I drop into a banquet for Iñupiat youth and Elders; Etok is elected to be the Arctic Slope's Elder's Rep; Kalib is thrilled by the fire

This is a banquet thrown today by the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation for Iñupiat Eskimo youth and Elders at the Hilton Hotel in Anchorage. I did not drive to town to photograph the banquet or the meeting that followed and I took very few pictures. I went to the banquet to meet a few young people to interview for my project. 

Here's the thing about that project - I am budgeted for 96 pages. My original layout came to 278 pages. I threw all kinds of stuff away that I wanted to keep - including many pictures that are better than others that stayed but did not tell the story as directly - and it now stands at 118 pages.

So it seems foolish for me to add even more material, yet, even if just interviews, for not a single picture that I took today will go into it, but there are still some things that I feel it needs. All these folks were down from Barrow and the other villages of the Arctic Slope to participate in the Alaska Federation of Natives Elders and Youth Conference.

Normally, I would have taken many pictures, but I have so many to deal with already that I just did not want to add too many more. Plus, I doubt that I slept for even two hours last night, so I was tired. I had little energy.

The youth and elders invited me to eat with them and I did. 

There was no Iñupiaq food - no whale, no seal, no caribou, no fish or ducks, no Eskimo donuts. It was all Hilton Hotel catering foods. Roast beef and roast turkey in gravy, red potato wedges, green beans, rolls of various kinds and pastries and coffee.

It was still very good.

There is a football field in Barrow that cost $3 million to build (and the game has proved very popular in Barrow). Luke Tetreau from Kaktovik said that if they could spend that much on the field, they should spend at least one million on school supplies. The statement brought loud applause.

Don't picture a big fancy stadium on the tundra, because there is no such thing. It just costs a lot of money to build anything in the Arctic. I had hoped to return to Barrow late this summer and photograph some games there, but it didn't work for me.

Maybe next year.

And yes, Barrow is cold now, despite the warm weather we are having here (although standing in the wind in Anchorage today, it did not feel warm at all. It felt cold.) Cold, snowy, and icy.

Hopefully, I will get back up there before too long and I will show you.

This is Etok, also known as Charlie Edwardsen, Jr. Etok was one of the original activists that launched the movement to settle Native land claims in Alaska, but he did not celebrate when the Alaska Native Land Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) was passed in 1971.

Today, he was nominated to be the Arctic Slope's Elder representative to the AFN Elders and Youth Conference and this is from his campaign speech. Etok said that he had been absent from AFN for 30 years because he considered the acceptance of ANCSA to be a sellout. He noted that no Arctic Slope Iñupiat had ever agreed to accept the act, no Iñupiat had ever signed a document of surrender, and no Iñupiat had treated or any in way agreed to give up one acre of their aboriginal Arctic Slope homeland - including Prudhoe Bay - to either the United States government or Alaska.

Therefore, he said, it all still belongs to the Iñupiat.

Now, after all these decades, he had decided to get involved again. And he won.

It is very difficult for me to think of Etok as an Elder, but I guess he is. It is amazing how many young, vital, people are Elders now.

I have yet to hear the results of the youth election.

The Reverend Mary Ann Warden delivers the closing prayer.

The AFN Convention will be held Thursday through Saturday. I do not plan to cover the convention per se, but there will be many people there who I want to see, so I will attend at least two days, and possibly all three.

As I drove away, I passed this kid on the Glenn Highway, by Merrill Field.

At home, Kalib was fascinated by the fire.

Very pleased.

I pedal into the graveyard and am surprised to happen on Wasilla's former mayor - this individual who put us into our house on Sarah's Way

I have pedaled by the Wasilla graveyard on Aspen many times, but, until today, never into it. Today I did and was surprised to come upon this grave first thing: Charles Howard Bumpus - Charlie Bumpus. Mayor Charlie Bumpus. Were it not for this man, perhaps my family and I would never have lived in Wasilla at all.

Lisa would probably not even exist, because where else but inside this house could circumstance have brought Margie and I together at just the right moment to conceive her? 

We met Charlie Bumpus a little more than a year after we had rolled into Alaska, homeless and jobless. By then, I had a marginal income, plus the first Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend and the state had a low-interest, guaranteed, loan program to help first time home buyers on the struggling side to purchase a house. Charlie Bumpus had come up with a brilliant scheme on how to bring these home buyers to him.

