Finally, I get to see Shoshana again - the Chugach Mountains and the beauty that surrounds us here in Wasilla; kid on four-wheeler in the same place

There is a certain bond between Shoshana and me, and I had not seen her for a full week. I think the bond exists in part because she is a young writer with natural talent who stands right at the threshold of the possibilities before her and I am one with the larger part of my career behind me, but still going, still driving, with many things to do yet.

So, even though our entire contact in life takes place entirely through this window, or, occasionally, across the counter inside, on the average of three or four times a week, if I am not traveling, for total of maybe ten minutes a week, if that much, that is enough time for us to give each other encouragement and we do.

Plus, there are people whom you meet that you just connect with and for me, Shoshana is such a person.

BUT - Shoshana is on a new schedule. On the days that she does not go to school, she comes in early in the morning and she leaves somewhere around 1:30 or 2:00 PM - well before I come in to get my cup at 4:00 PM.

So I had not seen her all week, and I had missed her. "Shoshana misses seeing you!" Carmen* told me Friday. "Saturday she works until 2:45. Promise me that you will come before that, so she can see you."

It would throw my schedule off a bit, but schedules are one thing - friendships are another. And I wanted to see her. On Saturday, I pulled up to the Metro window at about 2:30. When she spotted me, Shoshana began to jump up and down, waving, shouting out in a glad voice and Carmen did, too. The customer in the background seemed very amused by it all.

We were happy to see each other. It felt good to be greeted like that.

See you next Saturday, Shoshana. Same time, same place.

And keep writing, talented young friend.

So I headed home, sipping the Americano that Shoshana had prepared for me, listening to Garrison Keillor, since it was too early for the news.

On the last leg of the drive, I came down Seldon, toward where the Chugach Mountains tumble off to the east.

My normal practice would just be to shoot a few frames through the window as I drove on, listening to the news. But the news was not on. So I stopped, got out of the car, put the 100-400 zoom on my camera and shot a few frames.

Over the past couple of years, I have often heard or read disparaging things about the little community in which I live. I have traveled Outside and have had many people cast judgment upon me, just because I live in Wasilla.

But... my friends... this is what living in Wasilla means to me.

Whatever absurdities may sometimes happen down in this valley, however mocking of the land much of the development might be, we are still surrounded by beauty here - 100 percent of the time. It is always there. Day and night. Beauty! It never goes away. We know it, we feel it.

And when you go beyond the beauty that your eye can see from here, guess what you find?

Alaska. More and more of Alaska, reaching out, stretching ever further beyond in all its wild magnificence. More often than not, it is very difficult to get to and get into, but every inch of it is beautiful to the most exquisite degree.

Even when we can't see it, we feel it.

So take that, Maureen Dowd!

I have been to your New York City and I love it, cherish it, find wonder and amazement in it and the pretzels there were once the best in the world, but you will never find anything like this in New York City.

No, no, no! Nothing at all!

It does not exist there.

But it exists here.

In Wasilla, Alaska.

I still needed to listen to the 4:00 o'clock news - All Things Considered, Weekend Edition, but I had already drunk my coffee.

"Well," Margie said, "we could go get some lunch and sit in the car and eat it and listen to the news."

So we did, I heard the news. For the most part, it was not good. I still enjoyed it.

On the way home, as we came down Seldon, right at the very place where I had taken the pictures of the Chugach, I saw this kid on this small-wheeled four-wheeler.

*As should be clear to all regular readers, I also share a bond with Carmen and when I do not find her at Metro, I miss seeing her, too.

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Too Bright - the glare of the sun on Lucille, and on other things, too

Margie and I were motoring down Lucille Street yesterday, directly towards the high-noon sun. Due to the way it reflected off the ice and moisture on the street, it was kind of like driving toward two suns. It was too bright - altogether too bright - far crueler to the eye than even this picture implies.

I could hardly see anything. It hurt my eyes. All I could do was to drive very slowly and direct my vision back and forth to either side of the road. I could not look straight ahead, because when I did, I would see only painful glare - I would be blind to the traffic ahead.

It was too bright.

