A little storm blew in just before tax day and came down upon an American bald eagle

I have fallen behind. April 15, tax day, is drawing close to its end and I have not even put up a post yet. It was a fairly eventful day for me. I went to town, had lunch with Melanie, visited with Warren Matumeak, who readers met in yesterday's post as he drummed for Suurimmaanitchuat, and his daughters; drove home, passed a Volkswagen, saw a bit of the Wasilla Tea Party rally.

But I am going to go to bed early tonight and I will wait until I get up Friday morning, April 16, and then I will blog about April 15 and try to have it up by noon, Alaska time; 4:00 PM East Coast. That means that this post will only be at the top of the page for a very short time.

In the meantime, just so the day does not end without me putting up a post, here are a few images from April 14, when a minor storm of no consequence blew in.

In the afternoon, as I headed toward Metro Cafe, I saw these kids walking through it.

I then drove down and crossed the bridge over the Little Susistna River, where I saw a bald eagle sitting in a tree. I was a little irritated with myself, as this was a job that my pocket camera simply was not up to. I wondered why I couldn't keep a DSLR with a long lens in the car, just for occassions like this?

Yet, when I set out to document the world around me with a pocket camera, I know that I can never do with it what I can do with a DSLR, but the goal is to get a picture that is somewhat worthwhile anyway.

So I parked the car and decided to see how close I could get to the eagle.

In places where eagles hang out by the score and more all the time, getting close to them is no problem at all. They will practically let you walk right up to them.

But this is not such a place.

At first, I walked straight toward the eagle and it watched my every step.

Then I turned so that I was not walking directly towards it, but rather at an angle to the tree, but was still closing the distance between it and me with each step. Then I turned back, still at angle to the tree, until I reached a point where something told me that if I came any closer, the eagle would fly.

I raised my pocket camera.

And the eagle flew.

Country and Rock guitarist Dr. Aaron Fox, who, with help from Chie Sakakibara, has returned Iñupiaq songs to the people of Barrow; Tagiugmiut and Suurimmaanitchuat, at Kivgiq

This is Dr. Aaron Fox, Associate Professor of Music, Chairman of the Department of Music at Columbia University and repatriator of Iñupiat song and dance to the people of Barrow, as seen through my iPhone. I met him for breakfast at the Hudson Diner - a place that he recommended both because it was right around the corner from where the Alaska House and Alice Rogoff had put me up, and because he said it was one of the few cafes left in the area that cater to the working class.

Shortly after we sat down, I saw the potential for a good picture of Aaron in the foreground as two adults accompanied by a young girl paused in the background outside the window. I framed it in my pocket camera and shot. The image that flashed up on my my LCD looked good, but I shot a second and third frame to give me a couple more options. As they flashed across the LCD, they, too, looked good.

Afterwards, I tried to pull them back up so that I could show them to Aaron - but instead of images, the camera gave me this stark message: "No Memory Card."

Yes - no memory card. I had already downloaded the pictures that I took earlier that morning for my Easter Sunday post and had forgotten to put the card back into the camera.

Once again, I had to turn to my iPhone. 

So here is my portrait of Aaron Fox, shot with my iPhone.

Fox's title sounds pretty high-brow, but he is a country and rock guitarist and a former DJ. His favorite artists are are Stevie Ray Vaughan, Buddy Guy, John Lee Hooker, Aerosmith, Willie Nelson, and Merle Haggard.

He earned his PhD in Social Anthropology from University of Texas at Austin and an AB in Music from Harvard and holds a deep love for the traditional music of Native peoples worldwide. Columbia has a large collection of films and recordings of Native music.

The Columbia collection includes the work of Laura Boulton, who, from the 1920's through the 1970's, traveled the world to record the work of traditional and tribal peoples. She visited Barrow for one week in October of 1946 and recorded 120 drum-dance songs and oral narratives, performed by seven adult male performers and at least three children.

When Fox became the Director of the Center for Ethnomusicology in 2003, a position now held by his colleague Anna Maria Ochoa, he also became curator of the Boulton collection. By this time, the matter of who owned Native song and dance - the non-Natives who recorded them or the Natives who created and performed them - had become a public issue, and the understanding had grown that the ownership rights of Native people were as important to them as they are to any artists who create music.

While by law the publication rights to Boulton's recordings were held by Columbia, Fox launched a process both "to clarify the cultural ownership" of the works and to set up a process to repatriate the rights back to the people who had created them. Although he had been impressed with the Barrow recordings, he began this work with the Hopi and other Southwest tribes, thinking that sometime in the future he would turn his attention to the Barrow recordings.

