Wildlife photography from the car shot while backing out of our driveway; meeting the deadline for free money

I had to drive Margie to town today, so that she could get new x-rays, visit the doctor and see how her breaks are healing. So, when the time came, I gave Margie a boost into the back seat (she needs the whole thing right now), climbed behind the wheel and turned my head backwards to be certain that I would not run over anybody.

And there, grazing in my yard, was a cow moose. Yes, the very same one that we have met twice in just the last week. I rolled down my window and shot this frame, as I rolled past Gertrude.

I had to angle backwards to get onto the road and, as I did, it gave me a new angle, one that included her calf and the blue home of our next door neighbor, Joe.

Once in the road, I stopped, shifted from reverse to drive, took a shot with our house in the background, put my foot on the gas and drove off for Anchorage.

I dropped Margie off at the Alaska Native Medical Center and then headed toward the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend Office.

I had filed for both of us online (Margie has a phobia for computers and the net). Mine went through just fine, with my electronic signature. For some reason, Margie's electronic signature did not make it and instead I got a signature page. She had to sign that and then we could mail it in or drop it off.

I tried to drop it off yesterday when I went in to see the doctor, but the office was closed in honor of Seward's Day - the day the United States "bought" Alaska from Russia, although Russia had never bought it from the original owners.

I parked a few blocks away and then walked over.

"Hell!" I thought as I approached, "look at that damn line of procrastinators." The line was not only out on the sidewalk, but wrapped half way around the block.

A tiny segment of the line.

Unfortunately, right after I shot this frame, my pocket camera battery died. I could have taken a better picture, I know, if I could have just had a few more frames to figure it out. In case you haven't figured it out, that is me in the reflection, standing in the road, looking up at the mirror glass.

I did not want to go the back of this line and since I had already filed, the very thought seemed unfair. So I went in. The guy at the door told me that, since Margie's application had already been sent in online, the deadline had been met. I could mail the signature page in, or bring it back tomorrow.

I don't want to go to Anchorage again tomorrow. I am tired of going to Anchorage.

So I guess we will just mail it. Unless I get nervous. Then I will drive it in, and see what I can find to eat in Anchorage.

There is a larger selection of food there than in the valley.

The dividend, btw, is expected to be about $1800.

Every recognized Alaskan gets it, just for living here. Some people misunderstand. They believe it to be an oil payment.

It is not. Alaska has invested a certain amount of its wealth, mostly from oil, in the Alaska Permanent Fund, so that when hard times come, Alaska will have money. In order to prevent the legislature from raiding these savings for pet projects, Permanent Fund money is invested in blue chip and half of each year's earnings are paid out to its citizens.

This gives everybody an interest in keeping the fund whole, out of the reach of pet projects.

Due to the current economic crisis, 2010 dividends are expected to plummet to almost nothing.

Margie is getting better. She got a smaller knee brace and signed up for physical therapy.

She still has the same wrist brace, which is identical to mine, except that mine includes a thumb support and her's does not.

I get a wrist brace - and that's good news; yesterday's ash pictures disappear - and that's bad news (but not terrible)

See how white the snow is? It wasn't so white yesterday and I did take some pictures that showed this - including one of a broom lying atop the ash-coated snow. I thought that was very clever.

But all my pictures from yesterday do not exist! 

I don't think they ever existed.

I think I forgot to put a card in the camera. Since the spring of 2002, when I got my first digital camera, I have a made it my creed to document every day with at least one photograph. I haven't been perfect, but almost. 

The last time that I missed a day was September 20, 2005.

Or was it 2003?

It was awhile back.

Now I have no picture from yesterday.

Not a single one.

And there was ash on the snow.

Today, there was only snow on ash.

And that doesn't show.

You wouldn't even know.

You would think it was just snow.

As for this picture, I took it in Anchorage through a window on the third floor of the medical building where Dr. Duddy practices. I had gone there to see what he had learned from my MRI. I was worried that he might say that I needed surgery.

