On their way to the grotto to pray; Rowdy and Oscar; an iPhone look back at New York - young couple on subway, man down on sidewalk

I had stopped to visit Ron Mancil when Patrick Mahoney, owner of the ranch where Ron works, came out from the back on his motorcycle with Mary Angela Wassillie, who lives near Metro Cafe. Mary's mother was ill and in the hospital. "We're on our way to the grotto to pray," Patrick told me.

I pulled out onto the road and they pulled out behind me.

I drove at turtle speed, so that I could take this snap as they passed me.

They then turned off into the grotto - Grotto Iona - to make their prayers. I thought about stopping, too, to visit a little more there, perhaps take a few more pictures. As I related last summer, on that day that I pedaled my bike past the topless lady and then wound up on my knees before the graves of Patrick's parents, I have given myself the assignment to learn about this grotto and the couple who built it and now lie in it.

But I had just met Patrick and Mary. So I drove on and left them to pray alone. There will be time in the future. 

That was two weeks ago, this is yesterday:

I had gone to town for a business meeting and on my way back, I pulled off in Eagle River. Charlie's mom had sent me a Facebook message, asking me to stop sometime when I was passing by. So I stopped in the parking lot by Jitter's coffee shop to call and find out where Jim and Cyndy lived.

As I called, this old car and this young man riding a bike passed by in front of me.

This is Rowdy, ten years old, and those are the hands of Cyndy, Charlie's mom. Rowdy literally smiled at me when we were introduced. I am not kidding. It was a genuine smile. He smiled a few more times and I got my camera out and tried to photograph it, but Rowdy is not named Rowdy for nothing.

He was continually in motion and then he apparently decided that we had known each other long enough and now he didn't need to smile all the time.

So now I have another assignment - to catch Rowdy's smile.

And this is Oscar, their sixteen-year old cat. Not so long ago, Oscar was down to skin and bones and the pigment was gone from his nose. Cyndy and Jim believe it is the homemade food that they began feeding him that has restored him.

That is why they asked me to stop by - Jim had made another batch of food for Royce.

Three leftover iPhone images from New York:

This is from what was supposed to be my final night, before I got stranded at JFK. I had just left Chie Sakakibara and my camera battery was dead. I could not resist this couple riding the subway with me, however, so I used my iPhone.

After the couple got up, these people sat down where they had been.

When I came up the stairs that lead from the subway to the street, I found this scene. I was not exactly certain what was happening nor how I should react. I asked if everything was okay. The man who has a grip on the wrist of the one down on sidewalk said it was. He gave me the impression that he was a police officer, said that he had everything under control. He did not try to stop me from taking a picture, which I figured that someone who was up to no good would do.

I walked away. But now I wonder - what if he was not a cop?

Maybe I should have called 911.

Through the Metro window study - Carmen and Burt; Ron Mancil, horse and boys; deer and hunter/Aaron Fox story rescheduled for tomorrow

I have had to delay the Aaron Fox story for a day, as I find myself short of time to do it justice. Before I left on my recent trip to the East Coast, it was my general practice to create my blog posts late at night and then schedule them to appear at 4:00 AM.

I could not maintain this schedule as I traveled and so found myself making my posts in the morning, before I got into other things. I then decided I would continue to do so after I got home - I would put up my post in the morning, be all done with it no later than noon, and then I would have the remainder of the day, the evening, and the night to do all those other things I need to do.

This is, in fact, what I have done since I arrived home, but today I just couldn't pull it off. Now, I find it is already past noon. I must get a post up before the day grows any older, but it will take me at least a couple of hours to do the Aaron Fox story, so I am going to delay it until tomorrow morning.

In the meantime, here I am, yesterday afternoon, back to my usual, taking my 4:00 PM coffee break, which I began at the drive-through window to Metro Cafe. That's Carmen's brother-in-law, Burt, posing with her in:

Through the Window Metro Study, #6628.

Once again, I took the long way home from Metro and found Ron Mancil with a horse and two boys, up visiting from the Kenai Peninsula. The little boy is Roland. The bigger boy is... G.... G....

Damn! Why doesn't the rest of his name come to me?

I remember the "G," but nothing after that.