Yet almost immediately, he was contacted by Dr. Chie Sakakibara, then a graduate student in Cultural Geography, who had begun a National Science Foundation project to do her doctoral research on the whaling cultures and climate change in Barrow and Point Hope.

Sakakibara had become aware of the Boulton recordings and wanted to learn more about them. 

Aaron then asked Chie if she would help him locate living descendants of the singers Boulton had recorded. She eagerly agreed and set about to do so immediately. As she identified descendants and other interested Barrow Iñupiat, she sent their names and contact information to Aaron. He, in turn, sent CD's of the recordings to all who requested them.

Fox had anticipated that the process would be a slow one that would only develop into something sometime in the distant future, but as soon as the people of Barrow began to see the recordings, they took enthusiastic action themselves. Vernon Elavgak, a descendant of one of the seven drummers, his wife, Isabell, and Riley Sikvayugak, another descendent, organized a new dance group, the Tagiugmiut Dancers.

They listened to and learned the songs recorded in 1946 and began to practice motion dances put to those songs. The women designed beautiful, blue, outfits for their members, sewed them and then they began to perform in public, where they quickly proved popular. In 2007, Tagiugmiut won the Eskimo Dance category at the World Eskimon-Indian Olympics in Fairbanks and were invited to perform at the 2008 Gathering of Nations inter-tribal pow-wow in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Fox and Sakakibara traveled together to Barrow and did many extensive interviews with descendants and other Iñupiat who love dance. They gathered information not only on the performances that had been filmed, but also on a collection of photographs gathered at the time by Boulton, photos which now belong to the Indiana University Archive of Traditional Music. Many of the photos are believe to have been taken by Marvin Peter, a noted Iñupiaq photographer of that time.

Aaron showed me a few of the photos on his phone, including the above image of Alfred Koonaloak, one of the seven singers.

As interested as the people were in the recordings of the drummers, Fox found that they were even more captivated by the photos of their relatives and fellow Iñupiat, most of them gone now. Sometimes, a viewer would gaze upon and study a single image for close to an hour at a time.

Among the most popular was this image of eight women and a child, gathered outside Barrow's Utqiagvik Presbyterian church house. 

Aaron shows me a photo taken by Chie in which Mary Ahkivgak, daughter of Otis Ahkivgak, one of the 1946 singers, intently studies one of the photos from the Indiana University collection.

In another incident documented by Chie, the late Martha Aiken, a highly respected Barrow Elder, found a picture of her husband, who had already preceded her in death. She looked lovingly and longingly at the picture and then, through spoke softly through her tears. "That's my Robert," she said.

You can find the picture of Robert Aiken and the one Chie took of Martha viewing it right here.

So a partnership has now developed and is growing between the Iñupiat of Barrow and Columbia's Center for Ethnomusicology. The process of repatriation of ownership to be administer by the Iñupiat through The Iñupiat Heritage Center. While all rights will be held by the tribe, Columbia and the Heritage Center are working on an agreement that would license back usage rights for scholarly and teaching purposes, to be done in respectful ways.

Above is an image of the Tagiugmiut Dancers, that I took at Kivgiq 2009, as they performed a motion dance to a repatriated song.

Tagiugmiut. The woman at front center with the big smile is Isabell Elavgak, who helped her husband Vernon and Riley Sikvayugak to organize Tagiugmiut.

And that's Vernon on the left, during an invitational fun dance. The young man dancing alongside him is Ernest Nageak, son of Roy and Flossie Nageak, who has adopted into their family, as well as Chie as has another Barrow family, that of Jeslie and Julia Kaleak.

Jeslie and Julia have been active participants in the repatriation effort.

Tagiugmiut youth, performing a whale hunting dance at Kivgiq.

Aaron Fox in a fun dance with Tagiuqmiut after they invited him onto the floor.

Aaron is hugged by Josiah Patkotak of Barrow's Suurimmaanitchuat Eskimo Dance Group.

Barrow Elder Warren Matumeak in the midst of Suurimmaanitchuat. Matumeak has taken a strong interest in the project and has provided much information. At this moment, he is undergoing cancer treatment in Anchorage.

Suurimmaanitchuat - that's Mariah Ana Ahgeak-Fotukava and Maaku Matavale, beneath the drums.

