I go to town to take Margie to the doctor, pay the printers and look at airplanes

I had to get up very early today and it was hard. No, you would not likely call it early - 8:00 AM, but I have turned the clock upside and have been going to bed somewhere between 4:00 and 5:00 or even 6:00 AM. I don't fall into a good sleep, because of these damn, persistent, shingles, but I seem to get my best rest between 8:00 AM and noon, which is when I usually get up.

But Margie had a follow up doctor appointment in Anchorage scheduled for 9:30, so I had to get up at at 8:00 after going to bed at 4:30.

This is what Pioneer Peak looked like at 8:42 AM as we passed by on the way to Anchorage. To get the picture at all, I had to push my ISO to 3200.

Still, there is a lot more light here this time of year than there is in Barrow.

So I dropped Margie off at the hospital and drove to University Mall, where Jack of Print Solutions Alaska met me. I gave him a huge check, which I would have really liked to have kept because it could have supported us for three months. He gave me some copies of Uiñiq magazine to take home. The rest went into the mail and to the North Slope Borough in Barrow.

Maybe someday I will look at them. It's kind of a funny thing, but after I finish a big job and get the printed product back, I can't look at it for a long time.

I still haven't looked throgh the Kivgiq Uiñiq that I put out a couple of months ago. That was 116 pages. This new one is 120.

Now that it is done, I do not have a single paying job in front of me. For the moment, I do not want one. I want to work on my own projects. But pretty soon I must find some kind of work that will pay me some decent money or Margie and I will be on the street. I think we can make it for another six weeks. Maybe two months with good luck, one month with bad.

I have no idea at all what kind of job might come along. I want to keep working in the Arctic, though. I do. I love the Arctic more than I can express. Sometimes, I wonder why, because it is a tough place and it can be terribly difficult to work in, but I want to, because there is so much that needs to be done and I want to do it.

And the people. For whatever reason, the people of the Arctic tend to be good to me.

So I want to keep working in the Arctic. It is changing so fast. My eyes can sometimes hardly believe the changes I see.

This isn't the Arctic, though - this is Anchorage. Once I paid for Uiñiq and got some magazines to bring home and stick aside and never look at, I knew that I would have an hour or so until Margie was done.

And so I just started to wander and pretty soon, as always happens, I came to a place where there were airplanes. Lake Hood this time. It could have just as easily been Merrill Field.

I remember reading the story in the Anchorage Daily News or the Alaska Dispatch when this old World War II era plane wreck was recovered, but I don't remember the details. I tried to find it online but failed. I do remember they were going to restore it. Maybe someday it will make it back up there, where it can play with the clouds.

I returned to the hospital at 11:00. Margie was waiting for her medications. She asked if I could go to Jake and Lavina's and feed Marty, the calico cat. Lisa usually feeds her but didn't make it over this morning.

So I did, and as I neared their house, I saw this woman cleaning snow off her car.

I think I fed Marty, anyway. I never saw her. I looked in every room, in every nook and cranny that I could find. I called her name. I called out, "kitty, kitty, kitty."

But I never saw her.

Then I went back and picked Margie up. The doctor had removed the tube from her abdomen. He said she was doing pretty good, although they do want to monitor her blood for awhile. We then drove out to the Dimond area where Lisa met us at Red Robin.

Lisa said that in all the days that she has been feeding Marty, she has not seen her once. When she comes back the next morning, the cat food she put out the day before has all been eaten.

The two of them looked very pretty sitting across the table from me and I meant to take a picture, but I forgot. So, as Margie I waited a nearby red light, I photographed this overpass instead.

We continued on. While we were stopped at another light, this little Cessna 150 or 152 flew over us. I don't want a plane like this one. As metal planes go, they are cheap and economical but they are lousy bush planes. They are good for training student pilots and that's about it.

Still, if someone were to offer me one, I would accept. Then I would try to trade up, probably to another Citabria 7GCBC, because I loved my Citabria.

