Too busy to blog today, so here is Pistol-Yero, at the moment of forgiveness

Truly, good readers, I am too pressed for time to blog today. It could be this way for a couple of days. Still, to affirm my presence in cyberspace, I feel a need to post something, so here is Pistol-Yero.

We had suffered a little dispute and Pistol had gone into the garage to growl and hiss, because he is the kind of cat that does that when he can't always get his way. I sat down to work, but left the door between my office and the garage open enough to allow him to come in when he felt ready.

After about two hours, he suddenly appeared on my lap. He rotated his head toward me until it came into contact with my chest, just below my chin. He spent about 15 minutes there, leaning into me, purring.

Tavra.

This is all I have to say today.

In the absence of steel-cut oatmeal, a hand reaches over the seat in front of me

This morning, I looked for the steel-cut oatmeal, but could not find it. Yet, I was determined to eat steel-cut oatmeal - because it is good for you, it is cheap and, especially when you add berries and walnuts into the mix, it is delicious.

Not quite as delicious as breakfast at Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant, but still delicious.

And I can't afford Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant right now. I expect to receive a check by the end of the week and then I should be able to afford a few breakfasts at Family, but right now I can't. Just yesterday, two purchases went into overdraft protection.

So I was determined to eat my steel-cut oatmeal.

But the steel-cut oatmeal jar was empty. I already knew this, because I had emptied it yesterday, when I cooked my healthy and economical breakfast. When Margie filled that jar a couple of weeks back, there had been oatmeal left over, which she had put it in another jar. According to my understanding, she had then put the second jar in the hall-way pantry.

But I looked in the hallway pantry and could not find it.

This did not worry me that much, because Margie is forever putting something somewhere, after which she tells me where but when I go to look, I cannot find it. So I consult her and then it is quickly found - sometimes, right where she said it was, sometimes in a completely different place.

Anyway, I wanted my steel-cut oatmeal. She is in Anchorage, babysitting Jobe, so I called her up and asked her where the second jar of steel-cut oatmeal was.

Indeed, she answered, it had been in the pantry, but she had emptied it into the steel-cut oatmeal jar on the counter while I was traveling. 

This meant there was no more steel-cut oatmeal.

This left me with no choice but to go to Family Restaurant.

I did. I ordered ham, eggs over easy, hashbrowns lightly cooked and 12 grain toast, to be dropped and delivered only after I had finished the rest of my breakfast, so that I could lather it with strawberry jam and eat it slowly, while it was still hot, sip coffee and see if I could prepare my mind to face the day.

As I thus enjoyed this breakfast that I could not afford but that circumstance had forced me to buy, this little hand slipped over the top of the empty seat facing me.

I have too much to do today to fool anymore with this damn blog, so I will let this one image, and this exceptionally exciting and important story, which ought to win me a Pulitzer if not a Nobel, do it.

FAT CAT IS BACK!!!!!!

This morning I received an email from Snook, titled, "fat cat called."

This was the message:

"fat cat called and I went and got her yesterday. she's home now...."

For the moment, this is all the information that I have, but it is mighty good information.

For readers who missed the story of how Fat Cat jumped ship in Circle after traveling by boat with Snook, Alma and I up the Yukon River from Fort Yukon to Circle, you can find it here.

This must mean that Fat Cat finally found her way to a home in Circle and so the promised call was made. It must mean that Snook would have made a five-hour round trip boat ride from Fort Yukon to Circle to pick her up.

It means that for over two months she evaded the lynx spotted near the village, and grizzly bears, too.

She must have had a grand adventure and she ended it just before winter, which here can sink into the lower -70's, set in.

If I had the resources available to me, I would hop in my airplane right now, zip up to Fort Yukon and Circle and put the story together as best I could.

But I haven't the resource and my airplane is hopelessly broken.

Yet, I am happy, just to know Fat Cat is back.

I wonder if she is still fat?

Maybe she is Slim Cat now.

Even if so, I have a feeling she will soon be Fat Cat again.

On a day that I am too lazy and sleepy to even blog, someone gives me a gift to keep me awake

I always feel exhausted when I return from a trip. I thought today it might be different, as I had been gone for such a short time, only from Friday afternoon until this morning about 12:30 AM.

But no, all day I have felt lazy and listless. Sleepy. So much so that I decided that even the most simple blog entry would require an effort that I was not up to.

I did, however, make the effort to drive Metro Cafe at the usual time.

There, I found Shoshana at the window, informing me that I had a free Americano and pastry waiting for me.

It had been paid for by a woman who drove up Friday, told them that she liked this blog and then bought this gift for me. She did not identify herself.

So now I am alert just enough to make this simple entry.

Thank you, anonymous reader!

