I turn the clock back to right side up and fall into wedding preparations; etc - and three Young Writer studies

I decided that it was time to turn the clock back to rightside up. I wasn't certain that I could do it if I didn't absolutely have to - and I didn't have to. But I wanted to see what daylight looked again - even if it was just the muted daylight of Wasilla in December. "If I get up before 11:00, I'm going to go to Abby's for breakfast," I told Margie, just before she went to bed at 1:00 AM.

I stayed up for three more hours. There was no point in trying to go to bed early - I would just lie awake if I did. So, at 4:00 AM, I set my iPhone alarm for 10:00 AM - and then I just lay in bed awake, until close to 6:00 AM. After that, I slept sporadically until a few minutes before 9:00 AM, then I got up, auto-started the car and then, right about 9:00 AM, climbed in and headed over. 

As I drove down Seldon toward Abby's, I got the thrill of my life: I saw a school bus coming.

As I parked, I could see Heather through the window. I could not see Abby. I could not see her truck, either. That's because she was home, visiting grandkids.

When the cafe first opened up on the Fourth of July, Abby tried opening up at 7:00 AM, but that didn't work out too good and it gave her a very long work day, as the restaurant does not close until 8:00 PM. So she tried opening up at 8:00, but that didn't work that great, either. She said that I was about the only one who came at those hours, and since I usually only come once a week, she moved opening time to 9:00 AM.

I was the first customer of the day. I took a seat at the table that I always do if no one beats me to it - the little round one, right by the window adjacent to the door.

There was a card lying on the window sill, so I picked it up to see what it was. I would tell you, but you can see for yourself.

I turned it over to see what was on the backside and found out that the guy on the front was St. Michael. And here was a prayer to him, beseeching him to use his sword against evil on behalf of the supplicant.

A pickup pulled up and a woman got out. I recognized her immediately, so I pointed my camera at her to see what she might look like viewed through the reflections upon the window.

Again, you can see for yourself.

It was Arlene Warrior, who I had first met over 25 years ago when she was Arlene Lord, a student at the University of Alaska, Anchorage. I was working for the Tundra Times then, and was doing a story on Alaska Native students at UAA. 

I don't remember all the details about the interview and the story that I wrote way back then, but I do remember that she hoped that once she got out of college whatever she learned might help her to earn lots of money.

Now she told me that her daughter was getting married December 16, and she wanted me to be the photographer.

Oh, that is always a tough one! 

I am not a wedding photographer.

But how could I say, "no?" I told her to give me a little time to think about it. I told her that if I did it, I would not shoot it like a wedding photographer does, but like a photojournalist.

She said that was good.

I asked if she would mind if I put it on this blog and said that would be fine.

She wondered how much she would pay me.

I didn't know.

When I was in New York in late September/early October, I met a photojournalist who also shoots weddings. He charges $15,000 a wedding and will only shoot on the condition that he will do the editing and pick the pictures, which he then makes a Blurb type book out of. 

He limits himself to six weddings a year. With the income from those weddings, he is then free to go about and shoot the photojournalism projects that he wants. If he doesn't make a lot of money, fine. His wedding work will carry him through.

But there is no way I can charge $15,000 - not even close.

The wedding will be at the Alyeska ski resort. Her daughter will wear a dress that Arlene described as beautiful, white, buckskin. If I remember right, Arlene made it - but maybe it was her daughter or perhaps they sewed on it together.

Arlene went back to the truck and then came back with this piece of moose skin that her mother, who lives in Kaktovik, gave her. Arlene is making it into a wedding shirt for her son, Roland Warrior, who was named after her father, the late Roland Lord.

Arlene and her husband are spending a lot of money on this wedding, but there are two things they are not going to spend money on - liquor and the bar, and the Alyeska Starbucks coffee shop. "I'm not going to get anybody drunk," she explained to me. If any of the guests want to go to the bar and buy drinks for themselves, then that will be fine.

