I respond to an angry complaint about my blog from down in the Navajo Nation - kid scoots across the Little Su - German Shepherd looks at me

As I slowly crossed over the Little Susitna River on the Schrock Road bridge during this afternoon's coffee break, this kid scooted across in the opposite direction.

This evening, word reached me that hordes of people living in the Navajo Nation down in Arizona are complaining furiously that Kalib has not been on the blog for four full days.

So for all you Dine' who love Kalib, here he is, making a drum stick. This is Step one - eat the corn off the cob.

Step 2 - Belch loudly, then bring your hand to your mouth and say, "oops, pardon me!" Kalib has always been very mannerdly.

Step 3 - Now you have a drumstick, so bang it on the top of your drum, which you can also use as a table.

I hope this takes care of the problem and that nobody down there in the Navajo Nation is mad at me anymore.

Today, I saw this German Shepherd looking at me. I would have given him a dog biscuit, but I didn't have one.

Now I am faced with a terrible dilemma. Senator Lisa Murkowski is holding a town hall meeting on health care at 10:00 AM Friday, right here in Wasilla, Alaska. And Jacob and Lavina are taking the day off and it is kid's day at the Alaska State Fair in Palmer so they are taking Kalib.

I cannot take the time to go to both.

Stay tuned - see what I decide to do: go hang out with Senator Murkowski or follow Kalib around.

Horses, coffee and the odd fact that photojournalists are getting put out of work by the rapid proliferation of photography

I have so much to do and I am so far behind that I thought about working right through my afternoon coffee break, but when 4:00 o'clock came, I knew that I would be basically sitting at my computer for another ten hours or so. I simply could not stand the thought and so went out and bought a cup from Carmen.

As I drank it, I took the long way home. After I crossed the bridge over the Little Su and drove past the place where people stop to pray, I was surprised to see these horses, galloping hard. I rolled down my window, shoved my pocket camera out and, hoping to get it in position to peek over the bushes and a bit above the fence, raised it as high as I could and pointed in a direction that I hoped would catch the horses, and then I shot.

There is a little motion blur, but you know what? I don't really care. The horses were in motion going one way, my car was in motion going in the opposite direction (and no, I was not traveling at all fast and there was no other traffic anywhere in sight in any direction and I did not take my eye off the road any longer then you take yours off it when look over your shoulder to change lanes) and so a little motion blur is appropriate, I think.

This, by the way, is Carmen, who sold me the coffee. She is the owner of the new Metro Cafe that I showed you in yesterday's post. It is a family operation.

If I would have had more time, I would have went inside, taken more pictures, and had Carmen tell me the story of what led she and her family to buy out the old dog wash and build the Metro Cafe, but my 96 page project waited for me at home.

And horses. Horses were waiting for me, too. I did not know and neither did they, but they were waiting for me to come at just that moment. No other moment would have worked, so I had to get the coffee and go.

The coffee was superb. I mean superb. Better than yesterday. Better than any coffee I have had for awhile. I only ordered 8 oz. "I have to cut back," I told Carmen.

"Oh no! Not now!" she exclaimed.

Speaking of horses, my very favorite photographic blog is Lens: Photography, Video and Visual Journalism, published by the New York Times. Yesterday, they ran a story and photo series by Kenneth Jarecke titled: Essay: Cowboys and Photojournalists.

The images come from an excellent photo essay on the Montana State Fair in Billings that Jarecke shot.

The word essay was built on the premise was that there was a period in US history that lasted about 20 years during which what we think of as the American cowboy really existed. Yet, more than a century has now passed since that time and the real cowboy is no more, but people still dress like cowboys, still rodeo, still eat and raise beef and keep the notion alive.

And just as the real cowboy disappeared, Mr. Jarecke proposes, the heydey of what we called photojournalism, best exemplified by Life, a time when hard working Photojournalists could not only travel and document the world but get paid a living income to do so is fading away.

Yet, people are taking more photos then ever, putting more pictures before the public then ever, in places like this blog. It's just that it is getting more and more difficult for anyone to make a living doing so. So much content is free, so many photographers now put their work out there for free that it makes life very tough for the working photojournalist.

