, he told me he thought that he could complete the rotation before he hit the water.

Remember, my children grew up in Alaska and never had much of an opportunity to hone their water-sport skills.

It looks to me like that old man who peers out from the rocks chuckled a bit as Jacob plunged past.

Even so, Jacob swam away feeling good about the experience.

I think he could have kept at it for hours - if we had hours available to keep at it. We didn't. The sun had long since left the canyon and we knew it would be getting dark soon.

It looked like a decent enough jump for Rex...

...but when he first tried to emerge from the water, he found that he had become dizzy, unable to stand. It took awhile, but finally Rex recovered enough to rise. He took no more jumps after that. Water had gotten into his ears and would stay there for a day or two.

Charlie hit okay.

As all this was going on, Kalib engaged in a game of "throw the rock." His mother stuck close by to guide and watch over him.

Lisa didn't jump, but she did swim a bit.

Melanie spent some time floating in the shallow end of the pool, where the jumpers would not come down on top of her.

As for me, I spent too much time trying to photograph it all with my pocket camera. Finally, I decided to go up and jump, but because of my shoulder, I began to climb very slow and deliberate, and then realized that it was going to take me so long that I had better abandon it, if we were to get out of the canyon before dark.

Anyone can believe that I just chickened out, should they choose, but anyone who knows my history in this life would know that is not true.

Still, I can't stop anyone from believing whatever they are going to believe.

Even before the jumping finished, everyone posed for a picture... well, not quite everyone...

Now it's everyone.

Before we began the hike out, we refueled on mangos, a giant sandwich, oatmeal bars, assorted berry candy and other delicacies.

Now we knew we had to hurry, if we were to get Kalib out by dark. Kalib himself gamely plunged forward.

Sometimes, he needed a little help - but remember, he is only two-and-a-half years old. I think he was doing pretty well.

Once he fell and completely submerged. Cibecue Creek took the hat that he had borrowed from Jobe and swept it right off his head. Still, he got up and forged on.

Not withstanding the big hurry that we were in, we had to stop when Kalib needed another diaper change. A dark rock was releasing the heat that it had gathered from the sun back into the cooling air, so, while Lavina changed the diaper, my fellow hikers laid down upon that rock to absorb some of that solar warmth themselves.

After his diaper had been changed, Kalib found a big stone and played, "strong man."

Now we had to hurry as fast as was safe to go. The sun had officially set - even above the canyon walls. Arizona is not like Alaska, where daylight lingers long even after the sun goes down. In Arizona, after the sun goes down, dark comes fast.

When we reached the small dirt and gravel parking where Cibecue Creek empties into the Salt River, the light was just about gone.

Before we could drive away, Lavina had to change Kalib's diaper one more time. She had only the light of the inside car lamps to work with. After spending six hours with his feet either submerged in water or held in soaked shoes, Kalib's feet were wrinkled to the extreme.

He was also extremely drowsy. At the moment his mom finished changing his diaper and strapped him into his car seat, Kalib fell asleep.

As we drove through the night along the dirt and gravel road that follows the Salt River toward the highway, the moon rose over the canyon walls.

Kalib slept all the way back to LeeAnn's house - a drive of about an hour-and-a-half. He did not wake up when Jacob unstrapped him and carried him inside. He did not wake up when his grandma took him from his dad so that she could hold him on her lap and love him.

He did not wake when his mother got him ready for bed. He did not wake when she put him to bed. He slept until the following morning.

It was a well-earned sleep.

I think he did pretty damned good.

Remember - he is only two-and-half.

Cibecue Creek, part 3 of 4, possibly 5: We happen upon a frog, experience a bit of adventure, then hike into a place of magic

I will begin with the frog, which we happened upon shortly after we started to hike. As you can see, it was a tiny frog, but it brought to mind a bigger frog that I encountered very near to this place over 30 years ago. On March 10, I wrote a bit about my friend Vincent Craig, who was fighting the cancer that on May 15 took him.*

One of the experiences that I recounted was a nighttime rescue that he led that took place in a canyon cut out by one of the creeks that flows out of the White Mountain Apache reservation into the Salt River.

Perhaps it was this very creek, Cibecue. I cannot remember for certain, as we did the hike in and out and scaled the cliffs from which two waterfalls fell in the darkness of night. I have no visual memories of the terrain through which we hiked.

