For seven years, she refused to date him when he would show up at the motel; now they have been married seven years; a temple blessing; contemplating, part 2, on hold

As you can see, I wound up at Family Restaurant again this morning, but for a different reason. Jobe has been vomiting again, so Margie left at about 8:30 this morning to drive into town so that she could babysit him. I figured that it might be my only chance to ride in a car today, so I had her drop me off at Family on her way. I took this image after breakfast, as I was beginning my walk home, maybe a bit less than four miles. It was a bit after 9:00 AM. This may look dark for 9:00 AM to some of you, but for us, it is amazing to see how quickly the light is coming back.

As I walked along Lucille Street a raven would come flying by, always headed south, directly over the road, every few minutes. They all looked pretty intent to reach their destinations. I figured that these were ravens who nest out in the hills near the foot of the Talkeetna Mountains, but make their living in downtown Wasilla, primarily off the food that people discard - the ravens that I see at Taco Bell, Carl's Jr., McDonald's and such.

It was morning, and these ravens were going to work.

It was garbage pick-up day in our neighborhood.

As I did not have a car and had already walked four miles, I figured that I would just skip my Metro coffee break and listen to the news in my office while I edited pictures. But about 3:30, I was overcome by a strong desire to get out of the office, so I took off on foot for Metro Cafe. It was snowing now. 

Here I am, walking down Lucille Street, toward Metro. Look how heavy the traffic is! Yet, it is too early for people to be coming home from work. Why are all these folks driving down Lucille?

I arrived at Metro a little before 4:30, closing time being 5:00. Carmen invited me to look at her wedding album. They got married seven years ago, when she was 38, Scott 48. It was his third, her first. She met him when she was working at the Best Western Motel on Spenard in Anchorage. He would sometimes come and check in for the night on his way to and from the Arctic Slope oil fields and each time he did, he would ask her out. 

Each time, she would say no. He would tell her that one day they would marry, she would be his wife and would have his babies. She would say, "no!" This went on for seven years. Finally, she agreed to go to a movie with him, just to put an end to all the nonsense and get him out of her life. Anyway, she was Catholic and he was not.

That one date led to the marriage. It could not take place in the Catholic church, but "God knew what he was doing when he brought us together," Carmen says.

Scott has completed all of his cancer treatment and has finally gone back to work on the Slope, where temperatures have been running in the -50 range, with -75 and even -95 windchills. Carmen says he is finding the cold a bit hard to take, given the aftereffects of his radiation and chemo treatments.

I hear that it is warming up now - into the -30's and -20's.

This is Ryder, who came to Metro Cafe with his mom, Buffy, and his Aunt Danielle. Ryder drank hot chocolate and, except for me, was the last customer to leave.

I had planned to walk home, but Nola offered me a ride. I decided that seven miles was enough to have walked today. I got into the car. Nola brushed the new snow off the window.

Nola drinks a bottle of water as she drives me home.

 Okay - Part 2 of Contemplating the future of this blog will just have to wait until tomorrow. This post is long enough already.

And this one from India:

Inside one of the temples at Pattadakal - blessings are offered.

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It warms up and snows, Carmen and Shoshana, Heaven-bound Christian goes nuckin' futs, dog challenges me to game of chicken; I go bananas

I don't mind cold - in fact, I like cold (although I hate to be cold). But I was getting fed up with this weather: temperatures consistently below zero F - lately most often double digits below, but no real snow on the ground - only ice, crust and frozen earth. I was just getting tired of it.

I wanted some fresh, new, snow to cover it all up but no snow had fallen for weeks. Maybe a month or more. It's been a long time. Down south, I see lots of reports of heavy snow, but up here in the north we have a dearth of it.

And we wouldn't get any more until the temperature warmed up a bit. It never snows when it is cold.

And then... the temperature warmed up to ten degrees above zero - plenty warm enough to snow. And so it began to snow. It wasn't much of a snow, really. Just a dusting.

The ravens enjoyed it, though. Ravens always enjoy the weather, no matter what it is. Or so it seems. I've really never asked a raven about it, but whenever I see ravens, they always look like they are having fun.

I see them in all kinds of weather.

Always having fun.

Ravens enjoy life.

That's why I enjoy ravens so much.

Eagles may be more grand and spectacular, but ravens - they're the smart, clever, mischievous, happy ones.

And the Mahoney horses - they were enjoying the dusting of snow.

And then it turned into slightly more than a dusting. By morning, a few inches had accumulated. Margie took the car, and left me on foot to walk. That other car? That belongs to Caleb. It hasn't really run or gone anywhere in a couple of years or so.

Every now and then, he starts it up just to see if he can still start it up, but it has some problems. Some day, he says, he will sell it.