Anyway, I left a comment on the blog. It makes a statement that resembles something that I have been wanting to say here for awhile, so I'm just going to paste it in:

I did part of my growing up in Montana and for awhile I wanted to be a cowboy. But after studying Montana’s history for awhile, I came to understand that the cowboy had come too late and had been an instrument of destruction of what had been good about Montana and that the drover sitting on the horse working for a rich man had not only taken the freedom from the land, but had already lost his freedom. So I decided that I wanted to a mountain man and live in the mountains with the Indians, but this was impossible, for that life had also ended.

Still in pursuit of the dream, I became a photojournalist in Alaska where I have been fortunate to hang out with Alaska Native Eskimo, Indian and Aleut peoples and to document slices of their lives.

But awhile back, I realized that everything was crumbling around me, due to this digital world that I love so much. Thus I decided to start my own blog and to blindly move forward into what I did not know.

So far, the effort has been fun but not the least bit successful. I lack both the time and funds to do the blog right, because I still have to make a living and the blog actually gets in the way of this. But still, I forge on, believing that sometime before I am utterly destroyed I will find the answer.

I have additional thoughts to add to this, but right now I lack the time. I've got to get back to work so I can feed my cats. Not just these two, Chicago and Royce - who, as you can see, greeted me with great enthusiasm when I stepped back through the door - but Jimmy, Pistol-Yero and Martigne.

Technically, Martigne is Jacob, Lavina and Kalib's cat, but she chows down with them all. Sometimes, Muzzy does, too.

I will return to the subject another day, maybe tomorrow. Maybe later.

PS: I have had a bit of an empty feeling in me all day today, and it is because of the death of Senator Kennedy. I have been fortunate enough to have met and photographed him a couple of times in my career and I wanted to run one of those photos here in his honor. But I took them well before the digital age began. 

They are on negatives somewhere, and I have absolutely no idea where. I did a "Kennedy" search in my computer, because it seems like I might have scanned one of those images a decade or so ago, but if I did, it is not any harddrive currently attached to my computer.

It was a hairy fellow who first cultivated coffee: Images from breakfast, my bike ride (that's so Wasilla!) and my afternoon break

It was another one of those mornings when I woke up and simply could not bear the thought of cooking oatmeal, one of those days that I felt like I just had to start out of the house, somewhere else. I knew Margie would not want to come and hobble in on her crutches, but I asked her anyway, just in case, but she didn't.

She wanted to sit on the couch and eat Cheerio's.

So, I made certain that she had her Cheerio's and then I headed off to Family Restaurant to have a Denve - 0h Man! I just heard my email "ping," so I went to check and it was a "breaking news" notice from the Anchorage Daily News. Senator Ted Kennedy is dead! Damnit! We need him, now. We really do.

Anyway, there was a table in the corner and I took it, so nobody could shoot me in the back. And this little boy turned around and looked at me. 

He made me think of Kalib, who had long since left for daycare.

As I ate, this man walked past my red Ford Escape, carrying a cup of what I believe to be coffee, although it might have been hot chocolate, for all I know, or tea. It might have even been gasoline, because maybe he had an old 1950 Ford that wouldn't start and he needed to prime the engine. But I am pretty certain it was coffee. I suspect it was black. Unless he was taking it to his wife. Then, perhaps, it had cream in it, and Splenda.

There I am, stereotyping. Maybe he likes cream and sugar and his wife likes it black.

What an assumption on my part.

Perhaps he does not have a wife. Perhaps he lives alone with three cats.

And then again, he might not even like cats. He might live with a dog, a poodle.

Or five hamsters, three goldfish and a pet rattlesnake.

Perhaps he lives with a chimpanzee, and he is taking the coffee to the chimp.

Chimps are known to be big coffee drinkers.

In fact, coffee was first cultivated by chimps.

Not everybody knows this, but it is a true fact.

Two other men pass by my Escape on their way into Family. I believe that they were coming in to buy a bowl of oatmeal for their elephant.

Personally, I don't think one bowl would be enough.

