A spider escapes to spin its web; we eat breakfast as a train rolls by

I leave for Nuuk, Greenland in less than four days and I have a great deal to do between now and then, so I suspect that I will be blogging lightly for the rest of the week - although one never knows for sure with me.

So I won't write much about Kalib or about any of these pictures. As you can see, he is playing in the yard. What more do you need to know?

I suppose it would be helpful to know that these images were taken Father's Day afternoon, this one shortly after Kalib's dad fired up the grill.

Lavina and Melanie than set out to cook bread on the coals, and peppers, too.

Here is the bread and peppers - Apache style bread, of course. It turned out excellent.

This was the first time I had ever seen Jobe eat solid food; I think it might have even been the first time that he ever did. Lavina or Jacob will correct me if I am wrong. He ate beef. Margie noted a study that she had read about that indicated that when a baby eats beef for his first solid meal, it helps further that baby's brain development.

Rex brought a piece of art work with him that he was very proud of. He has been working on some kind of project to renovate a day care center and a five year-old girl who is a student there has become very fond of him. She was sad when he had to go, so she gave him these pieces of art that she had made especially for him.

Okay - left to right: Kalib, Jobe, Jobe, Lafe, Kalib.

After we had eaten, Kalib went out into the front yard to play in the dirt and I followed, to make certain that he did not run into the road when a car was coming. Later, his dad came out and found a nice little critter to show him.

The critter escaped and ran up his dad's arm.

This is the critter - a spider and a rather cute one at that.

Kalib scrutinizes the spider as it dangles beneath Jacob's hand from a string of web.

In the evening, as usual, everybody left. Muzzy would run for the first block.

I had planned to drive Margie into Anchorage this morning so that she could begin her week of baby-sitting Jobe. Jacob called just as we were about to leave and said Lavina would be working at home today and so I did not need to bring Margie in until tomorrow.

Instead, I took her to Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant, where we had the first of what should be several free breakfasts.

Yesterday J2KLM2 Hess gave me a $100 gift certificate to Family Restaurant for Fathers Day.

J2 = Jacob and Jobe, K = Kalib, L = Lavina, M2 = Muzzy and Martigne.

As we were sitting there, eating our free breakfast, the train came rolling by.

It was thrilling. How could the breakfast experience get any better than this?

A loving Father's Day tribute: My Pepsi-drinking Mormon dad, Apache father-in-law, humble whale hunter adoptive dad, loving son dad

For once, I look at a picture and I am at a loss to write. I cannot sum my father up in a photo and a few words - it would take a book - just to sum him up. I hope to write that book, but I am very much aware that the years are closing in on me, just as they closed in on him, and the list of books that I have yet to complete is too long to be written in whatever time I have left and I am not putting much time into book-writing these days, anyway.

For now, let it be enough to say that this is the man who flew into flak in World War II to bomb the Nazis and their Fascist allies, this is the man who, by his gruff exterior, often scared me when I was small, but in whose presence I also found a comfort and strength the likes of which I have felt nowhere else. Even at my age, with him in the grave for three years now, I still miss that comfort and strength and long to feel it. Sometimes, I think I do feel it.

Being devout in her faith to the extreme, my mother taught us truth in terms of absolute black and whites, but Dad taught us to question everything. 

There are so many places I could go in telling you about my dad, but since I landed on this picture of him smuggling a Diet Pepsi into the house, I might as well tell you about my Dad and Pepsi.

Remember now, I grew up Mormon and my mother was devout, more so, I suspect, than even the even the very highest church leaders themselves, President and Prophet included. In the Mormon Church, there is a tenet called the Word of Wisdom, issued by Joseph Smith, that prohibits good Mormons from indulging not only in alcohol and tabacco, but also coffee and tea - but it does not name coffee and tea directly, but rather "hot drinks."

This has been basically defined to mean coffee and tea, but the vagueness of the statement has created arguments inside the Mormon community that I expect never to be resolved. Some Mormons insist that even hot chocolate is banned under the Word of Wisdom.

As do many Mormons, my late Mom believed the restriction covered all caffeinated beverages, Pepsi and Coke included. Dad loved his Pepsi.