Even with the state program, a house like the one we are in would have been out of reach, but Bumpus figured out that if he created a subdivision, then took orders for five houses at a time, he could build at package prices, lower the cost and make them affordable to more people and thus make a good profit himself.

So we drove out from Anchorage and met him in a downtown Wasilla devoid of fast food joints and chain stores. He was tall, slender and freckled; he had blond, curly, hair and was highly animated and energized. Soon, as we followed, both desperate and fearful to keep up, he sped at an insane speed down Lucille Street, which in those days was a narrow, windy, gravel, road, kicking up gravel, dust, and stones. Each time he rounded a curve, it looked like we was about to slide off the road. I could feel the tires slip a bit as we rounded those same curves behind him. It was easy to imagine that we might soon fly right off the road.

Finally, we reached Ravenview Subdivision, # 1, where we transferred to his car. Charlie drove us through the gravel streets past empty lots of birch, spruce and cottonwood that stood over a spongy, mossy forest floor and then gave us an inside tour of the few model homes he had already built.

"I'm not doing this for the money," he insisted. "I'm doing it so that one day I can drive through here with my daughter, show her a thriving neighborhood and tell her, 'your dad built this!'"

We chose a lot on Sarah's Way, picked the cheapest of the three-bedroom home models, looked at linoleum samples, cabinets, sinks, refrigerators, showers, toilets, ovens, woodstoves and such and chose what we wanted.

We then signed the papers, knowing full well that we had just wasted his time and ours. We knew the state was not going to approve us for the program.

But the state did. And here we are. 

Bumpus quickly rose to become one of Wasilla's most important residents, famous not only for his business skills, but his talent as a saxophone player. He ran in races and participated in other sports. 

He was fit and prosperous. Life looked good for him. In 1985, he was elected Mayor of the City of Wasilla. Less than a year later, at the age of 45, Mayor Bumpus suffered a sudden heart attack and died - right on the 15th birthday of his daughter, Sarah.

I wonder how many times he had driven her down the street that he named for her? Our street? Did he swell with fatherly pride as he drove her past our house? Did she feel daughterly adoration toward him? 

And what would he have thought of Sarah Palin, who, in 1996, became the third mayor to succeed him? If he had finished his term and had then been relected, the whole political landscape of Wasilla would have played out differently than it did. Would Sarah Palin have even become Mayor? Would anybody, outside of a few locals, even know her name?

So today I pedaled into the Wasilla graveyard and came immediately upon his headstone. It was a modest headstone, for one of such wealth and prestige.

A little further, I happened upon a cherub.

Just beyond that, I found a married couple waiting for three of their four children to join them. The other already has.

What did this mean? Was it a child's grave? Or an adult, who was loved by some who imagined this to be the way he had lived as a child? Or was he, perhaps, a fan of Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer?

I saw some graves that were definitely children and, just as I did these, I photographed them as I pedaled past. But I didn't post the pictures.

Out in the trees, I saw the Virgin Mary looking at me.

A cherub, bathing nude in the sun.

In the upper graveyard, the new part, devoid of trees, I again saw Mary.

They seemed to rise from the ground as ghosts, and I could not even read their names. I wondered about their origins and how it was that they came to live in Wasilla, and if some of the many people of the old Russian faith that I see around here - the women in their long skirts and head scarfs, the men in their plain clothes - descend directly from them?

Since this was a bicycle shoot, I had resolved not to get off my bike or the trail, but I compromised, because I wanted to see this couple closer up, as individuals. I laid my bike down at the edge of the grass and walked over. 

This is he.

And this is she.

Can you see how much work I have ahead of me, if I am to meet my goal of finding the soul of Wasilla? 

So far, I have done very little. Given Margie and my needs to survive, coupled with all the work I still want to do outside of Wasilla, it seems so impossible, but I believe that I am going to do it.

That means that one day fairly soon, before I join them, I must get to know these two, at least a little bit.

I then picked up my bike and pedaled home.

