Breakfast, coffee break; Melanie comes out and we decorate the tree

Now, today:

In the morning, I got up and drove to Abby's Home Cooking. Abby had been at the wedding last night with her family, including daughter Emily who was a member of the bridal party.

So I decided I would go and let her fix breakfast for me.

I passed this cyclist along the way.

As you can see, another horrid mass of warm air has moved in from the Pacific - just like I speculated it would when I was trying to read the signs and predict the weather.

Damnit!

I hate this warm weather in December.

Funny, if any place else in the country, including the coldest states of the northern tier, had experienced the degree of consistent cold that we did in November, the religious among them would have said it was a sign that end was coming soon.

Hmmmm... perhaps all this warm weather in December here in South Central Alaska means... the end is coming soon?

There she is - Abby - cooking away behind the counter. This morning was the busiest I have ever seen it at Abby's. Every table but one was filled and there was action at the counter, too.

Shelly was not there to help her, because Shelly had run the restaurant all by herself all yesterday so that Abby could go to the wedding.

Abby's husband Andy was there, helping her.

Still, Abby was waitressing, cooking and busing.

If business keeps building up like this, she is going to have to hire more help.

As always at Abby's, I enjoyed my breakfast.

I guess I didn't totally work through the afternoon. Margie took the car and went shopping, so, having little rituals that I follow to keep me sane, when the time came, I walked to Metro Cafe for my coffee break. As I walked, this airplane flew by to both inspire and taunt me.

If it had been me up there, I would have had skis on by now.

I surely would have.

I'm not criticising, mind you.

This pilot might have a perfectly good reason to have kept this plane on wheels.

I can't think of a good reason, but the pilot might have thought of one.

Still, I would have rejected such a thought.

One of Carmen's guests had brought his 1974 yearbook to Metro. I would tell you his name, but I am going to let you see if you can figure it out for yourself.

If you can't, then I am sorry to say it, but your own education was a waste.

I don't care if you are a historian now, getting paid millions of dollars by government agencies and $60,000 a speech - if you can't figure this out...

Now, don't anybody post your answers in comments.

If you were wrong, I would hate to have to inform you.

In the evening, Melanie came over. We ate dinner, then we ate Alaska Wildberry chocolates. After that, we decorated the tree - or least Melanie and Margie did, after they went out into the yard while I was working on the wedding and cut it down.

For a long time, Margie had what she called "a Charlie Brown tree" all picked out.

They didn't cut it, though, because Melanie found another, even better, Charlie Brown tree.

Now, I have a very serious question to ask you:

Do you see any chocolate on the left side of Melanie's face?

Do you see any chocolate on the right side of Melanie's face?

Neither do I.

This is important, because a bit after I took these pictures, Melanie saw the image of herself in a mirror. She claims that chocolate was spread all across her face. She says she then washed that chocolate off.

She then began to scold me, telling me not to dare put a picture of her with chocolate on her face in the blog.

You didn't have chocolate on your face, I told her.

Yes I did, she insisted, and don't use any pictures showing chocolate on my face. Delete them. Delete them all.

I never delete a picture, I told her.

It didn't matter. There was no chocolate.

Margie hangs a Christmas tree ornament.

Melanie hangs a birch bark canoe ornament on a high branch. "We should get a star for the top," Margie said.

"Okay," I agreed.

This conversation has taken place now for, oh, I don't know... 25 years now? 30.

We really should, though.

Or an angel.

Or a cat, holding a song book, singing Christmas carols.

It could have a chip in it and really sing.

Last came the tinsel.

When it was done, I noticed they hadn't put the airplane oraments on the tree.

"Why didn't you put the airplanes on the tree?" I asked, reasonably.

"You have to do it," Melanie said.

"No," I said. "You could have done it."

"No. You always scold me. 'Don't put the airplanes on the tree,' you always say, 'only I can do that.'"