When I was small, a soda pop of any kind was a rare and cherished treat, but every now and then he would buy me a pop as a reward for some accomplishment, usually athletic, like when I swam across the pool for the first time, or hit my first triple in a Little League baseball game. In the early days of my life, these rewards were always drinks like Root Beer, cheery or orange soda, maybe Seven-up.

Then one day, we were in a gas station and he bought me a Coke - but only because Pepsi was not available. I was not to tell my mother. Soon, I followed in his footsteps and began to drink Pepsi at every opportunity - much to the consternation of my mother.

She would say, "I don't want Pepsi in this house," but Dad would sneak it in, anyway.

He kept doing this even when they grew old and fell into ill-health. After she died, Rex, the senior of my oldest brothers, the twins, took up where she left off. Not for religious reasons, but because he believed Pepsi was killing my father.

He did all he could to keep Dad from drinking his Pepsi.

Dad drank it, anyway.

And at the very end, after Dad suffered his final stroke and by his living will precluded the kind of medical heroics that would have extended his life at any miserable cost, he could not eat or drink.

All we could do as we watched him slowly die was to wet a sponge with water or other liquid and bring it to his lips, wet them and then let him suck on the sponge.

Yes - it was a sponge dipped in Pepsi that seemed to give him the greatest relief. When brother Rex saw this happening, he could not altogether hide his dismay and made certain to give Dad some sponge-loads of his own health drinks, but, what the hell, Dad was dying anyway.

It was proper that he go out with the good taste of Pepsi on his tongue.

This is my dad, Rex J. Hess, Sr. He loved his Pepsi.

Readers have met my mother-in-law, Rose Roosevelt, and now you can meet my father-in-law, the late Randy Roosevelt. This is he, holding my little sister-in-law, Chy, who in turn caresses a stuffed goat that I had found on a shopping trip to Globe, Arizona and bought for Margie as a Christmas present in the winter that we were engaged.

That Christmas vacation was the first time that she took me home to the reservation to meet her family and she had been very apprehensive about it, in large part because of this man. She greatly feared how he would react to her bringing a white man home to introduce as her husband to be. Plus, Randy was known to have a temper that could become exacerbated when he drank and, to be quite honest, drinking was a problem for him.

But her fears proved to be groundless. Randy took to me immediately. He took me into his pickup truck and drove me here and there on the reservation and introduced me to many people, both drunk and sober. Everyone that he introduced me to expressed great admiration for him; all said that he was a good man and that if he approved of me to be his son-in-law, then I was okay by them and I would have a home here, on the White Mountain Apache reservation. 

When Christmas vacation came to an end, Randy drove Margie and I to Flagstaff, so that we could catch a bus back to Provo, Utah, where we were students at BYU. Rose and Chy came with him. I took this picture in Flagstaff, just before we boarded the bus.

A little less than two months later, he, Rose and several members of the family traveled to Provo for our wedding. They could not attend the wedding ceremony itself, because, as was expected of us, it took place inside the Provo Temple of the LDS Church and while the entire Roosevelt family was Mormon, only Mormons deemed worthy by their bishop or branch president can receive "a temple recommend" and then be allowed to enter the sacred building. 

And you cannot get a temple recommend if you are drinking alcohol, coffee or tea (Pepsi drinkers can get recommends and, along with my mother, my Dad was called on a home-based temple mission in his later years) so Randy, Rose, and family were not allowed to attend the ceremony.

They did come to the reception, held in the gymnasium of our local Mormon chapel, and I will never forget how proud and happy Randy was to stand alongside us to shake the hands of all those who came to wish us well.

After we married, we visited the reservation in the late summer of 1974, when Margie's belly was growing big with Jacob. Again, Randy took me all over and introduced me to many more people, for he seemed to know everyone on the reservation. Now that I had actually become his son-in-law, the feeling of welcome acceptance that his friends gave - many of whom had great distrust of and low regard towards white people in general - was even stronger.

