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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Sylvia Carlsson - the woman who gave me my start in Alaska; contemplating the future of this blog, part 3

Memorial services for Sylvia Carlsson were held at the Alaska Native Heritage Center and were presided over by the Alaska Native Sisterhood.

In the final years of her life, Sylvia Carlsson became well known for her letters to the Editor of the Anchorage Daily News, which appeared on a regular basis. This is her final letter, published January 21, 2011 - just two days before she died unexpectedly at the age of 76:

Anybody can destroy; ability to create valued

Following the State of the Union address, some Republican and tea party members of Congress will fall into full assault mode and will begin battering the health care legislation signed into law in 2010. They've dubbed it "Obamacare" and labels not fit to mention. The legislation is actually entitled the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act or Public Law 111-148, but it is rarely referred to by its proper title in any of the media offerings -- "Obamacare" is more sensational maybe?

A few of the newly minted members of Congress seem to view themselves as foot soldiers specifically elected to wreak havoc on anything with President Obama's name on it, especially the PPAHCA. At least that's the impression I'm getting from interviews on the tube and in print.

Is there anything in the PPAHCA that could have helped the deranged shooter in Tucson? That question has yet to be asked.

When We the People begin electing members to Congress to destroy rather than create law, are we in trouble? Answer that question for yourself.

-- Sylvia Carlsson

I knew Sylvia for a different reason. I was a homeless person when I met her, and I had a homeless family. But I also had a dream - to make a life in Alaska for my family and me, to move out of the two tiny tents in which we endured the almost constant rain of the summer of 1981 into a house or apartment and to get to know something about this place they call Alaska.

It was Sylvia Carlsson, then President and Publisher of the Tundra Times who made it possible for me to begin to live that dream. She gave me my first and only non-freelance job in Alaska when, working in conjunction with Linda Lord-Jenkins, she hired me to come on as a reporter and photographer.

I worked there for 3.5 years and in that time, thanks largely to connections that enabled Sylvia to oversee agreements with the airline companies to provide me free transportation in exchange for ad space, I was able to do work in every region of Alaska, from the rain forests of Southeast, the wind-blasted volcanic islands of the Aleutian Chain, the Southwest Y-K delta, the Interior and, of course, the Arctic.

It was great fun and a big learning adventure. At times along the way, Sylvia backed me up against powerful individuals and organizations within her own Native community. Other times, we disagreed, and strongly so.

None of what I have done would have happened had Sylvia not hired me - not only my work for Tundra Times, but there would have been no Uiñiq magazine, no Alaska's Village Voices as I once shaped it - so many things.

So, when her niece and my good friend Diane Benson informed me that Sylvia, Tlingit, of the Raven Clan, had passed away, I made certain to attend her memorial service at the Alaska Native Heritage Center. There, I found her ashes on a small table alongside her picture.

I paid her my respects and gave her a Gunalchéesh, "thank you" in Tlingit, for hiring me and for giving me this great opportunity.

As Margie walks into one of the many campsites that we stayed in during the two months between the day we arrived in Alaska and when I was hired on at the Tundra Times, Caleb plays in the dirt. Melanie and Jacob visit in the master tent. Summer, 1981.

By June of 1981, it had become clear to me that if I was ever to realize my dream of making a life in what I knew to be my spiritual home - Alaska - I could wait no longer. I could not sit around until someone in Alaska gave me a job, I could not wait until a pile of money sufficient to finance the move and transition from Arizona to Alaska fell upon me. I had to go to Alaska and I had to go right then. I had dreamt long enough. It was time to take action - time to go.

So Margie and I held a yard sale, sold most all that we owned and then packed what was left on top of and into our Volkswagen Rabbit along with two tiny tents and our children, who then numbered four, and hit the road north.

Among those who loved us, many gave me good and loving council - "don't go!" You are not a kid anymore - you are a man with a wife and four children - a baby daughter, for hell's sake! Put your childish dreams behind you and be a man - be responsible, don't go!

Alaska is a harsh place. You're not prepared. Alaska will be cruel to you. Alaska will show you no mercy.

When we reached Salt Lake City, we stopped to visit my folks for a week or so. Rex Jr, my oldest brother, said he had shown my National Geographic work to a friend of his at the Salt Lake Tribune and she had a job there, waiting for me. He gave me her number and told me to call her.

