As her son runs the New York Marathon, the Fit Lady sprints beyond her cancer; Sarah denies being on Little Lake - it is written that Jesus wuz

I went walking a bit after noon today and, after I cut through the marsh, hiked up the hill through the trees and then came out onto the road, I saw Patty Stoll coming the other way. Patty, regular readers will recall, is fighting a deadly cancer. August 17 was the day that I first learned of and made note of it in this blog. 

At that time, without special treatment and surgery available only in the Lower 48, her doctor gave her only "months" to live - with that treatment, perhaps a year. It had been difficult to do, but, having a strong desire to live, Patty got herself lined up to go down south and get that surgery. Then, the doctor who was supposed to do it studied her data, concluded that her case was hopeless, that there was no point in doing anything further and told Patty to make her peace, because her time was up.

But Patty did not make her peace. She decided to fight. She would fight with naturopathic therapy, her strong will and medical treatment that she could get locally. She has made amazing progress.

So, today, once we got past the greetings, I asked, "how are you doing?"

"Good!" she said. "They still tell me that I am sick, but I feel good. I haved gained weight and I am growing stronger."

She told me that her local doctor is astounded at her progress, that he called it "extraodinary" and called her his "examplar." 

He asked her if she would be willing to meet with and speak to other patients with severe cancers and she agreed.

"Someone needs to be the examplar of how to beat this cancer," she said. "It might as well be me. I will set the example." She told me that she has two more rounds of chemo-therapy scheduled and that is it. Please note: she still has her hair.

Patty was also most pleased to tell me that her 30 year-old son, Willie Stoll, had run in the New York Marathon today. He finished the 26.2 mile race in 02:55:08, 616 out of about 20,000.

Jacob and Kalib had taken off walking before me. I went the opposite direction that they took, thinking that I might run into them along the way. But when I reached Little Lake without coming across them, I knew that that I had missed them.

As you can see, the ice has hardened and thickened around the goose decoy. I think it safe to say that, unless someone takes some heroic efforts to free it, this goose is locked down tight until some time in April or so.

The frogs that hang out back here are buried into the mud, where they should be frozen solid by now. They are amazing frogs, because, in the spring, even when only a small portion of the surface of Little Lake has broken clear of ice, you can hear the males croaking, calling their lovers to come and meet them so that they can make tadpoles together.

I could see that various people had been out testing the ice, and that a dog had been with them. The paw prints were big - like Muzzy paw prints.

I had missed them, but Jacob, Kalib and Muzzy had not missed the chance to frolic on the ice.

Others had gone out onto the ice, as well. I'm pretty certain that, despite their official denial, Sarah and Bonnie were among them. H'mmm... Sarah......??? do you think......???? Considering the denial and all?

It wuz written that Jesus had been there. This should surprise no one. 

I wondered if this track had been left by Jacob (It was too big to have been Kalib's) or by Sarah or Bonnie or whoever else might have ventured out onto the ice of Little Lake. When I returned home, Jacob confirmed that he, Kalib and Muzzy had been out on the pond, so I had him show me the bottom of his shoes.

This track was not his.

I should note that the reason all this dirt was on the surface of the pond is because of the big wind that blew the past few days. This is glacier dust, with some volcanic ash thrown into the mix, plus, I am certain, some regular dirt, too - along with the disintegrated remains of several dead spiders.

The wind still blew today, too, but not nearly so hard as the past couple of days. This flag needs to be taken down, disposed of properly and a new one raised in its place.

Since I missed them on the walk, I took Jake to lunch at Taco Bell. During my chat with Patty, she told me that she eats nothing but healthy food and that this has been the case for decades. Seeing as how we have always encountered each other in healthy situations - bike riding, walking and cross-country skiing, she had always kind of assumed I was healthy eater, too, and so has been very surprised to discover, on this very blog, the fact that I am a junk food junky - "a walking heart attack," as she put it.

Taco Bell food is pretty good though and it's got a lot of beans in it, and lettuce, tomatoes, corn chips and cheese and a bit of meat. I think that pretty much covers the food groups - except for fruit. When I got home, I ate a banana; later, Jacob gave me a chunk of persimmon that came all the way up from Brazil.

