New York City: Subway Series, Part 1 - Music and Love; Wasilla: waiting for breakfast at Family

Where did he come from? What did he do there? What did he plan to do here? What is his instrument? Where does his mind go when he plays it? How much does he earn? How many people does he feed? What thoughts go through the mind of the fellow on the bench beside him? So many questions, but the train door opens and I rush through before it can shut me out.

The door closes behind me and I sit down. I see these two, who look to be in love; she exhausted, he intent, curious; she finds comfort on his strong shoulder. Those on either side intently ignore them.

A click will make the image bigger.

One wonders why life passes by so quickly, why age and deterioration downgrade the body even as desire remains young.

What do they find so interesting in this booklet? I want to read it and find out for myself. I doubt that I ever will. Too many other things to read, too many books that I want to read but never will. Too many more books I want to write. Reasonable health and life provided, I will write some of them, but it is clear to me that I have already used up too much time to ever write them all. 

So why do I waste time blogging?

Blogging is fun. Damn, it is fun!

I could ask the same questions of this gentleman from Africa as I did the one from Asia. I did ask him one question, but he did not seem to have the English to answer. Or maybe he had the English, but did not wish to be bothered into making answers.

His music was good. I liked it. 

It seemed to me that he should be playing on a stage somewhere, in front of an auditorium, rather than in a subway station. The thought struck me that perhaps he does both - plays on a stage, and then in the subway, too. Maybe when he goes home, friends and family gather about and he plays and others sing, drum and play even more instruments - maybe a guitar.

Today in Wasilla, beginning at Family Restaurant:

Margie and I were fortunate and got a table within two minutes of walking in. But Family was crowded today. All who came after us had to wait to be seated.

More who must wait.

The boys sit as they wait to be seated.

This boy seems to grow impatient.

As she waits, she gets a gumball.

Those who wait will get seated. Family Restaurant is very popular and there are many more tables than the few seen here.

After breakfast, I drop Margie off at Wal-Mart - a popular raven hangout.

After Margie gets off work, I drive her and Lisa to the Espresso Cafe. Lisa orders an iced Americano, which strikes me as crazy, since the temperature is in the teens. The barista is glad to fill Lisa's "Alaska for Obama" mug, as she is a supporter, too.

It's amazing how many Barack Obama supporters I encounter, right here, in Wasilla, Alaska.

Wasilla: Halloween drive to Anchorage to send Kalib south; New York City: On the way to the Met I walk by a bus

I barely get home from New York City and all of a sudden I find we must send baby Kalib to Arizona. This means a drive to Anchorage, where we will pass him off to his mom and dad at a Halloween chili feast. Margie dresses him in his St. Bernard outfit, buckles him into his car seat and then gives him his little fish book, meant to be read upside down.

As we pass through downtown Wasilla, three blocks from the wisdom of Main Street, we pass by a fender bender. Perhaps it would not have happened had the drivers been cruising Main Street instead of Lucille. Unlike Main Street, even Governor Palin knows that a great deal of foolishness takes place on Lucille Street.

As we approach Wasilla Lake, we happen upon a hitchhiker. I do not pick him up. To see a larger copy of the image, just click on it. This is a good example of the modern day beautification of Wasilla.

Before we can reach "Mocha Me Crazy," we are passed by a white dog in a red 4x4. To better see the dog, click on the picture. 

Needing a bit of a caffeine kick to continue, we pull up behind the pick-up parked at the drive-through window of "Mocha Me Crazy." I witness money being exchanged for coffee.

Then we pull up to the window. As we wait, a truck appears on the highway in front of us.

Next a school bus comes by. I see no students in it, only the driver.

As we sip our coffee, we pass by Pioneer Peak. 

We approach Anchorage, where hot steam rises through the cold, still, air.

As we drive toward the Native hospital, Providence hospital looms in front of us. I think about my two stays there in June. It is a great hospital. I owe Providence so much - in more ways than one. Damned insurance company. Their rep lied when he sold me the coverage so long back - said that if anything happened to me in out in the roadless areas, the insurance would cover my air ambulance bill. That air-ambulance bill came to about $40,000. Insurance says they do not have to pay it. 

That's not all they're not paying. Damned insurance company.

When people speak of the deplorable state of health care in the US, they always talk about the huge, growing number of uninsured. They need to talk more about the problems of being insured.

But I love Providence hospital. Thank you, Providence, for what you did for me.