When the visit ended, we again returned to Provo, this time in our little yellow Volkswagen Super Beattle, which the people of Carrizo had named, "Billy Bug." Two weeks later, we drove back again, along with Margie's sister, Janet, who had just enrolled as a freshman at BYU. We came for Randy's funeral. He had died in a head-on collision and so had the woman driving the other pickup truck. Both drivers had been drinking. The accident happened almost right in front of the house of Vincent and Mariddie Craig.

Who crossed the line? I don't know.

Randy died three months before the birth of Jacob, his first grandchild.

Less than a year-and-a-half later, we moved to the reservation and I took over the job of producing the tribal newspaper. Sometimes, in the early days as I wandered about the reservation, I would track down someone who I needed to talk with and/or photograph, a person who would see a white man coming with a camera, pen and notepad and would grow wary to the extreme.

Still, I would introduce myself.

"Say," aren't you Randy Roosevelt's son-in-law?" the person would then invariably ask. "Randy was my friend. He was a good man. You're okay, then."

That's how it would go.

I often think back to our wedding. It was a quiet, beautiful and special experience, yet when I think about it I truly do wish that we had not begun our life together with a temple wedding.

Randy, Rose and the whole Roosevelt family should have been present to witness our ceremony. It is not right that they were told they were not worthy to attend the wedding of their own daughter and sister.

I'm sorry, my good, faithful, Mormon friends and relatives, but it just isn't.

They were denied too many things because of a larger society that deemed them to be less worthy than they. They should not have been denied our wedding. I feel badly that I allowed it to happen this way.

If I write fewer words here than I did for my natural dad and my father-in-law, it is not because the late Ben Ahmaogak, Sr., my Iñupiaq dad, is any less deserving, but only because I did not intend to write so much as I did and I do not have the time to keep going on like this. 

Father's Day is half over here in Alaska, which means it is more than half over in the rest of the world and in some places, it is over altogether. Soon, my children will arrive for dinner.

Plus, I have this idea in my head that in the future will enable to tell the bigger story of how Ben took me into his Wainwright whaling crew, Iceberg 14, and beyond that, into his large, extended family, so I will save my longer writings about him for that time.

Certainly, I have more dramatic pictures of Ben than this one, but I chose it because of all the men that I ever met, he was at once one of the smartest, toughest, most skilled and daring, yet most humble and gentle.

I should say, too, that this is also true of Jonathan Aiken, Sr., Kunuk, who also took me into his crew and let me follow them for four years. They never referred to me as their adopted son, but our relationship was close and they feel like family to me as well, as does Elijah and Dorcas Rock and, to one degree or another, every hunting crew that I have followed. 

In this picture, Ben serves tea to the guests who have come to the Nalukatak, the whale feast, that he hosts with wife Kanaaq and family. As the whaling captain who caught the whale that came to his village and provided the sustenance for this feast and beyond, his status is as high as status can go. He was worked hard and long and no one could hold it against him if he were to just sit back now, relax, enjoy the feast, and let the young girls serve the tea.

But he doesn't do that. He walks through the crowd himself, serving tea to all who desire it.

He is a humble man, that's why.

I included Margie in my Mother's Day tribute, and so I guess I must include myself on Father's Day. I feel odd about this, because I am acutely aware of my great failings as a father and husband. I do not say this to be modest. It is just fact. 

Although I always hate to leave my family and home, I am a wanderer and probably spent close to half of the time that my children were growing up wandering away, to other places.

Nor was I much of a teacher. I started out trying to teach my children right and wrong as I had been taught, but the more I thought about things the less it all added up for me until finally I did not know what to teach them. So I basically taught them nothing, but left them to try to figure life out and learn things as their consciences saw fit.

They grew up, however, with an excellent mother and that was what I did right as a dad - I made her their mother. I believe that I did one other thing right as well. I loved my children and they always knew it. No matter what else I did or how often absent I was, they always knew that I loved them.

This is what I will say then about my children - they are all good people, each and every one. They live in various degrees of confusion, as do we all, whether we admit it or not, but they are fundamentally good people.

And if anyone says anything to the contrary about any one of them that person is wrong and speaks falsely.

It took him a long time to get there, and so far not one other child of mine has followed suit, but now my oldest son is a dad twice over.

Sometimes, he might a be tad over-indulgent but I have to say he is a much better dad to Kalib and Jobe than I ever was to him. He showers love and attention upon them and makes certain that they get to experience many things.