At 4:00 PM, I stopped at Metro Cafe. The temperature had now warmed up to 18 degrees F. Carmen and Shoshana were marveling over the warm weather and talking about how, when such temperatures first strike right after summer, they come to the window, open it and freeze, then shut it as quickly as they can. Now, 18 degrees feels warm to them. They don't even bother to close the window.

Then Carmen began to tease Shoshana about her new boyfriend. That's what she's doing here. She's teasing Shoshana. When I get a chance to blog the party they invited me to last weekend, I will introduce her boyfriend.

He is very lucky and at the party I told him so.

As Carmen teased Shoshana, I looked in my mirror and saw two of the girls who live just a short distance up the road coming for their afternoon smoothies.

As the girls drew near, Carmen continued to tease Shoshana.

Then the girls were in Metro Cafe. I'm not quite sure how it happened, but, just like that, the oldest and Carmen began to compare their finger nails.

At first, I tried to focus on Carmen's, which were bright red. I didn't realize it at the time, but I missed the focus a bit.

Still, you get the idea.

Then I tried to focus on the girl's nails, which were sort of a fluorescent lemon-lime. I didn't realize it at the time, but I missed the focus by quite a bit. Still, you get the idea.

I would have stayed longer, tried a few more shots and made sure I got the focus, but I was in the drive-through line and I did not want to make anyone coming in line behind me wait until I had my focus perfect, so I drove away with blurry images.

Some photographers aim for perfection. Me, I just want to get the idea down and to tell a story, even if imperfectly.

I hadn't gone far before I found myself stopped at a red light, right behind this car. This should all be quite legible in slide show view, but just in case anyone is having trouble reading everything at this small size, I will interpret the three signs as I understand them, beginning with the fish at lower left. The name, "Jesus" is written in the fish. This tells me that the owner of the car is a Christian.

The license tells me that the owner is "heaven bound."

And the little bumper sticker in the window tells me that the owner is going "nuckin' futs."

This one puzzles me a bit. I have never heard of either of these words, "nuckin'" or "futs."

What does this mean?

Please, someone, tell me!

I start to wander how the Mahoney horses are doing today, so I point the car in their direction. Along the way, I see many exciting and wonderful sights. Here is one of those wonderful and exciting sights.

"How you doing, Mahoney horses?" I shout out the window.

"We're doing good, Bill. How about you?" they neigh in return.

"Could be doing better," I shout back. "But I'm surviving. Don't know how or why, but I am."

"Good," the horses neigh back. "It's better to survive than not to survive."

These horses are wise.

And yet, the time always comes when each one of us, horse and human alike, does no longer survive.

Make of this contradiction what you will.

Next, I come upon a little dog, standing in the road, facing me as I drive towards it. I wonder what the dog intends to do? I slow to a modest speed.

As if I was going fast to begin with.

Why!? The dog comes charging straight at me! The dog wants to play chicken! Foolish canine! Can it not see that I am driving a hunk of steel and it is just a fragile little skin packet of bones, flesh, blood and fur?

I will win this game of chicken, easy.

But I don't win. I chicken out and brake to a complete stop.

The dog stops, too. I would call this a tie.

The dog disagrees. The dog calls this a clear win for the dog.

I'm going nuckin' futs!

Whatever that means. I don't know. I have no idea. But I'm pretty sure that it describes me right now.

And this one from India:

See the hands on this side of the bananas? They belong to my nephew, Vijay Dixit, brother of Vivek who is husband to my sister's daughter Khena and first cousin to Soundarya, which in India makes him kind of like her brother.

One afternoon, Vijay treated Melanie and I to a feast of bananas - including bananas of varieties that we never see here in the US, let alone in Alaska.

For over a year-and-a-half now, Vijay has been waiting for me to post a picture sequence on that feast.

At the beginning of this week, I told him that I would post it for certain this week.

Each day, I thought that I would do it the next day, but then the next day there would be too many images in my regular, current, series for me to post the banana series, as to do so properly I must use several images.

Today, once again, my regular post came in with too many images. I don't know why. It just happens that way. Tomorrow is the last day of the week, so I decided I would post the bananas then. Then, this morning, it occurred to me that tomorrow is a doubly significant day and I must post something else.

So I decided I would wait until Sunday - but Sunday is next week.

So, in order to somewhat keep my promise to Vijay and get at least some banana material up this week, I now post this picture of Vijay in a Chennai fruit store, looking for just the right bananas to stuff into Melanie and me. 

I promise, Vijay - I will keep Sunday's Alaska material light - maybe just one image, perhaps two, no more than three, and I will post the full banana experience that you treated us to.