It reminded me of a story that I was fortunate enough not to witness first-hand, but to hear second-hand from one who was present to witness it. It happened in a small community somewhere in the American West. I will not identify the community, because it is small enough that every single person who lives there knows every other person and some of them just might get a little embarrassed to have their community caught in the glare of such a light.

Anyway, a number of the young men of the community had gathered to socialize at a place alongside a river which flowed nearby. They were drinking beer, shooting the bull, and just enjoying the sunny afternoon.

"Hey, take a look at what I got," one of them suddenly said. Then he unbuckled his pants, pulled down the zipper, yanked out his pride and joy and let the sun shine down upon it.

There was a moment of silence.

"Too bright!" One of his companions finally said. He turned his gaze away - the glare must have hurt his eyes.

Margie and I continued on to the Parks Highway, where we would be able to turn left, so that the sun would no longer be glaring in duplicate right into my eyes.

It's just pure coincidence that the next image that I would take after "too bright" would be this one.

I do not know such things happen, but they do. I didn't even realize it had happened, until I placed the image in this blog post.

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Big, white, limousine gets stuck just beyond Ethan Berkowitz sign

So there I was, yesterday afternoon, tooling down icy, twisty, hilly, Gail Drive at 99.105 miles per hour, listening to All Things Considered and sipping at the Metro Americano that I had just bought from Carmen when I glanced down a side road and saw this limousine, stuck in the snow just beyond the Ethan Berkowitz sign.

I instantly slowed down to 2 miles per hour and shot this image through the open window of the red Ford Escape as I zoomed by.

Three posts ago, I dedicated my entry to the signs being waved at motorists passing through "downtown" Wasilla on election eve and election morning. Most of those signs were for Joe Miller, some for Lisa Murkowski, a few for Sean Parnell, and a couple for Don Young - all Republicans. On the eve, I did see one sign for Young's opponent, democrat Harry Crawford, who went down to defeat. Crawford's sign was dark, was not held up by hands but by a platform, Joe Miller people were in front of it and it could hardly be seen at all.

The next morning, I did find one Scott McAdams sign, standing by itself at the roadside.

Other than that, I saw no Democratic signs in downtown Wasilla, and I saw not one individual holding a Democrat sign.

Subsequently, a few readers left comments to assure me that there were Democrat signs bravely planted in yards and alongside driveways here and there in Wasilla and that two individuals had been "downtown," waving their McAdams signs, apparently about half an hour before I passed by.

Now, here is proof that Democrat signs could be found in Wasilla.

It is too late, of course. The election is over, Sean Parnell remains governor. I have no idea what Berkowitz will do next, or what Diane Benson will do, or Scott McAdams. I believe they all want time to think about it.

Closer crop of the stuck limo.

As I drove on, I found myself facing a dilemma. When I see people get stuck, it has been my life-long practice to stop and try to help out. After I lost my right shoulder and got a new one, I could no longer help if it meant that I had to push, because my shoulder was just too fragile for that.

My shoulder is much stronger now, but still weak. Two nights ago, I filled a five gallon bucket with water that I had removed from one of my fish tanks so that I could replace it with fresh water. I absent-mindedly grabbed the bucket handle with my right hand, lifted it up and began to walk toward my office door.

I didn't get very far, because I suddenly felt the pain and stress in my shoulder and had to put the bucket down.

That was two nights ago.

I still feel the pain in my shoulder - not terribly, but it is there.

"Yes," I told myself, "but if I need to push, I can do it with my left."

And then I noticed the Americano that Carmen had prepared for me, sitting in the cup holder. I picked it up and took a sip. It was good, and hot. If I turned around, went back to the limo and got involved in something, it might be cold when I got back to it. It was nice, cozy and warm in the car, with All Things Considered playing on the radio.

Plus, that limo looked to be really stuck. It was going to take a lot more than me to get it unstuck. And it looked like all efforts to unstick it had come to halt for awhile, anyway. Maybe a big truck was coming to yank it out.

I decided something like that must be the case. I took another sip and drove on.

To see larger slides of the stuck limo, click here.

