Horses who came to watch over the Inauguration of President Barack Obama (main post still on hold)

Until I find the time to finish the inaugural post, I can at least post images of a few horses that came to watch over the crowd on Inauguration Day. This was taken shortly after the swearing in, as the crowd was dispersing from off the national mall and Lisa and I were looking for Margie, who had disappeared.

By now, I had found Margie, but I lost both her and Lisa after I stopped to photograph this horse. It took me about 15 minutes to find them.

And here is a curious thing - using this laptop, these photos look pale and washed out after I put them online in the blog, but they don't in Photoshop.

I need to figure out why.

For the first time since her injury, we take Margie out of the guest house and into D.C. (Inaugural still on hold)

The process was complicated and I won't go into it, because it is 1:00 AM and I just want to go to bed, but today Lisa and I got Margie out of the guesthouse and into D.C. It took much longer than I had anticpated to get her ready, but when she was, her hair was clean and so were her clothes - no more hospital-blue paper pants. She looked nice.

We did a bunch of driving around and then wound up at the Muesum of the American Indian. We checked out a wheelchair and this fellow helped us get Margie into it.

As for the black and white, I am not trying to be artistic or to recall the good old days when I shot nothing but black and white film. I left my big cameras behind today and only took the pocket camera. I always keep it set to RAW, but somehow it had switched to JPEG with the color balance set to tungsten.

I tried and tried to come up with a suitable color balance and, had the images been RAW, it would have been no problem, even with the tungsten setting. But I could not do it, so I just made them black and white.

Well, the light inside the cafe of the Museum of the American Indian must have been tungsten.

They close the museum at 5:30 and by the time we finished eating, it was already after 5:00, so we didn't get to see much of it. I had thought we could go back tomorrow, but Margie says, no, it is too hard in the wheelchair. She does not want to do it again.

So it looks like we will just have to come back to Washington, D.C., another time. Maybe when the cherry blossoms bloom.

DC dining with Lisa - Inauguration Day post remains on hold

The fact of the matter is, the circumstance of my wife's injuries have prevented me from devoting the time necessary to complete my Inauguration post for so long now that it has lost all sense of immediacy. If Margie is able, we are going to return to Wasilla either Sunday or Monday and so I just may wait until I can sit down in my office and just do the post then.

Or maybe I will find the time to do it tomorrow, which is really today, as it is 1:49 AM Saturday morning that I type these words.

For the time being, it may have lost its freshness, but, 100 years from now, it will be just as fresh as if Margie had not been hurt and I had posted it the night of the inaugural, as I had planned.

So, for today, I will illustrate how Lisa and I have been dining while Margie lies in her bed in the guest house.

On the afternoon following the inauguration, we found this little 24 hour Steak and Egg Restaurant. Even though it was afternoon, we needed breakfast, so we went in. The food was excellent - especially the omelets. We took scrambled eggs back to Margie. We have eaten breakfast there everyday since, although we have not seen this cook again. He was having some kind of dispute with his boss. I wonder if that has anything to do with why?

Maybe he just took a vacation to Alaska. We told him what a great place Alaska is.

One of Lisa's great ambitions for this trip was to eat sushi in New York City. Now that we are not going to New York City, we decided to try D.C. Sushi instead. As it happens, this place sits right next to Steak and Eggs Restaurant. So tonight, we went here.

The sushi was quite good - except for the salmon. The salmon was bland. It was farm salmon. I don't know why they even bother. We brought terriyaki chicken back to Margie, who has never gotten used to the idea of sushi. Traditionally, Apaches shunned fish as food, which is curious as they are so closely related to Alaska's Athabascans, who eat fish by the ton. Margie does like wild Alaska salmon - cooked: roasted, broiled, fried, smoked or dried.

When I travel from Alaska to the Outside, I almost always find the salmon to be extremely disappointing. 

As for the cat shirt, we have fallen into a routine where, after breakfast, I drop Lisa off at the Metro and she goes into DC to do some exploring and I come back to Margie. Always, Lisa returns with a shopping bag full of Obama memories. Today, she found the cat shirt.