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A snowball for Soundarya; Margie and I drive off to Anchorage and stop at Metro Cafe; a feeling of peace and serenity; raven stories

Margie started the car with the remote at about 1:00 PM. Maybe five minutes later, I went out to clean the snow off of it as she gathered up the things that we would need to take to the Thanksgiving feast. I scraped the snow off the windshield with my hand. Our snow here, at least in the past, is most often cold, dry and powdery, but this snow was warm and wet, so I packed it into a snowball.

I was trying to decide what to do with the snowball when suddenly I thought about an email that Sandy sent to me just over two weeks ago. She had dreamed that she had been sitting in the living room of our house here in Wasilla with Margie, Kalib and me drinking coffee and then she and I had decided to go on a bike ride.

It was snowing, and she was exhilarated, because snow was new to her. She was enthralled by the view of the mountains around her. We pedaled for awhile and then stopped, so she could play in the snow for the first time in her life. "I behaved like a five-year old," she wrote. She dreamed she made a snowball, smashed it on me and then we got into a snowball fight. 

The dream ended when the sound of Anil's snoring awakened her and she found herself not in Alaska, but back in India.

So, Soundarya, this snowball is for you.

Margie came out, carrying the dough that still needed to spend time in a warm place and to rise before she could bake it into rolls.

She looked so pretty to me, standing in the weak light of a dim winter afternoon, the headlights of the car striking her knees.

I thought about throwing Sandy's snowball at her, but I knew that she would not appreciate getting struck by something cold, wet and hard when she was carrying bread dough. I tossed the snowball into the yard, to join the other snowflakes that were piling up there.

Metro Cafe was closed, but Carmen was having a family and friends Thanksgiving get-together there and had asked me to swing by with Margie on our way to Anchorage.

We swung by. Scott was in the driveway, so we stopped and said "hi" to him first.

Then we pulled up to the window, where Carmen gave us each a coffee and a biscotti and wished us a happy Thanksgiving. Then she was joined by her sister, Teresa, Carmen's son Branson and Teresa's son Evan and together they posed for:

Through the Metro Window, study 242,996.88: Thanksgiving Day, 2010

After we shared our few minutes of smiles and laughter, they returned to their gathering and we drove away. As has been the case for every conscious moment since I learned the news, Soundarya's image was in my mind and grief in my heart.

I felt determined to move forward and to have a wonderful holiday with my family, yet I still felt absolutely, hopelessly, bitterly, crushed. There would be no snowball fight - never. Sandy would never sit in our living room and drink coffee with Margie and me while Kalib performed his antics. We would share no bike rides. She would not look upon Alaska's mountains.

The business of her heart and dreams that she had been laboring to launch in Bangalore would never blossom to fruition.

As we drove through the snow on towards Anchorage, I felt a completely unexpected feeling of peace come upon me. In many ways, I did not want to feel it, because it did not seem right, given that Sandy's many and passionate dreams had all been taken from her, but that feeling of peace was there and it just kept growing stronger.

It felt to me like Sandy was there, right there, in the car with us, here in Alaska, and that this feeling of serenity was coming directly to me from her.

As I have said many times, notwithstanding my religious upbringing, the preaching and testifying that I myself have done in the past and the fact that I constantly intermingle with people of faith, many faiths, so many of them firm and sincere believers striving to make their way through this hard life into the sweet beyond, I know nothing of God or of the hereafter. It is all a mystery to me and will be for as long as I reside on mortal earth.

Yet that's how it felt to me - that this feeling of peace and comfort was coming to me directly from her - that she was there, in a form that I could feel but not see.

She was giving me the feeling that somehow, in the eternal ethereal, it is all okay.

We drove on. Here and there, drivers had slipped on the ice and left the road, this one to tip over.

This one just got stuck.

They have ravens in India too, but they are different than ours - smaller, and while the black of our ravens tends to also reflect a slight, iridescent blue hue, in southern India that reflection seems to lean more toward a burgundy-brown. Sandy loved ravens. Before she got together with Anil, she once brought an injured one into her apartment to care for it. 

When her landlord discovered what she had done, he was outraged, as it is believed by many in India that a raven in the house will bring many years of bad luck and ordered her to get the raven out. She didn't care. She had compassion for the raven and was willing to be booted out of her apartment, if that's what it took to help it.

Later, she found another injured raven when she was out with Anil during their time of engagement. She cradled the raven in her arms and took a seat on the back of her motor bike, behind Anil. As he drove in search of a vet, she sang to the raven.

"What song did you sing to it?" I asked, via internet chat.

I expected her to name a Hindu song, or perhaps an Indian lullaby - something that I would not even know.

"Safe in the Arms of Jesus," she answered.