"No," I countered, truth on my side but to no avail, "I never say that."

Yet, it was clear that if the airplanes were going to get on the tree, I would have to do it.

So I did.

There were only two of them.

What happened to the rest?

I had enough airplane ornaments to decorate a whole tree all by themselves.

Not that I would ever do that.

But I had enough.

Where did they go?

Probably flew away, I guess.

Finally, the tree was done. The three of us stood before it and altogether we sang, "Oh Christmas Tree."

Or at least I did. All by myself.

Or at least I sang this much of it, in a non-existant key of my own invention:

"Oh, Christmas tree, oh, Christmas tree! How lovely are thy branches!"

"Dad," Melanie challenged, "are those the real lyrics? Or did you make them up?"

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So - just how much is that doggie in the window? Recipient of writing award wins gold medal and cash prize

It seems to me that I have written about the doggie in the window before, the one with the waggily tail. But I am too lazy to do a search and find out if I actually did or if maybe Grahamn Kracker did on his now slumbering blog or if I just wrote about that doggie somewhere else, so if I repeat myself, I repeat myself.

Anyway, the doggie that I reference was the star of song that was popular when I was a little boy, a pop song with a country tilt, sung by Patti Page*, with deep ache and longing in her voice.

"How much is that doggie in the window?" she asked so longingly.

Then the dog barked twice, "Arf! Arf!"

Patti sung on:

"The one with the waggily tail (Arf! Arf!)

"I do hope that doggie's for sale..."

Oh, did that song fill me with longing! I wanted that doggie. I would plead with my mom that we get that doggie. She would laugh and smile, and even sing the song back to me, but she would not take me to a store where there was a doggie in the window.

And then one day, she and Dad took me to the dog pound in Pendleton, Oregon, and let me pick out a puppy. I chose a white little fellow with light brown spots and, indeed, he did have a waggily tail. I named him, "Whitey" and he would come to me, his waggily tail a-wagging, smiling in that way that puppies smile. A scientist might tell you that a puppy cannot smile, that a puppy lacks the muscles required to smile, but anyone who has had a puppy or a good dog knows that, indeed, they do smile - with their eyes, their mouths, their entire countenance.

And so it was that Whitey would come to me, waggling and smiling.

Then one day, after Whitey had been with us for about two weeks, he went under the bed and would not come up. No matter what I did, I could not persuade him to come.

He had suddenly become frightened of me and I did not know why.

He had become frightened of everybody and everything. So we took him to the vet. He had distemper. So I was told that the kind thing to do would be to let the vet put him to sleep. This would put an end to his suffering, which would only grow worse if we did not. Would I agree?

I agreed. 

Grief-stricken though I was, I still had to go to school, so I did.

As it happened, my second grade teacher showed us a filmstrip that day. It was about Old Mother Hubbard.

Her own doggie was hungry. So she went to the cupboard to get her poor dog a bone, but when she got there, the cupboard was bare. There was no bone for the poor dog.

Thankfully, it was dark in that room. It can be a terrible thing for a second grader when his friends see him cry.

Actually, I did not intend to write the above story. I was just going to mention how, when I pulled into the parking lot, I found this particular dog behind this particular window. I was going to muse about how much time animals spend waiting all alone and lonely, not understanding why, for their humans?

What I was going to write about was "contemplating the future of this blog, part 4."

But I really don't have the time to articulate my thoughts on that right now, so I won't.

Today is the birthday of my beautiful and intelligent daughter, Melanie, so I don't think that I will be getting to part 4 tomorrow, either.

Happy birthday, Melanie! See you tonight!

On Tuesday of next week, I leave for Barrow. I have more to do between now and then than I can possibly do. Maybe I will get to part 4 before then, maybe I won't.

The fact is, though, it will be quite awhile before I can find time execute any of these ideas that I have to advance my blog and start up my electronic magazine, so I suppose it is okay.

