Kalib, for Grandma Mary down in the Navajo Nation: may his image help speed your recovery

There was a car crash on the Navajo reservation Friday and it left Kalib's other grandmother, Mary Fatt, badly injured. She had to be medivaced by helicopter ambulance from just outside of Shonto to Flagstaff. Just to set the record straight, because I know that among those who do not know Mary there will be some who will be wondering, yes, Grandmother Mary is a sober person and was driving sober. 

We do not yet know about the other driver, who apparently was not hurt, nor do we know the details of how the accident happened. Lavina and Jacob were in Anchorage until very late in the evening and out here, Margie and I spent several hours, worried, wondering.

I will not try to detail her injuries, but the last word that we received is that she is stable, her life no longer in danger.

I had taken a few pictures earlier in the day as I took my walk and then later after I drove off on a coffee break, but I decided instead to make a special post, just for Kalib's Grandmother Mary.

So, beginning fairly late in the evening, I shot this series of photos just for her.

I hope that she will be able to see them soon - like today, if Kalib's aunts who are with his grandmother can figure out a way to show her - if she is able to look.

If not, then she can enjoy them later.

Whenever she sees them, I know the face of Kalib will bring her cheer and cheer will help her heal.

Here, Kalib rinses a dish for his Grandma Margie.

He prepares to throw paper into the fire.

Kalib takes a bath, #1.

Kalib takes a bath, #2.

Kalib takes a bath, #3 - he watches the water go down the drain.

His mother dries him off and carries him out.

Mom sits down on the couch to finish the job. The TV is on.

Kalib gets pretty excited by something on the TV.

After he gets dressed in his pajamas, Kalib pays a visit to his Grandma Margie. She usually wears glasses that cover up the mole on her nose. With the glasses gone, Kalib finds the mole to be quite fascinating.

Kalib blows his nose.

Then he tries to blow his grandma's nose - with the same tissue!

Grandma puts her glasses on Kalib. Despite all the nose blowing, a little bit of snot trickles from his left nostril.

He draws, then tries to figure out Margie's crossword puzzle.

Mirror-view of Kalib working the crossword puzzle.

Kalib sees himself. Yes, our house is chaos. We are chaotic people, but, since I got hurt nearly a year-and-a-half ago, followed by Margie's two accidents, the chaos has intensified. We must live with it for awhile yet.

Kalib with pillow.

Kalib sees himself in the clock radio.

On this most difficult night, Kalib gives his mom a hug.

As Kalib's mom sends text messages to her sisters, his dad helps him into his bed. Kalib then turns around and pulls his hair.

Get well, Mary!

Many prayers for you.

Real Wasilla - not to be found in Rogue: Snowplow comes down the road, turns around and goes back up again; Kalib loses shoe on sub-zero drive; more

As I took my walk today, I saw a snowplow coming down the road.

It zipped right past me.

It reached the end of the road, then turned around and came right back again, it's second blade grinding loudly against the pavement it scraped.

It zipped right past me all over again - talk about deja vu!

Here is Kalib, at the Post Office. I see that he has removed one shoe. That's the thing to do when the temperature outside is -5 F (-21C).

On the way home, we passed a postal worker distributing mail. Kalib did not witness this great event.

He had fallen asleep - that's why. I picked him up, carried him into the house and gave him to Margie, who put him into bed for his afternoon nap. 

As soon as he hit the mattress, he was wide awake. (I received a complaint from down in the Navajo Nation today: each of my last two posts contained only one photo each of Kalib. This was highly inadequate, I was informed. POST MORE PICTURES OF KALIB!!! I was chastised. Well, today there is three. I suppose three won't be enough, though.)

At 4:00 PM, I took my coffee break and drove past these kids, playing in the snow.

And here I am, in the drive-through at Metro Cafe, where some important business was being conducted.

As should be clear to all readers, here in Wasilla, the excitement never ends.

You won't find anything like this in "Going Rogue," but you will find it right here, on this blog.

It kind of looks like yesterday, but it isn't (and yet, by the time this post appears, it will be)

No, you haven't accidently logged on to yesterday's entry. It's just that today's begins just as did yesterday's. Once again, Kalib was ill and had to stay home from daycare. Once again, despite having worked all night, his Uncle Caleb devoted himself to his care and entertainment.

Lately, I have been working on a story about the role of Iñupiat uncles play in teaching hunting skills to their nephews. This is because a father can be so overprotective of his own children out in the dangerous Arctic environment that he can fail to teach him what they need to know to survive.

So I thought about that. In both the Apache and Navajo cultures from which Kalib hails, the uncle also traditionally plays a teaching role that the father does not, and for similar reasons.

But I tell you - no one is more protective of Kalib than his Uncle Caleb. I have never seen a relationship quite like the one these two share. Kalib and Caleb - what a bond they share!