Margie and Lavina go to Starbuck's and get me in trouble with Lisa; Kalib visits a firetruck for muscular dystrophy; I hear gunshot as I photograph goose decoy frozen into pond

"Dad!!!!!????? Starbuck's?????!!!!! "Lisa accused. "You went to Starbuck's???"

I was innocent. Margie and Lavina had committed the sacrilege when they drove into Anchorage the other day to get the ultrasound of the new baby that now brews in Lavina's womb and, afterward, stopped at a Starbuck's. They carelessly left the evidence in the car.

Lisa was in the car with me because she came out today for about two hours and we went out to coffee together. There is no Starbuck's in Wasilla (yet) but I can assure you, even if there were, we would not have gone there.

Lisa is pretty liberal and tolerant of the foibles of her fellow human beings, but not when it comes to buying coffee from Starbuck's. This she will not tolerate.

After I made my case and told her the true story, she said something like this, "I'll bet that they told each other, 'Lisa never needs to know.'"

This evening, after the five-month pregnant Lavina returned home from her volleyball game in Anchorage, I told her how much trouble she and Margie had gotten me into.

"We didn't think Lisa would find out," Lavina said. "We told each other, 'Lisa never needs to know.'"

The money Jacob is handing to Kalib is not for the tot, but for the tot to drop in the fireman's boot. But the tot does not want to take the money and drop it in the boot. Before the incident is over, Jacob, Lavina and Kalib will drop about ten dollars into the boot. 

After dropping the money, Jacob and Lavina check out the firetruck on display in the Carr's parking lot.

It was the wheels that most impressed Kalib.

After awhile, he was ready to go.

This is fireman Danny, who explained that the money goes to send local children with muscular dystrophy to summer camp. They display the truck for two days each year. Last year, they raised over $10,000.

After we returned home, I jumped onto my bike and took a short ride. I crunched my way through frozen puddles.

As I passed the pond the kids named "Little Lake" when they were small, I saw a goose decoy, frozen into the surface. It used to be, several years ago, that each summer a number of ducks would nest around this pond and geese would drop in, too. 

Soon, we would see the little ducklings following their mothers about the pond.

There were no homes near the pond, but then Red and his wife bought a piece of property on the corner of Seldon and Wards that overlapped half of it. They built a home there. Red liked the idea of ducks and geese coming to their pond and so he put duck and goose decoys into the water to attract them.

Of course, they had been coming anyway.

Red died a few years back and his wife, who has remarried, twice, began to spend her winters in Arizona. About a year ago, she put the house and property up for sale. It is still for sale. 

This decoy still drifts in the pond. We have not seen ducklings in the pond for the past few years.

The water level has just dropped too low. I don't think it can support them.

Despite the ice, the weather is still warm and beautiful for this time of year. Little Lake may have frozen over, but the big lakes don't even appear to be close to doing so.

As I photographed the decoy, I heard a rifle shot that sounded to be about 200 yards away and like it came from a yard.

I didn't think too much about it, because gunshots are common around here and usually just mean someone has plunked at a target or that they just decided things were too quiet and they wanted to make a little noise.

Then I got to wondering what if, sometime, I heard a gunshot and thought it was nothing, when it was actually somebody shooting somebody else, perhaps to death. Unless someone started screaming and shouting, I would just go on about my business thinking that everything was okay.

I'm pretty certain everything was okay, today.

After I left the goose decoy in the pond, I got onto the bike trail and pedaled down the shadow of a guardrail.

Kalib jumps up and down; a flight of fancy about the Yankees and the Cubs

I had taken Margie out to eat at Taco Bell and when we came home and turned into the driveway, we saw a strange sight through the front room window: the silhouette of Jacob as he jumped up and down.

We entered the house and saw that what he had been doing was mimicking Kalib, for Kalib had learned to jump. Now, he was busy honing his new skill.

This was really not a situation for the pocket camera, but rather the EOS 1Ds M III, but the pocket camera was in my pocket and the Ds III was not.

I thought about running into my office to grab it, but if you want to photograph a toddler jumping, you had better do it while he is jumping, which he might not be after you run to your office to get another camera.

And anyway, sometimes I just find it fun to see what I can get with the pocket camera when the situation is all wrong for it. Canon has just released two new pocket cameras - the G11 and the s90, both of which are supposed to be greatly improved in low light.

