A blog by Bill Hess

Running Dog Publications

P.O. Box 872383 Wasilla, Alaska 99687

 

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Wasilla

Wasilla is the place where I have lived for the past 29 years - sort of. The house in which my wife and I raised our family sits here, but I have made my rather odd career as a different sort of photojournalist by continually wandering off to other places to photograph people and gather information, which I have then put together in various publications that have served the Alaska Native Eskimo, Indian and Aleut communities.

Although I did not have a great of free time to devote to this rather strange community, named after a Tanaina Athabascan Indian chief who knew Wasilla in the way that I so impossibly long to, I have still documented it regularly over the past quarter-century plus. In the early days, my Wasilla photographs focused mostly upon my children and the events they participated in - baseball, football, figure skating, hockey, frog catching, fire cracker detonation, Fourth of July parade - that sort of thing. 

In 2002, I purchased my first digital camera and then, whenever I was home, I began to photograph Wasilla upon a daily basis, but not in a conventional way. These were grab shots - whatever caught my eye as I took my many long walks or drove through the town, shooting through the car window at people and scenes that appeared and disappeared before I could even focus and compose in the traditional photographic way.

Thus, the Wasilla portion of this blog will be devoted both to the images that I take as I wander about and those that I have taken in the past. Despite the odd, random, nature of the images, I believe they communicate something powerful about this town that I have never seen expressed anywhere else. 

Wasilla is a sprawling community that has been slapped down hodge-podge upon what was so recently wilderness of the most exquisite beauty. In its design, it is deliberately anti-zoned, anti-planned. In the building of Wasilla, the desire to make a buck has trumped aesthetics and all other considerations. This town, built in the midst of exquisite beauty, has largely become an unsightly, unattractive, mess of urban sprawl. Largely because of this, it often seems to me that Wasilla is a community with no sense of community, a town devoid of town soul.

Yet - Wasilla is my home and if I am lucky it will be until I grow old and die. Despite its horrific failings, it is still made of the stuff of any small city: people; moms and dads, grammas and grampas, teens, children, churches, bars, professionals, laborers, soldiers, missionaries, artists, athletes, geniuses, do-gooders, hoodlums, the wealthy, the homeless, the rational and logical, the slightly insane and the wholly insane - and, yes, as is now obvious to the whole world, politicians, too.

So perhaps, if one were to search hard enough, it might just be possible to find a sense of community here, and a town soul. So, using my skills as a photojournalist and a writer, I hope to do just that. If this place has a sense of community, I will find it. If there is a town soul to Wasilla, I will document it. I won't compete with the newspapers. Hell no! But as time and income allow, it will be fun to wander into the places where the folks described above gather, and then put what I find on this blog.

 

by 300...

Anywhere within a 300 mile radius of Wasilla. This encompasses perhaps the most wild, dramatic, gorgeous, beautiful section of land and sea to be found in any comparable space anywhere on Earth. I can never explore it all, but I will do the best that I can, and will here share what I find and experience with you.  

and then some...

Anywhere else in the world that I happen to get to, such as Point Lay, Alaska; Missoula, Montana; Serenki, Chukotka, Russia; or Bangalore, India. Perhaps even Lagos, Nigeria. I have both a desire and scheme to get me there. It is a long shot. We shall see if I succeed.

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Entries in weather (86)

Friday
Mar062009

I spot two Mormon missionaries as they walk through the snow

 

Late this afternoon, as I drove home from the coffee shop drinking my cup and carrying another for Margie, I saw some Mormon missionaries walking down the side of the road ahead of me. It was a very warm day, 30 degrees.

Even so, I felt sympathy for them and decided to offer them a ride.

"No, thank you," the tall one, Elder Bjorkman from Emmett, Idaho, told me. "We're working, visiting people who live around here." I told him that my family originated in Southern Idaho, and I mentioned Malad, where Mom was born. 

He said that he had a close relative who came from there. I think it was an uncle, but maybe it was his dad; my memory failed to hold the information. I spent a summer working on my aunt and uncle's cattle ranch, just outside of Malad.

I don't ever recall hearing the name, Bjorkman, which was the name of his relative.

The short one, Elder Moala, is from Tonga.

Different kind of climate there. Maybe he will wind up in Barrow before he returns home. There is a noteworthy Tongan community in Barrow.

I told Elder Moala just a tiny bit about my own history involving Mormon missionaries from Tonga, Samoa and Hawaii.