As you can see, Jim makes things hard for me. He has been in the space between my keyboard and my monitor ever since I sat down here about three hours ago. In this capture, he is simply turning around to face the opposite direction from what he had been.

I don't make him move. I just tilt my head this way and that way and work around him.

Tonight I want to get bed early and see if I can force myself back onto a schedule that comes closer to matching that of the world around me.

It is 2:29 AM right now. Maybe I can make it to bed by 2:45 and get up before Sunrise, which probably happens about 10:00 AM. Maybe a few minutes before. If you look at the time this actually posts, then you can figure I got to bed maybe 10 or 15 minutes after that.

I hope I can get some decent sleep. I've got all kinds of medications now to take away the pain and the horrid, horrid, itching and they help a little bit, but not as much as one would hope or think. In fact, the last several nights have been maddening.

I know I am not supposed to scratch, but when I get suspended in a strange state of near sleep and the itch that accompanies the pain is maddening, I can't stop myself. I scratch. I just hope this itching means that it is going away.

It has been just about four weeks now since I first knew that I was getting struck by something bad.

Thank God it was only shingles. At first, before the rash appeared, I truly thought this might be it, the affliction that would take me down. But it was only shingles. No big deal. Just a painful nuisance for awhile.

But I would like to sleep, uninterupted. I would really like to.

Tomorrow, I will post more pictures from my time of hiatus. They will be fun pictues, I promise you. 

Sub-zero walk at dusk

I read that cats sleep up to 16 hours a day - a little piece here, a big piece there, a chunk here. I fear that in some ways I have become kind of like a cat lately - except that I know for a fact that when cats sleep, they sleep good, even though they are ready to wake up and spring into action in a fraction of a second.

Today, I got up a little after 2:00 PM - just in time for me to cook and eat my oatmeal, catch just a bit of news and web updates, put on some thermal underway, two pairs of socks, three sweatshirts, a light but good jacket, an ear band and a baseball cap and then head out onto my walk, only to discover that the sun had already set.

Judging both by the degree that my nostrils stuck together when I enhaled and the amount of frost that built up in my mustache and beard when I exhaled, I estimated the temperature to be close to -10 F (-23 C).

I was dressed plenty warm enough for such weather, but, as I have noted before, these shingles which I no longer want to write about seem to have greatly cut down my resistance to cold. So I walked and froze, stopping every now and then to snap a frame and when I stopped, I froze even more.

Some might think that under the circumstance, I would be justified in foregoing the walk. No. I must walk. And pretty soon I am going to get some studded tires for my bicycle and then I will start biking again, too.

I wanted to get the studded tires today, but I got up too late.

And pretty soon, I am also going force myself back into a better sleep pattern. As it stands, I have been going to bed about 2:00 AM and then getting up at anywhere from 10 or 11, or, today, after 2:00 PM. 

I do a few things and then pretty soon lie down upon the couch, the woodstove burning hot just beyond my feet and doze in and out of the kind of dream world I have described before. Always, I am joined by at least two cats and sometimes three. They want to snuggle up right on my shingles, but I do not let them, so they wind up on my legs or lower tummy, where they add their own warmth to that of the fire. While the dreams can get bizarre and the pain never goes away, these couch naps are in some ways the and most pleasant part of my day.

In this picture, I have just completed my walk and am back at the house. This is the smoke coming from the woodstove that makes my naps so toasty and nice.

I justify these long hours of sleep and rest by telling myself that I need them and that is why my body is forcing me to do it. But I have lots to do and I must get back to it.

After I finished my walk, I did not want to bring my frozen camera into the house, so I put it in the car, started the car, went inside while the car warmed up then came back out and drove off for coffee. The temperature out here was, indeed, - 10.

Metro Cafe was still closed for the holiday weekend, but some kind of group must have rented it for a party of somekind. I snapped this shot from the car as I drove past. I continued on to Kaladi bros, where the temperature was a warm - 2 F, bought a 12 oz Americano black, then brought it home, gave half of it to Margie and used the other half to wash down a left-over piece of the pumpkin chiffon pie she had made for Thanksgiving.