Exhausted, he crawls down Shrock Road, trying to envision the next ten years, trying to figure out how to shuck responsibility and get his work done

Yes, here I am, yesterday afternoon, crawling my way up Schrock Road, exhausted, sipping at an Americano bought from Carmen at Metro, wondering how to make what I want to happen these next ten years happen.

I must add a magazine to this blog. I simply cannot refine any kind of story in blog format. In a blog, you get the daily slog. A little piece of the story here, another there - this one left out altogether because even though maybe you got it in your camera and in your notes and your recordings and you think it more vital and compelling than what you have so far posted, the date just keeps changing and you must move on before you can complete it.

So this will be kind of an experiment - the daily slog, portrayed in the blog, and then at some point the refined stories in the magazine. 

I don't know how to do it - how to set it up, how to fund it. But, damnit, I feel it in me - a force, driving me irrevocably toward it. Me, wandering here, wandering there, mostly in Alaska but not totally - not when there is a place like India sitting out there, waiting for me to come back, and Argentina, awaiting my first arrival - meeting people, photographing people, conveying slivers of their stories, which are my stories, and your stories. Sometimes not traveling, but just staying home for long periods of time, telling the stories around me, dredging out past black and white negatives to tell those stories, too - as I saw them then, as they have evolved - to revisit and look upon the faces of those so vital when I photographed them, dead now, existing only in memories, some of which I have been fortunate to capture in slivers lasting maybe 1/250th of a second in length.

We are all part of one big story, only pieces of which ever get told and no one ever gets to learn but a few of these stories, yet, in these few, everything is told, even if what is told is very little of the whole.

So, if I can be so fortunate as to get ten more years of life and functionable health, I will do it. I don't know how, but I will.

And then you know what? At the end, once I am dead and gone, some clever person will take it all and condense it into a narrated slide show that will tell the whole story in one hour - maybe half-an-hour. Ninety minutes, if I am lucky.

Ha! I'll be dead. Luck won't matter to me then. I will be neither lucky nor unlucky - just past.

Maybe tomorrow, I will break away from everything, take you surfing, tell you how I came to be a photographer.

Maybe not. That is a blog post that will take a little time to put together, and I am afraid that I have been spending too much time on this blog and must force myself to cut back for awhile.

That is the contradiction. In truth, I cannot spend too much time on this blog. No matter how much time I spend working on it, it is not enough - not enough to accomplish what I want to do, to tell the stories I want to tell. But I have to force myself to break away from it, to push it aside, because I need to feed Margie. I need to keep a roof over her head.

I must buy cat food, and kitty litter.

Sometimes, despite all the love I feel, I just hate responsibility. I just want to take pictures, and to write. Thats all I want to do. I don't want to be responsible. Responsibility is getting in the way of my work. Responsibility is interfering with my work.

So I must find a way to shuck responsibility, bear down on my work (which is not only blogging and such, but books too - towards which I am making slow progress). I do not know how to do it, I have no resources to do it. I am exhausted.

But I have the desire - strong desire. And I have the drive.

Is desire and drive enough to overcome exhaustion and lack of resource?

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Margie votes; new barista at Metro; my daughters and Charlie join me to visit Ethan Berkowitz, Diane Benson and Scott McAdams; Larry Aiken

Thank you, Margie, for voting. Our candidates lost, all the way across the ballot. But damn, they were the right candidates to vote for and you stood strong for them. It was a pleasure to go to the ballot box with you.

Let's do it again next time.

We cast our ballots during our afternoon coffee break - which, naturally, took us to Metro Cafe. Carmen has a new barista there, by the name of Elizabeth.

Don't worry - Shoshana is still there. Carmen told me that Shoshana had been working hard since very early in the morning, serving all the voters who swung by. Her shift had ended before we got there.

Congratulations on your new job, Elizabeth.

For some reason, you appear a little angelic in this image.

Diane Benson had called me earlier in the day to invite us to what we all hoped would be the Berkowitz/Benson gubernatorial victory party. So come evening, I headed over to the Snow Goose, where I thought she had said the party was going to be held.

At the goose, I found Joe Miller signs and supporters everywhere, but not a one for Berkowitz and Benson. It seemed very odd to me that both campaigns would be celebrating in the same building, but as long as I was there, I asked a Snow Goose employee if by chance the Berkowitz party was also there.