As for the coffee, Arlene says she will not patronize Starbucks. This, she said, is because on 9/11, there was a Starbucks not far from Ground Zero that stayed open. When thirsty firemen, risking their lives in the hope that they might save others, Starbucks made them pay for water, she told me.

So she does not patronize Starbucks, and Starbucks is the coffee shop at Alyeska.

"If people want to go into Starbucks and buy their own coffee, okay," she told me.

Pretty soon, Heather came with my omelette and hashbrowns, cooked by Shelly. Boy, that omelette was good! Abby's Home Cooking produces the best omelettes I have bought in this valley.

As I drove home the moderately long way, this snowplow came charging past.

It was about this same time that my iPhone alarm went off in my pocket.

Back home, Pistol-Yero was chillin' in the warmth of the fireplace.

Before I started to work, I took a walk. This raven came flying by, a feather missing. Did you see the raven, Sandy?

Soundarya? Soundu? 

At 4:00 PM, I headed out on the usual excursion to Metro Cafe, where I shot three Young Writer studies. Here is the first:

Study of the Young Writer, Shoshana, #3222: The young writer smiles as she prepares an order for whomever is inside the truck in front of me.

Study of the Young Writer, Shoshana, #42: The young writer prepares to deliver that order.

Study of the Young Writer, Shoshana, #10,029: Shoshona with her beau, Justin. As you can see they are very happy together. May they long remain so.

I took the long way home. Not as long as some long ways. I didn't drive through Texas. That would have been the long way home. But it was longer than it could have been if I had taken the most direct route, which is very boring and it gets me home too fast.

Along the way, I crossed paths with a school bus.

View images as slides

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.

Jobe on the phone, a biker in the snow, along with other big vehicles; blogging with Jimmy

I can't believe it! It is now already two full weeks since Jobe was born. And I have not laid eyes upon him for 12 days. I have missed him every single one of those days - just as I have missed his big brother, Kalib. As I waited in the drivethrough at Metro today, I heard the text message tone go off in my iPhone.

It was this picture, sent by Lavina.

Jobe is growing so fast and I am missing it all. 

But, weather permitting, Margie and I plan to drive into town after we get up. We will see him again.

Finally, a little new snow. The temperatures are still warm - mid 20's today. Sadly, Laverne is going to take Gracie back to Arizona and the rez on Sunday and unless Nature gets her act together fast, when everybody asks if she froze in Alaska, Laverne will have to say it was warm the whole time she was here.

What fun will that be?

Of course, it's always warm when it snows. It can't snow when the temperature is cold. Maybe we will all get lucky and some cold weather will come just before Laverne and Gracie leaves.

My friends up on the Slope have been experiencing brutal weather lately.

That's what they tell me on Facebook. Nobody has said anything about temperatures. They have just said that it has been cold and windy. And when an Arctic Slope Iñupiat states on Facebook that it is cold and windy, you can pretty much believe its true.

Especially if they say, 

"Alapaah!"

A bit further along, I saw this school bus.

And then this snow plow.

Two nights ago, I mentioned how I was typing away with my good black cat buddy, Jimmy, sprawled across my chest. I also noted that I have had a great deal of time to practice this technique.

So tonight, I started working on my blog and, once again, there was Jimmy, sprawled across my chest, except that this time he was lying on his side.

I decided that I might as well try to photograph the scene, so that my readers will know that I do not lie or exagerate. So here I am, typing, working on this very blog post as Jimmy sprawls across my chest.

And I am taking a picture, too.

This is what is known as "multi-tasking."

Jimmy and I are good at it.

Jimmy sits up to think about things. Jimmy likes to think. He is a thinking cat. He is not quite as deep-a-thinker thinking cat as Thunder Paws was, but still, he is a thinking cat.

He thinks about many things.

He is very bright.

He is a bright cat.

A bright black cat.

He then executes a maneuver that would distract a lesser blogger, but, as you can see, I blog on, undettered. My powers of concentration amaze me.