And elephants like bananas, too.

So I hope they bought a lot of bananas.

All right, now I am no longer at Family, but am riding my bike. Don't ask me to explain the above. How would I know?

It's just the normal, everyday kind of thing that one sees here in Wasilla, Alaska.

As Melanie would say, "that's so Wasilla!"

"You have a pretty dog!" I shout at the lady as I pedal past.

"Thank you!" she responds.

"What's the dog's name?" I shout louder, as they fall further behind me.

"Sarah," she screams, just before I go out of hearing range.

So there you have it - Sarah the Dog.

It never ends. It just never ends. Everyday, more of Wasilla falls away.

I spot a calico cat. The calico cat spots me. 

When I get back home, I find Kalib working on his bike. He has been riding 20 to 30 miles every day. He has lost weight. I want to lose weight, too. Well, today's ride should surely help.

Now I am in my car, late in the afternoon, on my coffee break. This is where I bought it - a brand new place called Metro Cafe, where they park cute cars outside. There used to be a dog wash here, but the owners sold out and the new ones tore it down and built this place.

They don't serve breakfast, though. If they did, I wouldn't have gone to Family this morning. I would have walked right in, sat down and ordered eggs, because its always fun to try breakfast at a new place.

They do have a drive through window, so this afternoon I tried it out. The coffee was excellent. Unfortunately for me, I bought an apple fritter to go with it. It was big and sweet and when I discovered this, I told myself I would only eat a small fraction of it but once I started I couldn't stop and so I ate the whole thing and there went all the good that I had done for myself on the bicycle ride.

I finish this day fatter than I began it.

Sometimes, if you want to catch a shadow, you must become a shadow

A couple of days ago, I was about to go walking, but was most distressed to discover that I had forgot to charge the battery to my G10 pocket camera. So, instead, I grabbed my big, heavy, 1Ds 3 and set out to walk and to carry the damn thing.

Here I am, headed down Brockton, in the direction toward where Dan lives. Dan is a veteran who has suffered some bad injuries to his back and neck. At least half the time when I walk this way, I find him outside his apartment, smoking a cigarette and exercising his cats.

So I stop and we talk, about many things.

There have been times that the light has fallen on him in a most beautiful way and I have wanted to photograph him, but he is perhaps the most painfully camera shy man that I have ever met, so I haven't.

I contemplated the problem as I walked, wondering how I might finally photograph him - if he was out. I had not seen him since before I left for the Slope in June and I was a little worried.

He had suffered a heart attack last spring, so there was just no telling.

But on this day, he was out, smoking his cigarette. His cats were hanging out in the nearby shadows. He said he had not seen me for so long that he had grown worried. "There's just no telling, you know," he emphasized.

So I told him about the latest accident, how Margie had fallen and injured her knee, broken her femur.

That reminded him of an experience he had in the Army. He described it as having taken place in a pit, where he had to wrestle a big man. He called him a "mullet," or something like that. He was a lot bigger then Dan, and heavier too, but Dan had to wrestle him anyway.

"Look," the mullet told him. "I don't want to hurt you, so why don't you just go down easy and the match will be over."

But Dan wasn't going to do that. He was in it to win and if he couldn't then he was going to go down wrestling.

So the mullet wrapped his arms around him and bent him in half and tore the ligaments in one knee. "It hurt like hell," he said, "so I can sympathize with your wife." 

He was out of commission for awhile and the Army tried to discharge him on the grounds that he was no longer physically fit, but he fought the discharge and won.

"Is your shadow as camera shy as you are?" I asked, after he finished the story.

"No," he answered. "My shadow is not camera shy at all."

So I photographed our shadows doing what we do - mine, gripping a shadow camera, his, smoking a shadow cigarette.

And then I photographed the cat, Varmit. I was surprised that Varmit let me get so close. He didn't use to be like that. Varmit used to spook easily.

"I got him neutered," Dan explained. "He's not so shy anymore."

One day before I left for the Slope, I had come by and had found Dan feeling pretty bad. Varmit had peed on his couch. The cat had never done such a thing before.

And now he was neutered.