He did not even know who Ethan Berkowitz was.

"You might look upstairs," he said. "Maybe he's up there."

I left, then went outside, pulled out my iPhone and began to see if I could track down the real location.

Soon, I got a text from Lisa. She, Melanie and Charlie were at the Snow Goose, surrounded by Miller people. So I went back and we got together.

We decided to walk down to Snow City Cafe, and see if maybe the party was there.

So here we are at Snow City and, as you can see, it is bustling. There is a party going on. It looks like the kind of party a candidate for governor would throw.

But where is Diane? Where is Ethan?

Here's Diane's son, Latseen, inside Snow City, standing and talking to Tony Vita, Diane's special friend and the man who has in so many ways served as father to him.

"Standing..."

How good it is to see Latseen standing, looking strong and fit.

For those who do not know, Latseen lost both legs to an IED in Iraq.

Here they are, Ethan, Diane and supporters, inside Snow City. For anyone who might not know, that's Ethan Berkowitz at left. The fellow on Diane's right is Jeff Silverman, the filmmaker and producer with whom she did the Elizabeth Peratrovich documentary, For the Rights of All - Ending Jim Crow in Alaska, about the Native struggle for civil rights in Alaska.

That's Nellie Moore to the left. Melanie and Lisa were very happy to meet and talk to her. Nellie is a well known and highly respected public radio journalist and commentator in Alaska, and played an instrumental roll in making National Native News a hit in Indian Country nationwide.

We decided to run over and pay a visit to the McAdams for Senate camp. When we arrived, I was surprised to see that the very first person to greet us was Angela Cox, who readers will recall from the Anaktuvuk Pass wedding of B-III Hopson and Rainey Higbee - Angela's sister.

Angela has been an active campaigner for McAdams and joined a group of other Native youth in making a video promoting his candidacy - and she has been taking an active role in many Native leadership activities, encompassing both tribes and corporations.

I think that she is someone who we will all hear from in the future.

Just a couple of months ago, Scott McAdams was a name that few people knew, even in Alaska. In recent weeks, his name, face and message have become known all across the nation. He has been sought out for interviews by all the major news and propaganda media and, unlike some who have tried to hide and avoid any media that might be all unfriendly, he had the guts to be interviewed even by the biggest and most potent propaganda machine that the world has ever seen - Fox News. 

Part of his message had always been that, "despite the odds, we will win this."

At this moment when he stepped before supporters who had gathered in the hope of hearing a victory speech, the numbers had become clear. He would not win this race.

Before speaking, he paused for a bit, but when he did speak, he did so with strength and eloquence.

He promised those gathered that, whatever the final numbers might be, what they had begun with his campaign would carry on into the future, that a new movement had been born and it is a force to be reckoned with in the future.

Supporters listen to Scott McAdams.

In turn, Melanie and Lisa congratulated McAdams for a campaign well run and let him know they would remain among his supporters. I had hoped to get a picture of the three together in a place with decent light, but there was almost no light in this spot.

Some may wonder why I do not put on a flash at such moments, but, when documenting things, my basic philosophy is that I document events as I see them. If the setting is dark, I am going to leave it dark in the picture. 

A flash casts deceptive light upon the scene.

The lady with the recorder in the background is Ellen Lockyer, reporter for Alaska Statewide News. It always gives me a good feeling to see her on the job, because I have been seeing her on the job, anywhere in the state, for nearly 30 years now.

She keeps going. It gives me that much more hope that I can keep going.

As things continued at the McAdams camp, I hurried back over to the Berkowitz/Benson party. Before I reached the door, I saw Berkowitz doing an interview with Channel 2 as Diane took a break to be with her family.

Shortly after my return, Berkowitz got up to publicly thank his campaign staff and to give a speech. By now, it was clear that his Republican opponent, Sean Parnell, would remain governor. Berkowitz also promised his supporters that the work they had put their heart and life into would continue, and that a better day for Alaska was coming, a day where people of great diversity would all be made welcome at all levels of government and society.