I drove on, sipping my coffee. I did not even think to look into my rearview mirror, until I had gone aways. This is what I saw when I did. They were growing smaller and smaller. Soon, they disappeared altogether from my sight.

And yet, they never disappear, altogether.

Never.

One day, I will explain.

Notwithstanding the good parts - and there were many - it is a painful history and all the conclusions that it has drawn to have been painful.

For now, it is enough to know that on this day, I spotted two Mormon missionaries, walking through a warm snow, right here, in Wasilla, Alaska.

 

Tuesday
Mar032009

Catch 22 upon Catch 22: I could blame the ravens, but actually, it is all my fault

I want to go to bed right now - in fact, I wanted to go to bed an hour ago, but I have fallen behind on this blog and if I don't catch up right now, when will I?

I have a good excuse. I had a little project that had to be postmarked no later than March 1 and it ate up all my time, day and night, and then after I drove to Anchorage late Sunday night, got the postmark, bought a cheese quesedilla, a cheesy-bean burrito and a strawberry mango drink at the Parks Highway Taco Bell all-night drivethrough and then drove home, I was drained and have been ever since.

Taco Bell. That is where the problems started. Not the one on the Parks Highway in Anchorage, but the one here, in Wasilla, Saturday, where I photographed this and the other two ravens seen here. 

This is how it happened: I had no cash on Saturday when I went through the Wasilla Taco Bell drivethrough. Margie was stretched out across the back seat of the Escape, so pulled out my wallet, slipped my debit card out of that, paid with the debit card, slipped the card back into the wallet and then put the wallet...

Where did I put the wallet? Did I put it on my lap? I don't remember. Perhaps because I was paying too much attention to the ravens. I always pay attention to ravens. They demand it.

Did I put it in the little pouch on the inside of the drivers door?

Just where did I put it? It was black. These ravens are squabbling over and eating something black. Did they take it? Did they eat it?

All I know for certain is that, after we finished dining, I drove up to the outside Taco Bell garbage can. I handed my sack of Taco Bell garbage back to Margie, she put her sack of Taco Bell garbage into it, handed it back to me and then I got out of the car, walked to the garbage can, threw it in, got back in the car and then drove straight at the ravens, thinking that they would fly before I got to them.

But they didn't. They called my bluff and I had to stop and then go around them. It is not because they were stupid and did not understand the danger a Ford Escape could pose to them.

They are smart. They just knew that I was bluffing, and that I would stop. And if by chance I didn't, they had it all calculated down to the micro-second just when they would actually need to hop and flap out of the way.

But they did not want to do that unless it was absolutely necessary, and they knew it wouldn't be. They wanted to call my bluff, to humiliate me, and they did.

Margie wanted to go to Carr's to buy some groceries after that. So I drove her to Carr's. I thought that she meant that she wanted me to go in and buy some groceries, but she meant she wanted us to go in and buy some groceries. It would be the very first time that she had gone into a store since she suffered her injury, January 20.

I drove her as close as I could to the door, got out of the car, opened up the back door, helped her out, made certain she got through the new fallen snow to the walk that leads inside the store, then got back into the car. By then, the lady and the boy above were in front of me, so I took their picture.

I then found a place far from the store to park the car. Being a rough, tough, Alaskan, I did not care at all about the falling snow. I hiked from the car to Carr's as if it was not even snowing at all. As if I was in Phoenix, Arizona.

That's how I did it. I then entered the store and these two boys - I assume the one with a beard is a boy, but who knows, he could be a girl - how could I tell? - offered me a Peanut Butter Cup. First, I took their picture and then I took the Peanut Butter Cup.

That is the kind of thing of thing that you do when you are a serious photographer, which I am. You take your picture before you take your Peanut Butter Cup. It does not matter how badly you want that Peanut Butter Cup, you take the picture first.

If you can't do that, then, hell, you might just as well throw your damn camera in the trash.

I wonder if I threw my wallet in the trash at Taco Bell? I wonder if I had accidently placed it in the Taco Bell sack when I was eating, the one that became my trash bag?

All I know for certain is that when I got to the check-out stand, with Margie hobbling behind, and the checker rang up the $200 plus bill, I reached into my pocket for my wallet, but it was not there.

I went back to the car and searched in and all around it. My wallet was not there. I went to Carr's customer service, to see if someone had turned my wallet in. They had not. I drove back to Taco Bell, to see if someone had turned in my wallet there.

No one had. I asked if the garbage can had been emptied. It had.