A few of you have made some suggestions, with some helpful ideas. When I finally do part 4, I will include these ideas in the contemplation.

And this from India - Ramz receives a writing award:

Not so long ago, I introduced readers to my young niece Ramz, seen here at the wedding of Soundarya and Anil, and to her blog. I am pleased to announce that, yesterday, Ramz won a gold medal and a cash prize in an essay contest.

In her blog, she lets her mind travel far and back and forth through time. She visits Japan, Abraham Lincoln, and Albert Einstein. I wonder where her writing of the future will take her? Far away and back home, maybe?

*See Patti Page sing, How Much is that Doggie in the Window? 

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For seven years, she refused to date him when he would show up at the motel; now they have been married seven years; a temple blessing; contemplating, part 2, on hold

As you can see, I wound up at Family Restaurant again this morning, but for a different reason. Jobe has been vomiting again, so Margie left at about 8:30 this morning to drive into town so that she could babysit him. I figured that it might be my only chance to ride in a car today, so I had her drop me off at Family on her way. I took this image after breakfast, as I was beginning my walk home, maybe a bit less than four miles. It was a bit after 9:00 AM. This may look dark for 9:00 AM to some of you, but for us, it is amazing to see how quickly the light is coming back.

As I walked along Lucille Street a raven would come flying by, always headed south, directly over the road, every few minutes. They all looked pretty intent to reach their destinations. I figured that these were ravens who nest out in the hills near the foot of the Talkeetna Mountains, but make their living in downtown Wasilla, primarily off the food that people discard - the ravens that I see at Taco Bell, Carl's Jr., McDonald's and such.

It was morning, and these ravens were going to work.

It was garbage pick-up day in our neighborhood.

As I did not have a car and had already walked four miles, I figured that I would just skip my Metro coffee break and listen to the news in my office while I edited pictures. But about 3:30, I was overcome by a strong desire to get out of the office, so I took off on foot for Metro Cafe. It was snowing now. 

Here I am, walking down Lucille Street, toward Metro. Look how heavy the traffic is! Yet, it is too early for people to be coming home from work. Why are all these folks driving down Lucille?

I arrived at Metro a little before 4:30, closing time being 5:00. Carmen invited me to look at her wedding album. They got married seven years ago, when she was 38, Scott 48. It was his third, her first. She met him when she was working at the Best Western Motel on Spenard in Anchorage. He would sometimes come and check in for the night on his way to and from the Arctic Slope oil fields and each time he did, he would ask her out. 

Each time, she would say no. He would tell her that one day they would marry, she would be his wife and would have his babies. She would say, "no!" This went on for seven years. Finally, she agreed to go to a movie with him, just to put an end to all the nonsense and get him out of her life. Anyway, she was Catholic and he was not.

That one date led to the marriage. It could not take place in the Catholic church, but "God knew what he was doing when he brought us together," Carmen says.

Scott has completed all of his cancer treatment and has finally gone back to work on the Slope, where temperatures have been running in the -50 range, with -75 and even -95 windchills. Carmen says he is finding the cold a bit hard to take, given the aftereffects of his radiation and chemo treatments.

I hear that it is warming up now - into the -30's and -20's.

This is Ryder, who came to Metro Cafe with his mom, Buffy, and his Aunt Danielle. Ryder drank hot chocolate and, except for me, was the last customer to leave.

I had planned to walk home, but Nola offered me a ride. I decided that seven miles was enough to have walked today. I got into the car. Nola brushed the new snow off the window.

Nola drinks a bottle of water as she drives me home.

 Okay - Part 2 of Contemplating the future of this blog will just have to wait until tomorrow. This post is long enough already.

And this one from India:

Inside one of the temples at Pattadakal - blessings are offered.

