Kalib causes us to go into town late

We had planned to go into town (Anchorage) today and we agreed that we would leave at 11:30, so that we could meet Melanie for lunch at 12:30. In the morning, I did a few things and then when the time neared, I took a shower. 

By the time I was dressed and ready to go, it was 11:30. I went out into the living room, expecting to see Margie and Kalib ready to go, too. But Margie was sitting there, her hair still in curlers, holding a sleeping Kalib against her body. She had not expected him to fall asleep there, as he never had before, but when he did, he felt so good to her that she did not move.

At my urging and with my help - I had to fetch jacket, mittens, booties - Margie finally got Kalib dressed and ready to go. She also freed her hair from the curlers. She did all of this without waking Kalib or getting up from where she sat.

Even now, she was reluctant to go.

But we did go, and along the way there and back, we came upon several scenes like this. The road was covered with the thinnest, nearly invisible, layer of ice. The temperature as we passed through this area was -22, F.

But we traversed them all safely.

Melanie did not mind that we were very late for lunch. 

Kalib takes a midnight trip to the emergency room; the wind blows

Last night, Kalib got scratched by his cat, Martigny, who has always seemed to love him. It happened just before midnight, and because the cut on his lip went very deep, we took him to the emergency room at Mat-Su Regional Hospital. I have more to blog about on this subject, but tonight I have neither the time nor the energy, so I will hold it until I do.

Let it be enough to say that, even though a granddad knows that his grandson must suffer numerous little injuries as part of the natural course of growing - and please, let them all be little injuries - it is none-the-less a tough thing to see when it happens. And it was tough on the parents, too. Kalib, too. Very tough on Kalib, and he did not know why.

Here is Kalib, in his grandma's arms, in my office, right after the scratch, immediately before the trip to the emergency room.

Just now, Kalib came into my office, held in his mother's arms. "What do you think, Kalib?" I asked, as I pointed to the above picture on my computer screen. "That's you."

He smiled real big, raised his arms into the air and, with fists clenched, pumped them up and down happily, kicking his little legs as he did so.

This is how the weather has been for the past 48 hours straight. Blowing and blowing, the wind ripping down the Knik and Matanuska glaciers to blast its way mercilessly through this valley. Cold, too.

I have more to blog on this, also, but will hold off for the same reasons stated above.

And this is how it is at the moment, right here, in Wasilla, Alaska.

My home town.

Click on any photo to see a larger copy.

I enter the Christmas holiday in a car crash; a crabby Christmas raven named Rusty

The GMC truck that struck me. It hardly suffered a mark.

Last night, right after I wrote in here about how Jacob had been in a minor wreck in Anchorage, I climbed into the Taurus, headed toward Wal-Mart to meet Margie to do some midnight Christmas shopping and got in a minor wreck myself.

This is how it happened: As I neared the fire station on Lucille, I saw that the warning light was flashing red. This means that you are supposed to stop, as fire trucks will be racing out onto Lucille at any moment. At the same time, I saw a small fire truck, pickup-sized with all the markings, nearing the end of the driveway, less than ten feet from the road. It was partially obscured by the snow berms.

I stopped. Immediately after I did, I began to study the fire vehicle, to see what it would do. Suddenly, I heard a loud wham - the car lunged forward with a jolt and my body and head slammed hard against the seat back and headrest. Without that headrest, I would have suffered bad whiplash for sure.

I got out of the Taurus and saw this big, white, GMC pickup sitting on the road behind me. A young man, late teens or early 20's, sat in the driver's seat. There were young women riding with him.

He got out.

"Didn't you see the light flashing red?" I asked.

"No," he said, "the only thing I saw was you stop suddenly, right in the middle of the road. Why did you stop like that?"

"See the light? It's flashing red! That means you stop!" I answered.

My Taurus. It still seems to run fine, but the trunk won't close.

And so it went. I called the Wasilla police, who showed up shortly, took down all the relevant information, then sent me on my way. They kept the kid a little longer. My neck was a little sore, but not too bad. Other than that, I felt no pain and thought I was fine. I still think I am okay in the long run, but am just a little worried.