I woke up this morning broke. And I mean broke. No means to pay a single bill, not even my house payment, due in two days, or any extra taxes that may be due Uncle Sam the same day. No possibility of any income coming in for at least two weeks, maybe three. After I finish this blog, I am going to call the doctor and cancel the appointment that I have scheduled for tomorrow, because I can't pay for it.

Very soon, I will begin to receive a bunch of irritating phone calls demanding payment from me that I am currently unable to pay.

So I decided to go to Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant and have breakfast. I do have a credit card, after all. Whenever I get down to my last few dollars, I go out to eat. I don't give a damn about wisdom and common sense.

I go out to eat.

After I sat down and placed my order, I noticed this kid sitting across from me, playing with his toy deer, his toy motorcycle and his toy truck. Sitting at the table in front of me was an old man and a young man. I did not eavesdrop on their conversation, but just after I noticed the toy deer, these words rose out of the whispery din of their spoken words, "...go deer hunting."

Strange coincidence, I thought.

The little boy was with his grandma. When they finished their breakfast, picked up their ticket and started to leave, I stopped them and showed them this picture. I told them about this blog and gave them the address. Then I asked for the boy's first name:

Hunter.

Hunter - have a good day. And when I get older and can no longer care for myself or Margie, please remember me, and bring me a slab of venison, or a hind-quarter of moose. I will share it with Margie, and perhaps a tiny piece with any nearby cat who might plead for it.

Margie, by the way, has gone to town to babysit Jobe.

Kalib bonks Mom and Grandma on the head; horses run to Ron; Margie and Jobe

As I leave for Boston, enroute to Nantucket, early Wednesday morning, I had told myself that I would put only one picture in this blog tonight, and write no more than two or three sentences.

But I did not know that Kalib and Jobe were going to drive out with their good mom so that they could see me before I left.

I was conducting a phone interview when Margie came in to tell me they were here and I had to shoo her off. I was talking through an almost invisible headset, so she did not know I was on the phone and kept talking to me even as the person I was interviewing was answering my questions and I was trying to type them down.

When I finished the interview, I came into the house and this is what I found: Kalib, about to bonk his grandma on the head as his mother fed his little brother.

Then he bonked his mom on the head. Thank goodness, he didn't try to bonk Royce.

Next, he bonked himself. He did not try to bonk me. I felt a little left out.

At 4:00 PM, I took Lavina and Kalib to Metro and then we sipped our drinks as we took the long way home and drove past the Mahoney Ranch horses. As you can see, the horses were on the run.

We drove down to the end of Sunrise, turned around and drove back and there we saw Ron Mancil, in the midst of the horses that he had just fed.

As I drove along this road, I thought how quickly I will be in a totally different kind of environment. I am always eager to travel and to see new places and meet new people, but at the same time I always hate to leave home, too.

Margie and Jobe.

At this time tomorrow, I hope to be sound asleep in Massachusetts. 

I'm such an insomniac that I can't guarantee it.

Or I might be working on this blog, posting pictures from my travels.

Now, I must finish packing and then go to bed.

At Family Restaurant, I am reminded of an assignment in my quest to find the soul of Wasilla; a girl squirts ketchup in her face; other moments

When I finally stepped into our room a bit after 5:00 AM to go bed, it was ice cold in there. This is because the five chords of wood that we began the season with is now down to a few sticks, so we had heated the house very conservatively, keeping the bedroom doors closed to hold the heat in the living room and kitchen, which left the bedrooms cold.

Plus, now that it is mid-March and spring draws nigh, the unusually warm weather that dominated December, January and February is gone and the temperature has dropped. I found Margie buried beneath her quilts, sound asleep. Although her knee injuries are much improved, she still must sleep in a bed by herself. Every night, I find myself lonesome for her.

Once I got down to my barefeet and was about to climb into bed, I realized that I needed to medicate Royce, so I did. By the time I was done and ready to finally go to bed, my feet had grown cold. In fact, I was cold all over. I climbed under the covers and waited to warm up.

My body gradually did, but my feet stayed cold. I would fall asleep and then they would wake me up again. Repeatedly. I kept thinking that they would warm up, but they didn't. Finally, after a couple of hours, I got up, put two pairs of socks on and went back to bed.