I had enough of surgery last June. And if I needed it now, it would be the third surgery to result from that stupid fall.

Afterward, Lisa wanted me to pick up sandwiches for her at Middle Way Cafe and then meet her outside her place of work, so that we could drive to a nearby dog park, park in the parking lot, eat our sandwiches and talk about cats as dogs passed by outside.

So I did. She only gets half-an-hour lunch break, but when we finished and I drove her back to the door, she had five minutes to go, so we took a short drive.

It was on that drive, as I was stopped at an intersection waiting for a break in the heavy traffic, that I saw this guy.

It sometimes seems hopeless to me that I can ever find the time and money to do this blog right.

Suddenly, this man showed me the way.

I wonder how many tickets I should buy?

How much do they cost?

What is the payoff?

I don't know anything about this lotto, except that it could be a good way to fund this blog.

Here I am, back at home, wearing my new wrist and thumb brace. I do not need surgery. I just need to wear this brace for a few weeks, to keep me from moving my thumb so much. There is nothing wrong with my thumb. It's my tendons, and when I move my thumb, the tendons pull back and forth and that is why, after 9.5 months, my wrist still hurts. The tendon has not healed.

It needs to rest, the doctor says, and then it will heal.

So right now I type without using my right thumb.

A bit awkward, but not so awkward as it was, such a short time ago, when I had to type, shoot, eat, drink and do everything that I did with just my left hand.

Remember what I told you about Jim? How he is always there for me? How, whenever I am home, he hangs with me throughout the day? How he will be beside me in one room and I will move to another and there he is, still beside me?

It does not matter what room, he is there.

Even when I shower, he walks around on the edge of the tub.

He gets a little wet, sometimes, just like he does when he accidently falls into a fish tank.

And so it was that when I came home with my right wrist and thumb in this brace, he was right there, with me.

That's my buddy, Jim.

Jim Slim Many Toes - because there are a whole lot of toes on that paw that he grooms.

Nobody has ever been able to count them all.

He has a bunch of toes on the other front paw, too, but not quite so many.

Jim Slim Many Toes.

Diane Benson takes her final bow as Tlingit civil rights heroine Elizabeth Peratrovich

There was a reason that I drove to Anchorage yesterday and got myself caught in falling ash - to see Diane Benson act in her final performance of the one woman play, "When My Spirit Raised It's Hands." Here, at the end of the play, she takes her final bow as Tlingit civil rights heroine Elizabeth Peratrovich.

Diane first put the play together over a decade ago to create a simple but effective device to teach Alaska schoolchildren something about how Alaska's Natives had to fight racism and prejudice to secure their rightful place in their own homeland.

Afterward, she explained that she feels it is time for a younger Native actress to step up and take the play over. "I don't want to be the grandmother forever playing a woman in her thirties," Diane explained.

In 1941, Elizabeth Peratrovich moved from the tiny Tlingit village of Klawock to Juneau with her husband Roy. There, she was surprised and deeply hurt to find signs, such as this one depicted outside "Mel's Diner," that banned Natives from certain establishments. These are the actual words that Elizabeth found herself confronted with - and such signs were common in Alaska cities, from Juneau to Fairbanks to Nome.

Elizabeth was the Grand President of the Alaska Native Sisterhood and Roy the Grand President of the Alaska Native Brotherhood. They teamed up to lead the fight for civil rights for Alaska Natives in Juneau, the territorial capital.

The US entered World War II and a higher per-capita percentage of Alaska Natives and American Indians entered the military to fight the Axis then did any other racial group. 

To make a statement, Elizabeth the "No Native or Dogs" moved the sign from in front of the diner to the recruitment office.

Elizabeth and Roy allied themselves with Governor Ernest Gruening, who expressed revulsion when they showed him what kind of discrimination Alaska Natives had to face. Along with allies in the Territorial Legislature, they helped draft an anti-discrimination bill. The effort took years, but finally Alaska's Anti-Discrimination Act came before the legislature in February, 1945.