After I got home, I sat down at my computer and began to type. Soon, a very strange feeling - a combination of ache and numbness, spread through my injured arm and shoulder and into my hand. Ever since I got out of my last surgery, little things have continually happened that have brought pain and numbness to my shoulder, arm and hand but have gone away.

I can still do all my exercises, so I believe that I am okay.

And that emergency fire station vehicle that they had put the flashing red light up for? It responded to no emergency, but only wielded a snow plow. All it was doing was clearing the driveway of the afternoon and evening snow that had fallen.

So this morning, Margie and I set out to do the shopping that we had done last night. Wal-Mart was our first stop. Margie headed straight to the door, but I started following this raven as it hopped in and out through rows of parked cars. I wanted it fly, but it never did. It just kept hopping away from me.

I gave up.

"I know that individual crow by name," a woman who I found myself walking alongside of said. 

"Yea?" I bit. "What's its name?"

"Rusty," she said. "That crow is named Rusty."

"Rusty, I thought that raven was Jim," I responded. "But then I always get these ravens mixed up."

"No, that crow is Rusty," she said. "I know that crow as an individual."

We walked side by side toward the store through a few seconds of silence, then she explained.

"I knew this old lady - a real, crotchety, crabby old lady. She was so crotchety that one day I told her, 'after you die, you're going to come back as a crow and you're going to be alone.' So whenever I see a crow by itself, I call it Rusty." 

Rusty's buddies.

We bought nothing at Wal-Mart and went elsewhere to purchase our gifts. Then I took Margie home and returned to Wasilla's commercial area by myself, to get some lunch, and buy Margie a present. This is what it looked like on the Parks Highway, right by the entrance to Taco Bell, Target and a few other places.

Once there was a mall here, but they tore down the mall to make way for Target.

I bought Margie's present, or at least the frame for it, in here.

Merry Christmas!Or happy whatever holiday it is that you celebrate!

I have changed my mind...

I decided that this idea of putting this blog on hold until sometime after the New Year is nonsense. I am going to keep it going, but will attempt to discipline myself to spend a minimum amount of time on it through that time period, 15 to 30 minutes a day max. Of course, here I have reached the point where I am just starting my third sentence and I have already put more than 20 minutes into it.

Hmmm... part of this is the fault of my bloghost, Squarespace. As I have stated before, it is a buggy program, prone to misfire, and so far tonight I have had to bounce around between three windows in two separate browsers, just to get the photos placed. Some nights it works perfect, some nights it is a nightmare and cannot be brought under control no matter what I do. Tonight it seems to have fallen somewhere in between.

Okay... 25 minutes now...

I awoke very late this morning, I think because of what I went through yesterday and the night before, when I got almost no sleep, as I had to "prep" for the medical procedure referenced yesterday.

Now, I am supposed to eat a great deal of "real oats" until I clear up the damage that all these decades of an abusive diet has done to my digestive system, but after yesterday, I just had to go out for breakfast and get myself some ham and eggs.

I will eat oatmeal tomorrow.

When I walked into Family Restaurant, I saw that this man, Van Buskirk, had just sat down at a table. Sometimes, when I am out walking, he will come driving by and wave, and sometimes he stops alongside me, rolls down his window and we chat for awhile.

I was alone, so I sat down with him.

It has now been 30 minutes. I am behind schedule.

There was much from our conversation that I was going to write, but, as you can see, I am out of time.

I will note this: he served in the Pacific in World War II as part of the Army Air Corp occupation forces and then stayed in the military to make a career of it, but his heart went bad and he got drummed out. He suffered a massive heart attack and later had a few more, plus some strokes.

No one figured that he would last very long, but here he is, Van Buskirk, deep into old age, having breakfast with me at Family Restaurant. The lady showing him the love seems to be in charge of all the waitresses.

Van Buskirk picked up my ticket. I got out my wallet to at least leave the tip, but he insisted that I put it back into my pocket.

Thank you, Van Buskirk!

I should add that, after the waitress brought our food, he bowed his head and said a blessing.

It has now been 38 minutes.

After I got home, I went walking. Not far from where Van Biskirk told me he lives, I saw this secular Christmas display.

