Music to drive home from Wal-Mart by

I had the radio tuned to KSKA, Anchorage Public Radio, when I dropped Margie off at Wal-Mart the other day. A program called, "Rock Island Line" was on the air. The song, as these people walked in front of me into the parking lot, was Bob Dylan's, "Blowing in the Wind," as performed by Peter, Paul and Mary.

I drove home via the low road along the railroad tracks. Right here, the song was "This Land is Your Land," performed by Woody Guthrie himself. I am among those who believe this should be our national anthem.

While it might sound odd to some, as I listened to Guthrie sing, "from California to the New York Islands, from the redwood forests to the gulf-stream waters, this land was made for you and me," I thought of a certain young woman in India, who I call Muse, and who will marry soon. Someday, I hope to play this song in my car, for she and her husband, as I drive them down an American road.

An Alaskan road...

Now, back to Bob Dylan, with help from the Son of David, Ecclesiastes 3:1-8: "To Every Thing There is a Season," or maybe the title is "Turn, Turn" this time performed by Joan Baez.

A Season was still playing when I came upon these two ravens. I pulled into a turnout, and shot through the open window.

One raven flew away. These three boys came walking by.

"Black Bird," by the Beatles, as I passed beneath this raven. That's a lie. I don't remember what song was broadcast here. I wish that it had been "Black Bird." But then you wouldn't have believed me.

Bob Dylan again - this time, performed by Bob Dylan: "Shelter From the Storm." Most appropriate.

Still "Shelter."

Altogether too appropriate: "Cumbaya" A few years back, I heard about a crash on this corner that killed a mother and her baby. Shortly after that, someone put up the cross on the left.

The cross on the right came later. It says, "Dad." I do not know the story.

"Someone's crying, my Lord, Cumbaya, someone's crying, my Lord, Cumbaya..." I don't remember who was singing. So many have done this song and when I remember back to this moment, I can hear different versions of it in my head.

"The Eerie Canal." Again, I cannot recall the performers."

"Winkin and Blinkin and nod..." The boy carries a rifle.

"Michael, Row the Boat Ashore..."

Puff, the Magic Dragon - Peter, Paul and Mary, of course.

"Mommas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys..." - Willie Nelson. Not really... another lie. But it is a cow. Cow moose. Someone ought to enter it in a rodeo, let some cowboy chase it on a horse, lasso it, trip it, jump off his horse, tie its hoofs together and then raise his hands into the air.

I wonder how fast he could do it?

Tired, lazy, busy

Lazy today. Tired, too. Still two hours before normal bedtime, can hardly keep eyes open. Busy today, too, but accomplished nothing. Took a total of only two pictures, all day. This one, when I was driving to Taco Bell by myself. I forgot to change the ISO from indoors, so it was set at 1600, shutter speed 1/60. Then I also shot through a dirty, cracked window.

Still, it is what I saw, so here it is.

And this one, while gassing up my car as the guy getting out of the gas truck gasses up the gas station.

Compared to the other morning, it had warmed up greatly, about 30 degrees. The temperature was in the 20's, but the wind blew brisk and I wore a light jacket, which I was too lazy to zip up. So even though it was warm, it felt damn cold, standing there, gassing up the car, listening to the rattling diesel engine of the truck run as it pumped gas into the gas station.

I have great ambitions for this blog. What I am doing for now is using it to hold the space, until I can figure out how to find the time to build it into what I want it to become.

After the show, an image that is not Mom appears

I did my little show tonight at the Anchorage Museum of History and Art and it was a lot of fun. The theme, of course, was how I was forced to shoot with just my left hand after my injury, and how this led me to the G9 pocket camera and the resultant images.

About three million people came (and considering that the entire population of Alaska is about 600,000, that's a pretty good turnout) and each one of them let me know they enjoyed it.

Afterward, Jacob, Lavina, Kalib, Melanie, Charlie and Lisa and I all went to get a late dinner at a place on 3rd Avenue called the Snow Goose. I would have ordered a snow goose, too, had there been one on the menu, but there was not. Yet, the halibut tacos.... OOOOOHH!.... exquisite!

I can still taste those tacos.

On the other side of the table from me were some large windows, darkened by the night. And I looked at one and saw... Mom... deceased now for almost three years... looking back at me. 

It was a hazy, mottled, reflection of a poster that hung on the wall behind me. "Who does that look like?" I pointed to the reflection and asked Melanie, who, at times, appears to me to be a darker, taller, version of Mom walking. "Gramma," she said, without hesitation. When I got home and put it on my computer screen, I called Margie out. 

"Mom," she said right away.

This is the poster that made the reflection. Doesn't look like Mom... and yet, it does. Interestingly enough, my mother often speculated that maybe somewhere back in her family there was some Asian blood. On my Grandmother Roderick's wall hung a portrait of my Aunt Myrtle, mother's oldest sister, who died in her mid-twenties, before I was born. 

When we would visit, I would study that picture for long periods of time, and then at night would lie awake in bed trying to imagine what this beautiful girl with the delicate, Asian-like features had been like in life.

For Mom to make that speculation was a bit amazing, because, from the time that I was small until the time that she knew that I was going to marry an American Indian, Mom was adamant that when the time came, we were all to marry within our church and race.

About the latter, she changed her mind after she met Margie.

She loved Margie.

And who could not?

Mom was a teetotaler and considered alcohol a gift from the devil.

I meant to include this shot from yesterday's Taco Bell

It's Jacob and Lavina - and maybe it says something about why we are so privileged to have baby Kalib hanging out with us these days. 

The full t-shirt text: "TOO HOT TO HANDLE."

Today, December 1, is too busy. I have no time for this blog. No time at all. Still, I do want to run the driving home series from yesterday. If I get a chance, I will. Maybe the entire series will simply join the thousands upon thousand upon tens of thousands of images that I take that just slip into storage and are never seen by anyone, often not even me.

Today, finally, the weather here in Wasilla has turned to the cold side. About -10 in the low-lying flat where we live this morning; probably a little warmer in town itself. I walked earlier, and I took pictures, but I doubt that I will have time to post any of them, ever.

Oh well.