Margie and I go to town to babysit Jobe again, I make a blog post and then another Squarespace fiasco wipes most of it out

Just as I said we would, Margie and drove back to Anchorage today to babysit Jobe, so that Jacob and Lavina could take Laverne to Fur Rendez, to see the sled dog race, do some carnival rides and go to the inter-tribal dance.

While it wasn't bitter today, it was much colder than it has been lately. About 0 (-18 c) at our house when we left and about 10 in Anchorage when we arrived. Laverne thought that was plenty cold.

Folks, I have spent the last two hours working on this post. Right after I finished it and did the final save, this wonderful, wonderful, blogging program called Squarespace flashed an "error" message that resulted in all the text that I had done from this point forward getting erased.

You will just have to use your imagination, because I am too exhausted to redo it.

I will note that Laverne and Gracie have now gone back to Arizona.

Margie and I babysit Jobe; I pay a visit to Jason, Iqaluk, Raquel and Aanavak, down from Wainwright

I am in the car with Margie and we are nearing Jacob and Lavina's house. As is plain to see, there is more snow in Anchorage than there is here. I think it is because the way the mountains around us are situated. They scrape a lot of the snow out of the sky before it can fall on us.

That's my theory, anyway.

Laverne and Gracie must check in at the airport late Saturday night for their very early Sunday morning departure back to Arizona. The Anchorage Fur Rendezvous began today and Lavina wanted to show her sister the sights, so Margie and I went in to babysit Jobe and Gracie.

Lavina with Jobe, shortly before she and Laverne set out to explore the Rendez.

What do you think he was dreaming about?

Soon, Margie had Jobe. Jacob came home for lunch and checked him out. Gracie played with Muzzy. Those two hit it off big time.

Gracie is a great admirer of my mustache and beard. Nobody has one in her household down in Shonto, Arizona, in the Navajo Nation.

Gracie became sleepy, and went into her room to take a nap. Nobody had to put her down, she just did it on her own.

Every now and then you meet someone in this life who you wish could be there all the time, a person that you would like to see nearly every day, and say, "Hi. How you doing? Wanna go get an ice cream?" but you know that can't be. You know you will see this only every now and then, in visits separated by years.

Still, you wish.

Gracie is such a person. I will hate to see her go.

Farrell, her dad, will be thrilled to see her come home. He has spent so much time overseas in places like Kuwait, wearing the uniform for Uncle Sam, that he deserves all the time he can get with his little daughter.

Pretty soon, Jobe needed to be fed, so I held him and gave him the bottle. He guzzled it. In fact, he would guzzle three bottles before Margie and I would head home in the evening.

Margie and Jobe, Take 1.

Margie and Jobe, Take 2.

I had a few other people to see, I had to leave Margie with Jobe and the sleeping Gracie. I headed out into the heavy traffic of Anchorage.

I made a couple of stops, then headed over to the Dimond Center Hotel, because Jason Ahmaogak of Iceberg 14 and a member of my Wainwright family had come down to get some dental work done on his daughters, Raquel and Aanavak, here with their mother, Iqaluk.

The family had been out to Fur Rendez, where the temperature was a warm 20 compared to in the -25 to -40 range back in Wainwright, where it had been mighty windy, too. So they wandered about dressed in light clothing, marveling at the warmth, and they say they got a few stares.

Because of their dental work, the girls had to eat soft food, but when they saw some Chicken McNuggets, they wanted them. Jason bought them some and cut them into tiny, tiny, pieces.

Soon, Jason says, they will be eating maktak and other Iñupiaq foods. They will need their teeth for that.

Jason and Aanavak, Take 1.

Jason and Aanavak, Take 2.

I then went back to Jacob and Lavina's, hoping to get a shot of Kalib and Jobe together, but Jobe was asleep. Kalib was helping his dad prepare dinner.

He was making enough for all of us, but Margie and I had to leave, so we didn't get to eat any of it.

We will go back Saturday, to do some more baby-sitting while Laverne and Lavina go watch the sled dog races.