On July 12 of last summer, Roy and Flossie Nageak, who have adopted Aaron into the their family and Pk-13 whaling crew as well as Chie, invited me to a 45th birthday dinner that they threw for him at their home in Barrow. I went, ate, and took photographs. I had planned to publish one of those photos in this article, but I must have inadvertently erased them from my card before I downloaded, because when I went to my folder dated July 12, all I found was three photos of the Alaskan husky, Dawson.

Fortunately, Bobby Akpik was there taking pictures as well. This one, of Aaron with Chie and the cake that she spent hours making for him, is posted on Sakakibara's Facebook page.

As can happen in small towns, when people saw Chie and Aaron going about the community together as they did their research, some speculated that perhaps they were a couple. Chie set the record straight on Facebook, as you can read in the photo.

Through the Metro window study - Carmen and Burt; Ron Mancil, horse and boys; deer and hunter/Aaron Fox story rescheduled for tomorrow

I have had to delay the Aaron Fox story for a day, as I find myself short of time to do it justice. Before I left on my recent trip to the East Coast, it was my general practice to create my blog posts late at night and then schedule them to appear at 4:00 AM.

I could not maintain this schedule as I traveled and so found myself making my posts in the morning, before I got into other things. I then decided I would continue to do so after I got home - I would put up my post in the morning, be all done with it no later than noon, and then I would have the remainder of the day, the evening, and the night to do all those other things I need to do.

This is, in fact, what I have done since I arrived home, but today I just couldn't pull it off. Now, I find it is already past noon. I must get a post up before the day grows any older, but it will take me at least a couple of hours to do the Aaron Fox story, so I am going to delay it until tomorrow morning.

In the meantime, here I am, yesterday afternoon, back to my usual, taking my 4:00 PM coffee break, which I began at the drive-through window to Metro Cafe. That's Carmen's brother-in-law, Burt, posing with her in:

Through the Window Metro Study, #6628.

Once again, I took the long way home from Metro and found Ron Mancil with a horse and two boys, up visiting from the Kenai Peninsula. The little boy is Roland. The bigger boy is... G.... G....

Damn! Why doesn't the rest of his name come to me?

I remember the "G," but nothing after that.

I woke up this morning broke. And I mean broke. No means to pay a single bill, not even my house payment, due in two days, or any extra taxes that may be due Uncle Sam the same day. No possibility of any income coming in for at least two weeks, maybe three. After I finish this blog, I am going to call the doctor and cancel the appointment that I have scheduled for tomorrow, because I can't pay for it.

Very soon, I will begin to receive a bunch of irritating phone calls demanding payment from me that I am currently unable to pay.

So I decided to go to Mat-Su Valley Family Restaurant and have breakfast. I do have a credit card, after all. Whenever I get down to my last few dollars, I go out to eat. I don't give a damn about wisdom and common sense.

I go out to eat.

After I sat down and placed my order, I noticed this kid sitting across from me, playing with his toy deer, his toy motorcycle and his toy truck. Sitting at the table in front of me was an old man and a young man. I did not eavesdrop on their conversation, but just after I noticed the toy deer, these words rose out of the whispery din of their spoken words, "...go deer hunting."

Strange coincidence, I thought.

The little boy was with his grandma. When they finished their breakfast, picked up their ticket and started to leave, I stopped them and showed them this picture. I told them about this blog and gave them the address. Then I asked for the boy's first name:

Hunter.

Hunter - have a good day. And when I get older and can no longer care for myself or Margie, please remember me, and bring me a slab of venison, or a hind-quarter of moose. I will share it with Margie, and perhaps a tiny piece with any nearby cat who might plead for it.

Margie, by the way, has gone to town to babysit Jobe.

Dr. Chie Sakakibara, who once believed Native Americans to be Caucasian, takes me to The Cloisters; the place where the Dutch may have purchased Manhattan; I eat Easter Bunny stew

When Chie Sakakibara was growing up in Japan, she thought the indigenous people of the Americas were Caucasion. Hollywood movies were her primary source of education about Native Americans and those that she saw on film were usually portrayed by white people. She believed what she saw.

Chie is now Dr. Chie Sakakibara, with a PhD in Cultural Geography from the University of Oklahoma, where she first enrolled in 1998 as an undergraduate student in Native American Studies. 