To all you dad's out there:

Happy Father's Day!

It's a hard challenge, but it's worth it.

Airplanes, ice cream and the need to escape; the final picture of the living Royce

I just want to escape for a bit now - not forever, not for years, not for months, perhaps not even for weeks. Days would be good, but I don't have days to spare. Hours, perhaps?

Just for a bit - and then while I am in escape to imagine that this little bit is forever. I want to climb into my airplane as I once used to do and go up there, into the clouds, into the sky, as I witnessed someone else do here, above me, late yesterday afternoon or early evening as I pedaled my bicycle.

But I want to be more free than the folks in this plane were. They were in the air, but they were completely controlled by people down on the ground, people who gave them orders as to just what altitude, heading direction and speed they could fly.

I want to be in the air, my hand on the stick and my brain free to choose what direction to push that stick and if I should push it that way and then change my mind and decide I want to go the other way and climb or descend to a different altitude than that is what I want to be able to do.

I want to fly into the updraft and then just let go of the damn stick altogether and let the wind carry me; see how high it will lift me into the sky before it turns me loose, and then to see what the view looks like from that perspective. There will be many mountains to look at, I assure you, and fields of ice and snow. 

I know, because it has happened just this way before.

And if I should come upon an eagle, bald or otherwise, I want to push the stick so that the airplane goes into a hard bank, to fly a tight circle with the eagle at center, it's pivot point, close enough to my cockpit window so that I can see the eye that it locks upon my eye.

When this happens with an eagle, even though one is flying a 360 degree circle around it and it is matching the turn degree for degree, the eagle appears not to move at all. The only hint that the eagle is rotating is that the areas of light and shadow upon the eagle change. Only the rays of the sun mark its turn, for its eye stays connected with yours, it's eye looks right into your's, and does not blink. It's wings do not flap, it's body appears to remain stationary.

But my airplane is broken and I cannot do such things now.

Yet I must break away for a bit.

What will I do?

Will I ride my bike, on and on, never stopping?

No, I am not fit enough right now to do that.

Will I walk, hike, up in the mountains?

I don't know.

But I've got to break free for a bit, somehow.

Of course, there is always ice cream. We have a Dairy Queen in Wasilla and I love their soft ice cream. This is from one week ago. Jacob, Kalib and Jobe were visiting us while Lavina went to Homer with Sandy for Sandy's early bachelorette party. She is getting married September 4 at Lake Lucille, here in Wasilla.

So us boys went and got ice cream. The chocolate coated cone Jacob is grabbing is for him. The other one is for Kalib. The milkshake, strawberry, is for me. Poor Jobe! He got none.

He didn't feel bad, though.

It didn't bother him at all.

Kalib, with his ice-cream cone.

Remember the patch of dandelions in the black and white series that Royce defended from Happy the dog and then floated above? This is the very patch, 15 years later. And that's Kalib in it, the little boy that has emerged from the baby that Royce loved so greatly.

If Margie were not spending her week days in town, babysitting Jobe, there would not be so many dandelions here. She loves to spend the days of late spring pulling dandelions out by the roots. There have been years where it has appeared that she has gotten them all, but, of course, with dandelions, you never get them all.

The dandelions are always there, surviving, even when not seen, even when the ground is frozen solid and the snow piled atop it. The dandelions are there, preparing to proliferate again. To a young boy, this is not a bad thing.

To a young boy, it is a magical thing, one that supplies him with many tiny parachutes to launch into the breeze.

Oh, dear! I have gotten things completely out of order! Chronologically, this picture should have preceded the ice cream shots. In it, we have just begun the trip to Dairy Queen. Muzzy needs a little exercise, so he runs alongside the Tahoe as Jacob drives down Sarah's Way toward Seldon. When we reach Seldon, Jacob will stop the car and Muzzy will get in.

Then we will continue on to buy the ice cream.

Now I am in the car. I have just stopped by Metro Cafe where Carmen and Sashana presented me with smiles and a cup, plus a muffin and I did not pay for either one. Someone out there, one of you my readers who refused to identify yourself, felt badly when s/he read about Royce and so bought this cup and muffin for me.