The Taco Bell ravens laughed at me.

You don't believe me? You don't believe that a raven can laugh? Then come to Alaska and you will learn otherwise.

So I drove Margie home and checked my online bank account. No activity. Checked my credit cards. No activity. Still, I had to cancel them all. Each and every one.

Worse yet, I had no cash. Worse still, Margie had no cash. Even worse, when I cancelled my cards, I also cancelled her's, because we share accounts.

We do not have a pre-nup, either. Don't need one.

Although she was a little irritated with me, right now.

After that, there was nothing to do but go home and work on the project that I was telling you about. I worked on it all day Saturday for the remainder of the day and then when the day ended, I continued to work on it.

I did not stop until 5:00 AM. I then went to bed, pulled the covers over me and then the cats piled on. I sleep better when cats are piled atop me. Unless they grow mischievous. They grew mischievous.

I got up a bit before 10:00 AM, fixed Margie some oatmeal, fixed me some oatmeal and then got back to work. I did not stop until I was done, and that happened about 8:45 PM. At that time on Sunday, the only open Post Office in the whole state of Alaska is the airport Post Office in Anchorage, so I climbed into the car and drove - without my driver's license, because that was in the lost wallet.

Margie could not drive me, because her leg is in a brace and still cannot be bent. Her arm is in a cast and she could not grip the steering wheel.

So I drove, without my license. I set the cruise control to four miles above the speed limit to make certain that I would not accidently speed and get pulled over without a license.

I drove very cautious and carefully, so as not to attract any undo attention.

I drove past car after car that had gone off the road. Some had flipped over, some were on their side.

The road was dry. It was not icy. All those cars must have slid off the road the day before, when it was snowing. A whole lot of cars must have slide off the road Saturday, for so many to still not be retrieved Sunday night.

Probably, in the past, some of these drivers have laughed at news reports of snow-caused traffic mishaps in Lower 48 cities, especially in cities unaccustomed to snow that suddenly get snow.

Today, we seen such reports come out of Tennessee, and other southern states, like Maine.

I bet these drivers didn't laugh today.

Others did, though. Their time is coming.

As for today, it dawned clear, cold, and beautiful. -20 at our house. For you celsius people, that would be -29 on your scale. But I drove over the hill that is behind me in this picture and on Wasilla Main Street, it was +3. We live in a cold sink, that's why.

The good thing is, I now have so many bars on my cellphone right in my house that I haven't even bothered to count them, as that would require me to put on my reading glasses. But there are a lot of bars. No more dropped calls - thanks to this ugly monstrosity that just got turned on.

Now here is an amazing thing: when we flew out of Salt Lake City on the way home from Washington, DC, there was a guy at the gate next to ours peddling Delta Airlines American Express credit cards. He said if I got one and made just one purchase, why, hell, right there I would get enough free Delta Airlines miles just for doing so that I could fly free on a Delta Airlines roundtrip ticket  anywhere they go.

He said Margie could sign up and we could get two free round-trip tickets. I did not want another credit card, but I did like the idea of those free tickets. So I signed us both up. Margie was too broken up to sign herself up.

Those cards arrived the other day, but I just ignored them. This meant that I did not put them in my wallet. This meant that they did not get lost.

That is how I paid to mail my package from the Anchorage airport Post Office - with that Delta Airlines American Express card.

That is how I bought gas to drive back home from Anchorage - with that card.

And now I can fly anywhere in the US that Delta goes...

So today, driving illegally once again, I drove to the Department of Motor Vehicles in Palmer, figuring that I could be legal when I drove back.

When I got to the DMV, a sign asked me to please fill out all the relevant forms before my number was called. So I took my number from the number machine, then found the basket for the form that I needed.

It was empty.

Next, I sat in a chair and waited for my number to be called. My number was 241. As you can see, the couple in the picture here had number 237, and I had already been waiting awhile when I took it.

See the two portraits hanging on the wall? The one on the left is of our Governor, Sarah Palin. Ever hear of her?

I doubt it. It seems unlikely.

Anyway, 241 was finally called. I journied to the counter. The guy who helped me was most friendly. He gave me the form that had not been in the basket and patiently waited while I filled it out. He then had me take the eye test, which I passed just fine.

I showed him my passport and he agreed that I am who I said I am.

"That'll be $15.00," he said.

So I whipped out my American Express card.

"I'm sorry," he said, "the DMV does not take American Express."

Come on, Sarah - for hell's sake! 