The Act passed in the House, but ran into stiff opposition in the Senate.

"Who are these people, barely out of savagery, who want to associate with us whites, with 5,000 years of recorded civilization?" mocked Juneau Senator Allen Shattuck.

Another Senator proclaimed that he should not be forced to sit in a theatre alongside an Eskimo, because the Eskimo smelled.

It was after that, in the moment depicted above, that the spirit of Elizabeth Peratrovich raised its hand. Her right to speak was honored. She stepped before the Senate.

Standing between the American and Alaska flags and the traditional clan blanket that Identified Elizabeth as a Lukaax.adi clan of the Raven moiety, Diane recites the speech that the ANS Grand Camp president delivered that day.

"I would not have expected that I, who am barely out of savagery, would have to remind gentleman with 5,000 years of recorded civilization behind them of our Bill of Rights. When my husband and I came to Juneau and sought a home in a nice neighborhood where our children could play happily with our neighbors' children, we found such a house and arranged to lease it. When the owners learned that we were Indians, they said 'no.' Would we be compelled to live in the slums?...

"There are three kinds of persons who practice discrimination. First, the politician who wants to maintain an inferior minority group so that he can always promise them something. Second, the Mr. and Mrs. Jones who aren't quite sure of their social position and who are nice to you on one occasion, and can't see you on others depending on who they are with. Third, the great superman who believes in the superiority of the white race..."

Shattuck challenged her. He asked if the act of passing the bill would actually end discrimination.

"Do your laws against larceny and even murder prevent those crimes? No law will eliminate crimes but at least you as legislators can assert to the world that you recognize the evil of the present situation and speak your intent to help us overcome discrimination."

Peratrovich finished to silence - and then loud applause. The Act passed, 11- 5: 19 years before the US Civil Rights Act was enacted in 1964.

After the play, Diane sat down to take questions, but was interrupted by Tony Vita, who presented her with a plaque from Roy Peratrovich, Jr. Her emotion showed.

If you would like to read what Roy Jr. wrote, just click this picture.

Unfortunately, Elizabeth Peratrovich died before Alaska became a state in 1959. Diane came along too late to meet her, but as a youth she did get to know Roy. Diane had led a tough life, had been in many foster homes and had experienced abuse, both physical and sexual.

Roy firmly told her not to drop out, but to finish school and make something of her life. She agreed that she would.

Just as Elizabeth predicted, there were those who still discriminated against Natives, despite the act. As a girl, Diane once went into a restaurant in Ketchikan where a waiter refused to serve her.

Her father complained. The waiter was fired. That might not have happened, had no such act been in place. After the play, Diane stressed that racism is still strong in Alaska, and urged all present to continue to fight against it.

Diane is the mother of Latseen Benson, an Army veteran who lost his legs fighting in Iraq. As a past candidate for Congress and before that, for Governor, Benson has strongly stood for the rights of veterans.

In this, she also echoes Elizabeth Peratrovich, who, as ANS President, organized fundraisers and drives to help World War II soldiers of all races, including prisoners of war.

When her son went to war, Diane was helped through the turmoil of all that happened by her cat, Romeo. The story is right here, on the No Cats Allowed Kracker Cat Blog.

Today, part 2: We get ashed by Mt. Redoubt

Melanie, wearing her ash mask in the parking lot of the Arts building at the University of Alaska, Anchorage.

When I left Wasilla for Anchorage, the sky was clean and pure, deep, blue, the mountains gleaming stark and white against it. I thought about taking some pictures, but I had already taken quite a few pictures today and I expected to take several more at the play.

I did not want to spend the time editing and processing the white mountains against the clean blue sky pictures, since that is not an uncommon scene around here.

Now, I wish I had taken those pictures, just to show the contrast. It happened so fast. 