I still hope that maybe some of that cold air will slip down here before Laverne and Gracie leave, but I saw a picture on the news of a low-pressure system spinning this way from out of the South Pacific, so I doubt it.

Jobe on the phone, a biker in the snow, along with other big vehicles; blogging with Jimmy

I can't believe it! It is now already two full weeks since Jobe was born. And I have not laid eyes upon him for 12 days. I have missed him every single one of those days - just as I have missed his big brother, Kalib. As I waited in the drivethrough at Metro today, I heard the text message tone go off in my iPhone.

It was this picture, sent by Lavina.

Jobe is growing so fast and I am missing it all. 

But, weather permitting, Margie and I plan to drive into town after we get up. We will see him again.

Finally, a little new snow. The temperatures are still warm - mid 20's today. Sadly, Laverne is going to take Gracie back to Arizona and the rez on Sunday and unless Nature gets her act together fast, when everybody asks if she froze in Alaska, Laverne will have to say it was warm the whole time she was here.

What fun will that be?

Of course, it's always warm when it snows. It can't snow when the temperature is cold. Maybe we will all get lucky and some cold weather will come just before Laverne and Gracie leaves.

My friends up on the Slope have been experiencing brutal weather lately.

That's what they tell me on Facebook. Nobody has said anything about temperatures. They have just said that it has been cold and windy. And when an Arctic Slope Iñupiat states on Facebook that it is cold and windy, you can pretty much believe its true.

Especially if they say, 

"Alapaah!"

A bit further along, I saw this school bus.

And then this snow plow.

Two nights ago, I mentioned how I was typing away with my good black cat buddy, Jimmy, sprawled across my chest. I also noted that I have had a great deal of time to practice this technique.

So tonight, I started working on my blog and, once again, there was Jimmy, sprawled across my chest, except that this time he was lying on his side.

I decided that I might as well try to photograph the scene, so that my readers will know that I do not lie or exagerate. So here I am, typing, working on this very blog post as Jimmy sprawls across my chest.

And I am taking a picture, too.

This is what is known as "multi-tasking."

Jimmy and I are good at it.

Jimmy sits up to think about things. Jimmy likes to think. He is a thinking cat. He is not quite as deep-a-thinker thinking cat as Thunder Paws was, but still, he is a thinking cat.

He thinks about many things.

He is very bright.

He is a bright cat.

A bright black cat.

He then executes a maneuver that would distract a lesser blogger, but, as you can see, I blog on, undettered. My powers of concentration amaze me.

Jimmy and I, blogging together.

Jimmy. My good black cat buddy.

What a character. What a friend.

How could I even do this blog without him?

Dogs; Democrat; original Tea Party supporter with a new alternative monthly paper; cat snot on my lens

As I walked down Seldon, Dodd Shay pulled over to talk. He had a new pup riding with him. Dodd is the fellow who owns that part of the marsh where I most recently photographed two moose, property where certain sorts of snowmachiners and four-wheeler drivers ignore his "no trespassing" signs, charge in and tear up his property.

Dodd wanted to let me know that he plans to start going to Metro Cafe at 10:00 AM Thursdays and would like it if Democrats would come and join him for coffee and conversation.

Cars kept coming, so he pulled off Seldon onto Tamar and he and the pup, Scotty, got out of the car.

As we chatted, this car turned onto Tamar. The occupants were very taken by Scotty.

Scotty. Dodd and his wife Carol raise dogs that assist people with various needs. Dodd hopes that Scotty will become a breeder.

As they say, "lucky dog."

That's Jared on the left and his fiance on the right. She told me her name, too, but I forgot it before I could take it down. Jared showed both Dodd and I where he lives and said if we ever need any help with anything, just come knocking.

Someday, we may get a chance to talk more and maybe he will tell me about the tattoo. 

I was driving toward Metro Cafe at 4:00 o'clock when I spotted this dog ahead. The dog made no attempt to get out of the way of any cars, but just kept running in a straight path. Drivers honked their horns, but the dog just kept coming at them until they pulled to the right.