So I drove illegally from the DMV to the Palmer McDonald's to buy a cup of coffee and some cinnamon nuggets. I chose McDonald's because I figured they would probably take American Express.

I made my order and pulled to the first window. A girl was there to take my money. I had put my American Express Card inside my passport. I absent-mindedly handed her the passport.

She didn't know what to do.

But when she figured it out, McDonald's accepted the card. I pulled up to the next window and this kid handed me my coffee and my cinnamon nuggets.

I drove out of the lot toward the highway and as I did, these two kids jaywalked right across the highway. They were lucky it was me driving. Most drivers would not have realized what was happening until it was too late and would have run right over them, but not me.

The coffee was scalding hot. Way too hot to drink. It would have to cool down. So I decided to take the long drive home, via fishhook road, which would extend the trip from about 15 miles to at least 20. I figured that would give the coffee time to cool down enough for me to drink while I was still driving home.

Plus, it is a more pleasant drive. 

I hadn't driven far before I grew impatient and decided that I did not want to wait for that coffee to cool down. If the coffee cooled, so would the cinnamon nuggets. I looked at the car's temperature indicator. The exterior air temperature was 10 degrees. That's the thing about this time of year, after the sun comes back. In December and January, if the morning temperature is -20, it might rise to -18 or so, but that's about it.

I looked at the speedometer. It read 55 miles per hour. I did some quick mental calculations and came up with a wind chill factor of -19. I figured that would cool down the coffee real quick, so I rolled down the window and held the cup out into the wind for a couple of miles. The inside of my hand was burning, the outside freezing, but it did the trick.

The coffee was drinkable in short order. The cinnamon nuggets were still warm.

I turned off Fishhook onto Polar Bear. I hadn't gone far when I saw this snow machine, just sitting in the road. 

And a bit later, on Church, I saw this guy. His snowmachine was working just fine.

Which brings me to another dilemma that I face. I might need to do some snowmachining real soon, to do my work which I have fallen so far behind on since I got hurt. Or I might have to hang onto the back of a sled. I have not done either since I shattered my shoulder and got it replaced.

I am much improved now, but I don't think my shoulder is capable of handling a snowmachine on rough terrain - and sea ice is always rough terrain. And neither is my wrist, which got hurt, too, but was completely ignored due to the severity of my shoulder injury. Now, it often bothers me worse than my shoulder. Each night, I lose sleep by the hour to the pain in my wrist, and in my shoulder.

What do I do?

In part, my Muse seems to have solved the problem. I promised her that when she got married, I would come to India to photograph her wedding. I am not a wedding photographer, I do not photograph weddings. But sometimes I make an exception.

For her, I will make such an exception.

Tonight, she informed me that she has set the date for May 3, and said that I must come one week early. That's probably when I would be doing the most heavy snowmachining of all. Now, on the hope that all goes well, I will be India, where it is pretty hard to drive a snowmachine.

You could do it, but it would be mighty hard on the snowmachine.

Oh, good grief! Did I write, "hard on?"

I never intended this to be that kind of blog. I am shocked.

And on a snowmachine! That would be awful. Something might break right off.

I think it is time to get out of this blog and go to bed. I think I am sleep-deprived.

But still, I would like to get on a snowmachine between now and India.

What do I do?

Now, being broke and all, how do I get to India?

My Muse has set her wedding date. I will find a way.

I have never let being broke stop me from traveling.

Now I will click "published," then "saved," and I will go to bed. 

Despite the time listed at the top of this page, it is 4:35 AM. 

 

Monday
Feb232009

Jack Russell puppies for sale; the boy is not sad to see the St. Bernard pup go... reflective Mocha Moose coffee girl

I got this bad headache, I am tired and the skin around the top of my head seems to be contracting in a strange way. I just want to go to bed without writing even one more word... or maybe not one more after this... but I have already placed these pictures. I suppose I should add a few words to them.

So here's the story above: once again, I coaxed Margie up off her convalescent couch and took her out for a fast food lunch, just so she could see something besides the four walls that surround her. It is a little hard to get her out the door and it is scary when she steps off the porch and onto the packed snow and ice of the driveway, but we are careful and it is good for her to get out.

We drove to KFC-A&W for chicken and cut through Fred Meyer's parking lot to get there. Before we reached the chicken, I spotted this guy, Lenny, trying to sell Jack Russell puppies, so naturally I stopped. He was asking $400 per pup, which he assured me was a very fair price, but it was too high for me, so I didn't buy one.