So when I get that check I mentioned last night, I am going to be really tempted to buy one. While I would not use a pocket camera when I am doing paid-for work, I love the pocket camera. Yes, when I use it I miss the super wide-angle, the big telephotos and the motor drive, but there is something that is just plain fun about using a camera with a limited lens and that you can only get a shot off every couple of seconds.

It adds challenge, I guess.

But really, Billy? For Kalib's first big jumping episode?

He shows off for his grandma, who is very pleased.

He observes as his dad demonstrates the possibilities.

Of course, I had to tell the world. So I got into the car and drove straight back to Taco Bell, got in line and soon saw this New York Yankee fan in my rear view mirror. I had no idea who he was but when I saw him pull out his cell phone I quickly punched the button on mine labeled "cell phone nearest to you" and sure enough, I got him before he could even make his call.

"Hello?" he answered, puzzled.

"Kalib jumped today," I said.

"Who the hell is Kalib?" he asked. "And who the hell are you and how the hell did you get my number?"

So I told him I was driving the red Escape that was waiting in line for tacos right in front of him and that Kalib was my grandson.

"Oh," he said. "I never would have guessed. You look too young to be a grandfather. I thought maybe you were 31. Well, congratulations then. Hey! Did you see how the Yankees cleaned up on the LA Angels of Anaheim? I think they're going to the series, I think they're going all the way. You think?"

"When I was a kid, I was a big fan of Mickey Mantle," I answered. "I wanted to go all the way, but it didn't happen. My parents kept dragging me off to church. That's why."

"Oh," he said. "I guess you really must be a grandpa, then. And what do you mean? The Yanks went all the way with Mantle! Seven times! It didn't matter if you were in church or not! The Yankees still won! God always watches over the Yankees."

"Well, I'm a Cubs fan now," I said, "and they never go all the way." He hung up.

LA Angels of Anaheim?

I called this lady and told her, too. She was so ecstatic that she began to hop around like a rabbit. I tried to photograph her hopping, but the pocket camera can be a little slow and so this is how I wound up catching her - right between hops.

I pedal my bike to Taco Bell and back; along the way, I see many amazing sights, including a polar bear that passed by

I got up this morning, went online, checked my bank balance and saw that it was $79.85. So I decided that I might as well go to Taco Bell for lunch. Lavina had driven off to Anchorage in the red Escape to get an ultrasound of our new grandchild. Margie and Kalib went with her. I needed exercise, so I pedaled my bike the four-and-a-half miles to Taco Bell.

Along the way, near the west edge of Wasilla Lake, I saw this guy carrying the front wheel of a bike. He studied me with great suspicion. "Hello," I said. He said nothing. So much for The Brotherhood of the Bikers.

I should get a check next week. Hopefully early.

My whole career has been like this. I would not advise anybody to be a freelance photographer/writer, unless you have no choice, like me, because that is just what you are and nothing can be done about it.

In that case, I hope you have more business sense than I do. I have been in business for myself for over a quarter of a century and I haven't learned a damn thing about business.

I wonder how it is that I have lasted so long? Raised a family? Supported how many cats, how many dogs, how many schools of tropical fish? Most freelance photographers don't last long at all and those who do tend to have business sense that I lack and a willingness to do work of a nature that I won't do for any fee - if you try to hire me to do that kind work my mind goes foggy and I freeze up inside.

It's not because I lack the talent.

It's something else, something that I feel, and I can't get past it.

And now I ride around on a bicycle, shooting blurry, pocket-camera pictures and I put them in a blog that costs me $8.00 a month to maintain and grosses me not one cent, distracts me from tasks that could put money in my pocket, and all the time I somehow think that prosperity will yet come to me.

Someday, perhaps soon, the realities that I have managed to avoid for nearly three decades will explode upon me and wipe me out. That would be okay, if I could find a warm place with power and internet where I could sit down, put my books together, and blog.

I don't think Margie would be very happy about it, though. She's been through a great deal, to stand by her ever dreaming, roving, restless, husband who does not know how to make money. She's done it without complaint. She does not deserve to go through something like that, too.

Otherwise, I don't think I would care at all, as long as I could work on my books, do my blog and find a few dollars to go to Taco Bell, now and then.