I slowed way down, because I did not know the dog would do.

Sure enough, just before I reached it, the dog changed lanes and then started running down the road, directly in front of me. It ran and it ran and it ran. I had to drive very slow. I only honked when there was no immediate traffic coming in the opposite direction, but my honks did not phase the dog.

Finally, it left the road and ran off.

I do not know where it was going and I don't think it, did, either.

I hope it reached its destination safely.

Longtime readers have probably observed that I come upon dogs in bad situations all too often. I can't judge, because I do not know the circumstance that resulted in this dog running down a busy road.

Through the Window Metro Study, #1961. That's Josh Fryfogle. He is "Editor and Writer" of a free monthly publication called Make-A- Scene: The People's Paper. He points at the paper's logo on his shirt. I must confess, I had never heard of Make-A- Scene before. He gave me a copy. It is newsprint on an 11 x 11.5 format. Part of what Josh does is to seek out valley stories on restaurants, businesses, and the great political stories of the day.

Inside the pages, I found three articles with Josh's byline: Jalepeno's - his account of dining at Jalepeno's, where I sometimes dine as well. He had praise for Jalepeno's and I would agree with that. The second was titled, Belly Dancing, and it described an adventure he had with his ten-year old son on a Saturday night at Bombay Valley restaurant. Although we haven't since last Father's Day, we sometimes eat at Bombay, but there have never been belly dancers.

Josh says they are going to be there every Saturday now, so I guess I will have to go see them.

He describes it as a pretty wholesome experience - oh well; I'll go check it out, anyway. One of these Saturday's. Maybe not this one. But perhaps.

We will see.

Tea Party Bait and Switch was the third story. I was going to suggest that if you want to read it, you could go the website, but I just went there and it is not yet up, although another of his stories, The Man-Made Religion of Climate Change is, so you can read that, if you want. Summarily stated, with a number of quotes from the University of East Anglia email scandal, Josh counters the contention of what some say is 98 percent of the research climatologists who think that we are in a potentially disastrous period of climate change brought on largely by man-made activities.

In Tea Party, as an early supporter of the movement and a man who waved signs for Ron Paul and waved at Sarah Palin as she drove past, Josh laments that the Tea Party is being co-opted by "the Neo-Conservatives who had previously taken over the Republican Party." He is pretty disgusted with both Democrats and Republicans and, while he once had hopes for Sarah Palin, is disappointed in her, too.

It would take too much space for me to try to sum up all that he said in the article, but I suspect it will show up on the website, soon. He does say, "I am ready for real revolution and, if need be, I am ready to invoke the Second Amendment! And I know I'm not the only one... 'Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable' - John F. Kennedy."

So there you have it - in the morning I come upon Dodd Shay who wants to start getting together with Democrats at Metro Cafe and in the afternoon, I meet Josh, Tea Party original, who is ready for revolution.

I wonder how such revolution would unfold here in this valley that Josh, Sarah Palin and I share with a whole bunch of others of many and varied political and religious belief? 

In this valley, most of us do own guns, be we left-wing, right-wing, middle-of-the-road, apathetic. It seems to me that we have all been exercising our second amendment rights all along, but what does it mean that the time might come that we need to "invoke" them? That we get to shoot each other, because we do not all see the world the same?

Is this what John F. Kennedy meant?

Be assured, Carmen is a good person and in running her cafe, she needs to keep her door open to everyone, liberal, conservative, left-wing, right-wing, extreme, moderate, mainstream, fringe.

Maybe some interesting discussions will take place inside. May such discussions always be peaceful and civil, even if some of the minds thus engaged are turbulent.

As I drove home in round-about fashion, I saw this girl running alongside the road.

I don't know if anyone overtly noticed, but each picture in this post has a soft, hazy, area. It's most pronounced when there is some backlight, such as in the picture of Jared and his fiance.