Pumpkin chiffon must have been invented by the angels. It was a heavenly experience, shingles be damned!

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I pick Margie up at the hospital and then drive her through insane traffic and panicked moose safely to our home

I slept with my iPhone right by my ear and so was awakened a bit before 11:00 AM by Margie's call to tell me that she would soon be released and so I could come in and get her.

11:00 AM - sounds very lazy. But I had not been able to go to sleep until 5:00 and I ran out of Vicodin two days okay and while it is possible that I could call the doctor and get the prescription refilled I have decided that I don't want to take it anymore and will just tough it out. I did not sleep that good. I bet my shingles woke me up AT LEAST 30 times. Maybe I should rethink that decision. We'll see. So, even at 11:00, it was very difficult to get up, but I did not want to leave my wife in the hospital, so I got up.

When I reached her, I was a little dismayed to learn that she has a plastic tube going into the place were her gall bladder used to be. Fluids drain out of that place into a little bag that she keeps safety pinned to the inside of her shirt. She must bear this burden until November 30, when I bring her back to see the doctor again.

Still, you can see that she was happy to be getting out of the hospital and headed toward home.

Anyone who read yesterday's post has probably already figured out that the building seen through the window is the hospital - the Alaska Native Medical Center.

Soon, we were on the Glenn Highway, headed toward the Parks Highway and home. As you can see, the traffic was absolutely insane. For some reason, when I look at this picture, I hear that old TV jingle that used to accompany Chevy commericials on TV: 

"See the USA in your Chevrolet..."

Back then, our family car was a Ford.

And today, I was driving a Ford.

Ford Escape.

"See the USA, in your Ford Escape..."

There were school buses roaming about, packed with studious kids who would have preferred to remain at school, but now had to go home.

About this time, a text came to our phones simultaneously. Margie was free to look at hers. It was from Lisa. It was an iPhone shot of her and Melanie, in Carrizo, Arizona, White Mountain Apache Tribe, standing with their Grandma Rose, Margie's mom.

Finally, we were in Wasilla, headed up Lucille Street. Just before we reached Metro Cafe, this moose crossed the road in front of us. When you see moose crossing the roads right in front of traffic and often dying in the process, they seem like pretty stupid animals. But I think in the woods they are pretty smart. Not as smart as bears and wolves, but pretty smart just the same.

If they weren't, they wouldn't still be here. The bears and wolves would have got them all and then the poor ravens would have had to make do without their moose carrion. It's just that living in the woods for how many tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or milliions of years, moose had no need to learn about roads so they didn't. They didn't even bother to develop the capacity to learn about roads.

Now they are undergoing a crash course and maybe sooner or later the survivors will ultimately evolve to the point where they figure it out.

They might even start driving cars themselves; they might run over us, sometimes.

I asked Marige if she wanted me to pull into the Metro drive through but she just wanted to go home.

The moment we got home, Margie asked if I would take a picture of her with her iPhone so she could send it in return to Lisa and Lisa could show it to Rose and all present so they would know that their mother and daughter had made it home safely.

So I did.

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Passed on Church by EHH295

This guy passed me on Church.

No big deal. He was within his rights. It didn't hurt my ego.

Lots of people get passed on Church.

Retreat becomes full-blown hiatus - final post until September 15: puddle lakes, familiar road, study of the young writer

I shot two scenes today, both on my morning walk, and one portrait, on my coffee break. This is the first scene and I shot it because when I saw these puddles, I was reminded of how it used to be when I would be flying my airplane and would look down and see a seemingly endless spatter of lakes laid out across the tundra.

Minnesota boasts of 10,000 lakes. There are 3 million in Alaska and I used to fly over them in my little airplane. I would pay very close attention to those lakes, and match them up with the ones on my map. I always wanted to know just where I was.

