As I continue to contemplate the future of this blog, I happen upon two moose, a kid exits a school bus and I prepare to fly to Barrow

I know - as moose pictures go, this one is fairly boring - but this is the moose picture that presented itself to me today as I set out on my walk, so it is the picture that I got.

And this is the kid-getting-off-the school bus picture that presented itself after I had walked about two miles and was returning home.

I must keep this post short. In just hours, I board a jet to Barrow and before I do, I've got to get a haircut, pick up my once broken but now repaired 16-35 mm lens as well as some other supplies and eat some tacos or something.

I fear that for the next week, my posts are likely to be tiny, next to nothing - which is the irony that I always face when I am in the field. I will be shooting pictures like crazy and I should get some pretty decent ones, but I will not have time to edit them, I will not have time to process them, my internet connection will be slow and I will be using my laptop, which is still malfunctioning because I have not been able to repair it, so I will not be able to post anything more than a token image or two per day.

I will do my best to post something every day. I can't promise, but I will do my best.

And for all of you who gave me suggestions regarding my contemplation about the future of this blog, be assured that I have read them all and am thinking about what you say.

I expect to return to Wasilla early next week and then to stay home for about three weeks before I head back into the field for a more extended stay.

I will continue the contemplation at that time and, before that three weeks is over, will seek to take at least one concrete step towards that future.

I've got to go now.

I am a very shy person, but I know that I am going to have to dance in front of a large audience at least a couple of times before this week is over.

I know it. There is no way out around it. I am going to have to do it.

I will try to make it fun.

Three from India: Bill, Vijay, and Melanie

Yesterday, my nephew Vijay left a comment on a recent post in which he made a request that I pull up a picture that he took of me at Mahabalipuram-Mamallapuram, the place where a temple is carved out of a rock.

So, as ridiculous as I look, I honor his request. You will note that my shirt is soaked with sweat. That is because it was 198.6 degrees F there. I am not kidding. I am not exaggerating. That's how hot it was.

And that was the coolest that it got the whole time that Melanie and I were in India.

This is Vijay himself, and Vasanthi, who is also his mom.

And here is Melanie, wandering about inside the temple cut out of a rock, the temple that was never finished.

I will not be able to post India pictures while I am in Barrow, but be certain, I will be remembering, continually.

View images as slide show

Contemplating the future of this blog, part 1

On a painful day in the recent past, I wrote of how I once heard a teenage girl speak a name and immediately fell in love with the woman named, a woman who I had never yet met but who would become my wife and the mother of my children.

The girl who spoke Margie's name was Martyna White Hawk, Lakota of Manderson, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

One week ago, I received a Facebook message from Martyna in which she told me that on January 25, she was going to hold a memorial walk for the three children of hers who had been killed one year before in a terrible traffic accident. MADD - Mothers Against Drunk Driving - was going to walk with her and she hoped that the Lakota Times might come and cover the event.

As soon as I learned this, I just wanted to drop everything and go. I wanted to be there.

Yet, the total sum of my business and home checking accounts, plus the one cent still left in my savings account, did not add up to the required airfare from Anchorage to Rapid City, or the rental car that I would need from there.

I checked my frequent flier miles and came up 10,000 miles short.

I sent an email to an important person in the photographic world who works at a national blog that has plans to soon feature some of my work to see if by any almost impossible chance he might be able to help me get there.

He responded that he was moved by the story but did not have any resources available to help me do it.

So I had no choice but to resign myself to the fact that I could not go and to hope only that the Lakota Times would show up and they would do a good story and that I could read about it there and post a link here.

The night before the walk was scheduled to take place, Margie had gone to town to babysit Kalib and Jobe and so I had stayed up almost all night, pittering away at my computer. When she is gone, it is very difficult for me to make myself stop what I am doing and go to bed. Even so, as has so often been the case these past couple of months, once I did go to bed, I was only able to sleep briefly before I awoke, exhausted, yet unable to sleep further.

So I got up, thinking maybe I would walk to Family Restaurant - but that would be close to an eight-mile walk, roundtrip, and while I could use an eight-mile walk, I didn't have time for it.