We stop at the day-clinic at the Native hospital, because Lisa works there and wants to see Kalib before he goes to Arizona. I wait in the car, by the words that honor our convicted Senator, Ted Stevens. The Native hospital has always cared for my family, myself excluded, and by and large it has done a good job. I believe it is the best Native hospital in the country - because of Senator Ted Stevens.

So much in this state that is good is there because of Senator Stevens.

Whether he was rightly convicted or wrongly convicted, this has been a sad, sad, sad week for Alaska. 

We arrive at the Halloween chili eating party at Duane Miller & Associates, an engineering firm. Melanie works there and invited us so that we could sample her pumpkin chili. "20,000 moose can't be wrong," her little sign, the one that promoted her chili over the many other vats made by other employees, beckoned. Here is the pumpkin chili cooker (and it was tasty - spicy - hot - the hottest of the four chilies that I tried - and the best) holding Kalib before he leaves for Arizona.

Melanie had been very worried that her brother, Jake, my oldest son, would not show. She wanted to show her engineer brother off to her engineering firm coworkers. But he did show, and then he and Lavina took Kalib from us and headed off for Arizona. 

Charlie, Melanie's boyfriend, got into the picture. It is a good thing he is standing behind everybody, because he came dressed as a 70's man, in big 7o's style, baby-blue bell bottoms and a shirt with ruffles - not to mention an absurd sports jacket. He looks ridiculous.

That's the same kind of clothes I wore to my wedding reception. At least Margie looked beautiful, her lovely dark skin and long, jet-black hair set off against her white dress.

And now I back up to Wednesday of last week, in New York City:

I had intended to make tonight's New York entry a series of subway pictures. But it is too late and I am too tired. So I put in this bus instead. I took it as I walked to the Met. It looks like this guy Dexter must be a killer or something. 

New York: A walk in the Met; Wasilla: Fine dining on the bank of Wasilla Lake

My intent was to spend maybe two hours wandering through the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which I reckoned would be enough time for me to see it in its entirety and then I could move on to the MoMA, where, among other things, there is a display of Mikhael Subotsky's photographs.

But once I entered the Met, I was trapped. I could not leave, nor could I even advance at a decent speed. A turtle could have passed through that museum quicker than I moved. At the end of the day, they kicked me out, because the museum had closed and I could no longer stay.

I had only managed to walk through a small part of it.

In that walk, I spotted this girl passing by the mummy of Pekherkhonsu, Doorkeeper to the House of Amun, and the great art meant to accompany her into the afterlife.

The girl and her family spoke a language that I did not recognize, and in feature appeared as though they might have originated in the same part of the world as did the mummy.

I wondered about their thoughts, but I could not ask.

Anytime one enters a museum alone with a camera, one should do a self-portrait. So I chose to photograph myself inside this sarcophagus, which had once held someone else. In pursuit of their religion, the ancient Egyptians went to amazing lengths to ensure their bodies would be preserved to rise up in eternal salvation and glory in the afterlife.

What they actually accomplished was to make their bodies - those that were not destroyed by vandals - curiosities in museums, and to create amazing art that we, each of us who, despite our own believes, must follow them into the blindness of death, can gaze upon with wonder.

If you can't find me in the image, just click on it and make it bigger. These pictures are all clickable.

What I had not understood before I entered the Met, was that I was about to take a walk through ancient Egypt. I had not understood this at all.

I was moved by the hairpin pictured below. Nearly 5000 years ago, a young woman died and was buried at the Fort Cemetery in Hierakonpolis. Before they buried her, the people who tended to her fixed her hair to look nice, and placed this pin in her hair to hold it in place. That's how archeologists found herm her hair still in place, held by this pin. 

I cannot know the circumstance that caused someone to place this pin in her hair, but I think perhaps love had something to do with it. Also in the case were the bracelets that she wore on her wrists. It seemed that she was quite stylish, and liked to look nice.

Speaking of love... here's a guy trying to cop a feel for the past 5000 years or so. Memi is trying to look innocent, as though he is not up to anything unusual at all. Sabu looks like she thinks the situation to be very strange, but does not quite know what to do about it, so she goes along with it.

Ah, to be young, and to know what I know now but didn't know then! And these two were young so very long ago, when it seemed like right now.

The met is a place where ancient faces float in the air, where paddlers carved thousands of years ago continue to toil as they propel the wealthy up and down the Nile River.

As he peers into the past, does he contemplate the future?