I wish I had had such an uncle.

Four dogs that I saw as I took my walk. It was warmer today - just a few degrees below zero at this point. And snow is forecast sometime within the next couple of days, so it will get warmer yet.

I just hope that none of those "Pineapple Express" storms blows in from the South Pacific. They make a mess of everything and just ruin winter.

But it is an El Niño winter, and these are the winters that the Pineapple Express gets completely out-of-hand, so it is inevitable. Just watch.

And whenever it gets really warm up here, it gets cold down in the Lower 48. You will see.

I used to park my airplane right about there, where this playground sits in Wasilla's downtown park. Yes, this used to be Wasilla's airport and the Iditarod Sled Dog race would start right here. It was a terrible place for an airport, though, as Wasilla Middle School and High School both sat under the flight pattern.

During take offs and landings, I would see the buildings and kids outside, beneath my spinning prop, doing PE, practicing football and such. It seemed to me that it was just a matter of time until an airplane went down there.

In fact, one day, a Super Cub did, crashing not far from my son, Jacob, who was a middle school student at the time. Fortunately, nobody was hurt except for the pilot. He was hurt pretty bad, but he survived.

Somewhere in my files, I have a picture of that crashed airplane.

Today, I passed by on my coffee break. I took it early, at 3:00 instead of 4:00, because I could hardly stay awake.

Again, I took the long way home and saw this horse. "Hey Bill! Come ride me!" it neighed out as I drove by. I ignored the invitation.

Someone might have thought I was a horse thief and shot me, or lassoed me and then hung me on the spot. That's what they do to horse thiefs, you know.

I think that horse was trying to trick me, to get me in trouble. Look closely at it. You can see that it is a very mischievous horse.

A short distance later, I saw this guy pedaling his bike. All that conditioning I did pedaling my bike is gone now! I missed five days in a row during AFN and then two days after that, my back tire went flat and I still haven't fixed it.

And whenever I ride a bike in the winter, sooner or later it slips on the ice and slides out from underneath me and I go down. This was not so bad in the past, but now that I have broken my shoulder and have this titanium one, I really don't want to fall.

I'm going to get my cross country skis out real soon, though.

I don't want to fall on them, either. But I will. But I will have snow beneath me. I think I will be ok.

After the bike, I saw a school bus.

I am now nearing home. It is 4:00 PM. The sun has gone down. Alpenglow lights up the Talkeetna Mountains.

Today, in Barrow, the sun rose in the south, then set in the south an hour later. On the 19th, the Barrow sun will come up for just half-an-hour, will go down and then won't rise again until January 23.

I will get there sometime between now and then and I will show you the dark noon.

Of course, if you are already there in Barrow, or anywhere on the Arctic Slope, as many of you, my friends are, this won't be anything new at all.

I am just about home now. Look how much traffic rolls down Seldon! I wonder why?

Kalib gets sick and stays home, I take a walk in the cold air and later go on a coffee drive - how much more excitement do you want?

I have been very lazy and have yet to dig up any of my winter clothes - if everything hasn't disappeared - or buy new clothing if it has. I was desperate to go on a walk this morning, but with the temperature at -22 (-30 c), I needed some kind of protection. 

So I put on an extra sweatshirt, two light jackets and pulled a thin pair of pajama-like cotton pants over my Levi's. In and of themselves, they would not trap much heat, but I reasoned that they would create a layer of air between them and my Levi's and that would be good enough for a relatively short walk. I wouldn't want to be out all day dressed like that, though. Or even for more than just the tiniest while, if there had been a strong wind blowing.

Every single one of my three, good, beaver hats - each worth about $200 - has disappeared, but I found another hat that would do. I had no idea where any gloves were, but my hands are pretty cold-conditioned and I figured that I would be fine if I kept them in my pockets and just pulled them out every now and then to take a picture.

I put on two pairs of socks and then stepped into my regular, kick-around shoes.

As I headed toward the door, I saw these two, engrossed in something going on in Caleb's computer. Little Kalib did not go to daycare today, as he had a bad runny nose, sniffles, and other ailments. Hence, the Kleenix.

On that front, it has now been two weeks since whatever bug struck me, struck me. I hope it was the swine flu, so that I can be done with it. The symptoms read somewhat the same. Probably not, though - that one might still be waiting for me. I am certainly much better than I was two weeks ago, but I remain annoyingly congested and I have a cough that goes away and then comes right back again.

So I walked, and soon I saw a shaft of light falling through the trees, down the road. I could hear a car coming, so I got ready and shot the picture, just as the shadow entered it.