Of course, if Lenny had been giving them away I wouldn't have bought one either. There is no such thing as a free pup.

Although the lady is having a good conversation with someone on the phone and it looks like she might be telling whoever it is that she is bringing a Jack Russell pup home, she and the girls were pupless when they left.

Jack Russell butt. 

Lenny called his pickup the Jack Russell Pup Mobile, or something like that. When you have a headache as bad as the one that now smites me, it is hard to remember such quotations word for word.

Jack Russell ear.

Just beyond the Jack Russell Pup Mobile was another vehicle and in it this boy held this St. Bernard pup. As you can see in the windshield, the pup was going for $600. If Lavina had been with us, she would probably have bought it. She fell in love with it when I showed it to her on the LCD to my pocket camera. That was yesterday. This evening, she was still walking around, thinking about this puppy and sighing, wishing that I had bought it and brought it home to her.

Jacob strongly insinuated that if I really loved my grandson, I would have bought it for toddler Kalib. But, if a free pup is expensive, think how expensive a $600 pup is.

As for the boy holding the pup, you can see how sad he looks. "It must be kind of hard to know you have to give up the pup," I said to him.

"No," he said, "It doesn't bother me at all."

I had more questions that I wanted ask, but a grim and solemn air permeated the St. Bernard Pup Mobile, so I kept my questions to myself.

If I had shot these as a feature for a newspaper, I would have had to ask the questions; I would have had to write down names. But since its a blog - my blog - I can do whatever I decide to do.

And I decided to leave it at that.

The puppy pictures are all from yesterday, but now this raven catches me up to today. I spotted it as I took my walk. It is so good to have all this sunlight back, to see such a blue sky, but it fooled me a bit.

I did not wear my earband. My ears got cold.

Even so, the increased hours of sunlight is finally beginning to drive the SADS out of me. I am still lazy and listless, but new energy is radiating back into me.

A snowmachine trail across Little Lake. Little Lake is not really a lake at all, but a pond, a tiny pond. When my kids were small, they named it, "Little Lake." They even made a sign that said "Little Lake." They posted that sign by Little Lake so that all who passed by would know its name.

Serendipity. Damnit. That hill used to be mine. 

This dog came running from a house, barking at me with joy. He was so happy to see me. Or maybe "she." I didn't check.

Today, to get her out of the house again, I took Margie to Taco Bell. Right next to Taco Bell is this construction site. It will be a Walgreen's Drugstore. 

Wasilla grows ever more mainstream, but in a haphazard sort of way.

The coffee girl at Mocha Moose reaches out towards her own reflection to take a customer's money.

Headlights coming down Shrock Road. Click on the picture, if you don't believe me. And that is all I have to say about this day, which for me, in its entirety, was spent right here, in Wasilla, Alaska. Maybe not all within the official city limits, but Wasilla, just the same.

Sunday
Feb222009

How will I bear it, when 200,000 more people live in this valley?

Recent news reports advance the claim that by the year 2030, the population of the Matanuska-Susitna Valley will rise to 300,000. The thought, to me, is unbearable. When we first moved into the Mat-Su 27 years ago, the population of the entire valley was about 30,000, but exploding fast due to the influx of money and jobs that poured across Alaska as a result of the oil boom that followed the construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. 

At that time, the same sorts of folks who put together this latest prediction were forecasting a population increase to 90,000, right about now. From what I gathered from listening to and reading the recent stories, about 100,000 people now live in this valley.

Way too many for me.

Naturally, there are many who get excited when they hear of such potential growth, as they see new opportunities to make money. Above all else, above open, wild, free country, the right to bear arms and freedom itself, money has been the force that has driven and ruled Alaska during the time that we have lived here. I am certain that it will continue to be.

Were it not for the much-loathed restraining hand of the federal government with its national parks and wildlife refuges, this place would have been ripped apart. Nothing that bore the potential of yielding a dollar would have been left unscratched.

To many, money equals quality of life, but to me, each time a new family moves into the valley to the increase of the population, the quality of life diminishes - perhaps imperceptibly with just that family, but devastatingly upon accumulation.

Please do not misunderinterpret me - I need money too and I do not begrudge any of these families who move here, hoping to improve their circumstance. I welcome each one. We did the same 27 years ago and yes, we diminished the quality for those of like-mind who preceded us.