Struck though I was by its ancient beauty, I had no idea at all what the one was trying to say; the other, I understood perfectly. I think.

Prior to 1963, the ancient Temple of Dendur stood in Egypt. Then the Egyptian government gave it to the Met, and now tourists wander through it and the kindly man who stands guard takes their cameras and photographs them. Now they can prove to all they know that they have actually stood inside the Temple of Dendur.

After several hours in the Egyptian sections of the Met, I finally worked my way into the American section. I saw many fascinating things there, but I realized the clock was working against me, so I just looked, quickly, and did not take pictures - until I came across Abe Lincoln. My President, perhaps my greatest president, here passing the endless, still, hours in the midst of questionable company.

I was also stopped by "The Tomb Effigy of Elizabeth Bott Duchevneck," sculpted by her husband, Frank Duchevneck. I wonder if anyone sculpted an effigy for him, when he died in 1919?

I wonder about those people looking out from the paintings in the background? At the time, maybe they were among the hip and cool, the people at the center of things, and that is why they wound up in these paintings. Now they are dead, probably rotted into dust, maybe some of them got incinerated. Perhaps one or two of them wound up in a grave so tightly sealed and impervious that now they lay as mummies, until that day when someone from a future society unearths them and then puts them in a museum.

I would like to see that display, but I guess I won't get the chance.

There was one more painting that I photographed, of four young girls and a cat. To understand why I would photograph it, please go to Grahamn Kracker's No Cat's Allowed cat blog.

Check out the October 28 entry.

When I stepped out of the Met, I found this elegantly dressed and coifed couple being all lovey-dovey on the steps. Why here? What were they up to? 

Oh. I see. They were taking part in a glamour shoot; high fashion stuff. Perhaps they are famous models, here or overseas, maybe both. Perhaps the photographer is known world-wide. Maybe they are college students, completing a class assignment.

How the hell would I know? I'm just an unsophisticated lout from Wasilla, Alaska. I could have hung around and asked them, but I was hungry for a pretzel and Pepsi, and a woman of Asian descent was selling both from a nearby cart, so I went to see her instead. 

Now, back home to Wasilla and the fine dining:

On my third day back home in Wasilla, I found myself hungry and lazy, so I went to Carl's Jr. The hamburgers here are really quite good.

Had I been in the mood for chicken or a hotdog, I could have gone right next door to the combo KFC - A&W. They have hamburgers there, too, but their hamburgers are not as good as Carl's. Unfortunately, Carl's serves Coke, so I also stopped at Papa Murphy's and bought myself a Pepsi.

These types of things did not exist in Wasilla when we first moved here. Now I am a regular patron, but I always wander why Sarah Palin and the Wasilla assembly ever approved construction of these, and the whole big Fred Meyer complex, right on the edge of once beautiful Wasilla Lake.

I know. Tax dollars. There are other places from which they could have collected my tax dollars, places where the parking lot would not have drained into the lake.

As for the promised pictures from the Wasilla sample that I took to New York, this entry is already far too long, so I will pass for now.

Wasilla: Birthday party, curious cat, curious baby; New York City: Sarcophagus and kids

Today was Lavina's birthday. No, despite the number of "candles," my daughter-in-law did not turn five, but 27 - I think. I could ask her, but she and Kalib have already gone to bed. As for the candles, we did not have any, so we used matches instead. Now you know why there are only five and not 27. Just imagine the difficulties we would have faced if we had tried to light 27 matches on Lavina's cake, all at once.

Earlier in the day, Kalib had found something mighty interesting in the box. Martigny was riveted by something outside. We never did figure out what. We looked through the windows and could not see it. Margie even went outside to check it out. Not a clue.

Two boys and an Egyptian sarcophagus - the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. It is late and right now I am just too tired to carry out the plan that I laid out last night. In fact, I edited and prepared several pictures from my walk through the museum to put into this entry, but, with the exception of this one, I will save them for tomorrow.

Also, I took a number of pictures as I wandered about Wasilla today, but I am too tired to bother with any of them, save for the two above. As for my plan to include a few of the Wasilla images that I took to New York in each entry until I am finished with this trip to New York, yes, I am too tired to do that tonight as well.

But with Wasilla images in this entry, and one from New York, I am keeping to the spirit of my plan, if not the letter.

All the images in this entry were shot with the Canon Powershot G9 point and shoot pocket camera. I am trying to decide whether or not I should get the new G10.