It didn't help. My feet stayed cold. I kept waking up and a bit after 8:00 AM, I reached a point where I simply could not go back to sleep - although I kept trying until about 8:45. Then I got up and came out here to my office, heated by natural gas, spent a couple of hours on my computer and then headed for Family Restaurant for breakfast.

I had not been there for awhile and I am still waiting for a check that I anticipated receiving last week, so I didn't really have any money to go but I did have a credit card. After staying up almost all night and then not sleeping well, I really needed to go to Family Restaurant for breakfast. Just Family. Nowhere else would do - not even home.

I invited Margie but she did not want to step outside into the cold, not even to pass through the short distance to the car. Plus, although I had been warming the car up for several minutes, she knew that the interior temperature would still be cool, but Caleb had made a fire in the living room so it was warm on the couch. That is where she decided to stay and eat her oatmeal.

When I stepped into the Arctic entry into Family, I saw this gentleman sipping on his coffee, looking right at me through the glass. I did not want to scare him, but it was a scene that I had to photograph and he was agreeable enough and so I did.

Afterwards, I chatted with him for just a couple of minutes and told him about this blog. He asked my name and when I told him, he said, "I've read your blog."

As it turned out, he is Tim Mahoney, son of the late Paul George and Iona Mae Mahoney, whose graves I came upon last summer in Groto Iona, after I pedaled my bike past a bare-breasted young woman and wound up on my knees amidst their graves.

At that time, I gave myself an assignment to learn something about who these two were as part of my quest to find the soul of Wasilla. I have not yet had the time nor have I been organized enough to do so, but I still intend to. Little reminders keep popping up - like my friend, Ron Mancil, appearing as a worker on the Mahoney Ranch, where those horses that I sometimes photograph hang out. Just last week, I received an invitation by email from Matt Mahoney to take a tour of the entire original spread, once summer comes and the snow is gone.

Tim's sister, Paulie, has also been in touch with me and has offered to help.

And today, I found a new reminder in a pair of eyes looking at me over a coffee cup as I entered Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant.

I was surprised when, shortly after I sat down, I saw a waitress who has often waited on me in the past enter the restaurant as just a regular Wasillan. It was Jolene, who you can find waitressing right here. She had told me about her children before, but I had never seen them and now here they were, with her - Javin, Jocelyn and Justice.

They were escorted to the table immediately across the aisle from mine.

Even though I know the names of all the children, and Javin is the little one, I forget which of the two older ones is Jocelyn and which is Justice. The older one took hold of a bottle of ketchup, but she squeezed it too hard and it squirted her in the face.

What kind of Justice is that?

She grimaced as her mother cleaned her face.

There was just enough commotion to catch the attention of the elder gentleman at the next table, who was amused by the whole little mishap.

Then the elder gentlemen visited briefly with young Javin - or perhaps Javen - I really should have followed Journalism 101 practice and asked for the correct spelling, but I wanted my interruption of their meal to be as short as possible so that they could just enjoy their food, along with each other's company.

When I went back to my car, I found this guy and one other, putting up a new sign on the marquee.

At 4:00 PM, I got back in the car and headed towards Metro Cafe for my news break. Michael was out, blowing the new snow out of his driveway. We chatted for a bit. He heads to work at Prudhoe tomorrow, but said when he gets back he will come and get me and we will go to Hatchers and go cross-country skiing together.

I can't believe that I have not been skiing once this entire winter. Last winter, sure, because I was in recovery from my shoulder injury and surgery and it would have been too dangerous. This winter, I have just been too behind and too unorganized, all winter long.

Maybe next week.

On the way to Metro, I drove by this moose, grazing from the Lucille Street bike trail.

Through the Window Metro Study, #392

Carmen, with Shoshanna, who she had just hired to help her out.

This is actually from yesterday, one of the photos that I had planned to use but did not, because I devoted the space to my friend, Vincent Craig.

This is what it looked like on Church Road, as I drove toward the Talkeetna Mountains on my way home. The shortest route would have been for me to turn right, very close to where I took this picture. Instead, I continued straight, then turned left, crossed the bridge over the Little Su and then drove out past Iona Grotto and the Mahoney Ranch.