It was a very nice thought and I thank you.

So I proceeded on, to escape as best I could while drinking from the cup and eating the muffin. I passed by Grotto Iona, the Place of Prayer, and there were horses there.

On my way towards Grotto Iona, I came upon a place where a vehicle had gone off the road and was down in the bushes. A tow truck had just arrived and there were a few guys there. Before I could safely turn on my camera and get it ready, the picture was behind me.

On the way back, I knew they were there. As I passed, I lifted the camera as high as I could, hoping that it would catch the vehicle down in the bushes, but it didn't.

Out of chronologically order again - here is Carmen, before the Grotto and the horses, before the vehicle off the road, even before I got my cup and muffin. I have not even reached the drive-through window yet.

Metro Cafe, headed to drive-through window study, #32.9: Carmen and Branson

Financially, though I have managed to go far and do many things, these past few months have been hell. But finally my latest contract has been activated and yesterday I got my first check. I took Margie to the movie in Eagle River - Jonah Hex. 

In many ways, it was an absurd movie and the bad guys came to predictable ends, but it was fun. It was escape and I enjoyed it. Afterwards, Margie and I dined at nearby Chepos.

The food was good and the atmosphere pleasant. 

And then, last night, as I was going backwards through my largely neglected take of the past week, I came upon this, the very last picture of Royce, alive and aware, that I ever took or ever will take.

Since his passing, Chicago has been a very needy cat. She wants to be with me constantly. As much as is practical, I let her.

Images from the life of Royce, part 2 of 2 - the color images: A birthday cake, a comfy lap, an amazing bond with a baby and more

After thinking more about it, I decided that I would drop part 2 and just let the previous black and white post stand as the total "Images from the life of Royce series." I did not want to overdo it. But I had made two promises - one, I would tell the story of how Royce once saved Jacob from getting a ticket.

I could not break such a promise, and so, hoping to save time by doing copy and paste, I just spent one hour searching for that story, which I wrote down shortly after it happened. I could not find it. It is out there, on some disk somewhere, probably in paper form too.

Well, now that I have thrown an hour away, I'll sum it up:

Royce had a brother, a black cat by the name of Little Guy (not to be confused with my own Little Guy) whom Jacob gave to his friend, Angel. Angel and Little Guy now live in Phoenix, but back then they lived in Wasilla. One day, Jacob. Jacob put Royce in a pet carrier of the kind that fold and are made either of plastic or cardboard so that he could take him to Angel's house to play with his brother. Royce hated to travel in the car and howled and fussed all the way over.

I understand that once they got there and Royce went inside and saw Little Guy, he calmed right down and they had an excellent time.

When it came time to go home, Royce fought hard against the idea of getting back into the pet carrier, but Jacob stuffed him in anyway.

Again, Royce howled and screamed and clawed and fought, but he could not get out of the carrier... until he did. He went a little mad. Jacob then stuffed him back into the carrier, but Royce now had his escape technique down and just kept popping back out.

Jacob gunned the gas, hoping to get home fast. A cop pulled him over on Lucille for breaking 50 in a 35 mph speed.

Royce was out of the box, but now he wanted out of the car. The cop came with his ticket book pulled out and motioned to Jake to roll down his window. Jake partially did. Royce lunged for it. Jacob pulled him back and tried to get him back into the carrier, but Royce soon broke free and lunged for the window again.

This kept up for awhile until the cop gave up and told Jacob just to get that cat home as quickly as possible.

That's how Royce saved Jacob from getting a speeding ticket.

Of course, you could also say that Royce was the one who caused Jake to speed in the first place - but, knowing Jake, he would probably have sped anyway and then would surely have gotten a ticket.

So Royce actually did save him.

Royce and Melanie.

Caleb and Royce.

Lisa and Royce.

Charlie, Royce and the Oldsmobile Starfire. 

Charlie and Royce.

On December 26, 2007, a new baby was born into this family. When Jacob and Lavina brought Kalib out, Royce was right there, hanging close. We did not know it, but an amazing relationship had just begun. This is the second thing that I promised to do in this post - explain something of this relationship to newer readers who might not know.