It's because of this guy, Pistol-Yero. I was trying to get a close-up of him when he touched my lens with his nose. I could not find any lens-cleaning cloth for a long time. Now I have found some, but I am not certain that I got it all. The tiny, recessed lens of this s90 pocket camera is very hard to clean.

I will always love Pistol, though, no matter how many cameras he messes up.

There's Royce, walking behind him. Royce is hanging tough.

I take a walk with Shadow

I have always been a walker and usually I have walked alone, or with a dog. Occassionally, I have walked with cats, but as much as I love them, walking with cats can get pretty aggravating. You have to keep stopping and you never do get very far.

Sometimes when I was small, I took off walking and when my parents discovered that I was missing they called the cops and each time they launched a search for me.

They never found me, though, because I could be anywhere from the side of mountain to balancing on the railroad tracks. Finally, I would come home and find the cops at the house, trying to calm my distraught parents. I could not understand why they got so upset, because I always knew exactly where I was in relation to the house. Now, of course, I understand.

After I met Margie, we would often walk together but even then, I would take long walks by myself.

Next, the kids came along and we would often all go walking, or Margie and I might walk with one or two of the children one time, and others later, or just the young girls when the boys became teens. Yet even then, I would often walk by myself.

Years ago, Margie quit walking with me all together because it became hard for her. The dog Willow was still with us then, so she and I would walk together and there was no Serendipity and so we had the big woods to ourselves. Then they cut down the trees, made Serendipity and Willow died.

Again I found myself walking, all by myself. Which was fine with me. I enjoy walking alone. 

Then Jacob, Lavina and Kalib moved in and often I would walk with all or two of them. Kalib was always on those walks and he even inspired Margie to come on a few - sometimes just her, Kalib and me. The pace was terribly slow and we never went as far as I would have liked, but the company was good.

Now that those three are living in their own home in Anchorage along with new baby Jobe, I am, once again, walking all alone.

That's not really true.

Sometimes, Shadow pops up and walks with me.

He did today.

Sometimes, Shadow will step on the very bottom of my feet. You would think this would be annoying, but I hardly even notice it.

I'm pretty sure that these two guys had planned to stop, jump out of the car, beat me with a baseball bat, take all my money and then head to Taco Bell. But they saw Shadow. See how tough and frightening he looks?

Shadow scared them away. Those poor guys didn't get to go to Taco Bell today and neither did I.

I don't know about Shadow.

Maybe he snuck off and went without me.

Were any of you at Taco Bell today?

Did you see Shadow there?

What did he eat?

Shadow had been walking in front of me, but after I turned the corner, he walked alongside me. We were equals, then.

But when I turned and walked to the south, Shadow walked behind me.

We turned east on Seldon, which can be a fairly busy road. "Hey! You fool!" I shouted at Shadow. "What kind of idiot are you? Don't walk down the middle of the road! You will get run over!"

Shadow did not heed my warning, but just kept on walking.

It was horrible. Shadow got his head run over. Shadow brain matter spread out across the road. "I tried to warn you!" I screamed, "but you wouldn't listen!"

Hmmm... Shadow was not hurt at all. He just kept walking. I guess that's because when you are so flat that you are not even flat, you cannot be flattened.

A mailman came along - the same one who sought to rescue me from Tequilla, the sweetheart bull dog who tries so hard to make me think she is mean. Shadow waved at the postman.

I didn't wave, though. I kept my hands in my pockets.

In the late afternoon, I stepped outside again. I looked for Shadow but he was not there. The sky had turned overcast. 

Shadow, I'm afraid, often proves to be a fair-weather friend.

Well after dark, I took a short walk, just to clear my head. Shadow was with me when I stepped off the porch, but the farther I got from the house, the darker it became. Shadow has a very dark side, yet, he will only step out into the dark when it is punctuated by light. Shadow abandoned me.

Then, a ways down the road, as I passed by a house with the porchlight turned on, Shadow reappeared, walking beside me. Shadow can be sneaky like that, at night.

Shadow. 

Only he knows.