I looked for Ron but did not see him, so I turned around and came home. That was seven hours ago. I have been here ever since, mostly sitting at my computer but not accomplishing nearly as much as I had intended to.

I will do better tomorrow.

A bald fellow in the parking lot at Carr's; Ron, Milo and the Mahoney horses

I got up late today, never took a walk and, after I ate my oatmeal and read the Sunday paper - or at least those portions that I had not already read online from one source or another - basically spent the entire day sitting in front of my computer, working on a proposal that I must have done tomorrow. I am a long ways from being finished, so, once I finish this blog entry, I will go back to it.

The proposal is a long shot, but I've got to try anyway. I've found that funders have a very difficult time getting past the word, "blog," but the proposal involves this blog and it could make a big difference to it.

The only time that I stepped outside the house was at 4:00 PM. Margie needed to buy a few groceries at Carr's and so I suggested that I come along, sit in the car and listen to NPR while she shopped, and then afterward we could get coffee and go for a short drive.

So this picture represents the first stage of that process. Margie is in the store, shopping for a few groceries and I am sitting in the car, listening to the news and glancing into my rearview mirror.

I wonder what she was going into Carr's to purchase? Cat food, I suspect. And some Vitamin C.

Metro Cafe is closed on Sunday's, so we went through the drive-through at Mocha Moose, then went driving. As we passed by the Mahoney place, I saw the horses that are usually out in the field in this little enclosure. My friend, Ron Mancil, originally of the Arctic Slope, was with them, so I stopped to say hi.

It has been a long time since I rode a horse. Over 30 years. At that time, Margie and I were still living on the reservation and we decided we needed a horse. We heard of one for sale at a ranch immediately over the reservation line, a gray mare, and we were told that it was a very good and gentle horse.

So we drove over. 

Margie climbed on first and that damn good and gentle horse bucked her right off.

So I climbed on and the damn good and gentle horse bucked me off, too.

We decided not to buy it.

Mikey, a horse-shoeing housewife from southern Arizona and a frequent visitor to this blog, could surely have handled that mare, though.

This is Milo. I tried to make friends with him, but he wasn't interested.

Milo prefers the friendship of horses.

Not long after the horse-bucking incident, Margie's family gave me a horse that they had already named, "Billy." Trouble is, it lived in Carrizo Canyon and pretty much went about its business as it wanted and we lived in Whiteriver, 25 miles away.

Every now and then, we would drive through Carrizo Canyon and we might have gotten a glimpse of Billy once or twice, but that was it.

We moved to Alaska shortly after that. Every now and then, we would receive reports that Billy had been seen here or there during family outings up the Canyon, to do things like plant and harvest corn.

I even think Red Nose caught him a couple of times and rode him.

But basically, my horse Billy lived a free life on the reservation and did whatever he wanted.

I have some other horse stories to tell, including my best ones, but it would take more words and time than I am prepared to devote tonight.

So I will save them for another time.

Ron says horses are kind of like "smart moose."

Good thing they don't grow antlers. Someone would shoot them, for sure.

It reminds me of when I was a boy living in Montana, where cows were often referred to as "slow elk."

Local hunters were always gripping about out-of-state hunters who, folk-lore held, came into Montana and shot and even butchered copious numbers of "slow elk."

Milo vigorously rounds up the horses. A good horse dog is indispensable when you live on a ranch.

Just before we left, this black horse suddenly appeared and walked right up to me. I reached out and patted it on the head, then, fearing the horse would not stay long, lifted up my pocket camera and turned it back on, only to discover that it had been on all along. This meant that I had actually turned it off.

The pocket camera does not make transitions quickly. I had to wait for the lens to retract and the camera to shut off. Then, after I pushed the turn on button again, I had to wait for the lens to come back out and the camera to activate itself. By then, the horse felt it had learned whatever it was it needed to learn about me and so left as I quickly snapped this one, out of focus frame.

As you know, I love the pocket camera even better than my big professional cameras, but I tell you, it does cause me to miss a lot of pictures, just by being so damn slow.