Just as I was about to cook oatmeal, Caleb pulled into the driveway, home from his all-night shift at Wal-Mart. "You can take my truck," he said.

So I did. And here I am - at Family Restaurant, once again, eating breakfast and photographing reflections in the window.

The day must come - IT MUST COME - when this blog and its evolution gains enough resource that if I suddenly find I have the need to drop everything, hop on a jet and go to South Dakota, I can go. 

In one month, Sujitha and Manoj will experience a formal Hindu wedding in Bangalore. Those who have been with me since the day that I mentioned how Martyna spoke Margie's name know why it would be important for me to be there.

Last winter, my dear and best friend down in Arizona, Vincent Craig, lay in a hospital bed, battling cancer, and I wanted to drop everything and go see him, but I couldn't, until late May, and then I got there and stepped into his hospital room just hours before he died.

While I was glad that I made it, I should have been there in time to sit down with him, talk with him, joke with him, laugh with him, cry with him, but I didn't make it and I will regret that for the remainder of my days.

And then all that happened in India in November - I want to say that I should have been able to hop on a jet at the first notification to scoot right down and then maybe that could have changed at least the final, tragic, outcome but, you know what?

After someone dies in India, things happen so fast that even if I had left on the next scheduled flight, it would have all been over by the time the plane touched down in Bangalore.

Yet, still I should have been able to jump on that plane and if I had possessed the resource, I surely would have and maybe... maybe... I can't be sure... but maybe just the knowledge that someone was coming from Alaska could have forestalled and then prevented the outcome which has now become destiny - but it did not need to be destiny.

Destiny only becomes firm once it has happened and then it seems as if it was always going to be destiny and that it was just beyond anyone's ability to change it. But before any one destiny becomes set and firm, other destinies abound in endless possibility and this could have come to a different destiny.

Anyway, I am rambling, going off track. I did not mean to go here. I only meant to state that this blog must find a measure of self-sustaining independence so that when the need arises, I can get up and go to wherever it is that I need to go at the time.

Or, if I just need to stay home for awhile, I can stay home. I can't always do that, either, you know. Sometimes, I want to stay home, but I must go.

The kids in this bus, btw, might have wanted to stay home on this, the morning of Martyna's memorial walk, but they had to get up, get dressed and go.

Not a single one of them were thinking of Martyna, or of her children, but I was.

I fear that I have rambled too much, and have missed the opportunity to delve into today's headline, "contemplating the future of this blog."

I spend a fair amount of time thinking about different options that I might pursue to find the means to fund this blog and to build it in to what I want it to be, but I think it is time for me to stop just thinking about it, to write it down, and start coming up with a plan to achieve it.

It can be done - I am certain of it - but not if I just keep going as I am going.

So, I was going to begin that effort, right here, today. I was going to write down some of what I hope to do and to contemplate the possibilities of getting me there. While I do not expect any readers out there to have the answer for me, if any had any input or ideas after reading what I thought would write about today, then I would have been very glad to read those ideas.

But I have used up all my blogging time and then some, and have already written more words than most readers are likely to read.

This is a cat, by the way - a black cat that has just crossed the road in front of me. So maybe some good fortune will come my way.

One thing that bothers me about this blog is how small the horizontal pictures appear.

So small that the cat barely appears at all.

This is the same frame, cropped. Now you can see the cat better, but I prefer the full-frame, horizontal image. It just does not work so well on this blog. It works a little better in slide show view.

Anyway, since I blew it today, I will change the title of this post to "Contemplating the future of this blog, part 1." I will continue this discussion tomorrow in "part 2".

I have run out of time to even jump into my India folder to randomly grab an image. Even so, I have been posting the India images to accomplish a specific purpose, and in this post that purpose has already been accomplished.

This image, by the way, is from the drop-in to Metro Cafe that I made with Margie the other day.

View images as slides

Shortly after yesterday's flurry of excitement, I see blured kids through a school bus window

I came upon a bit of excitement yesterday, a bit after noon. I photographed it, alright, but the only image that I am going to post today is this one, taken shortly after the excitement had ended, about two miles away from the scene.