Here, after introducing and saying something positive about all of the campaign staff that stand in front of him, he singled out a man in the crowd.

He said that young man would become well-known in Alaska. I should have written his name down, because I have forgotten it.

I am not even quite certain which young man it was; I think it was the fellow in the green, but I could be wrong.

I was struck by the fact that these people had all come to know each other very well. They had worked hard toward an objective, but the vote had not gone their way.

This caused me to wonder about myself. I could have been out there, slugging away in one, two, or three campaigns, but, politically, despite my convictions, I stayed low key. I justified this by the fact that Margie and I have just been hit too hard these past couple of years. I can afford neither the time or money to get heavily involved in any campaign.

Plus, ultimately, despite my lapses, I see myself as a person, who, sooner or later, must become a conduit to place the images and thoughts of many people - left, right, middle, and scattered - out there.

I can't get too partisan.

And yet, I am partisan.

Diane followed Ethan and spoke to supporters. Emotion overtook her. She paused for just a little bit, then continued on.

After she spoke, Diane received a hug from Mara Kimmel, Ethan's wife.

Karlin Itchoak and Monica Garcia.

I then rushed off to see if I could find Charlie, Melanie and Lisa again. Along with the entire McAdams party, they had ventured to Election Central at the Egan Center. So I headed there, too.

Just ahead of me, I saw these young supporters of Joe Miller doing the same.

As I walked alongside the Egan Center towards the main entrance, I saw that a homeless man had found a quiet place inside, where he could escape the cold and sleep in the warmth.

I wondered what he does, on nights when the Egan is not being used as Election Central?

And how long would he get away with being here on this night? When the candidates and their parties left, would he have to go, too?

Or would someone have already booted him out by then?

I entered, and found an enthusiastic crowd cheering Scott McAdams, but I could not find Charlie, Melanie, and Lisa. So I just started photographing other people.

Suddenly, Melane and Charlie were in front of my camera, smiling, waving a sign and flag.

But where was Lisa?

There she is! When it comes to her politics, Lisa is passionate. She is gung-ho.

Scott McAdams, onstage, cheered on by Lisa, Charlie, Melanie and a host of others.

I could not stay long. My friend, Larry Aiken, had undergone cancer treatment on this day and I had told him I would stop by. I would give him and Mona a ride to the store, to pick up needed supplies. So I headed toward the door, looking for other candidates such as Lisa Murkowski, who appears to be headed for victory in the Senate race, and Joe Miller.

I didn't see either of them, but I did see this group of young Miller supporters. I shot three or four frames.

"That picture will probably be in the paper tomorrow," I heard one of them say to the others as I stepped away to exit through the door. I stopped. "No," I said. "I don't work for the paper." I was trying to think how I might tell them of this blog, but I could think of no quick and easy way to explain it. I need to get some cards made up.

"You'll probably sell the picture and make money," one of them said.

"If I do," I said, certain that I would not be selling the picture, "I'll share the money with you."

Okay, they laughed.

Does someone want to buy a copy of this picture from me? Or perhaps usage rights in a major publication? To hang on a museum wall?

If you do, you will complicate my life, because then I will have to track these kids down and share the money with them. Plus, it would set a bad precedent for me, to pay these kids for having been in my picture. It's hard enough to make a living, already.

So I don't think I will sell this picture to you even if you ask.

Well, if you offered a million, I probably would. That way, I could give the kids a token something and then I could fund this blog, probably for the rest of my life.

When I saw these kids last night, their enthusiasm, their spirit of fun, their commitment to a cause I soundly believe to be wrong and misguided, I found my feelings toward them to be kind. I felt a desire that they find success in life. I want their spirit and enthusiasm to ultimately be rewarded with good things - but not with Joe Miller in the Senate.

Then I drove over, picked Larry and Mona up at their hotel near the Alaska Native Medical Center and drove them to Carr's.

Afterward, I was too exhausted to do anything but drive home. Mona said she would get me a cup of coffee from the hotel. I was going to take a picture of her bringing the coffee back to me but, somehow, I zoned out and then found the coffee in my hand, Mona going back into the hotel.

Thank you, Mona.

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