But here's the thing: at all points in my career, whenever it has appeared that I am absolutely done for, something has materialized to keep me going - and it has always been something that I like to do. I have taken some enormous risks, but something has always happened.

Will I be saved once again? We will see.

Isn' this ridiculous? Just awhile ago, these mountains were bright, white, and snowy and they were supposed to do nothing but get snowier and snowier and stay that way into next summer. When we first moved up here, national cross country ski teams would come up from the Lower 48 every October to train at Hatcher Pass, because, they said, it was the one cross country ski area in the country where good, deep, snow was assured this time of year.

But look at it!!!

This, by the way, is the view from the seat of my bicycle as I pedal past Wasilla Lake. If it looks to you like the picture was taken near sundown, no, this is what noon-hour light looks like around here this time of year. This "sunset at noon" look will intensify over the next couple of months.

And here I am, pedaling into Taco Bell.

Two of the strangers with whom I ate lunch.

Just as this worker stepped out for a smoke break, I climbed onto my bike and began to pedal away. "Wow!" she exclaimed, "this shopping cart sure traveled far!" Target is maybe 200 yards from Taco Bell.

Many amazing things happen in this town.

As I pedaled past McDonald's, I was pretty impressed to read the sign and learn that "the world's best crew works here." 

There are hundreds of millions of crews on this earth, perhaps even a billion or more. Why would the best one in the world choose to work at McDonald's?

I did not even stop at the Post Office, but kept going. This guy stepped in front of me as I pedaled toward the corner. If we had collided, it would have been okay, because we could have went straight in to see the chiropractor.

Sometimes, you see an excellent photo in front of you, but you just can't get it, no matter how hard you try. This is an example. I had just turned off Wasilla's Main Street, which is not at all what a certain rouge-clad rogue has cracked it up to be, and was pedaling toward Lucille Street when suddenly I became aware that a polar bear had just rolled by me. Yes - a polar bear that had once roamed the Arctic ice but was now stuffed and lying in a pallet on a flat wagon towed by a pickup truck.

I had put my pocket camera back into my pocket and by the time I could pull it out again, the polar bear had gone too far past for me to get any kind of picture. Even though I knew I could not catch the truck, I began to pedal my bike as fast as I could. Way up ahead, the light turned red. The pickup truck stopped. There was so much distance between us that I knew that I could not get to it before the light turned green again, but if a polar bear can roll past you, something else might happen to delay its progress, so I pedaled like I was Lance Armstrong.

As the distance between me and the polar bear closed, I began to think that I had a chance - but then, while I was still out of range for a good picture, the light turned green. The truck took off. Knowing it was hopeless but determined to try anyway, I raised my camera and, still pedaling as hard as I could, shot this frame. Then the polar bear was gone. If you know what you are looking for, you can bearly make it out, wrapped in the orange pad.

I could have made such a good picture, if only that light had stayed red for 15 more seconds. Even 10. I think with even just five more seconds, I could have got something.

As I neared home, I passed this guy jogging with his dog. "Now you decide to run!" he shouted at the dog, immediately after I shot this frame with my pocket camera.

Later, Margie got home and picked me up for coffee. It was nice to have her drive - nice that she could drive. We passed this lady and this little boy. If I had saw them sooner, I would have rolled the window down, but we came up over a rise and I had to turn on my pocket camera and work fast, just to get a chance to shoot one frame through the window as Margie shot past. I decided to go for impressionism.

It was extremely difficult, and it wasn't a polar bear, but I did it.

And if I had been driving, it was one of those situations where I would have just sighed, because there would have been no way I could have got the image.

Sometimes, I wish Margie would drive all the time, so that I could concentrate on taking pictures. But she seldom wants to.

I expect to win a Pulitzer for this picture.

I don't see why not. It is the best picture anybody has ever taken on this earth, in this spot, at this time and I'm the one who did it.

When we got home, Lavina and Kalib were about to leave on a walk.

As for cocoon mode, I am just giving up.

I will still try to restrain myself a bit, to limit my blogging time a little more than I did tonight, to do enough just to hold the cyberspace until the day comes that I can really go at this blog the way I want to - but I give up on cocoon mode.