Readers who have been following my New York series will recall that, after inviting me to show my slides at the class she teaches at Columbia University, Chie had invited me to tour The Cloisters museum with her the following Saturday. The museum closes at 5:15 and so she suggested that I meet her at 3:00 PM, but first I got a late start to the day and then I underestimated how much time my little jaunt to Ground Zero and St. Paul's chapel would take. To make it worse, after I rode the subway from the bottom of Manhattan to the top, I got off the train at the wrong stop and had to hike three blocks to our meeting place. By then it was about 4:00 PM - maybe even a bit later.

Once we got together, we still had a good distance to walk to reach The Cloisters. We set off at a brisk pace, but the company was pleasant and the conversation good all the way.

One day back in Japan, Chie went to a different kind of movie than those she had seen before - Dances With Wolves, starring Kevin Costner along with a cast of mostly American Indian actors, such as Grahamn Green and Rodney Grant.

"I was so surprised to see that they were not Caucasion, but they had dark eyes and black hair - like me," Chie remembers. She listened to their language and heard similarities to Japanese. She wondered how this could be, so she went to the library, where she read about the Bering Land Bridge and theories of how Asian people had migrated across into the Americas.

She also wrote a letter to Michael Blake, the author of the book, Dances With Wolves, who also authored the screen play for the movie. She told him that she wanted to learn more about Native Americans and asked how she might go about it. She waited for nearly three months, but heard nothing in response.

Here is Chie, after we hiked up a high hill overlooking the Hudson River and reached The Cloisters, which, in the early 20th Century, was reconstructed from the stones of five different monasteries originally built in medieval France.

It is a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, "The Met", dedicated to artwork from medieval Europe and houses a permanent collection of over 6000 pieces of art dating back to 800 AD.

After three months passed, Chie was surprised when she received a letter from author Michael Blake. He suggested that if she really wanted to learn about Native Americans, she come to the United States and walk among them herself. The two then began to correspond regularly. Blake helped her arrange the funding to come to the US to study.

After she boarded the jet and flew away from Japan for the first time, Chie found herself feeling lonely and frightened. She thought that she was on a route that would take her over Hawaii, but in time, despite her fear of heights, she looked down and saw a magnificent, vast, land opening up beneath her. She saw a boat in the water and she also thought she saw a whale.

This was Alaska, the pilot said. She was entranched by the wild beauty of the place. She continued on to Norman, Oklahoma, a place surrounded by many American Indian Nations,  where she enrolled in the University of Oklahoma. Yet, she knew that she must return to that land that she had flown over, that she must get to know it's indigenous people - most especially those who hunt the whale.

She still carries an Oklahoma driver's license (and she does not drive in New York City) and her boyfriend lives in Norman, so Oklahoma is still home to her in a way that New York is not. 

I must also add that Barrow and the Arctic Slope of Alaska is also home to Chie in a way that New York is not.

In fact, based on my own relationship with Barrow and the Arctic Slope, and having observed Chie with some of the Iñupiat who have adopted her, I would say that Alaska's Far North is a most unique and special home to her, one that will never be duplicated anywhere else.

Except to visit, she does not intend to return to Japan. She is building her life in the United States.

The above, by the way, is a sculpture of Jesus, riding a donkey into Jerusalem and originated in 15th Century Germany. It sits on a cart, so that it could be wheeled into the local church on Palm Sunday celebrations.

This is David Ferrando, a guard at the museum and an accomplished artist whose work has been exhibited at The Met. In his artist statement, Ferrando says:

"I am an artist employed by God. I am not working. God is dreaming through me. In the illusion of life I have many veils of consciousness..."

David took an interest in Chie and me, and spent some time chatting with us.

David also likes to make pictures. He photographed us both, one at a time, and very close up. He showed us the images on his LCD screen and although you cannot put a camera with a wide-angle lens that close to a face without dramatically enlarging the nose, the images were strong; they had the look of being made by an artist.

The image of Chie was more pleasant to look at than the one of me, of course.

If there was only one person that we would meet and talk to in this medievel museum - and indeed there was only one - I would have wanted it to be no one but David. He was just the right one.

These three alabaster ladies are the work of sculptor Franci Gomar and were created between 1456-58.

I believe the one in the middle is the likeness of the Saint Ursula and the other her companions - although I am a bit confused on this point. They might all three be companions to St. Ursula. Ursula was a teacher in England who is said to have loved her students greatly. Invaders came into her area and threatened to kill all Christians, so Ursula took her students and the other teachers who worked with her and led them to France.