Carmen was there with her red-headed friend, Amanda, who she used to work with at Northern Air Cargo.

So they posed for Through the Window Metro Study, #6201.22222229: Carmen and Her Red-Headed Friend.

Not long after I drove away enjoying the gift, I came upon this fall cat. I could tell that it is an excellent cat, so I took this picture and now I am going to put it up as the wallpaper for this monitor.

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The bite of winter, coming on - Update, 1:01 AM, Monday: Violet is her name

Originally posted at 4:58 PM, Sunday, September 26.

The wind was tearing when I drove out of Wasilla Friday afternoon, gusts slamming so hard into the car that at times it felt like we were going to be blown off the road. Worse yet, it had whipped up the powdered-sugar fine glacier dust and filled the air with it, irritating my throat and lungs and, judging by his little cough, Jobe's too. Our valley trees had been stripped of much of their fall color. The air felt cold, too, the way it does just before winter sets in. Margie dropped me off at the airport and soon my flight was being hammered and buffeted as it climbed through the turbulence roiling off the mountains, but at altitude, the air was smooth. As we descended into Fairbanks, we again encountered turbulence so strong as to cause the stewardess to be lifted from the floor and me to fear for her safety. I had an hour-and-half layover in Fairbanks, extended by delay into two-and-half hours. In the wintertime, when we drop into Fairbanks from South Central, we expect the temperature to be colder there. In the summer, we expect it to be warmer. The weather my last two stops in Fairbanks, the most recent just two weeks ago, had been very warm. But on this day, as I walked back to the plane and took this picture, I was struck by the cold bite in the wind. Winter must be coming on.

There was no snow when I arrived in Barrow. When I first became familiar with the town, back when I was producing the original incarnation of Uiñiq magazine, the snow had always set in for good by now, usually about the 20th of the month. Sometimes, I would hear some of the older elders speak of how things had warmed up, how, when they were young, snow and freeze-up would often set in by the end of August. In recent years, it has often not set in until early October. When I woke up Saturday morning, I found that the snow had come.

I walked to Pepe's for breakfast and saw that the moon was up.

Coming home, I walked by the Chukchi Sea of the Arctic Ocean. The water was dark and turbulent. The wind caught tufts of foam and sent it flying by, in delicately frozen tufts.

The Friends of Tuzzy Library had brought me up to talk about doing Gift of the Whale and to show slides from the book. As starting time drew near, the wind was tearing, snow was flying and I wondered if any more than the five or six people who had already gathered when I took this picture through the library window - very near to starting time - would show up.

As it turned out, people did come, pretty close to what would be the full, comfortable, capacity of the library to hold them. We ate a potluck dinner and then I spoke and showed my slides. It was great fun. They gave out door prizes afterward, including a few copies of Gift of the Whale. Anna Jack, here with husband Simmick, won the first copy. She told me that was good, as she had worn her first copy out. Authors like to hear this kind of thing.

This young lady, held in the arms of her father Bryan Thomas, was youngest person to buy a book, which she had me autograph. I feel terrible, as I have forgotten her name. I thought I would remember it after I addressed a book to her, but I didn't. I don't know about this getting older stuff.

Afterward, I stepped outside. The snow had momentarily stopped flying. This is the bowhead skull that sits between the entrance to the Tuzzy Library and the Iñupiat Heritage Center.

As I walked back to the house of Roy Ahmaogak, my host, I heard a knock on a window to the side. I looked and saw the gentleman at right waving, and gesturing for me to come in. I did, and James and Ellen served me tea and ice cream. Thank you, James and Ellen. Thank you, Friends of Tuzzy. Thank you, Barrow. Thank you, Arctic Slope. I just got a call from Melanie. She says it snowed in Anchorage this morning, but didn't stick. Wouldn't it be nice if we got to enjoy a real, old-fashioned, Alaska winter this year? Except that we don't have any firewood. The summer that just ended was just so tight that we weren't able to get any. We had better get some, soon, though.

The update:

As it happened, two hours after I made this post at 4:58 PM, Sunday, Roy Ahmaogak drove me to the Barrow airport, helped me carry my bags into the Alaska Airlines terminal, disappeared and then quickly reappeared to tell me that Bryan and his young daughter whose name I had forgotten were also here at the terminal.

Here they are: Bryan and one year old Violet, whose name I know now and have recorded in my history of the world as I experience it.

Then I was out on the tarmac, walking toward the Alaska Airlines jet that would take me to Anchorage. As I walked toward it, I wondered if, anywhere in this world, there is another land so magnificent, great and wonderful as Alaska.

I do not wish to offend any of my Outisde readers, but, no, I don't think there is.

And lucky me - right here in the midst of it!! Surrounded by it - traveling through it, calling it home - my home, that I still yearn to know so much better than I do.

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