All creeped out on Halloween

Mark, the four year-old son of Woodrow Oyagak and Sherlene Kagak, gets a little creeped out by a Halloween spider in Atqasuk. I took the picture October 12, as village recreation coordinator Arthur Bordeaux was just beginning to prepare a haunted house for this holiday.

I wanted to include a picture in Uiñiq and so I narrowed it down to two and chose the other. I didn't want this one to go to waste, so here it is.

Boo!

Chicago - the blessing of fire

It is snowing outside, lightly.

Inside, Chicago is warm and toasty.

Unable to attend Lavina's birthday party, I Facebook an old friend and order a special cake for her

It is Lavina's birthday and, to my great frustration, I cannot take the time to go into town, join in the party and wish her a happy one. I suspect that all the family but me will probably show up. There will be good food and gifts, cake and ice cream. Candles will be lit and even though they will be for Lavina, Kalib and Jobe will assist her in the blowing out part. Lynxton, who as of yesterday had grown to seven pounds, seven ounces - nearly two pounds more than he was born with - will at times open his eyes and look around and at other times will sleep peacefully.

He might cry a little bit, but not much, because he is not a cry baby and, anyway, once he starts to cry, whatever need he is asking to have taken care of, whether it be a serving of mother's milk, a needed burp or a diaper change, will soon be taken care of.

Oh, how I want to take this day off!

But I can't. I must stay right here and struggle to complete my work. I cannot go to Lavina's birthday party.

I hate my work. I love my work. I love it and I hate it all at once. But it is all a labor of love - even the hate part.

I had to do something and, as it happened, just yesterday, I learned through Facebook that my old friend, Ernest J. Tigglemaster, who I had not seen since our kindergarten days together at Lincoln Elementary in Pendleton, Oregon, is now Five Star General Ernest J. Tigglemaster, US Air Force, and is assigned to the Pentagon. He has great authority.

So I sent him a Facebook friend request. He accepted. Then we started messaging back and forth. I asked if he could contact the folks at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage and have them send up a pilot and a jet to make a sky cake - triple decker - for Lavina.

"Sure! Anything for the daughter-in-law of my old kindergarten buddy, Bill Hess!" he exclaimed. And he did.

And this is the jet, in the process of making the sky cake. The thing about a sky cake is that you cannot eat it. You can only look at it and admire its transient beauty, for, like a real cake, it does not last long. It disintegrates, sublimates, disappears, joins the clouds and drifts away.

But, for the little bit of time that it exists it is a beautiful thing, one that proclaims to all who can see:

"Happy birthday, Lavina!"

And see those things down below in the shadows - the things that look old, junked, cars?

They are not junked cars. They are expensive and elaborate birthday gifts, creatively wrapped. Any kind of gift that you want, Lavina - just imagine it and you will find it there, down below your sky cake.

The girl who sat across the room at breakfast time

As usual when Margie is off spending her weekdays in town to help Lavina with the little ones, I got up thinking that I should fix myself some oatmeal, for reasons of economy, health and time, but quickly found an excuse not to. It was cold in the house, maybe about 40-45 degrees and to build a fire felt like a waste of wood, what with Margie not here to enjoy the heat.

She has the car, so I got on my bike and pedaled to Abby's Home Cooking. There were many frozen puddles along the way and I made a point to pedal right across as many of them as I could. Some broke, crunched and crackled beneath my tires and some didn't. The ones that broke did so because after the surface had frozen, the water beneath had gone away, leaving just air bubbles behind and the ice covering those bubbles was not strong enough to support the weight of me and my bike.

Then I got to Abby's and it was warm inside. I ordered ham, eggs over easy, hashbrowns and coffee.

I'm not quite sure what Danille, Abby's grandniece who will be two next week, had ordered. Maybe it was a breakfast milkshake... an eggs, bacon, potatoes and blueberry pancake shake.

I've never had one, but I understand they are quite tasty.

Two boys, Navajo tacos almost, a future unforetold

Gideon and Vincent Mahoney, who I met at Abby's Home Cooking last night. I went because I learned that her special was going to be Navajo tacos. Now, several times in Alaska, including at the state fair and even at powwows, I have seen people advertising Navajo tacos and everytime that I have taken a chance and tried it, I have been disappointed, because I get to eat the real thing on a regular basis, except that sometimes, if Margie makes them, they are Apache Tacos.

When Lavina makes them, they are Navajo tacos. Sometimes, they make them together and then they are Navapache tacos, or perhaps Apachavajo tacos.

Either way, they are pretty much the same thing and they are superb.

But I have never bought a single food item in Alaska labeled as "Navajo Tacos" that has even approached the real thing. It is always a disappointment.

I love Abby's cooking and decided to give hers a chance.

What she served was very good... excellent even- shredded beef and black beans with cheese, tomatoes, onions and salsa on frybread that is a little heavier than Navajo-Apache frybread... but it was different than Navajo tacos.

Margie is not here right now. As is so often the case these days, she is in town helping Lavina with baby Lynxton and the boys, but I talked to her on the phone last night and she agreed... we are going to either invite Abby to dinner over here or go over there and then Margie or Lavina or Margie and Lavina will fix the real thing and show her just how to do it.

Abby is in favor of the idea.

As for these boys, Abby's nephews, Vincent told me that he had been somewhere, I forget just where, Big Lake, I think, with hamburgers being served, if I remember right, and a newspaper photographer had taken his picture. He quoted what the paper had written to go with the picture, word for word, it sounded like.

Pretty smart kid.

Vincent also talked about how fun it is to play with fortune tellers, one of which said he would be going to Disneyworld soon, and sure enough, six months later he went to Disneyworld.

I was not quite certain what he meant by "fortune tellers," so he got a sheet of paper and folded it up into an intricate design with many four-sided faces and, when manipulated, one never knows which face it will open up on. Whatever is written on the face that opens, that is the foretold fortune.

He demonstated, opening and closing the thing so that it looked like little jaws biting into the air.

Then he stopped, handed it to me, and said I could keep it.

Nothing was written anywhere. The face meant to tell my fortune was blank - all the faces were blank. It looked like I had no future at all.

But that was last night, when today was the future.

Here it is today, the future, and I am still here. 

I am still in one picture a day mode. I tried to keep this at one, too, but after I finished I realized I really had to show the fortune teller. Truly, I don't have time to post two pictures... or to write more than one paragraph - two at the most.

I feel like I am destroying myself, posting two pictures, writing all these extra paragraphs, even as hell bears down upon me - but, I bet I will survive, just the same.