There, they were captured by the Huns, who wanted to make slaves of Ursula's students, mostly little boys and girls. Ursula refused to allow that, so the Huns told her that they would let all go free, if only they would renounce Christ and their Catholic faith - otherwise, they would kill them.

All refused. So the Huns notched their arrows, drew back their bows and murdered each and every one. All these martyrs, the Catholic faith says, went straight to Heaven.

As beautiful as these alabaster sculptures are, when I looked at this image that I took of them on my LCD, it seemed to me that something was missing...

What...?

Why, it was Chie who was missing! Here she is!

This is a Pietà (Vesperbild), Mary holding her slain son, Jesus, carved from wood in Germany sometime between 1375 and 1400.

There are a series of tapestries about a unicorn hanging in The Cloisters, believed to have been designed in France and made in Brussels. The series begins in beauty and then follows the unicorn as people persecute and kill it. In the final tapestry, the unicorn is alive. This story of the unicorn is thought to be symbolic of the life, persecution, crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. 

When we reached this statue of Mary and a rather mature-looking baby Jesus, our time before closure was running very short. Everything that I know about this statute is contained within this photograph.

Then, before Chie and I were ready to leave Medieval Europe and venture back out into the upper-most reaches of Manhattan, where Spanish is the most common language heard on the street, museum staff announced that we had to vacate the building, as they were about to lock the doors.

As we headed to the main exit, we saw David standing somberly ahead of us as visitors filed past. When he saw us approaching, he smiled broadly, gave us a warm goodbye and told us that he hoped he would see us again someday soon.

Chie asked if I would like to see the place where the Dutch are said to have purchased Manhattan from the Reckgawanang Indians. Yes, I answered. She warned that it was a long walk. That's okay, I said. I walk all the time.

So off we walked.

I saw many potential pictures along the way, but I did not take any of them. As I noted in my Central Park essay, the battery in my pocket camera had begun to fail. Now it had grown even weaker and the low charge light was flashing. I feared that if I took pictures along the way, it might be dead by the time we reached the site and I would get no pictures of the monument.

Yet, I cannot let an airplane pass overhead without taking a photo of it.

Here is Chie, sitting on the rock that legend claims marks the very spot where the Dutch purchased Manhattan Island for 60 guilders - about $1000 in today's currency. When I was a young schoolboy, we were taught this purchase was done in beads and trinkets that totalled $24.

This information was passed to us in a sort of snickering way that said, "look how clever those white Dutch were and how gullible those dark Indians."

No deed can be found of the actual transaction and whether it was beads or other items of trade is not really known. One thing I am quite certain of - whatever transpired here on that day in 1624, the Reckgawanang surely interpeted it much different than did the Dutch. I do not at all believe that they thought they had just given away their bounteous homeland.

I am also certain that the Dutch survived their early days on Manhattan only due to the good graces of the Reckgawanang.

Who can now find a Reckgawanang on Manhattan?

Chie then took me on a walk through Inwood Park, which encompasses the monument. By urban standards, it is a gigantic park. While tame by Alaska standards, it is much more wild than Central Park - indeed, more wild than anything I had ever expected to see in Manhattan.

Chie is like me in that she wants to photograph everything that she sees. She flatters me, by telling me that it is my work that inspired her to take up photography. She currently shoots a Canon Powershot G10, which she bought at my recommendation - a G10 being the pocket camera that I used all the time before Melanie and Charlie gave me this even tinier s90 for Christmas.

She asked if I would mind if she took a picture of us together, head-to-head. After she took it, she showed it to me. I liked it, and so decided to take a similar one myself, and this is it. Chie told me that the Barrow families who have taken her in have looked at her pictures and have told her that she do should do as I have done and make a serious effort to photograph life on the Arctic Slope.

She has protested that this is beyond her talent, but I have looked at her pictures and I disagree. She has talent, a natural eye, and an ability to connect with people that goes beyond that possessed by shy, reclusive, withdrawn, me. She could well do it, far beyond the last day that I pick up a camera. Where it was a long, tough, struggle for me to gain the acceptance that I now enjoy, Chie has been loved in the Arctic from the day she first stepped off the plane into Barrow.

On that day, as she crossed a street, two Elder women stopped her and asked her a question in Iñupiaq. She did not understand. "What?" she responded.

"Who are you? Who is your mother? Who is your father?" they asked.

When she told them that she not from Barrow, but from Japan, they laughed.

"Oh! We thought you were one of us!"

And so she has become.