As you can see, Wasilla Lake is still not frozen over - although windblown shards have piled up on the edge of the shore. Way behind schedule. 

Come 4:00, I still had to go out for coffee, so that I could listen to the news on the radio. Here I am, in line at Mocha Moose, where I saw this guy reflected in my driver's door rearview mirror.

I took the long way home, via Shrock Road, where I took this picture at about 4:30 pm. This morning, it was very nice to be off Daylight Savings time - this afternoon, not quite as nice.

Even though we have yet to experience our first cold snap, the temperature has finally stayed continually below freezing for two days straight.

And tonight, I took a brief walk outside. Even with the lingering dust, the sky was crystal clear and the brisk air gave me a distinct bite that I can still feel in my ears. It felt just the way it does before a real cold snap sets in - so maybe.

I just wish there was snow, but there's not and if it gets cold you can be sure there won't be until it warms up again.

Kalib's parents bought him a girly pirate outfit for Halloween, but he didn't wear it

Kalib's parents bought him a pirate costume for Halloween, but when they pulled it out of the package, they discovered that it was a dress. They had bought him a lady pirate's outfit. So, they dressed him up as an Arizona State quarterback instead.

Kalib tosses his football into the air.

He fumbles.

Everybody fumbles. Now the plan was to take him to the Alaska Transportation Museum, where they were going to be handing out treats. I did not want to get stuck on their schedule, so I decided to follow separately.

Just after they left, the first group of trick-or-treators came to the door. When we first moved here, the trick-or-treators came hard and heavy. They would hike through the snow to our door and sometimes through subzero F temperatures, but they came, unstoppable. Sometimes, we would run out of candy and have to make an emergency run to Carr's.

And then one year, only a few came and it has been that way ever since.

I was a little worried about leaving Margie to hobble repeatedly to the door on her crutches to deal with trick-or-treators, so I waited awhile. No more came. She assured me that, even if they did, their numbers would be small and she could handle it. So I headed to the transportation museum.

Sadly, I got there too late - all the candy had been given out and Kalib had got his share. I did get there in time to watch an old Mighty Mouse cartoon.

For my benefit, Kalib walked back through the old vehicles and underneath the airplanes. The first time that he had walked through here, someone in costume had been stationed at each machine to give out candy.

It was these people, they were the ones who gave out the candy.

On the way home, I drove past the outskirts of Serendipity and was surprised to see cars lined up throughout the streets, with large groups of children moving from house to house.

So that's what happened. Serendipity took away our woods - and our trick-or-treators, too. I guess everybody figures they will get more candy by going to the houses of rich people.

After I returned, Margie told me that only two small groups had come while I was gone.

I suppose I should have turned off the road and into Serendipity to take a few pictures of all the monsters, ghosts, Palins and other such nightmarish creatures wandering the streets there, but all I wanted to do at that point was to get home to see how Margie was doing.

Now we have all this candy left. What choice do I have, but to eat it?

A hard wind blows, glacier dust tears my throat and sinuses apart; I wish it would snow and bury all that damn dust

I took this from my car about noon - the temperature was 36 degrees, warm for this time of year, but the voice on the radio was saying that the wind was 40, gusting to 70, so if you were to have gone and stood out there, it would not have felt warm.

This is all wrong. Wasilla Lake is supposed to be frozen by now. Some years, it has frozen in the second week in October, quite often by the third and almost always by the fourth. In only one other year do I recall seeing the entire month pass without this and the other lakes freezing.

Of course, October has not completely passed and it could yet freeze before the month is over, but I don't think it will.

The ravens were having fun, riding the wind.

They rode it low. They rode it high. It carried them up, it pulled them down.

She appeared on the trail and she shouted at me, but the wind carried her words away before they could reach my ears.

"What?" I shouted back.

She shouted at me again.

"What?" I again shouted back.

Then she really put her lungs into it: "The birds love the wind! They ride it high! They ride it low! It carries them up, it pulls them down!"

The wind grabs the glacier dust and drives it through the air. Glacier dust is extremely fine, like powdered sugar. It is horrible to breathe. And undoubtedly, it has some volcanic ash mixed in with it.

One year, it froze very early, but no moisture came. It did not snow in October, it did not snow in November, it did not snow through most of December, but it got very cold. Day after day of teens and twenties below zero, sometimes 30's and even -40.