New York City: Mikhael Subotsky - W. Eugene Smith grant winner; Wasilla: mean dog, cute baby

This is Mikhael Subotsky, the Cape Town, South Africa, photojournalist* who won this year's $30,000 W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund Grant in Humanistic Photography and he is just about to inflict significant pain upon me. Following the awards ceremony, the Fund hosted Subotsky and several others of us who had played a roll in this year's event at a fine, French restaurant where diners are greeted by a calico cat.

After dinner, a group of us were standing on the corner waiting for cabs and that is when I took this picture with my Canon Powershot G9 point and shoot pocket camera. I had wanted to bring my big, heavy, Canon 1Ds M III with me to New York, because of the quality of pictures that it produces - especially under low light such as this. Yet, given the state of my still healing shoulder, I knew that I could not handle carrying the weight of that camera around New York, so I left it home and took only the G9.

Subotsky's cab came first. Before getting into it, he shook hands with everybody on the corner. I had meant to warn him that I had broken my shoulder in June and that my whole arm and hand was still sore and delicate, but before I could, he clenched my hand in a vice-grip and vigorously pumped it up and down.

Despite the sudden pain, I managed not to howl out or scream. He then let go of my hand, and, as I struggled to maintain my composure, with his left hand he suddenly gave me a good, hearty, vigorous, friendly, cuff directly over what had been one of my major fractures.

I gritted my teeth and suppressed the scream that tried to escape me. I smiled, expressed once again my admiration for the powerful, stunning, poetic, enlightening look this 27-year old photographer has taken at this often dark life that we all share and then said good-bye as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

Not far from Broadway and 84th Street, where Sue Brisk, of the Funds Board of Trustees dropped me off by cab, I spotted this homeless man pushing his cart past the trappings of a fantasy world so impossible to him. This gave me a good excuse to point my camera at a fantasy image of the kind that I never have nor ever expect to get to take - although I damn well sure could, given the lights, the model, the assistants and the time.

I damn well sure could!

I attended this year's awards ceremony because I had won a first runner-up grant in 1999 and, as a Smith fellow, had now been invited to show a sample of work I had done since. Furthermore, as my little hometown has recently become famous, infamous, and notorious, I was asked if I might show some Wasilla photos as well.

The test run went fine, but - oh my! The presentation! Technological nightmare. Instead of photos, I put on a display of gigantic pixels over tiny images, some of which hinted at possible photography. 

Fortunately, I quickly realized that the situation had gone to hell and was not likely to get better and so I joked about it and kept everybody laughing all the way to the end and afterward managed to get a bunch of positive comments anyway.

I then spent the rest of the week in New York and I walked all around, at least ten and maybe sometimes 15 miles each day. I rode the subway, again and again and again. As I walked and rode, I snapped a hodge-podge of images with my little pocket camera.

Now, I will devote my next few entries to samples of my New York grab shots.

To keep the blog relevant to Wasilla, each time I do I will also include a few of the Wasilla images that I took to New York to show. To keep the blog timely to the day, I will end each of these presentations with some pocket-camera Wasilla images from the date of the post.

Here, then, are the three images that I used to introduce Wasilla to New York:

And yes, this damn dog bit me. Later, when it came after me again, its owner assured me that the dog was all bark and no bite, a truly loving and gentle character, not an individual to fear at all.

And here are five images from today in Wasilla:

My flight arrived at convicted Ted Stevens International Airport in Anchorage at 1:15 this morning. Daughter Melanie picked me up and got me home by about 3:00 AM. I slept in until 10:00 AM, then, as I always do the morning after I return from a trip, I got up and took Margie to breakfast, Kalib too.

A bit later, we ate lunch at Taco Bell, which now sits in the parking lot of the new Wasilla Target, where someone took a cigarette break, and talked on her phone. After New York, where people amazed me by bundling up in warm weather - some even wrapped their faces in scarves - it felt quite cold here, even though it was actually a nice, pleasant day in the teens. Single digits, now that evening has fallen (and come morning, a few degrees below zero).

As you can see, Rupright survived the primary and is still vying to take over Sarah Palin's old job. I have no idea why. If I can meet him, I will ask him, and share his answer with you.

The other primary survivor was Metiva. Same goes for him, should I meet him.

I end this day's presentation with baby Kalib and his mother - my wonderful daughter-in-law, Lavina, photographed in our driveway, right here in Wasilla, Alaska.

*Mikhael Subotsky's webpage.