She was very pleased.

Outgoing President says Goodbye; Chris Matthews through the window - Inauguration post must wait one more day

President Bush says goodbye. As he does, a low, murmuring "boo" rises from many spread throughout the crowd. Then voices, scattered throughout, begin to sing, "sha-na-na-naah, sha-na-na-naah, hey-heyeeh, good-bye."

As for me and my inaugural post, I was unable to complete it today. When one's wife gets hurt far from home and enters a temporary state of helplessness, her care takes precedence over the blog.

I did get the pictures edited down to a reasonable number, however, and I do expect to post it tomorrow.

Still, I felt that I needed to post something today, so I thought I would throw in the outgoing President and then deal with the new one tomorrow.

I know - the nomination of President Barack Obama will be ancient history by then, but sometimes things go that way.

After the inauguration concluded, the three of us (Margie, Lisa and I) happened to walk by the portable studio MSNBC had set up on the National Mall as Chris Matthews and guest Norah O‘Donnell told viewers what they had actually saw this day. Matthews said the "booing" of President Bush had been in poor form, but was an accurate reflection of how the nation as a whole felt about the man.

 I shot a few pictures through the huge studio windows.

Lisa wanted to get on TV, so she took a seat on the MSNBC bleachers, which are frequently panned by the cameras. She was enthralled, and stayed there for hours and hours and hours, not giving one damn about the cold that had all of DC talking.

I would have been happy to stay, too, but cold and exhaustion had overwhelmed my Margie, so we walked to the Metro, rode the underground train to Friendship Heights, where she fell and broke herself.

I did not tell Lisa until I picked her up at the  Friendship Heights Metro station and then drove her back to the home where we were staying. She was having a great time, and I could see no point in putting a damper on it prematurely.

Besides, she had never before navigated the Washington, DC Metro system on her own and I did not want her to be distracted with worry and then maybe wind up on the wrong train.

Suurimmaanitchuat of Barrow: Another group of Alaskans headed to DC to march in the Inaugural Parade for Barack Obama

I have many pictures of Suurimmaanitchuat dancing, mostly in Barrow at the Kivgiqs that have taken place over the past two decades. Kivgiq, also known as the Messenger Feast, is a great Iñupiat Eskimo celebration of dance, gift-giving and feasting on the real food of the north. Kivgiq was revived in 1988, but its roots are in antiquity.

So I intended to find some of my Kivgiq photos of Suurimmaanitchuat and post them here with this little note about their upcoming trip to Washington, DC where they will march in the Inaugural Parade for Barack Obama. So I typed "Suuri" into my computer's search engine to see what might come up.

None of the Kivgiq pictures appeared - I must have them all stored on disk and out of the computer now - but these five of Suurimmaanitchuat performing at the dedication of the National Museum of the American Indian in September of 2004 did.

This seemed even more appropriate. 

The dancer above is Lia Sakeagak. The temperature at the time was in the 90's - somewhat warmer than it would have been in Barrow.

And this is Alunauq Hepa. 

Darlene Kagak.

This feminine Elvis wearing mukluks is Mae Ahgeak, who spotted the face of the King of Rock 'n' Roll in the mask section of a big store in Anchorage. Now she is the most famous Iñupiat Elvis impersonator in the universe. Dancing to her right is Darlene Kagak and to her left, Molly Pederson and Marie Neakok.

Iñupiat dance always involves invitationals, when all are invited to come and dance with the performers. I am not quite certain how everything will come together in DC, but if they get a chance at any time while they are there, be it immediately after the parade or at some other time, I am certain Suurimmaanitchuat will call up everyone who wants to come up and dance.

So, if any readers happen to be in DC for the Inaugural, keep your eyes and ears open. You will be welcome to join Suurimmaanitchuat in dance. The young man at the forefront is Robert Akpik, Jr.

I'm planning to follow the dancers to shoot some pictures. I will use the images in a Uiñiq magazine that I am working on, but I will also post a few here as well.