The afternoon and evening proved to be snowy and the already icy roads became dangerously slick. In Anchorage, a woman slid over the center line, smacked T-bone into my son Jacob's Tahoe and knocked him into the ditch. He did not seem to be hurt, although now he is quite stiff. Margie was at work and so, instead of working myself, I spent four hours alone with Kalib, until Jacob and Lavina finally got home.

Kalib had a great time, being alone with his youthful gramp. I enjoyed him, too, but I was left to wonder how my wife keeps up with him all day long.

During his waking hours, Kalib does not stop. I was going to describe some of his antics, but I have already exceeded my time limit by over 10 minutes.

I still must go back and put in the code that turns the opening words to every section red. If Squarespace would simply put a color button into their editor, this would be a simple task that would take seconds. I have suggested this to them a number of times, but they have some high falutin idea that they are going to force their customers to use headers correctly and they think their customers will just be lazy and ignore headers altogether if they have an option to colorize sentences, words, and letters at will.

Of course, highlighting text in the body of the blog has nothing to do with headers.

So far, they continue to refuse to add this simple feature - as well as to do many other things that would make life easier for a Squarespace blogger.

I shouldn't vent like this, but, damnit, sometimes, when you blog, and write what just comes off your fingertips as they move, you vent.

When I started this blog, I should not have leaped so fast. Now I am stuck with Squarespace - for awhile, at least. Maybe they will solve these problems and I can just stay with them.

Flashback to India, August, 2007: the girl who Latika brought to mind; two of her street peers

In the previous post, I refered to the movie Slumdog Millionaire and mentioned how, when I saw the character Latika begging on the streets of Mumbai, I thought of a girl whose path had crossed mine in Bangalore. This is not her, although I did meet him on the same day.

When he first showed me the snake and the tiny chess set, I told him, politely, that I did not wish to buy either, or anything else that he was selling. He must have been quite certain that he could change my mind because, over the next couple of hours I roamed here and there and he continually materialized in front of me, smiling, exuding complete confidence that this time I would be either so charmed, impressed, or exasperated that I would buy from him.

When I look at this picture now, I kind of wish that I had bought that snake from him.

I hope he is doing well. Maybe he will be a millionaire one day.

These flying legs do not belong to the girl that I first thought of, either, but they do belong to someone who also survives by making her living on the India street. I was riding in an "auto-rickshaw" with my nephew and niece, Vijay and his wife Vidya, and we were briefly stopped in backed up-traffic. I glanced at the driver's mirror. I saw the reflection of a girl as she wind-milled our way in cartwheels from behind, nimbly navigating the narrow gap between two uneven rows of vehicles, all jam-packed tightly together.

Quickly, I raised my camera and shot, hoping to catch her image as she cart-wheeled by. The first part of her to enter my frame was this - her upturned, bare, foot which barely escaped her long, billowy, pantaloons.

The momentum of her cartwheel pulls her all the way into my frame...

and then she stops, obviously surprised.

This is the girl who Latika made me think of.

And when I saw her up ahead of me, begging like this, getting turned away, I thought of my oldest daughter, Melanie, when she was the same age.

There are strong resemblances between them, both in physique and facial structure.

She went from car to car, begging.

And then she was at our cab. Latika. My own daughter.

I look at this picture that I took as part of my incessant quest to document the world as it unfolds around me and I feel helpless. There is no way for me to know, but I hope that there is not a Fagan, a Maman, waiting to confiscate her earnings, eager to manipulate by other means her profibility in future years.

For the moment, when she stands in front of me, it does not matter. I must give her something. One way or another, even if by chance it means I must also fund to an even greater degree an evil Fagan, her survival depends upon it.

The only thing is, at some point in every day that one roams in India, he must stop giving, for there are too many open hands that reach toward him and he lacks the capacity to drop something, even small, into each of them.

Yet, I cannot tell you how badly I yearn to return to India. Every single day I feel this desire. And it has been a year and four months now. And each day when I look into the mirror, I see more white in my beard than I did before. And now the white even creeps into my hair.

What the hell was God thinking, to create such a magnificent, full, complex, challenging and diverse earth, and to give a human such a short time to get to know it?