Jimmy and I, blogging together.

Jimmy. My good black cat buddy.

What a character. What a friend.

How could I even do this blog without him?

Three of my neighbors: Tim builds his shop casually, Patty fights off her cancer intently, Michael blows away the snow; umbilical cord discussed at IHOP; coffee-dogs-Kalib

This is my neighbor, Tim, the carpenter who lives kitty-corner across the street. Sometimes, people who in their professions do things for other people have a hard time getting around to doing the same things for themselves.

Some of you who have been with me for awhile have probably noticed that my walls are almost bare. Photos do not hang on them. True, there is one of Kalib when he was little more than a newborn wedged into a cabinet door in the kitchen and another of him crawling with Marty past Muzzy that hangs at the opening to the hallway.

Other than that, there are none at all and these two are only recent developments. Prior to Kalib's birth, in all the time that I have been married, not one photo has hung on my wall.

Not a single one.

Tim is doing a little better in this regard than I. He started work on the shop that you see going up behind him four years ago. There wasn't much visible sign of it until early this summer, when a foundation began to appear.

Now that it is cold and snowy, he built two opposing wall frames just last week. He says the entire shop will be done soon.

Regular readers have already met my neighbor Patty, who I sometimes refer to as "The Fit Lady" because she has always kept herself so busy and fit walking, skiing, biking, sailing and such.

Just last summer, she discovered she had a cancer that the doctor said was terminal - so terminal that it was pointless for him to treat her further. He sent her home to die and said it would happen in just months.

In fact, according to that doctor, she is supposed to be dead right now.

She's not - because after he told her she was finished, she told herself she was not.

As I have reported before, she took up holistic healing and found a doctor who would work with her and give her chemo as she set her mind and dietary intake towards healing.

That doctor now says Patty is a miracle woman. He has her come and talk to other patients who have "terminal" cancers.

She was just tested. The tumors in her colon have all disappeared. Her liver tumor is still there, but is a tenth of its former size.

There are many reasons for her success, she says, including just putting herself "in touch with the universe." She says that sounds corny and strange, but "it's true."

I am sorry that this picture looks so ratty, but I took it at about 4:00 o'clock and it was dark - considerably darker then it appears in this picture. There are cameras that handle this level of darkness pretty well, but not this G10 pocket camera.

They say its successor, the G11, is much improved with low light. When I can, I will get one.

The fact is, this time of year, even in the middle of the day, the light here is pretty dim. We plan to go to Arizona next month and when we first step into the sun down there, it will shock us.

And this is my neighbor, Michael, two houses down, who works in the Prudhoe Bay oil fields, two weeks on, two weeks off. I most often see him when I'm riding a bike one way and he is riding the other, or when we meet on skis. He is often with his wife and his children were growing, they would often be with him, too.

Of course, I have not met him on skis for a long time, because after they built Serendipity, I could no longer step off my back porch, take off on my skis and go and go and go and go, because they put the damn subdivision in my way.

And I still have yet to take my first ski since I shattered my shoulder 18 months ago.

But Michael has been skiing - at Hatcher Pass. He says it is wonderful right now.

I told him I am going to try to go up there next week. He said we should go together.

I haven't done anything physical since I put down my bike to attend the AFN Convention and then it had a flat tire and before I could patch it the snow fell.

I don't think I could keep up with him.

"I think you could," he said.

That reminds me - Patty went skiing at Hatcher Pass last week, too.

Here is a bigger snowplow, coming down Lucille.

Here it is again.

This is one of the pictures from yesterday that I did not post because I had to go to bed. I took this picture from my car and when I saw his man, I had no idea what his sign said. I had to stop at a red light and that gave me some time to concentrate on the sign and try to read it, but I simply could not make it out.

I did make out the words, "Happy" and "birthday." So I figured it must be a Christmas message. The fact that he was dressed in red reinforced this idea. I figured maybe he was wishing Jesus a happy upcoming birthday.