As I neared Anchorage, the sky suddenly darkned, the air in front of me became hazy, fine dust - ash - swirled about cars as they drove through it.

Mt. Redoubt has been blowing off and on for days now. The ash has gone here and there, but has always missed us.

Now, all of sudden, it had hit us. 

Or at least Anchorage. I did not know if it had hit Wasilla.

The tower at Merrill Field. No planes were flying.

I wanted it to stop, all right. I hate to breathe this stuff. Imagine glass ground to the consistency of powdered sugar. That's what ash tends to be like. It hurts to breathe the stuff.

Flags near Merrill Field.

I did not want to drive the car through it, either. Ash is not good for cars. I hope my filters all did their job. Better replace them soon.

When I got back to Wasilla, it was even worse.

It was simply awful in Wasilla. In some zones, almost like a blizzard.

I had no choice but to breathe the stuff.

Jacob and Lavina reached the house at the same time I did. They had been out shopping. They reported that when they stepped out of Fred Meyer's, they got struck in the face by tiny rocks falling from the sky.

That must have been one hell of a boom.

If this keeps up, I am going to have to get some masks for Margie and me.

Today, part 1: Before the ash fell - Scenes from my walk; hot water heater ruptured, replaced

I had barely begun my walk today when I came upon this moose. If you look closely, you can tell that it is the very same moose that I came upon yesterday, the one that inexplicably scared me. Well, today I redeemed myself. The moose did not scare me at all. I hung out with it for awhile and we visited. I learned that its name is Gertrude. 

Gertrude has a calf nearby and I photographed it, too, but I want to get this done and get to bed, so I will leave the calf out of the post.

A little further on my walk, I saw this kid on a four-wheeler.

Please note that this is not a state trooper, but a Wasilla police officer who is taking the driver's license from the poor sap in the van. (Should you ever happen to read this, poor sap, please do not get offended. Sooner or later, frequently or infrequently, we all do our time as poor saps.)

Even though they call this area Wasilla, and the mailing address is Wasilla, it is just beyond Wasilla city limits and the Wasilla police did not used to have jurisdiction here. Remember how I told you about the time I had to make a citizens arrest on the drunken ice cream lady and hold her as my prisoner for one hour while I waited for the Alaska State Troopers to come, because the Wasilla police would not?

Or did Wasilla finally incorporate my neighborhood and I just didn't hear about it?

I hope Wasilla did. I am tired of paying all these sales taxes to Wasilla and not getting any direct benefits back.

So maybe this cop who has pulled this poor sap over is finally a direct benefit.

As I neared home, a Tahoe stopped on the road beside me. It was Jacob and Muzzy.

After that, somehow, I wound up walking the rest of the way home with a St. Bernard.

As I neared the house, I saw Jake pulling someone who had slipped into the culvert directly in front of our yard out of it.

Jacob and the guy he pulled out.  Jacob told me that this guy is new in the nieghbor and has three big dogs.

If I were to tell this full story, it would take all night, so I won't. Suffice it to say that, this morning, when Margie got up, she heard the sound of rain hammering plastic, but it was not raining.

The sound came from the crawl space beneath our house. It was hot water, pouring out of our ruptured hot water heater through a vent in the floor down into the crawl space.

So here is this Don, putting a new hot water heater into the laundry room.

Don attaches the natural gas line to the new hot water heater.

As for us, we were $1000 poorer than we were when we woke up in the morning.

That was a pretty hard blow to take.

Don lives in Anchorage where he has a plumbing business. We did not hire Don, Sears did. They keep him on contract just so he can help people like us out.

Don has been coming out to the valley to install water heaters and do other plumbing work for 20 years.

Besides Sears, we also checked Lowes, but they would not have been able to install until maybe Tuesday - and their installation fee was higher, even after the $90 emergency fee to have Don come out on a Saturday was added into the Sears installation fee.

Kalib with pan that he wants us to fill with hot water. He wants to boil a fish in that pan, that's why.