And on many of those days the wind tore, just like this. There was no snow to hold any of the glacier dust down, so the wind just picked it up and in the midst of all that cold, blasted it into you.

It was horrible.

Traveling through the streaming glacier dust. I write this with a sore throat, plugged nose and irritated sinuses.

Kalib was in the car with us - with Margie and me, that is. We had been baby sitting him. Fierce gusts frequently broadsided the car. It would rock, it would jerk.

It was windy in Anchorage, too, but not as windy as out here in the valley. On what they call the Anchorage Hillside, though - it would have been fiercely windy.

This was why we went to Anchorage. Every Halloween, they put on a chili feast at the place where Melanie works. Every employee brings in a pot of their own special chili. Melanie wanted her mom to help her as she cooked hers, so she did.

Me, I went off to try to visit a friend who had been severely injured in a snowmachine accident while returning to Wainwright from an ice-fishing trip.  He was medivaced by air-ambulance to Anchorage and then taken to the Alaska Native Medical Center. Also, I finally got that check that I had been waiting for, so I thought maybe I would buy the new Canon G11 pocket camera, because its high ISO, low-light, capabilities are much improved over the G10 that I have been using.

Yet, when the time came, I could not bring myself to lay down $499 for that camera. I really wanted to, but I just couldn't do it. So here I am, at the chili feed - the perfect place to test out the low light, high ISO capabilty of the G11, but instead I used the G10, which is very noisy and grainy at high ISO, but, oh well, so what?

That's Melanie on the left, of course. The fellow on the right is Chancey. A bit over two years ago, he was one of her coworkers at Duane Miller & Associates, but then he left to go be a Mormon missionary.

And where did he get sent? Japan? South America? France? New Zealand?

No. The Mormon Church sent him to Salt Lake City. For two years. To be a Mormon Missionary. In Salt Lake City. But he did get to learn to speak Spanish.

He is not being rehired, but he remembered how good all the DMA chili feeds were, so he came back to eat chili. That vat of chili in the foreground is Melanie's. Pumpkin chili. It is very tasty. "Don't eat too much, Dad!" she warned. "It's very spicy." It was very tasty. I would never have known that pumpkin and chili go well together, had it not been for Melanie.

I did not get to see my friend. They are being very strict about visitors, due to swine flu, and were only allowing two family members to go in with him. I did see his daughter, but not until after the feast. I was able to introduce her to Margie.

He has not yet come to, but he is in stable condition and his prognosis is good. He is just about to turn 70 and still he is shooting about the country on a snowmachine, hunting caribou, catching fish - doing that kind of thing.

Wandering about AFN, Part 7, final: More faces; I end at a memorial for a strong woman

The AFN Convention began one week ago yesterday and ended one week ago tomorrow, so, as fun as this has been for me, I think I had better wrap it up. I begin the close with Willie Kasayulie of Akiachak. Thanks to Ada Deer, a Menominee who served as head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs under President Bill Clinton, 229 tribes in Alaska now enjoy federal recognition, but in the early 1980's, many argued that ANCSA had rendered tribal government null and void in Alaska.

Kasayulie was President of Akiachak's tribal government, formed under the provisions of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 and neither he, the tribal council or the village elders believed this. They saw their tribal government as the legitimate voice of the people of their village.

So they dissolved their city government and moved all of its functions under the tribe. The move was extremely controversial, even within the Native community, but Akiachak did it and they succeeded.

The woman at left is Carolyn Nora David, daughter of Katie John and the wife of Charles David, who I earlier introduced as the man who witnessed as I crashed my plane just outside the village of Mentasta. Standing next to her is Shawn Sanford, Jr. with his mother, Crystal and father, Shawn Sanford, Sr.

The reason that I had flown to Mentasta in the first place was to attend the victory celebration for Katie John, after then Governor Tony Knowles, following a period of long debate, uncertainty and a trip to Katie John's fishwheel at Batzulnetas on the Copper River, dropped the State's court case against her right to subsistence fish under federal jurisdiction and did not appeal to the US Supreme Court.

Even though I crashed my plane, I still covered the celebration.