Varmit.

Today, I did not walk but rode my bike. I had intended to ride it every day that I stayed home following my last trip, but when I got home the tire was flat and I was too lazy and distracted to patch it and so I just kept walking.

Saturday, to my big surprise, Caleb patched it for me. Sunday, I headed out to take a ride, but my bike was gone. Jacob had taken it to go buy some pickles for Lavina.

But today I rode it.

And later, I felt better than I had felt in a long time, but right now I feel pretty exhausted again. Yet, for a few hours in the middle of the afternoon, I felt bright and alert in a way that I hadn't felt in a mighty long time and I know it was because I had ridden the bike. 

It was a short ride, five, maybe six miles, but it did me good.

Later, I took a coffee break and came home the long way. I had to stop behind this school bus, which was okay with me because I needed to get a picture that shows that the poor kids of Wasilla are back in school now. I was especially pleased that the dog showed up to meet the boy.

The lady whose face is hidden by the stop sign stood there and talked to the bus driver for a very long time, long after all the kids had crossed the road.

But all the while, the red lights kept flashing and the stop sign protruded outward, so I had to just sit there until their conversation ended.

I didn't mind too much, because it gave me something to write about in this blog. Were it not for the fact that I keep this blog, I suspect that I would have been pretty irritated.

I'll bet there were some irritated kids inside that school bus.

Country Kalib and the fish; Juniper stops by for a visit

Kalib loves my tropical fish. He loves to feed them and his dad usually helps him. Yesterday, he came running in with me, grabbed a can of fish food before I could supervise, ripped off the lid and then the fish food was all over my floor.

Jimmy, my good black cat, jumped off his chair and chowed down. Jimmy loves fish food. He craves it above the finest cat food ever created.

It was very tough to clean up.

This particular fish is called a parrot fish. It is not a natural fish, but is bred across species. Some aquarium purists tend to get very angry about parrot fishes and to scold people who breed, buy and sell them.

I did not know any of this when I walked into a fish store about eight years ago and saw this guy swimming around in a tank.

All I knew is that he looked very cute, and pretty, too, so I bought him, brought him home and put him in a tank.

I don't care what those purists say. I love him. He is a bright and intelligent fish. He studies the world and he figures things out.

I remember when he was just a pup. I only had two tanks then - a 29 gallon and a 55 gallon. I put him in the 55 gallon and he very quickly figured out my habits and knew just when I would feed him.

One day, I sat down right in front of the tank and put my face almost to the glass. This frightened him and he scooted off to hide inside a pipe ornament.

"You silly parrot fish," I chided, "it's just me. You know me. I'm your friend. Come back out now."

When he heard that, he swam right back out and came right to me, so that we were nose to snout. He tilted his body and head ever so slightly and got a sheepish look on his face.

"Oh, yeah," he said. "It's just you. I should have known. I don't know what got into me. I thought you were an alligator. I feel so silly."

That was when I knew just how smart he really was.

Oh, good grief! I had planned to clean the tanks the very day that Margie fell. I have been sidetracked and negligent. I had better clean them and fill the water back to the top.

So I looked out into the front yard and saw a tiny cow grazing in the grass. It was the tiniest cow that I had ever seen. I was pretty certain that it was the tiniest cow that anybody had ever seen, but there it was, grazing in the grass in my front yard.

I went out to investigate. Holy cow! It was not a cow at all! It was Juniper! Lisa had come out and had brought her along.

It is about time. Juniper has not paid us a visit in far too long.

Soon, Kalib was looking for Juniper. He did not know that she was climbing a brush pile.

Then he spotted her. She spotted him.

Kalib's dad lifted him up so that he could look straight into her eyes, but that was when Juniper decided to go back down.

Soon, though, Juniper went right back up. She was happy up there, because from this perch, she could see the entire world.

Even you, because you are in the world. Whatever you were doing at this time, Juniper witnessed it.

Don't worry. She won't tell. She never tattles.

She is not a tattle cat.

You can find a more complete account of Juniper's visit on the blog of my alter-ego, Grahamn Kracker, should you be interested.