Actually this was pretty exciting too, and Kalib would have really been excited if he could have been with me. "Bus!" he would have shouted. "Bus! Bus!"

Kalib just loves school buses.

For now.

As to the big flurry, I will wait to post my documentation of it until Monday. I wait because the number of visitors to this blog tend to fall down a bit on weekends and so I will save it for Monday, when those readers who disappeared to recreate or whatever come back.

I will give you a few clues as to what the subject matter might be:

You know that most days when I am home, I stop at Metro Cafe and then go driving on roads that this time of year can be icy. I often see trucks on those roads, even Kenworth trucks, and I pass horses and sometimes, even people riding horses. Sometimes, perhaps, there could even be a famous person riding a horse and I might not even know it. You know, too, that I took this blog to India for Soundarya's wedding, and found that the highways there can be very scary, and you know that just last week, all the major news and propaganda networks were also busy in India.

So there you go. With clues like that, you should surely be able to guess what yesterday's flurry of excitement was all about.

Skateboarder gets caught in the snow - and other scenes from a hopeful but rather minor and insignificant fall

It snowed a little bit yesterday. Not much, and today it appears to mostly be melting in the searing, unseasonable, 40 degree heat, but it was enough to give me a little hope.

Perhaps this guy can soon trade his skateboard in for a pair of skis.

I know, it doesn't look like it, but it is snowing in this picture. The temperature is 33 degrees. If you could see the full-size version of this, the cross that marks Grotto Iona would be clearly visible at the end of the visible part of road, by the west-bound car. You can somewhat make the cross out in the slideshow version, but to get the full impact, you need to see the full-rez version, which, unfortunately, I can't put in this blog.

By the time I reached this trail 10 minutes later, it was beginning to stick.

Our back yard.

The people who live in this house got cold, so they built a big fire outside and opened up the garage door to let the heat come in and circulate through the house. Personally, I can think of more efficient ways to heat a home.

Shrock Road.

Corner Study.

Then I drive over the Little Su, where Rex, Ama and I hung out just the day before.

They say this is a La Nina year and that the La Nina is the strongest that it has ever been since the mid-50's. La Nina years are supposed to be cold. They are the years that the cold Arctic air masses that come from the north completely overpower the warm flow that comes up from the south, off the Pacific.

So far, though, it is warm - very warm for this time of year.

Even so, the frogs have buried themselves in the mud where they will remain frozen until breakup.

View images as slide show

they will appear larger and look better

Budding artist in school bus; Wasilla's quiet condos on the edge of the Alaska wilderness; four kids walking

This is one of those days when I had a fairly extensive post planned, but I can find no time to post it. So I will hold off on that material and post it tomorrow, by which time I may or may not have my car back from the shop, and do short, quick, simple post.

Who knows when I can get my car back?

For those of you who fear the economic impact I will face by having my car in the shop for major repairs - don't worry. It is all under warranty.

Anyway, yesterday, as I waited in the Kendall Ford temporary replacement car at the left-turn lane at stoplight, this kid rolled past in a school bus and looked right at me.

I am quite certain that this kid is an artist with latent talent of the highest calibre. I am equally certain that, one day in the not terribly distant future, he will be enrolled at the nationally prestigious Girdwood School of the Highest Kind of Hiigh Art and, as instructed, he will open up his electronic textbook to page 32 and there, he will see this photo highlighted as the supreme example and the highest Highest Kind of High Art.

He will look at it and say,

"I find something oddly familiar about this picture - almost like I was there when it was taken."

He will get a large print of it, hang it on his wall and it will inspire him to endure the trials of a long and tormented life in pursuit of art and to go on to create the second-greatest Highest Kind of High Art ever produced.

Wasilla's most exclusive, quiet condos, built on the edge of the Alaska wilderness, directly across the Parks Highway from Dairy Queen, McDonald's, Pizza Hut and Wasilla Lake.

If only I could afford to join them, I would live here, too!

Four kids walking, as seen in passing from my Kendall Ford temporary replacement car. More on this tomorrow. It is an exciting and earth-shaking story - one you will not want to miss.