Not long after that, the Akootchook Crew, captained by Roy Nageak and wife Flossie, landed a bowhead. Roy's sister-in-law, Mae Ahgeak, invited her to come by the house for the first feed. She did. She helped with the preparations and she happily joined in the dining.

Roy and Flossie loved her right away and brought her into their family. Roy gave her an Iñupiaq name: Kuninga.

Not long after that, she met the late Barrow Elder, Dr. Kenneth Toovak. He asked her name and she told him, "Kuninga." He smiled big, and gave her a little kiss.

Later, she told a couple of other men her Iñupiaq name. They didn't kiss her, but they did break out with big smiles. Her new name spread quickly throughout the town, everywhere she went, people looked at her and smiled.

So she asked, and found out that her adopted dad had given her the name, "Kiss Me." 

She was also given a second name, Siqiniq. This means, "Sunshine."

That is the name she is now most commonly called.

As to the picture above, there are some caves in the park that were frequented by the Indians of old. Chie hoped to find and show a couple of these caves to me. Just before I arrived in New York, a huge rainstorm hit the city and had downed many trees in this park.

Even now, water still flowed down the trail. Chie did not find the caves, but, after having made several tries, she did connect with her colleague, Aaron Fox, on her cellphone. She arranged for he and I to meet for breakfast the next morning, just before I was scheduled to depart New York.

Immediately after I took this image, my battery died. Immediately after that, we happened upon a very enchanting and mysterious scene. We found three people, all Hispanic, gathered in prayer-like positions around a large, white, crystal bowl. A man continually rubbed the edge of the crystal with a round wooden stick in a rotating motion, creating an ethereal hum. I did not want to disrupt them, but the man said it was okay, that we could come through, and he showed us the crystal and demonstrated how it worked.

Sometimes, if I hold a camera battery in my hand inside my pocket after it dies and I warm it up, I can get another picture out of it. So I gripped the battery and pushed it deep into my pocket, hoping not to miss the next picture.

Chie then took me to dinner at the Indian Road Cafe, where they had created a special menu for Easter weekend. Among the specials was a bunny rabbit soup, with whole carrots. Easter Bunny stew. I ordered it. It was delicious. Chie ordered a macaroni dish.

I put my battery back in my camera, and managed to get a couple more frames out of it, including this one. Then it died again.

After we ate, I again gripped my battery in my hand and held it deep in my pocket as Chie walked me to the Subway station.  When we got there, I pulled out my Metro card, but it was low and needed to be recharged. Chie insisted on using her card to get me into the station.

After I passed through the turnstile, I pulled the hand-heated battery out of my pocket and slipped it back into my camera. It had gained enough recharge for just one more shot. This is it.

Our final goodbye.

Or so I thought.

Just before my train arrived, I heard a voice, turned around and there was Chie, who had come to the fence to say one last goodbye. My camera battery was dead - but then I remembered that I can take pictures with my iPhone, so I did.

Now I had to get on the train and go. It is always sad to see a friend disappear behind you, not knowing when you will see her again, but one way or another, that is how it always happens.

My next entry will cover my breakfast the following morning with Aaron Fox. I will relate a bit about how he and Chie teamed up to restore something very precious to the Iñupiat, something that might have been lost forever to them, had it not been for the good works and big hearts of Chie Sakakibara and Aaron Fox.

I take an intermission from my New York series to bring you... Kalib and Jobe! Plus their two fur sibs!

I will return to finish off the New York series with Chie and then probably one more post, but, having been gone for so long, I got lonesome to see my grandsons. I grabbed Margie and headed to town, where we found Kalib at the window, waiting for us.

Margie and Kalib looked out the window at the advance of the spring.

I'm not quite sure how Margie pulled off this little balancing act, but Kalib was mighty interested.

Kalib was sleepy when we arrived and soon lay down to take a nap.

And Jobe woke up from his nap. I was amazed to see how he had grown and filled out in the time that I had been gone. He looks like a dapper little man now.

Jobe, on my lap.

Jobe and his grandma. We let Lavina borrow our car to go off and study her math.

Soon, Jobe wanted to nap again. Margie tied him into his cradleboard.

Margie peeks in at Jobe.

I had to go over and peek in, too. This is what I saw.

Fur sibling Martigny.

Fur sibling Muzzy.

As for me, I am unspeakably tired. And I have other tasks that I must do. So I am going to wait until Monday morning to return to my New York series and Chie Sakakibara.

Truth is, I am just flat-out exhausted.

I don't think I will ever recover.