This creek does lead to a couple of falls, however, and it is a creek that is sometimes visited by non-tribal members, such as the blond woman who fell on the cliff and broke her leg.

There is another creek further upstream that also does. So it could have been either one. Somewhere, I have it written down and stored away, but that document would be hard to find and I haven't the time to look for it.

Near the beginning of that rescue hike on that night three decades ago, I was stumbling about on the rocks as we worked our way upstream when suddenly I felt something cool and clammy plop down upon my left wrist. "Snake!" was my immediate thought - "rattler" in particular. I let out a little shriek, but kept enough composure not to jerk my hand away until I knew what was on it and what it was doing.

I transferred the beam of my flashlight from the rocks below my feet to my wrist and there saw the startled eyes of a big frog, looking back at me.

Lisa holds the frog out for Kalib to see. Kalib cautiously touches it.

From the moment we came upon the creek and I looked at the walls rising into mountains on all sides of us, this line from Vincent's song, Someone Drew a Line, came into my head: "Between The Four Sacred Mountains we lived in harmony..."

These were not The Four Sacred Mountains that Vincent wrote about, yet, in their way, I believe all the mountains to be sacred and so it seemed appropriate. This song would stay in my head throughout the hike - for every minute of it, every second. Not for a moment would it leave me.

Sometimes Kalib hiked on his own power. Sometimes, he would be carried - either by his dad or his uncles, Caleb, Rex and Charlie.

Due to my shoulder, I could not carry him.

Mostly, we hiked through water. Before we started to hike, the heat had felt oppressive and I had wondered how we were going to do it. The water mitigated that heat. It turned out to be no problem at all.

Jacob trips and goes down while carrying Kalib.

Jacob gives Kalib an assist up a boulder, to his waiting mother.

There, atop the boulder, she changes his diaper, then helps him into a new one. Let no one doubt - she will pack the dirty diaper all the way up and all the way out. Other than temporary footprints, we would leave no sign of ourselves behind.

Kalib splashes water.

Jacob and Lisa hiking up Cibecue Creek.

Lisa comes to a big rock. She debates whether to go over it or around it.

She chooses to go over it. I walk around and get this picture of her as she tops it.

Although everyone had spread apart, we somehow all came together at this point. Something in the sky then caught everyone's attention.

It is a magnificent bird - a turkey vulture. At this moment, I kind of wished that I drug along my big cameras and my 100 to 400 zoom, but it was really nice to hike with a just a little tiny camera that I could slip in and out of my t-shirt pocket.

As everyone was gathered in one spot, we decided this would be a good moment to make a good group portrait - sans me. Kalib had grown hungry and so dug into his nose to see if might find something good to eat there.

He did. And he ate it.

Rex carries Kalib as we continue on.

Jacob and Lavina, hiking through the water.

Lavina and Jacob, stepping out of the water.

Melanie pauses by a big rock.

Kalib rests upon a rock.

Jacob and Rex survery the terrain ahead.

Jacob climbs over a rock and comes upon this drift log, wedged into a crevasse. "It looks just like a big b..." he exclaimed. I will leave the "b..." to your imaginations.

I will probably get in trouble with some of the female members of the family for even having said just this much.

Jacob climbs out onto the log and waves at Kalib, who is still working his way in this direction.

Uncle Caleb assists nephew Kalib as he works his way over a series of big rocks alongside water that was too deep to walk through.

Kalib tops the rock. Caleb offers him a "high-five."

Melanie finds a very pretty rock, which she shows to everybody. 

She by-passes a deep pool via a well-scuplted boulder. By now, we can hear the distant roar of a water fall. It sounds kind of like a jet.

As we move upstream, past cutouts in the rock, the roar of the falls grows louder.

And here it is, the lower of the two Cibecue Falls. It feels as though we have hiked into a place of magic.

Tomorrow: We frolic in the place of magic.

*Today, June 6, would have been Vincent Craig's 60th birthday. Today, his mother Nancy Mariano passed away, also from cancer. 

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

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

Soon, we all did: Melanie and Charlie.

Charlie and Lisa.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is he, Jack Dalton.

Lisa and Rex can be seen behind him.

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

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

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

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

Poof Cat.

Poof Cat, again.

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

Immediately after I asked, she pranced into view.

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

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

My day was made.

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

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

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

Soon, he tucks himself in next to Margie.

Then he moves to my lap.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you, smahoney!