I did not call. I loaded the family back into the car and pointed the Rabbit north, once again. "You'll turn around and come back before you reach the Canadian border," Dad told me just before we pulled out of his driveway. I called him from Canada. "You'll turn around and come back before you ever get to Alaska," he predicted.

Next, I called him from Tok, Alaska, just on this side of border from the Yukon Territory. "You'll be back within a year," he said.

That was almost 30 years ago.

When I drove across the border from the Yukon Territory on July 14 - my 31st birthday - and looked out at Alaska, at big, wild, country that I had never before seen, country in which I knew no one - hard, cold, country where no job awaited me, I felt this warm feeling of exquisite peace. I felt that finally, after having spent 31 years wandering in that wilderness called the Lower 48, I had come home.

It has long been my contention that although I was born in the city of Ogden, Utah, I have been an Alaskan since birth - it's just that I was born into exile.

I wondered why it took me exactly 31 years to get here, but it was better to have arrived late than not at all.

Rex, doing his art at the picnic table that serves as a tie down stake for the tent he sleeps in. Summer, 1981.

When I first got into the internet, and when I first saw blogs, I had this feeling that both had been made and created just for me. Basically, I had made a career of creating publications that I wrote, photographed and designed on contract, and I had longed to create my own publication.

I even tried it once, but the effort went nowhere. Even though I have spent 29 years of my 35 year career in business for myself, I am not a business man. I always put what I want to do ahead of money, and so tend to often wind up short. The expense of keeping a high-quality paper publication going while I figured out how to fund it was beyond my resource. I published one issue and then the thing died.

But with the internet - with a blog - the expense of producing and distributing a publication with a potential worldwide audience would be nominal. 

Yet, I hestitated for over a decade. I feared that if I put my photos on the internet, people would steal them, put them to unauthorized use. In fact, people had already done so, but I feared that on the internet, the problem could prove severe.

So, as badly as I wanted to launch an internet publication, I didn't.

Too bad. If I had have done so, perhaps I could have figured it out long before now. Perhaps by now, I would have a self-sustaining publication going. There are a good number of these out there, you - many produced by individuals, most of whom seem to have jumped in and built there readership and found their support before there were a billion blogs to compete with.

I don't think "a billion blogs" is much of an exaggeration at all. 

But because of this fear of theft, I waited until it became clear to me that the entire photographic world was moving online, anyway. Not just the young up and comers, but even the greatest known works by the greatest masters were coming online.

So a bit of theft and appropriation would just have to be tolerated. If something major were to happen, there are always the courts.

To all my Facebook friends - be assured, none of this applies to you. It gives me pleasure when you place my pictures on your wall, or use them as your profile pic - so long as my copyright mark remains and credit is given. I liken this to when I step into people's houses and find my pictures, clipped from magazines and newspapers, hanging on the wall.

Rex visits Melanie in the master tent. The summer of 1981 was the wettest on record to that time. It rained almost every day, sometimes all day and all night, too.

Well, damnit. I have again surpassed my alloted blogging time today and once again have done so much rambling that I have not gotten down to the main point of this "Contemplating the future of this blog" thing.

So I will have to do a part 4.

From comments that I receive, both here and in Facebook, I see that some of my readers still fear that one of the things that I am contemplating is to shut down the blog entirely.

No - no, not all.

I see this blog, and the electronic magazine that I plan to add to it, just like I saw Alaska after I drove across the border on the Al-Can with my family. I was looking at my future - Alaska. My past was literally behind me. I would still make short returns back into that past. The places and people who had been important to my life down south would continue to be so. From time to time, I would go down there and we would get together and do things.

Sometimes, I would go to places outside Alaska where I had never been - but my spirtual home was now my physical home and would remain so. I had almost no money, no home, but I had desire. I did not know where the money would come from. I knew that  it would come and it did - never enough to make it easy, but enough somehow to always carry on.

Now, this blog, and electronic publishing - this is what is before me. This is my future. I will still make my visits back into paper, but this world of electronic publishing is where I am and I am only going deeper. Once again, I lack all but marginal resources and I do not know where sufficient resources are going to come from. The resources will come, though, I know it. 

And you readers - you have encouraged, by coming and by your support.

Tomorrow, I will see if I can do what I was going to do today so that I can close out this series.

Two Ravens, in honor of Sylvia Carlsson of the Raven Clan. Thank you again, Sylvia, for the many good things that you made possible in my life.

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