They found a vet, but the vet wanted nothing to do with the raven. He scolded her for bringing it to him. She scolded him right back with such intimidating force that he relented and treated the raven.

The raven healed, and when it came time to let it loose, a crowd gathered. The raven looked around, flapped its wings and rose above the packed streets of Bangalore. The crowd applauded.

Such was Soundarya!

Well.

I said that I would not let this blog dwell upon the memory of Soundarya, but would move on, just as life always moves on. 

I meant it, too.

But this blog will never forget her, either.

As we drew near to Jacob and Lavina's house in Anchorage, we passed this guy, blowing the snow out of his driveway.

Then we were there - and there was Lavina and Jobe, in the window above, waiting for us to come in and join them - to join the entire family in Alaska, Charlie and his parents included, for Thanksgiving dinner.

That dinner will be the subject of my next post.

Maybe I will get it up today. Maybe not until tomorrow. 

It will be history by then, but so what?

Each action that we take becomes history at the very moment we become aware of having taken it.

I kind of feel like I have blogged enough for today.

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they will appear larger and look better

Transitions: Wasilla to Barrow

Not so long ago, I was in Wasilla. And on the last Sunday that I spent there, Margie and I took an afternoon drive. We past by this church on Shrock Road, which apparently was having its grand opening. It has been under construction for a long time.

Not long after that, I was sitting in a middle seat in a jet airplane between two big guys, flying north, Denali to the west.

And now I am in Barrow, where the temperatures are very mild for this time of year, but it has been windy, blizzardy. This morning, the effort to keep the roads clear was constant.

Even so, I heard several reports on the VHF radio about cars being stuck in drifts here and there. All flights in and out of Barrow had been canceled.

For people driving snowmachines, the drifting snow didn't matter much.

Big, white, limousine gets stuck just beyond Ethan Berkowitz sign

So there I was, yesterday afternoon, tooling down icy, twisty, hilly, Gail Drive at 99.105 miles per hour, listening to All Things Considered and sipping at the Metro Americano that I had just bought from Carmen when I glanced down a side road and saw this limousine, stuck in the snow just beyond the Ethan Berkowitz sign.

I instantly slowed down to 2 miles per hour and shot this image through the open window of the red Ford Escape as I zoomed by.

Three posts ago, I dedicated my entry to the signs being waved at motorists passing through "downtown" Wasilla on election eve and election morning. Most of those signs were for Joe Miller, some for Lisa Murkowski, a few for Sean Parnell, and a couple for Don Young - all Republicans. On the eve, I did see one sign for Young's opponent, democrat Harry Crawford, who went down to defeat. Crawford's sign was dark, was not held up by hands but by a platform, Joe Miller people were in front of it and it could hardly be seen at all.

The next morning, I did find one Scott McAdams sign, standing by itself at the roadside.

Other than that, I saw no Democratic signs in downtown Wasilla, and I saw not one individual holding a Democrat sign.

Subsequently, a few readers left comments to assure me that there were Democrat signs bravely planted in yards and alongside driveways here and there in Wasilla and that two individuals had been "downtown," waving their McAdams signs, apparently about half an hour before I passed by.

Now, here is proof that Democrat signs could be found in Wasilla.

It is too late, of course. The election is over, Sean Parnell remains governor. I have no idea what Berkowitz will do next, or what Diane Benson will do, or Scott McAdams. I believe they all want time to think about it.

Closer crop of the stuck limo.

As I drove on, I found myself facing a dilemma. When I see people get stuck, it has been my life-long practice to stop and try to help out. After I lost my right shoulder and got a new one, I could no longer help if it meant that I had to push, because my shoulder was just too fragile for that.

My shoulder is much stronger now, but still weak. Two nights ago, I filled a five gallon bucket with water that I had removed from one of my fish tanks so that I could replace it with fresh water. I absent-mindedly grabbed the bucket handle with my right hand, lifted it up and began to walk toward my office door.

I didn't get very far, because I suddenly felt the pain and stress in my shoulder and had to put the bucket down.

That was two nights ago.

I still feel the pain in my shoulder - not terribly, but it is there.

"Yes," I told myself, "but if I need to push, I can do it with my left."

And then I noticed the Americano that Carmen had prepared for me, sitting in the cup holder. I picked it up and took a sip. It was good, and hot. If I turned around, went back to the limo and got involved in something, it might be cold when I got back to it. It was nice, cozy and warm in the car, with All Things Considered playing on the radio.

Plus, that limo looked to be really stuck. It was going to take a lot more than me to get it unstuck. And it looked like all efforts to unstick it had come to halt for awhile, anyway. Maybe a big truck was coming to yank it out.

I decided something like that must be the case. I took another sip and drove on.

To see larger slides of the stuck limo, click here.