Once I lost track and then all the lakes looked the same and I could not match any of them to my map. Oh, well. I just followed my compass and it took me to where I wanted to go, anyway - that being Umiat. Then GPS came along and it didn't seem to matter anymore, but still I kept track of those lakes, because I still wanted to always know where I was.

I long to fly over those lakes again.

I have photographed this stretch of road many times - with snow, school buses, people on bicycles, fall leaves, dogs running, moose crossing, a cat walking... but somehow, today, when I looked at it, it looked different to me than it had ever looked before.

So I shot it again.

Afterward, I realized - this summer retreat that I announced awhile back - this effort to keep this blog short and simple? I must make it a full hiatus and break away until mid-September.

It is not because I am tired of doing the blog. I love doing the blog. Of all the forms of publishing that I have ever engaged myself in there is only one that I like doing better than the blog - and that is the writing and making of books.

That is my favorite thing of all - to write and make books - I have done a lot of book writing and making that still needs to be brought to completion - and then this blog.

But I have some projects I must finish, and soon, including two Uiñiq magazines, the second of which will probably be the last Uiñiq I ever do. I can't say that for certain, because I thought that in 1996, yet I wound up doing some more.

If I am to finish these Uiñiqs and the two other jobs I have lined up between now and summer's end, I must put aside as many distractions as I possibly can.

And, as much as I love it, this blog is a distraction from those projects.

So I am putting it aside until September 15, when all the paying projects that I am working on should be done.

Then I truly need to figure out how to make online publishing pay, because I either figure out how to live in the world of online publishing or I go under. It is that simple.

The old ways of doing things are fading and, when I finish my current projects, I am pretty sure they will be over for me, for good, permanently.

So I have to figure it out.

I do not have the temperament to take a regular job - even a photography job - and to work for someone and get bossed around. And there aren't so many good jobs left anymore, anyway, because everybody's got a camera on their phone and everybody is on Facebook and photographs are seen more and more as cheap and common things that are to be taken for free and given away for free and it is pretty hard to compete against free and for free.

And yet, to survive online, one must somehow learn to give away his work for free and yet bring in income for doing it.

I have yet to figure it out, but I must.

If I can, I can really do something.

If not... no... it can work. I know it can work.

It must work. It will work. 

I can do it and I will do it.

I just don't know how.

Haven't a clue.

This is the portrait I shot, just before I rolled past the drive-through window at Metro Cafe. Hence:

Study of the Young Writer, Shoshana, #7,921: she appears at the Metro window with a braid in her hair.

I know that in taking such a long break, I will lose some of my current readers for good. Other things will fill the time they now devote to this blog and when I return, they will just keep going on as they are.

But I won't lose Shoshana. She will come back and she will read the blog again. I am confident that others among you will, too.

And then I have to get... I don't know... say, 100,000 or so more new readers to join in.

Maybe a million more.

Or one very rich philanthropist who wants to turn me loose.

Then I would not have to worry about making a living and I could really go nuts. I could make an online publication like no one had ever seen before.

I am not saying it would be the best online photographic publication in the world - not with great publications out there like Burn and Visura and Lens, drawing on a wide variety of the best photo talent in the world. But it would be good and it would be like nothing else anyone had seen before. This I am confident of.

Alaska would come alive, right here, in my blog, or whatever my blog becomes or merges with. ALIVE!!! Because this place called Alaska lives, and I live to be in it.

That will not happen, of course. That philanthropist does not exist. But, somehow... I just have to figure it out.

Maybe pulling back from it for awhile will help me figure it out.

Or maybe it is all a foolish dream, destined to go the way of all foolish dreams.

No... no... I cannot yield to that notion.

I will keep reading Shoshana's stories as well. When she finishes a story, she brings a copy to Metro Cafe and passes it through the window to me, along with the coffee and the pastry.

That is why I know she is a talented writer. She is a talented barista as well, but her talents go way beyond making and serving lattes.

See you in September!

PS: Even though I will not be posting, I will keep shooting, everyday, capturing smatterings of whatever I see, just as I have been.

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