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Thos and Delaina's wedding day, part 3: We plunge in our forks in American Fork, where I experience the curse of the Wasilla traveler in the age of Palin

We left Rex's car at the Draper Temple and he rode with me south toward American Fork, the plan being that I would drop him off on the way back and he could then pick up his car. The wedding lunch was to be held at the Rodizio Grill. As has become my way, I did not bother asking anybody for directions, but just entered "current location" and "Rodizio Grill" into the Google map feature of my iPhone and it laid out the route for me.

That route ended at the freeway exit into American Fork, so I figured that once we got there, I would just pull off at the exit, zoom in on the iPhone map, spot the exact location of Rodizio's and drive right to it.

As we drew near, Rex said that I needed to take the Lehi exit, the one immediately before American Fork, and then go west. I chose to listen to my iPhone and continued on to the American Fork exit. As I did not know which direction Rodizio's was from the freeway, only that it had be very close, I took Rex's word and turned right, to the west. 

By the time we had traveled 100 yards away from the exit, it was obvious there was going to be nothing to the west, so I pulled over and took out my iPhone. Rex was insistent that I should have taken the earlier exit and then gone west from there.

So I did a new iPhone map from the spot where we were parked to Rodizio's and it drew out a half-mile route to a spot that appeared to be right on the freeway, right near the entrance for north bound traffic on the east side.

Rex still insisted that I should have taken the last exit and that we needed to go west. He said he had got his information from Mary Ann.

"But it shows it right here," I pointed to the map on my phone.

However, because it showed Rodizio's looking as though it sat right on the freeway near the entrance, a slight amount of doubt crept into me. What if the iPhone did not know where Rodizio's was, but had merely given me the route to the American Fork exit?

But this could not be... iPhones are smart! It had to know the location of Rodizio's!

Anyway, it showed me the route to that spot, I started to follow it and we reached this stoplight. Rex called Mary Ann for clarification. Just beyond, there was a fork in the road. One fork continued on the iPhone route, crossed over the freeway, then veered slightly north and came back to the spot where Rodizio's appeared to be right on the freeway. As the sparrow flies, we were maybe 300 to 400 yards away.

The other fork led back onto the freeway, going south, toward Las Vegas. 

The light turned green, I started out on the iPhone route, but Rex ordered me to turn right, onto the freeway ramp. And you know... he's the big brother. I did. As it turned out, the iPhone was right. There was road construction to the south and the next two exits were out of commission. 

It took us nearly 20 minutes to double back and return to the dot that appeared on the iPhone to be right on the freeway but which was, in fact, Rodizio's, sitting right alongside the freeway.

Never doubt your iPhone - not even when your big brother speaks.

See that mountain? That's Timpanogos, 11,749 feet. I climbed it once in the winter and slept on the side, in a snow cave. Nothing compared to Denali, but a nice little adventure, anyway.

About eight months after Jacob was born, Margie and I dropped him off at my parent's house in Sandy, then we drove to the north side of this mountain, which is forested and has glaciers near the top. Robert Redford's Sundance ski resort sits on the north slope of Timp, which was also the setting for much of his movie, Jeremiah Johnson.

We climbed to the top.

Coming back down, we reached a slide on the glacier. Margie took a seat at the top of the slide but looked at the steep slope below her and was afraid to go. She just sat there, immobile. So I gave her a little push on the back and down she slid, shrieking.

I plopped down and slid down behind her.

When I reached her, she was both shrieking and laughing, scolding me for pushing her, yet happy that she had made the slide. 

In Rodizio's, we found the bride and groom, not eating, but milling about, entertaining the guests.

I took a seat right beside Delaina's dad. "Where do you live?" he asked me.

"Wasilla, Alaska," I answered.

"No!" he shot back, in genuine disbelief. "No you don't!"

"Yes," I said. "I do."

"No you don't!"

"Yes," I held my ground. "I absolutely do."

"Oh. Well... you're good then."

And he never asked me another single question. It was as if the fact that I live in Wasilla told him all that he ever wanted to know about me.