Katie is well into her nineties, now. Although she did not come to Anchorage, Nora says she is doing well.

Paul Kignak Jr. and wife Kate, of Barrow.

Aqqaluk Lynge, left, traveled all the way from Greenland to attend the AFN Convention, on behalf of the Inuit Circumpolar Council. Lynge is President of ICC Greenland and delivered an address to AFN. Next to him stands Kelly Eningowuk, the Executive Director of ICC Alaska. Jim Stotts of Barrow is the acting Chair of ICC. 

The last General Assembly of ICC was held in Barrow in the summer of 2005 and the next is scheduled for July, 2010, in Nuuk, Greenland. I cannot promise that I will be there, but I hope that I will and I think the odds are fairly good.

Eben Hopson, the first Mayor of the North Slope Borough, was never happy with the fact the Inuit people, spread from the Russian Far East, across Alaska and Canada and Greenland were separated by international boundaries.

And so he set in motion the movement that led to the first General Assembly of ICC, then known as the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, in Barrow in 1977. The organization seeks not only to strengthen ties between the Inuit of all four nations, but also to advance Inuit and indigenous causes world wide, including in the United Nations.

The tall lady second from left is Julie Kitka, Tlingit, who is President of the Alaska Federation of Natives and the person upon whom the responsibility of organizing the convention falls most heavily. At left is Valerie Davidson, originally of Bethel, who has earned her law degree and now works at the Southcentral Foundation in Anchorage. 

Yesterday, I introduced Sylvia Lange of Barrow. Standing next to her is Marla Berg who carries North Slope Borough issues to Juneau and Washington, DC.

Colleen Akpikleman, from the North Slope Borough Mayor's Office.

Ellen Frantz and Martha Brower, both of Barrow.

Christopher Kalerak of Elim, artist, and his daughter.

Merlin Koonooka of Gambell on St. Lawrence Island, who I once followed on a seal hunt. I am sorry, but I have forgotten the name of the woman who stands next to him.

Iqaluk Nayakik, Kuugmiut Dancers, Wainwright. 

On Saturday, I headed into Anchorage with plans to attend the final hours of the AFN convention, which was scheduled to adjourn at 3:00 PM. First, I stopped at the Anchorage Native Assembly of God chapel to attend a memorial for Bernice Tagarook, a respected Elder from Wainwright who had passed away at the Alaska Native Medical Center.

It is common in Alaska to have a memorial in Anchorage before the person is flown back to their village for the funeral and burial. Because of AFN, many people were in town and were able to attend the memorial.

Bernice always greeted me in Wainwright with warmth and friendship, but the memory that I have of her that I think speaks most strongly to her strength of character took place in the village of Atqasuk.

Her daughter, Bernadine, had married into that village and I, who, I stress again, am not a wedding photographer, happened to be there at the time and so I photographed the wedding. Several years later, I happened to return to Atqasuk on the very day that Bernadine died of cancer.

So I attended the funeral, and after the burial, during one of the most hard and painful events of her life, Bernice invited me to sit with her, in the midst of many crosses and grave markers. It was she who found the strength to smile, even to laugh, and to give comfort to those others who mourned all around her.

Here, her grandchildren that were present in Anchorage step to her casket before it is closed for the service.

I never made it to the convention on Saturday, because I did not leave Bernice's memorial until well after 2:00 PM. I then headed over to the Bishop's Attic, an Anchorage thrift store, to meet my daughter Melanie so that we could figure out where to meet Lisa for lunch. 

After we decided where to go, I drove back out onto the Seward Highway, looked into my mirror and was surprised to see the hearse that Bernice now rode in. It was the first leg of her final journey back to Wainwright.

I could not help but think of these lines from the Carter Family, accompanied by the great Johnny Cash:

I was standing by my window,
On one cold and cloudy day
When I saw that hearse come rolling
For to carry my mother away...

Well I told that undertaker,
Undertaker please drive slow
For this lady you are hauling
Lord, I hate to see her go!

Will the circle be unbroken
By and by, Lord, by and by?
There’s a better home a-waiting
In the sky, Lord, in the sky!

When you think about it, that's really what the people are doing when they get together - the youth and the Elders, the leaders and the onlookers - to discuss, debate, to try to determine how to advance ancient cultures within a modern and sometimes alien and hostile world - they want to keep the circle from breaking.