I rounded the corner, walked up the road, then turned around to see what my shadow looked like. I was surprised to see that it was frightened. "Don't shoot!" it shouted silently. "Please! Don't shoot! I have a wife, and kids! And a grandson! Don't shoot! Don't shoot!"

Silly shadow! I didn't even have a gun.

Shortly after I topped the hill and started to head down, a school bus rolled past the end of the road and the way the light looked coming through its window's was amazing. I tried to take a picture, but the pocket camera was just too damned slow.

Sometimes, a school bus will go by and another will soon follow. So, hoping this might happen, I stopped, raised my camera and waited.

After about 15 minutes, none had come. I noticed that my bare fingers were starting to go numb. So I decided to photograph the very next vehicle that came along and call it quits. It was this UPS van. I put my camera back in my pocket, tucked my hands in, too, and headed on, hoping that I might find some moose in the marsh.

I didn't, but even before I got to the marsh, I saw the tracks of a snowshoe hare.

And then two ravens flew over me.

At 4:00 PM, I took my coffee break and here I am, on it, driving down Pittman.

Still on my coffee break, passing by the fire-station. I liked the way it looked, but the damn camera would not focus. Oh well. I took the picture anyway.

Preaching, feeding and healing at First Native Baptist; late though it be, our first cold snap finally arrives: NC on Rogue release

I had gone to Anchorage to do an interview and get a couple of photographs of an 11 year-old boy who fed the first bull caribou that he ever shot to the homeless people who gather each Sunday at the First Native Baptist Church in Anchorage to be fed. 

I misunderstood a little bit, as I thought that the feeding would begin at 3:00 PM, so I made certain to be there on time. In actuality, a church service lasting just over an hour is held first, and then the feeding follows.

I had not intended to take any pictures during the service, but then this fellow was called up to speak. Alalsredo lives in Bangalore, India, where I have many in-laws. His stay in Alaska would be short. As I write these words, he should already be on a jet to continue his tour, which will now take him to several cities in the Lower 48.

"Why would I come from India to preach in the US?" he asked. His answer: Jesus had called him to travel across our nation, stop in all the churches that he could along the way and deliver this specific message:

The people of the US - particularly the church people - need each day to get down on their knees and pray to God. If they don't, he warned, "then this great nation of the United States will fall."

He said that the reason Jesus had sent him specifically to the church people of the United States is because they are God's choice people.

Afterward, he announced that he wanted to call up one person, at random, to pray for that person. He chose this young woman. She came up and he prayed for her.

I had my professional digital SLR's with me to do the picture of the boy, but I did not touch them during the worship service. I tried real hard not to take any more pictures at all, but I could not altogether stop myself, so I did them with my pocket camera, which is perfectly quiet, whereas the DSLR's are noisy.

I had been greeted by one of the pastors when I first entered, and he had expressed his admiration for my professional DSLR's, as if he expected that I had come to use them, so I assume it would have been okay. Yet, they felt too intrusive so I stuck to the pocket camera and even then only shot a little over a dozen frames.

I think one day I might come back and do a complete story on the church's feed-the-homeless program and then, after I have spent more time with them and gotten to know them better, I will photograph the happenings to greater depth.

There was a time to call for healing. This man was suffering pain in his legs. Maybe he felt better afterward, I don't know. I could not take the time to follow-up, but had to do the job that I had come to do.

This woman suffered so badly that she wept. I hope she felt better when it was all over. As for the young man who I came to interview and to photograph, it all came together excellently. I am saving those pictures, though, until I put them to their intended use.

The temperature in Anchorage had been about five degrees, but when we got home last night it was ten below. This morning, at 9:28, it was -18 (-28 C.). So it looks like we have finally entered our first cold snap. Not terribly cold yet, but still a cold snap.

I decided to check online and see what the official temperatures were at a few other Alaska locations, including true cold spots, like Fort Yukon. I had expected that it might be in the -40's, possibly even -50s, there, but it was -31. Fairbanks, a much colder place than Wasilla, was exactly the same as us: -18. Barrow was in the grip of a heat wave: PLUS one.

Anchorage was two above.

In some ways, this is not fair to Anchorage, as the official temperature is taken at the airport, right by Cook Inlet and there are other places in the city that can be 5, 10, 15, or even as much as 20 degrees colder.

I might add that I have checked our car thermometer against official sources and it is amazingly accurate.

The Little Su.

Grotto Iona.

Two moose - momma and calf.

Sarah Palin releases her book:

As if you didn't know. In theory, being as how I am a Wasilla blogger and Wasilla's most famous resident seems at the moment to be the biggest news story in the world, what with the release of Going Rogue, I suppose that I should be writing about Sarah Palin today.

But 42 million people are already doing that and I have other concerns, so I have "no comment."

Not that I couldn't write about her today - I just choose not to.

That circus can tumble on without me.