When I travel Outside, I frequently find that many people peg me as soon as they learn where I live. Right wingers will often immediately embrace me as a soul brother. Upon hearing the word, "Wasilla," left wingers, who were friendly and open one minute before, will sometimes suddenly shy away, cease all conversation and want nothing more to do with me.

Folks...!!!! We who live in Wasilla are individuals. We do not all think alike. We do not all eat the same food. Some of us prefer coffee to tea and many don't drink either. We do not vote as a block. We don't all hang out together and we don't all worship Sarah Palin.

Some of us remember how life was before this odd phenomena that is her burst so irrationally upon America and we wish it could be that way again.

We want our Wasilla back!

He is a physical therapist. He got into the field as a student at BYU. He went on to work with the BYU football team and other athletic teams, which caused him to spend much time traveling. He spent many years in Texas.

Now he does his physical therapy on inmates at the Point of the Mountain Utah State Prison.

Occasionally, an inmate will get hostile. Every inmate that he works on is restained, usually either by hand or leg cuffs, depending on what part of the body needs therapy.

Now, I will just move quickly along. The food at Rodizio's... hey, it's not quite as good as Iñupiat and native food, but it is mighty fine and tasty. You start out at a salad bar that has about 30 selections, some of which could qualify as the main course, then guys like this keep coming by with skewers of everything from spicy chicken to spare ribs, to grilled pork and, as you can see, grilled pineapple.

That pineapple... whoa!

I want some more, right now!

Can't have it.

Maybe never again.

A once in a lifetime experience.

I bet they have it in Hawaii.

Even better there.

How can I get to Hawaii?

This is the turkey, wrapped in bacon. Rex has two pig valves in his heart and so does not eat anything wrapped in bacon.

I do, though, and it was... heavenly!

Mary Ann and her daughters are all vegetarian, and this place was good for them, too.

The intellectual banter was continuous.

Shaela and Delaina's mom.

More pineapple.

The thing was, each shaving of food was tiny, leaving the diner to always feel that he (or she) can take another.

So the diner eats and eats, all the time thinking that she has room for plenty more. And then, at the end, suddenly, the diner realizes she is stuffed beyond stuffed.

Or he realizes it. Because I am a he and at the end I was stuffed beyond stuffed.

I could hardly waddle back to the car.

The Rodizio Grill - a place where young people meet...

...and get to know each other.

The bride and groom, at the beginning of their life together.

The other men attached to my sister's daughters. That's Eric sitting by Amber. He is an adventurer, a mountain climber. He loves the Arctic and has scaled tall, icy, peaks that rise from Baffin Island in northeastern Canada.

The other fellow is Steven, Shaela's husband, who, like her, is making a career in the brutal film industry called Hollywood.

Shaela.

A hand upon the shoulder of a granddaughter.

You should know these two by now.

It is time to go. But before we do, Rex visits Tom and his mom.

My sister and her step-granddaughter.

I constructed this and part 4, the final wedding day post, before I went to bed last night, but I will give this a half-dozen or so hours to hang at the top of the list - to see how many extra hits are drawn in just because the word, "Palin," appears in the title.

It will be a bunch, I'm sure.

Update: After reading this, my niece Shaela posted a picture of me being blessed at the Indian temple at Shravanabelagola on her own blog.

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they will appear larger and look better

Thos and Delaina's wedding day, part 2: On temple grounds

Before I continue, I must apologize for the many omissions I am about to make. I met a good many people on the day that Thos married Delaina and I was also extremely tired. Hence, most, if not all, of those names have simply flown out of my head. I could try to contact Thos and Delaina, run the pictures by them and have them supply all the missing names, but they are honeymooning in Vermont and I am certain that they are busy admiring the fall colors and do not wish to be interrupted by me and my questions.

So, except for my immediate blood family members, I am just not going to name all these people, including Delaina's beautiful little niece.

This is beautiful Delaina, my new niece-in-law and her beautiful little niece.