Not so long ago, I watched a white hearse carry my own mother away. Those lyrics came into my mind then, too.

Wandering about AFN, Part 6: Still more faces and stories: Centurian, rescuer, Tlingit Anthropologist, Point Lay whaling captain and more

When I first went to work for the Tundra Times, nearly three decades ago, I was lucky to meet Elders from all across Alaska and one of them was Dr. Walter Soboleff, Tlingit. These Elders were a special group of people, for they had seen and known life in Alaska in a way that no one else ever would again. They had knowledge in their heads that they would take to the grave and then that knowledge would never again be possessed by anyone in quite the same way.

To honor them, it was Tundra Times policy to always capitalize the words Elders and Elder - and I have continued to do so.

With very few exceptions, those who were Elders then are gone now.

But Dr. Soboleff is still here. He will turn 101 on November 15. The very short nap that he took during the proceedings is well-deserved. I spoke to his son, Walter Soboleff, Jr. not long after I took this picture. He told me that the week before, he had attended a Grand Camp meeting of the Alaska Native Brotherhood and that his dad had been busy throughout - reviewing and filing resolutions and always making sure that folks adhered to Robert's Rules of Order.

Late one day in March of 2000, shortly after the sun dropped below the sea ice on the horizon, I landed the Running Dog on Norton Sound, just beyond the Nome shoreline. I was tired, I did not have much spare change and the hotels were full anyway. 

I expected Mike Williams to drive his dogs into town in the wee hours, probably about 3:00 AM, so I twisted my ice screws into the surface of the sea, tied the Running Dog down, hiked to the shore, bought a big dinner at Fat Freddie's, went back to the airplane, pitched my tent beneath one wing, crawled in, slept a bit, got up to greet Mike as he came in, then went back to the plane, crawled back into my tent, back into the sleeping bag and got what sleep I could.

I felt like hell when I got up the next day and I wandered into town in somewhat of a daze. I had not gone far before a pickup truck stopped beside me. "Hey Bill!" I heard a voice. I turned and looked into this smiling face.

Perry Mendenhall.

I moved out of the tent and into his house, where I stayed for several days. We ate good. Seal, dry fish, walrus, an occassional hotdog, maktak - and a bunch of King crab pulled fresh out of the ocean and dropped live into the boiling pot.

At night we went to ball games and to the bars where we threw darts at targets hanging on the walls.

His wife was down in the states. Two cats lived with him - the white one, which he did not like but his wife did, and the gray one, which he did like.

When finally I would get to bed and go to sleep, those cats would come in and sleep on top of me.

Late on an AFN afternoon, I was feeling dry and parched, so I left the convention center and headed over toward the Penny's Mall, determined to get a Pepsi. When I got there, I found Janice Meadows shopping for goods to take back home to the Slope with her.

She needed a Pepsi, too, so I bought one for both of us, plus pretzels. We had a good, long, visit and she advanced some excellent ideas about how I might seek out the ways and means to begin sorting through and making sense of the photos and stories that I have taken and gathered over the years.

Thank you, Janice!

This is Rosita Worl, Phd, Tlingit Anthropologist and the President of the Sealaska Heritage Institute. In 2008, she was honored with the very prestigious Solon T. Kimball Award for Public and Applied Anthropology. In June of that year - the same month that I took my fall and shattered my shoulder, got it replaced with titanium and truly learned why the American Health Insurance industry needs to be reformed - SHI released a book on which, as a photographer I collaborated with Worl and other Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian authors:

Celebration: Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian, Dancing on the Land. 

In short, in 1982, after listening to the Elders lament about how the Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian language, songs, and dances were being lost among the young, Rosita took a lead role in organizing Celebration '82. Tlingit, Haida and Tshimshian people came to Juneau from all across Southeast, as well as Anchorage and Seattle, for three days of dancing, singing and feasting in the hope of inspiring the young to learn.

There was much power, energy and joy in the dances, but there was also a solemnity that hung over the entire celebration, one that reminded me a little bit of being at a wake - this because no one knew for certain if this was the birth of a new cultural awakening or the dirge of one about to go under.