For example, there was an old trapper's trail that cut right through our back yard. The trapper who had made it had long since disappeared from the country, but many recreational snowmachiners used to buzz up and down that trail and it was a real battle to convince the most bull-headed among them that, now that the trail not only went through a subdivision but directly through yards where children played, they could no longer use that trail.

When the population here hits 300,000, where will the recreational snowmachiners go? Their prospects will be greatly limited. Look at Anchorage right now. How much recreational snowmachining do you see going on in that town? Anchorage is about 300,000. Smaller area than the Mat-Su, true, but the reality will be largely the same.

Perhaps our arrival did increase the quality of life for the developer of our subdivision, who was a bright, energetic, ambitious, enthusiastic man in his forties - a jogger and a musician. We put more money into his pocket.

"I'm really not interested in the money," he told me one day as we drove through the newly burgeoning neighborhood, "what I want is just to be able to drive through here one day with my daughter and be able to tell her, 'when I first came here, there was nothing but trees, but your dad built this - and look at all these families who now make their lives here!'"

His heart killed him, not long afterward. They named a ball park after him and my boys all played American Legion baseball there.

As for the above series of pictures, I took them after I dragged Margie up from her position of convalescence upon the couch and drove her to Taco Bell, where we could eat in the car, just to get her out of the house.

There was no Taco Bell back then, no McDonald's, no Arby's, No Carl's Jr., no KFC-A&W, no fast food of any kind.

As ought to be apparent to anyone who has read much of this blog, and to the chagrin of my oldest daughter, I enjoy my fast food. 

After we ate, I stopped at the Tesoro Station on Seward Meridian and Palmer-Wasilla Highway to gas up the Escape. I damn near froze - not because it was that cold, it wasn't. It was about 18 degrees F., having warmed up from the -5 (-21 C) of the morning. But the wind was brisk and I was protected only by a light jacket.

I then climbed back into the car and took Margie on a good, long, drive. I thought about the cost of the gas and the added pollution and greenhouse gas that I was throwing into the air, but I drove anyway, because I really wanted to.

I need money, too, I really do. Maybe when they start the gas line up, some of the new dollars will land in my bank account. If I can get enough to buy, maintain, and gas-up another airplane, I can still escape the maddening crowd.

Even if by chance these two break all records for feline longevity and are still around in 2030, they will not be bothered by the population increase.

If the economy stays bad in the Lower 48 but the gas line becomes real here - wow! It will get completely crazy! People from all over will pour in up here looking for jobs, just like they did during TAPS construction and the oil boom. Most of them, probably 70 or 80 percent, will not find jobs, but they will still need to eat, they will still need a warm, dry, place to lay their heads and country to play in. The influx will be disproportionately male; they will need females, however they can obtain access to them.

Everyone here seems to be excited about the prospect of a gas line; it just can't happen soon enough.

This picture of Royce and Chicago is one of a series of pictures from yesterday that appeared on Grahamn Kracker's No Cat's Allowed Kracker Cat blog.

Wednesday
Feb182009

I fly south, drinking cranberry juice as I go; Summer stays behind in Barrow

Here I am in Alaska Airlines Flight 52, sitting in seat 20 F, watching the Stewardess come down the aisle, serving soft drinks and pretzels, and selling alcoholic drinks and "snack packs" that are not at all worth the cost. She cannot take cash, but only credit or debit cards. That is why she holds the glowing device in her hands - it is a credit card reader.

She and her partner reach my row, which is empty except for me. "What would you care to drink, sir?" she asks.

"Cranberry Juice," I answer. I feel quite inflated with myself - she called me, "Sir."

Her partner hands her the cranberry juice and a plastic cup.

The stewardess hands me my cranberry juice. I am thirsty and it tastes very good. I want more, but she never offers me more. Not enough time, I guess. This leg is from Barrow to Fairbanks and only takes a little over an hour to fly.

I become curious as to who sits behind me. I turn around and see a baby. It is six-month old baby Noah of Barrow, with his mother, Bobbie.

 

But Noah and Bobbie are not traveling alone. Sister/daughter Nancy, five years old, flies with them. It is not right to leave her out of the picture, so she joins in.

There is one more sister, Summer, age 2. She has stayed behind in Barrow. I have no choice but to leave Summer out of the picture.

After Fairbanks, we fly on to Anchorage, where I am greeted by 30 degree air - that's above zero. It feels shockingly warm. As I stand on the curb waiting for Lisa to pull up and pick me up, I find myself standing by a guy who flew in from Portland.

He thinks it is cold.

A warm front has blown into South Central from off the Pacific.