As I mentioned in my last post, I, a constant photographer, had to restrain myself and hold back, as Thos and Delaina had hired a real wedding photographer. If anyone should wonder if I was at all offended not to have been asked to shoot the wedding day... no, no, no!

I was glad they had a photographer. Very glad.

They will be glad, too, because they will get their pictures a lot faster than they would if I had shot them.

Anyway, here they are with their photographer, who was a dedicated and hard worker. I have no doubt at all that she did an excellent job.

There will be no polar bears in her pictures, but that is okay.

Polar bears would not be happy in Utah.

They just wouldn't be.

Utah is not a polar bear place. That is why I never want to live there again.

Once you have lived in state where polar bears roam, no other state can quite hold up.

Thos and Delaina, posing for their photographer.

Now, they do a pose for me.

Might I add that this Thos is a very special young man. If it were not so, I would not have traveled all the way to Utah from Alaska to be present outside the Draper Temple on the day of his wedding. My impression of Delaina is that she is special as well. I know she has chosen well.

They look good together.

I hope that they both live to be very old and that they are together through all that time.

In the Mormon faith, the purpose of temple marriage is to wed your spouse not until death do you part, but for all time and eternity.

I do not know about eternity, but if such a thing is possible, then I hope their love will bind them through it.

I hope the same for non-Mormon couples who love each other as well.

Even though I am not a wedding photographer, every now and then I find myself photographing a wedding. Not always, but most often, there comes that exciting moment when I must photograph the groom removing the garter from the leg of the bride.

I do not expect to see such a thing in connection with a Mormon wedding, and so I was bit surprised when I saw the bride begin to hike up her gown for the photographer - but it was so she could photograph her red shoes.

Red shoes also have a reputation as being a bit sexy.

But who says a Mormon bride can't be sexy?

Margie was a Mormon bride and she was sexy - oh, my goodness!

Was she sexy!

That's why we wound up with all these kids.

A little dog came running by.

It was a righteous and holy dog.

Sorry. I couldn't resist.

Thos gets a hug from his stepdad, Gregory Hayes, husband to my sister.

My sister Mary Ann hugs her new daughter-in-law. My niece, Shaela Ann Cook, who sometimes leaves comments on this blog, looks on from the left. Looking on from the right is Tom Swallow, Mary Ann's first husband and the father of all four of her children.

Soon, the photographer was lining all of the family members present together for a group picture, the bride's family on one side and us of the groom's on the other.

You can see that I am standing very close to my former brother-in-law, Tom. Over the past few decades, I have had to give great thought to just what defines a family. It first happened after my brother, Ron, died in 1987. His divorce had been a painful one, but his ex-wife came and despite all the pain of the past, she came as family.

As the mother of my nieces by Ron, she was family. The first wife of my older brother, Mac, also came. Their marriage had also come to a bitter end, but at the funeral it was, once again, as though she were still an integral part of the family.

I will be honest, when Tom and Mary Ann split up, my feelings toward him were made hard and they stayed hard for a long time.

Then, Shaela got married and there Tom was, as family, in the midst of family. It was his place to be there and so those hard feelings had to be put aside. Next, my father lay dying and Tom was there again. Again, it was the right place for him to be and his presence was appreciated.

Next was Khena's wedding in India, and we did some touring together - Tom, I and several others.

And now here we are together again, at Thos's wedding.

He is no longer my in-law, yet, he is family, bound to me through my sister's children. Twenty years ago, I would not have believed it possible, yet I find I now feel a certain sense of love toward him. When we parted company at the end of this trip, we hugged. It was a real hug, with love in it.

Finally, the wedding photographer had us all posed as she wanted. I let my camera hang useless as she took her pictures of the unification of our once separate families.

When she finished, I told everybody to stay put for just a moment, so that I could take a picture of the family group - absent myself, of course.