The number of dance groups was fairly small and most of the dancers were older. The number of youth and children dancers was small.

I returned again for Celebration '84 and then did not come back until 2004.

What an amazing experience 2004 was. Now, there were so many dance groups that the only way they could accommodate them all was to set up three separate venues so that they could perform simultaneously.

And there were hundreds - no, THOUSANDS - of young people dancing. And when the parade came, they poured through the streets of Juneau like a multi-colored river of song and dance. The power of the drums boomed through the streets of the Capitol City.

I returned in 2006 to find Celebration had grown even bigger still.

So that's what the book was about. It has been kind of a strange experience for me, this book, almost like it never happened, like I was never involved in such a work at all. I have not been to Southeast since I fell and got hurt. In the year that followed publication of the book, particularly the first half, my whole focus was pretty much limited to trying to put myself back together. I had almost no contact with anyone down in Southeast. I have heard almost nothing of the book since it came out. I have not attended a single function related to it, nor autographed a single book.

Rosita told me that it has had many excellent reviews and is beloved by the people of Southeast.

So that was good to hear.

This is Thomas Nukapigak, one of two whaling captains from Point Lay. I am not going to say much about this story right now, because it is part of the project that I am near to bringing to conclusion, so I will tell it in more depth later.

Briefly stated, one year in the 1930's, the people of Point Lay landed three bowhead whales. After that, largely due to the misguided Indian Relocation Act, the people of the village began to be dispersed all across the nation, from Chicago to San Francisco and elsewhere.

Point Lay emptied, until only two people remained - Warren and Dorcas Neakok.

In the early 1970's, following the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act and the organization of the North Slope Borough, they returned to reclaim their village, but they were small in number and not yet organized to where they could whale again.

By the time they were ready, many complicated things had happened and only ten Alaska communities were recognized as whaling villages. Point Lay was not one of the ten. They were not allowed to whale. In 2008, after several years of trying, Point Lay was finally recognized as a whaling village.

So I headed over there, to see what would happen. Thomas and his crew - comprised largely of very eager high school students were the first to head down to the ice, so I went with them.

A couple of days later, Julius Rexford, the other whaling captain, had repaired his boat and brought his crew down, too.

It was a most enjoyable stay for me, but the weather was relentlessly windy and harsh, ice conditions terrible, and no whale was landed.

I wanted to go back in 2009, even as I wanted to go back to Wainwright and follow Jason Ahmaogak and Iceberg 14 - for reasons that will also become clear in future posts.

But I had shattered my shoulder and was still recovering. It hurt all the time. It was weak. I wore a brace. I feared that I could not hold up under the rigors of the whaling life. So I went to India to photograph Soundarya's wedding and on the day that I left, Julius Rexford and crew struck a bowhead, even as Thomas and his crew were closing in on another.

Thomas turned away from the whale that looked like it was about to come to his boat and rushed off to help Julius land his.

Now I am very embarrassed. I do not have a picture of Julius at AFN to post here. I saw him, we had a good chat, but, as I did in many cases at AFN, I got so wrapped up in the conversation that I simply forgot to take a picture.

Julius received AFN's Culture Bearer Award at this convention.

You can find pictures of Julius in my Point Lay Nalukataq series.

Here are some of the others who helped land, butcher, divide and share the Point Lay bowhead: Amy Henry, Sophie Henry, Marie Tracey and Lena Henry. The Henry's are all sisters, Sophie is Marie's daughter-in-law and her husband, Bill Jr., is Tom's harpooner and a good, all-around right-hand man.

I am running out of time, so I am not going to say much about these two, Roy Nageak of Barrow and Nannie Ray Kaigeluk of Nuiqsut. They both have roles in the project that I am working on. After that project is done, I am going to share the results with you, so you can learn about them, then.

Now I must hurry: Paulette Moreno, Tlingit poet, actress and playwright, chatting with Mike Williams.

Deborah Vo, who I knew as the Executive Director the Alaska Inter-Tribal Council in the late '90's and early '00's.

Robin Demoski, who took my picture.

Laura Itta, of Barrow. I can assure you, there are stories behind all of these people, but I am flat out of time for now.

Tomorrow, I will publish the final episode of this series and then I will leave the AFN Convention behind until next year.