But when I pulled the picture into my computer and was able to examine it, I saw that he was actually wishing happy birthday to the US Bill of Rights and that he had singled out the Second Amendment - the right to bear arms - for special good wishes.

To all others who might want to stand on street corners waving signs, let me suggest that you make your letters big and bold and even colorful, so that passers by do not mistake you for Santa Claus - especially if you are going to wear red during the holiday season.

This is also from yesterday, when I was at IHOP. I swear, I was not eavesdropping on these people's conversation, but all of a sudden, in a very animated and amplified voice, so loud that no one anywhere nearby could have missed it, the fellow on the other side of the table blurted out, "when the baby comes out, you just snip that umbilical chord."

Then, speaking just as loudly, the fellow at left said that he had heard that when you cut the umbilical cord -sploosh! - the stuff inside it just comes gushing out to squirt all over you and everything else.

At that moment, my waitress came to my table and laid my ham, eggs, and strawberry-banana pancakes in front of me.

On my walk, this dog ran out of a driveway and took off down the street. Pretty soon, this car pulled out of the same driveway, drove to the dog, stopped, and then the lady got out to catch the dog.

As I pulled up to the drive-through of Metro Cafe yesterday, I was listening to All Things Considered on the radio, where I heard what an important fellow Joe Lieberman is trying to be. He is saying that he is following his conscience. Another person contends that the real argument is how many hundreds of thousands of people will die from lack of good health insurance.

After Carmen opens the window, she tells the beautiful lady on the other side of the counter that I always take pictures of everything, that I even photographed the grand opening of Metro Cafe and that she can find it all on my blog.

Her name is Sherry and the kid wearing the hat is Greg.

Or is he Doug?

I'm pretty sure he's Greg.

If not - Doug, I apologize.

And if by chance he is neither Doug nor Greg, well, hell. I apologize twice.

Sherry and Carmen ham it up for the camera. Today, Carmen told me that Sherry comes in every morning at 7:30 AM. "Just like you come in every day right after 4:00," she added.

I wonder how it happened that Sherry and I came at the same time?

Tamar Street.

Yes, I took Muzzy on another walk.

 

When we got home, Muzzy flopped down in the driveway and began to pull the snow out from between his toes.

And here is Kalib and Margie with two stuffed Muzzies, this evening.

Now I might not see either of them for a few days. The new house is airing out pretty good, so Lavina and Kalib plan to stay in town tomorrow night and Margie is going to go with them. Caleb, of course, works all night.

Party time.

I will get out the cat nip and pop some corn. The cats and I will party like crazy.

Kalib turns away from his oatmeal; a snowplow roars down Seldon; I exceed my limits

Margie tries to feed Kalib some oatmeal, but he does not seem to be very hungry.

On my walk, a snowplow came grinding and banging past. We got two or three inches of new snow overnight. Further up the Susitna Valley, 30 inches fell. It's still pretty warm, but not as bad as yesterday.

As I walked on, this man zipped past me on a snowmachine. He was going a little faster than me, but I'm pretty sure that if I had put my mind, lungs and legs into it, I could have sprinted right past him.

I just didn't want to, so, as he sped by, I walked casually and nonchalantly on.

I did wave, though.

It's good to wave at strangers driving snowmachines.

You might need their help one day.

As I neared home, this dog charged me, growling and barking under its muzzle. It hit my wrist with its muzzled snout and then charged past, still growling, still barking. I wasn't worried, though. I have known this dog since it was a cute and friendly pup and it has charged me many, many, times - even without a muzzle.

It's just a show he's got to put on.

This is what Pioneer Peak looked like at 9:00 AM.

This is what Pioneer Peak looked like at 2:30 PM.

This is what the Talkeetna Mountains looked like at 10:00 AM.

Kalib drinks his juice.

Well, I see that I have exceeded my self-imposed limit of one picture each of Kalib and the outside world.

Oh well.

I got a significant amount of work done today, anyway.