As I did so, the wedding photographer studied the situation and suddenly decided that she, too, liked the scene without me in it and so stepped back in (see lower right) and again shot the family group - absent me.

If you look at the bigger picture in the slide show, you will see that some eyes are looking at my camera and some at the real wedding photographer's camera.

I don't mind such a dichotomy in my photos, but I did not think that she would want it, so I quickly stepped aside, as quickly as was feasible, anyway.

Thos and his three sisters, Amber, Khena and Shaela. Amber hates to be photographed and has been known to take extreme measures to avoid the camera lens. I was the official photographer for Shaela and husband Steve Cook and Amber was part of the bridal entourage, and so she had to yield and I got some wonderful pictures of her.

I might also note that my sister's children are all brilliant. If you were to drop them in amidst the honor classes of Harvard, Yale, Stanford, MIT - any damn place - and pull together the four other brightest people present and put them in a group, these four right here would still be the brightest quartet in the room.

I won't elaborate now, but maybe I will sometime in the future, should my time and travels allow.

I tell them I am done with this picture. They step away. I take another. I like to do things like this, to get the scene just when the pose has been broken.

In my last post, I used a picture of the bride and groom that I shot at this very spot, just seconds apart from this one. In that one, they were standing slightly apart, so that the picture would show the words engraved in the granite behind and above them.

So I figured that I had better use this one now, so readers can see that they are not stand-a-parts, but rather a genuine, loving, hugging, couple of newlyweds.

And here they are, loving each other some more.

And this was my first glimpse ever of my youngest niece, Ada Lakshmi Iyer, held in the arms of her father, Vivek. She had been sleeping and so Vivek had stayed in the car with her.

Ada Lakshmi, in the midst of all.

Ada grew irritated and began to cry. Her dad showed her something on his iPhone and she calmed down.

Then Vivek took Ada off to the side of the temple and pointed out something above. I can't be certain, but I suspect that it was the golden statue of the Angel Moroni.

This is my brother Rex, the eldest of the two twins and also of all five of us original siblings. He is an insurance investigator and some little disaster had happened that he was called to early in the morning, about 7:30. He thought that he would be able to get it taken care of quickly and then join us at the appointed time, but he was wrong.

He did not arrive until after the photographer had taken all of her temple pictures, until after the bride had changed out of her gown.

Things often happen this way for my brother, Rex.

Now that Rex has arrived, we all leave the temple grounds and head back to our cars. As we do, I think of my trips to India and the temples that we saw there. One of those temples, dedicated to the Hindu God Ganesha, is located less than a block away from the home where Vivek comes from.

Just like this building, it is a temple, but the two places could not be more different. There is an elephant at that temple and if you give it a banana or a coin, it will raise its trunk, lay it upon your head and give you a blessing. The walls are covered with many brightly painted statues and in the evening monkeys leap about among them.

You must walk through a gantlet of beggars to get that temple. It is not in me to ignore and shun them, but it is hard to give to all.

The first time I went to that temple, I was very nervous. I feared that I would not be welcome, that nobody would want me there and I would not be allowed to enter.

I was wrong. I was asked to leave my shoes outside and then I was very welcome inside (as was any money I might care to leave behind). Their holy men blessed me in their way and although I did not understand it, I appreciated it and it felt good to me.

I really liked it when the elephant blessed me. That felt good.

In essence, although neither group may recognize it and some might get angry at me for saying so, the people at both temples are striving to do the same thing - to find their way through a hard and puzzling life into a good death, a death that isn't death.

Now that the temple part was over, there were three more functions to take place on this wedding day: lunch, a post-wedding ring ceremony held for the benefit of those who could not enter the temple, and a reception.

It is now 6:55 PM. I will try to get it all blogged, one way or another, before I go to bed, so that I can move this blog along and return it to Wasilla.

Update: After reading this, my niece, Shaela, posted a picture of me receiving a blessing from a holy man at a temple in Shravanebelagola on her own blog.

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