Kalib and his family moved in with us for over a year so that they could save money to buy a house. During that year, Royce was always watching over Kalib and hanging out with him. He watched when ate his first birthday cake.

He was there to coach him on when Kalib took his first steps and his mother cried.

When Kalib went out to hunt Easter eggs for the first time, Royce was right there with him.

The two were together most all the time.

They would even go walking with Muzzy, out in the marsh.

When Kalib laid down to marvel at the mystery of a fluffy white cloud floating through a deep, blue, sky, Royce gave him a soft pillow on which to lie his head.

Kalib could be exuberantly rough with Royce, but no matter how rough he got, Royce understood and tolerated. Not once did he ever claw or bite him.

Not once. Martigny clawed once, but not Royce. Not ever.

Kalib could be caring and gentle, too, willing to share his food.

Kalib would cuddle the cat.

Royce did so love his little friend!

When little Kalib would sleep, Royce would watch over him.

Kalib was not the only one to ever use Royce as a pillow.

Then he got sick and I had to give him medicine.

I could go on and on and on. There's lots more, but I will just leave it here with Royce in the window, when he was good and healthy.

Images from the life of Royce, part 1 of 2: The black and whites - using his tail for a sail, the fluffy kitten sets out to explore the icy seas; more

Yesterday, I promised to post some pictures from the life of Royce, the cat who was always searching for love. Well, if I do what I was intending to do, this post will not be up for awhile, for I feel rather drained at the moment and lack the energy to do it. So, for now, I am just going to a post a few of the many black and white images that I took of him before I started shooting digital and hence, color. I will pretty much let the pictures tell the stories themselves.

Here is Royce, as a very young kitten, finding love with his "Uncle" Clyde.

In the first spring of his life, Royce decided that he wanted to be a sailor and sail the seven seas of the world. With a little assistance from Lisa, he set out to do so, but his boat wobbled, he paniced and jumped out.

Soon, he got his courage back. Royce returned to his boat, raised his own tail to use for a sail, caught the wind and then ventured off to explore the world.

He returned with many wonderful stories to tell and he told, always using but one word:

"Meow."

There used to be an old spool in the backyard. We made many uses of it, from rocket-launching pad to picnic table.

Royce made pretty good use of it, too.

Royce loved his dandelions. They matched his fur and his mane. Often, he would sit in them looking just like a king.

Royce, the Dandelion King.

One day an intruder by the name of Happy came from the house next door to invade Royce's dandelion kingdom. Royce was not happy.

Royce hissed and he growled and he snarled and he drove that intruder right out.

Royce loved it when the dandelions went to seed, because then he could leap into the air, catch the breeze, and drift about with the little parachutes.

Royce drifts over the dandelions.

Down he comes.

Off he walks.

That's my boy.

Royce C. Boy.

That's what I often called him, "Roycie Boy."

One day, Caleb felt melancholy and went out to sit on the porch. Royce saw him, went out and sat down by him so that they could be melancholy together. That's what a cat who always seeks love does - he gives love and so gets love.

During the time of construction of our addition, a carpenter left a ladder against the house. Royce climbed that ladder, to see what the world looked like from up there.

Melanie saw him, grew worried and went up to rescue her beloved cat. Royce would not be rescued. As the late Willow observed, he began the trip down the ladder all by himself.

Royce descends the ladder.

On the night of her Senior Prom, it was Royce who had the honor to dance first with my beautiful daughter, Melanie. Make no mistake, Melanie was Royce's girl.

During the time of the Miller's Reach Fire, when the flaming forest burned down 300 homes and buildings and we nervously watched the advancing smoke, Royce remained calm. He and the late Little Guy took a walk into and out of the marsh, which had pretty much dried up from the almost constant and unusual heat of that summer.

Royce and me, as photographed by Melanie.

There is no picture of me that I like better than this one. When I had a show go up in the atrium of the Anchorage Museum of History and Art, this is the photo that I chose to go with it.

Royce and me, together.

I will see if I can get the second post, the color post, up before the day is over. When I do, because I promised I would, I will at least tell the story of how Royce saved Jacob from getting a speeding ticket.